A Visit to Valley Forge...with Valley Forge Weather

Today, some forty history students from my campus of Penn State Altoona trekked the hallowed grounds of Valley Forge National Historical Park. The extremely knowledgeable and ever entertaining Joe Petrulionis was the teacher and supervisor. I was actually pleased by the amount of snow and muddy pathways. What better way to get a taste of Valley Forge's history than to be just slightly cold and muddy?

Following the American defeats at Brandywine on September 11 and Germantown on October 4, 1777, George Washington required a site to simultaneously train his men and keep an eye on British forces occupying Philadelphia 16 miles to the east. Valley Forge provided a site close enough for surveillance and foraging, but far enough away to avoid a British assault. In addition, the geographic components of the Schuylkill River and formidable high ground made the Forge a considerable defensive position. Six to ten inches of snow covered the ground for the majority of the winter. Of course, most know of the great suffering which took place there that winter, but that is only half the story. The new training methods implemented by Prussian Baron Freidrich Von Steuben throughout the six month encampment led to an arguably more efficient American fighting force.

Our guide was Ranger Scott Houting, an incredibly well-versed historian of the Revolution and military history. Our first stop in the park was the extreme left flank of the outer line defenses of the encampment. In this sector lived the men under the command of General Peter Muhlenberg's brigade. Upon the Continentals' arrival at Valley Forge, Washington broke down his army into companies of twelve men. These soldiers built cabins 14x16 feet in perimeter, humble shelters where they would live until the following spring. "Company Streets" were formed in this log cabin city. The Continental Army would leave the Forge on June 19, 1778 upon word of the British evacuation of Philadelphia.

Our first video features Ranger Pete Maugle discussing the composition of the Continental Army at Valley Forge.

Next, the very young but quite experienced sergeant in the photo's foreground helped demonstrate some small squad drilling and firing.

Here, Ranger Pete describes one of the modes of firing the muskets.

A fire was blazing away in their small cabin, yet the cold was still considerable.

After driving past the National Memorial Arch (similar to the arch in Paris) and the inner defense lines near Redoubt Number 3, our caravan arrived at the Isaac Potts House. In 1777, a woman by the name of Deborah Hues was a tenant of the stone house. The home was then subleased to Washington for use as his headquarters. The first "public" commemoration of Washington's birthday took place in the front yard of this home when an artillery band serenaded the general and wife Martha. (Or did the men just want their overdue pay?)

Ranger Houting talks about the architecture of the structure. Minus a new roof and some minor restorations, the Potts House largely remains as it did 232 years ago. Visitors can grasp the same stairway railing that the general used.

The front room of the house is where aides such as Alexander Hamilton and the Marquis de Lafayette would have completed much clerical work.

A brief synopsis of the work done in the front room.

The dinning room at the rear of the headquarters. Notice the almonds on the table - one of George's favorite treats. No wonder he had bad teeth...

An upstairs bedroom furnished as officers' quarters.

Reproduction cabins of Washington's "Life Guards," the 18th Century equivalent of the Secret Service.

In our final video, Ranger Houting provides additional information about Washington's elite personal body guards.

Our day in the Valley Forge area concluded with with a well-deserved meal at "Five Guys Burger and Fries." A good day indeed!

What Defines "The Sacred?"

I composed this brief paper for a Gettysburg class in 2008. In it, I draw comparisons between the American landmarks of Mount Rushmore in the Black Hills, the Gettysburg Battlefield, and other historical sites. I'd like to pay homage to my professor, Dr. Brian Black, who's studies first made me ponder such questions of historical memory and sacredness. In a quest I am still investigating, I delve into what makes Gettysburg (and Rushmore) special to we history buffs. Furthermore, why do others see them as divisive objects of debate or conjecture? The answers to these questions can be as complicated as the history itself.

The Black Hills of the American West have long been a contested parcel of territory throughout the history of the United States. In the 1870s, a battle was waged between the prospects of gold and the notions of ancient spirituality. In the modern era, a war of words and ideals is being waged in the Black Hills, a conflict often as controversial as the one waged over a century ago. The hills are the home of Mount Rushmore, one of the most poignant images of American identity. Yet to some, this edifice has come to represent humiliation, defeat, and conquest.

Many claim that the four presidential faces look down from a place where they should not be – sacred Native American land. In a variety of ways, it stands a trophy over the defeated Lakota Sioux that once called the hills their home. Just as Federal monuments at Gettysburg far outnumber Confederate memorials, there seems to be a story that is only partially being told.

In addition to the alteration of memory, there has been an ever-increasing amount of commercialization throughout the American West. As environmental historian Donald Worster has stated, “Today’s Hills, with all their billboards, national parks and forests, gas stations, and curio shops, can symbolize their persistent status as victims of the westward movement.” Who could not say the same of Gettysburg and other American battlefields, where one can discover an abundant collection of souvenir shops and tourist stops retailing Robert E. Lee shot glasses?

The debate over the appropriateness of Mount Rushmore continues to this day. How did Native Americans feel when Cary Grant dangled from George Washington’s nose in Hitchcock’s North by Northwest? How painful might it have been when Gutzon Borglum carved four presidents into their sacred space, the Lakota equivalent of the Vatican or Jersusalem? John Lame Deer, an activist involved with the American Indian Movement (AIM), occupied the monument in the early 1970s out of protest. He placed a staff atop the monument proclaiming it, “shall remain dirty until the treaties concerning the Black Hills are fulfilled." According to one Indian Heritage website:

"The Sioux see Mount Rushmore as a desecration of a beautiful, sacred mountain, an insult so grotesque that it is almost unspeakable. The late medicine man Lame Deer once said that the monument 'fits into our sacred Black Hills like a red-hot iron poker into somebody's eye... They could just as well have carved this mountain into a huge cavalry boot standing on a dead Indian.'"

