December 19 · This Day in America
On December 19, 1777, a beaten, hungry army limps into a ridge of frozen Pennsylvania farmland called Valley Forge. They have lost Philadelphia. They are short of food, short of coats, and short of hope; Washington reckons a third of his men have no shoes, and a trail of bloody footprints proves it. There is no battle here. The enemy this winter is cold, smallpox, hunger, and the quiet temptation to simply go home. Some two thousand will not survive the season. And yet — drilled by a Prussian volunteer, fed at last, held together by a commander who refused to leave them — the men who stagger in broken will march out in June as a real army. Valley Forge is not a victory. It is the place an idea proved it could endure being tested, which is the only kind of endurance that counts.
Source: www.nps.gov
Also on this day · 1776
With the cause near collapse, Thomas Paine's first Crisis essay reaches the public on December 19, 1776, opening with a line that has never stopped working: "These are the times that try men's souls." The summer soldier and the sunshine patriot, he warns, will shrink from service now — but what we obtain too cheap, we esteem too lightly. Days later Washington crossed the Delaware.
Source: www.amrevmuseum.org
“These are the times that try men's souls.”Thomas Paine, The American Crisis, 1776