Still more critical was the lack of food for the men, and forage for the
horses and oxen on which every kind of winter transportation depended.
December 1779 found the troops subsisting on “miserable fresh beef,
without bread, salt, or vegetables.” When the big snows of midwinter
blocked the roads, making it totally impossible for supplies to get
through, the army’s suffering for lack of provisions alone became almost
more than human flesh and blood could bear. Early in January 1780, said
the Commander in Chief, his men sometimes went “5 or Six days together
without bread, at other times as many days without meat, and once or
twice two or three days without either ... at one time the Soldiers eat
every kind of horse food but Hay.”
Thanks to the magistrates and civilian population of New Jersey, an
appeal from Washington in this urgent crisis brought cheerful, generous
relief. This alone saved the army from starvation, disbandment, or such
desperate, wholesale plundering as must have eventually ruined all
patriot morale. By the end of February, however, the food situation was
once more acute. Wrote General Greene: “Our provisions are in a manner
gone; we have not a ton of hay at command, nor magazines to draw from.”
Periodic food shortages continued to plague the troops during the next
few months. As late as May 9, there was only a 3-days’ supply of meat on
hand, and it was estimated that the flour, if made into bread, could not
last more than 15 or 16 days. Officers and men alike literally lived
from hand to mouth all through the 1779-80 encampment period.