In a form of retaliation toward Rushmore and to pay homage to their own leader, the Sioux commissioned a Rushmore-like statue of Chief Crazy Horse just miles away from the four presidents. (The Crazy Horse carving will be three times larger than Rushmore upon it's completion.) The contested landscape largely ceases to be conflicted as two separate yet connected narratives are at last interpreted with a form of equality. Coincidentally, the first Native American superintendent of a National Park now oversees Mount Rushmore. Gerard Baker, a Mandan-Hidatsa, sees Rushmore as a new potential symbol of unification, not just division. He stated in one interview, “A lot of Indian people look at Mount Rushmore as a symbol of what white people did to this country when they arrived—took the land from the Indians and desecrated it,” Baker says. “I’m not going to concentrate on that. But there is a huge need for Anglo-Americans to understand the Black Hills before the arrival of the white men. We need to talk about the first 150 years of America and what that means.”

A similar situation of highly symbolic and contested "unification" arose out of Richmond, Virginia at a completely different historical site. When a statue of Abraham Lincoln and his son, Tad, was dedicated at the former Confederate Tredegar Ironworks, there were open protests by southern heritage organizations, some of which compared the monument to placing a statue of Hitler in Paris. In another form of retaliation or attempt at balance, the Sons of Confederate Veterans commissioned a similar statue of President Jefferson Davis and his sons. Although many argue the statue is not in retaliation of the bronze Lincoln, one never knows. Their efforts in the placement of this memorial failed, however. Nevertheless, both the Crazy Horse and Davis statues, reveal how our many cultural and political wounds often heal, but very slowly.

Such “sacred landscapes” frequently have different meanings for different people. The divisive and broad sagas of the Civil War and the American West are only two instances displaying how history shapes our landscapes and diversifies our modern culture.

Lincoln statue in Richmond, VA.

Iwo Jima in "The Pacific"

I recently discovered a one minute segment from HBO's upcoming miniseries The Pacific and features the character of Marine John Basilone, a Medal of Honor recipient. This particular scene is reminiscent of the amphibious landing assaults portrayed in the recent film Flags of Our Fathers. However, I sense that this series will delve into themes and events entirely new to film. In the left corner of one of the shots, you can see the heavily fortified Mount Suribachi as the Navy F6F Hellcats drop their ordinance. I'm now reading Eugene B. Sledge's (one of the film's characters) memoir, With the Old Breed, in anticipation of this program which begins on March 14. There is much excitement in regard to this series and from what I have previewed thus far, I can certainly understand why.

Thomas Jefferson's Great Dilemma

By Jared Frederick

The beliefs of Thomas Jefferson and his thoughts of slavery have long been elusive, contradicting, and highly debated. How could the author of American creation, who proclaimed that all were equal before God, own 175 slaves? If the founding fathers, including Jefferson, truly believed this, why did the majority of them own slaves or believe the other races to be morally or intellectually inferior? Answers to these questions are still being sought over 230 years later. Contradictions regarding the peculiar institution can be seen in more than one case. Thomas Jefferson himself confided to his friend John Adams that “slavery is an abomination.” Yet Jefferson How can we begin to explain this paradox? owned slaves until his dying day, manumitting very few of them upon his death.

Jefferson and Colonial historian Andrew Burstein offers one unique perspective in his book, Jefferson’s Secrets: Death and Desire at Monticello; “Jefferson used the nonracial variant of slavery in his 1774 Summary View of the Rights of British America, to decry Parliament’s ‘systematical plan’ of political oppression; and when he got around to drafting the Declaration of Independence, he directly blamed King George III for encumbering his colonies with an African slave trade they would have preferred to abolish on their own. He and his fellows wished to imagine that their antislavery statements moderated their actual failure as emancipators of African Americans” (Burstein, 118).

Even the most vehement critics of slavery amongst the founding fathers could do little to end it, including those who owned slaves themselves. Like George Washington, Jefferson claimed opposition to slavery. However, they both (at some point at least) believed the journey toward emancipation would have to be gradual. The southern economy, agriculture, and the financial elite depended too heavily upon the necessity for chattel slavery within their society. Nevertheless, Jefferson feared the intense sectional divides brought about by slavery would eventually bring civil war upon the young nation, and he was right.

At times, we simply cannot translate Jefferson’s true feelings. His mixed emotions are seen in his 1821 Autobiography: “Nothing is more certainly written in the book of fate than that these people are to be free.” Yet, he goes on to say, “Nor is it less certain that the two races, equally free, cannot live in the same government. Nature, habit, and opinion had drawn indelible lines of distinction between them” (139).

As Jefferson aged, he seemed to become more removed from abolitionist thought and holds a more racist point of view. He noted blacks were “brought up from their infancy without necessity for thought or forecast, [they] are by their habits rendered as incapable as children of taking care of themselves.” Furthermore, he states, “They secrete less by the kidneys and more by the glands of the skin, which gives them a very strong and disagreeable odor. They seem to require less sleep.... Comparing them by their faculties of memory, reason, and imagination, it appears to me, that in memory they are equal to whites....and that in imagination they are dull, tasteless and anomalous.... The Indians will astonish you with strokes of the most sublime oratory; such as prove their reason and sentiment strong, and their imagination glowing and elevated. But never yet could I find that a black had uttered a thought above the level of plain narration...”

So what were Jefferson’s true feelings? Was he a reluctant slave owner and founding father ahead of his time? Or was he a bigoted businessman who took advantage of his slaves? Well, the conclusion could very well be both. The truth of the matter is that we may never fully know these answers. The only thing we are sure of is that we never cease learning new things about Jefferson and how conflicted his life’s work really was.