who showed up as winter ended and helped train the continental army
Valley Forge Increasing military efficiency, morale, and discipline were as vital to the army's well-being as its supply of food and arms. The army had been handicapped in battle because unit training was administered from a variety of field manuals, making coordinated battle movements awkward and difficult. The soldiers were trained, but not uniformly. The task of developing and carrying out an effective training program fell to Baron Friedrich von Steuben, a skilled Prussian drill master who had recently arrived from Europe. He tirelessly drilled the soldiers, improving their battle and formation techniques greatly; more importantly, he gave them their morale back, which had been lost in the hopeless winter.[18]
American Revolution The Continental Army forced the British out of Boston in 1776, but the British captured and held New York City for the duration of the war. The British blockaded ports and captured other cities for brief periods, but they failed to defeat Washington's forces. The Patriots unsuccessfully attempted to invade Canada during the winter of 1775–76, but they captured a British army at the Battle of Saratoga in late 1777, and the French entered the war as allies of the United States as a result. The war later turned to the American South where the British under the leadership of Charles Cornwallis captured an army at South Carolina but failed to enlist enough volunteers from Loyalist civilians to take effective control of the territory. A combined American–French force captured a second British army at Yorktown in 1781, effectively ending the war in the United States. The Treaty of Paris in 1783 formally ended the conflict, confirming the new nation's complete separation from the British Empire. The United States took possession of nearly all the territory east of the Mississippi River and south of the Great Lakes, with the British retaining control of Canada and Spain taking Florida.
Economic nationalism While the coining of the term "
Valley Forge The army’s situation improved when a five-man congressional delegation arrived on January 24. The delegates consisted of “Francis Dana of Massachusetts, Nathaniel Folsom of New Hampshire, John Harvie of Virginia, Gouverneur Morris of New York, and Joseph Reed of Pennsylvania.”[30] According to historian Wayne Bodle, they came to understand through their visit “how vulnerable the new army could be to logistical disruption, owing to its size, its organizational complexity, and its increasing mobility.”[31] Washington and his aides convinced them to implement recommended reforms to the supply department. In March 1778, Congress also appointed Nathanael Greene as Quartermaster General, who reluctantly accepted at Washington’s behest. One of the Continental Army’s most able generals, Greene did not want an administrative position. Yet he and his staff better supplied the troops at a time when the weather began to improve, and with it, road conditions. The Schuylkill River also thawed, allowing the Continental Army to more easily to transport convoys from the main supply depot at Reading.[32]