"What Dr.Stoudt has done is to cull a variety of sources- military journals, diaries, memoirs, newspapers, and published letters- and to reconstruct life at Valley Forge, day by day, during the terrible winter of 1777-1778. The 'chronicle' that emerges is not genuine history, since Dr.Stoudt has varied, modified, reorganized, transposed, and rewritten his source material to suit his purpose. This purpose is to dramatize that episode in American military history which has become a national symbol of courage and patriotism for the general reader and the Revolutionary Warbuff. As such,Ordeal at Valley Forge is a commendable effort." [From a book review by Milton Klein of Long Island University]
A detailed account of the engagements around Whitemarsh, PA, December 5-8 1777, which ended with Washington's forces retiring to Valley Forge. "After the reverses at Brandywine, Paoli and Germantown, it was significant that the skirmishes around Whitemarsh constituted an important moral victory for the American cause, for had General Howe succeeded in destroying the Continental Army by his well planned surprise attack, there might very well have been no Valley Forge!" [from the foreward]
The continuing effect of the American Revolution : an address, on the occasion of the celebration of the Prelude to Independence, June 10, 1961 at the eighteenth-century capitol, Williamsburg, Virginia. Opening remarks by Winthrop Rockefeller