Valley Forge: George Washington and the Crucible of Victory by William R. Forstchen, Newt Gingrich, Albert S. Hanser Read Free Book Online

offering a dare; if he himself was moving this column, the challenge was an even greater affront. The commanding British general, leaving the comfort of his headquarters and the beds of his mistresses for a few days in open challenge and defiance, would be a chance too good to miss.
    The target momentarily disappeared from view behind the house. His rifle primed, Dan Morgan waited.
    Morgan sighed as he contemplated the spectacle nearly three hundred yards away. It was a far cry from what he had witnessed several months ago, up north in the forests of New York and the field at Saratoga. Back then, it was his men in the open sweeping the countryside with victory.
    With the first rally cry for volunteers in 1775, he served with his comrade of the last war, George Washington, bringing with him a hundred riflemen recruited from the Virginia frontier. Sent north to join one of the great heroes of this war, Benedict Arnold, he then fought at Quebec in ’75, taking command when Arnold was wounded and captured. The campaign turned into a debacle and he, too, taken prisoner. Exchanged along with Arnold for a couple of British officers, he returned south, raised a regiment in Virginia, returned to the war, and then went north to join in the climactic struggle to hold back the northern invasion by General John Burgoyne.
    How he had lusted for that assignment; he was filled with a fervent though ungodly prayer to once—just once—have Burgoyne within 250 yards of his muzzle.
    Years ago, as a boy of eighteen, he ran off to join the army of General Braddock as a teamster. There he first met Washington, a young officer in command of militia, and the two became fast friends. It was there, as well, that he ran afoul of Gentleman Johnny Burgoyne, a young, foppish officer who should have stopped a bullet when the army was all but annihilated on the Monongahela.
    After one of Burgoyne’s comrades slashed at him with his sword over some alleged rude remark, he gave the man the thrashing he deserved for insulting a free man. In retaliation Burgoyne ordered him to be bound to a wagon wheel to suffer 499 lashes.
    As he contemplated it now, Dan rubbed the back of his neck. What were intended as scars of humiliation had become a source of pride. He had openly stripped to the waist before the men of his command more than once to show his wounds. He swore before them that he would not rest until every lash was repaid in full. His men followed him with an eager determination to fulfill that oath.
    Four hundred and ninety-nine lashes were tantamount to a death sentence. He later learned that Washington had tried to intervene with an appeal but was rebuffed, and had been warned that it was time colonials learned the meaning of discipline. He was told that those gathered to watch saw the bones of his ribs and spine, the flesh hung in bloody strips…all in the name of proper discipline. His indomitable spirit and the fact that he had survived the ordeal made him a legend of survival and defiance against the increasingly hated officers from En gland.
    When he joined the northern army with his sharpshooters, they had set to work with a passion. A wonderful moment indeed when he spotted an officermore than two hundred yards off, and put a bullet through the man’s head with an offhand shot.
    The British, under a flag of truce, sent a representative to protest the deliberate shooting of officers, as if it were against the rules of war, stating that it would only create unruliness and a collapse of discipline on both sides. The British officer exclaimed that it was not at all proper, and was genuinely upset and utterly confused that his protest was met with mocking disdain.
    Morgan was supremely delighted to send a personal response back to the “Gentleman,” asking him if he remembered a young teamster who received four hundred and ninety nine lashes and was now eagerly waiting to see him anywhere within two hundred yards of the front lines.
    It was later