Cara’s Blog

Wages of War is in concurrence to the hardships that Private Joseph Martin described. Martin complained only getting barely enough food to survive and having to wear insufficient clothing in the dead of winter. While I believed Private Martin, I could not grasp the extent of the army’s deficiencies. Severo and Millford stated that in the winter of 1778 the men at Valley Forge devoured 2,225,000 pounds of beef, and 2,297,000 of flour. Most of these men were not properly clothed. Unfortunetly, for the 11,000 men who complained of hunger and cold, only 8,500 lived till spring. Such a horrible treatment of the soldiers could have cost us the war. It’s remarkable to me that Americans were still able to pull off a victory against Great Britain.

The pay or lack of pay to the continental soldiers did not come as a huge surprise to me. With a new born country already in debt, how could the government expect to pay their loyal men? What did surprise me is that congress passed the halfpay agreement even though they knew they didn’t even have the money for it. I thought we were fighting against this kind of treatment from the government. One writer from the “Boston Gazette” asked :” How are our worthy patriots treated? Men who risked their lives and property, in the cause of freedom..?” I would ask a similar question.