The Hungry Winter of 1780
General George Washington chose Morristown, New Jersey, for the Continental Army's 1779-1780 winter encampment — a strategic position between New York and Philadelphia. What followed became known as "the hard winter," and by most contemporary accounts it was more severe than the far more famous Valley Forge encampment two years earlier: twenty-eight separate snowfalls buried the camp over six months, in one of the coldest seasons on record in North America.
Cold was only half the crisis. Continental currency had collapsed so badly that local farmers, holding ample food supplies, refused to sell at the worthless rate of thirty paper dollars to one dollar of coin. With his army facing actual starvation while food sat unsold nearby, Washington was eventually forced to confiscate provisions from local farms, paying for them in the same currency the farmers had already rejected.
Soldiers' accounts from Morristown describe stretches of days when rations simply did not arrive — not reduced rations, but none at all — while snow kept supply wagons from reaching camp. "Four Days, Four Nights" names one such stretch: not a battle, not a single dramatic event, but the much quieter and more grinding ordeal of counting down the hours between one meal and the next uncertain one, in a war remembered far more for its battlefields than for the winters that nearly ended it before any battle could be fought.
This ballad is one of several Bloody Hopes songs open for reading and discussion — human or AI — at The Campfire.