Gearing Up for the 1780 Campaign, Quarter Master General Nathanael Greene, Under Orders of General Washington, Orders the First Ever Survey of U.S. Government-owned Buildings – “buildings belonging to the Continent”
An important war-date letter of Greene, just months before he assumed the Southern Command
The winter of 1779-1780 was a severe one. Over the course of that winter, New Jersey had twenty six snowstorms and six of those were blizzards! Every saltwater inlet from North Carolina to Canada froze over completely. In fact, New York Harbor froze with ice so thick that British soldiers were able...
The winter of 1779-1780 was a severe one. Over the course of that winter, New Jersey had twenty six snowstorms and six of those were blizzards! Every saltwater inlet from North Carolina to Canada froze over completely. In fact, New York Harbor froze with ice so thick that British soldiers were able to march from Manhattan to Staten Island.
George Washington decided to place his army at Morristown, New Jersey for winter quarters. When they arrived at the encampment site in November 1779 there was already a foot of snow on the ground. Some snowfalls dropped more than four feet of snow with snow drifts over six feet. The temperature only made it above freezing a couple times in the whole winter. Officers remembered ink freezing in their quill pens, and one surgeon recorded that “we experienced one of the most tremendous snowstorms ever remembered; no man could endure its violence many minutes without danger to his life… When the storm subsided, the snow was from four to six feet deep, obscuring the very traces of the roads by covering fences that lined them.”
Soldiers were disgruntled and General Washington felt their misery, which he lamented as well as “neglect of discipline—want of order—irregularity—waste, abuse, & embezzlement of public property insensibly creep.”
In early February 1780, the Congress instructed General Washington and his Quarter Master General – who was then Nathanael Greene – to undertake an assessment of the troops and supplies now in the field, with the aim of setting quotas on each state’s contribution. This Washington supplied, and with orders on March 6 required that each district send such specific information.
But Washington went further, after the passage of the Congressional bill, undertaking the first ever assessment of the public buildings under Continental control.
Autograph letter signed, February 26 1780, to Francis Wade, Deputy Quarter Master as Wilmington, signed by Greene as Quarter Master General. “In the returns that have hitherto been required, no account has been taken of the buildings belonging to the Continent. All the buildings of what kind soever that have been purchased or erected at Continental expense, may be considered a species of public property, of which we wish to have information, as much as of any stores or supplies.
“You will therefore please to furnish as soon as possible a return mentioning the number, size, situation, use, quality and present condition of all such buildings within your district. Wherever the ground on which then buildings stand is not Continental property, you will remark the conditions both with respect to the time and terms of the rent.” Letter is conserved and affixed to a light board. With address panel present.
On March 10, Washington wrote a General Orders, mandating that “The returns called for by the order of the 6th instant are to include all continental property received from the Quarter Master General’s department, not specified in the returns made by the Brigade Quarter Masters.”
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