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Valley Forge harboured a heterogeneous collection of foreigners, whose enthusiasm had impelled them to offer swords and influence to the American cause: Steuben, Du Portail, De Noailles, Custine, Fleury, Du Plessis, the three brothers Armand, Ternant, Pulaski, and Kosciusko.
Steuben was, at the best, an irritable person, and his descriptions of the Virginia militia are probably tinged by his indignation at constant failure. General Nelson, who was the Governor of the State, behaved with spirit, but neither he nor Steuben could make the militia stand against Arnold.
Serving with Greene was General Daniel Morgan, the enterprising and resourceful Virginia rifleman, who had fought valorously at Quebec, at Saratoga, and later in Virginia. Steuben was busy in Virginia holding the British in check and keeping open the line of communication with the North. The mobility and diversity of the American forces puzzled Cornwallis.
His appointments in that Conference were Mount Desert, Deer Island, Steuben, North Penobscot and North Bucksport. At the division of the Conference he fell into East Maine, and, before coming West, was stationed at Frankfort, Hampden, Bangor, Rockland and Damariscotta. Brother Tilton came to the Wisconsin Conference by transfer in 1857.
Yet light was beginning to dawn: Steuben, the German, had begun to introduce the discipline which was to make the American army a new and powerful instrument; Lafayette had brought the sympathy of France and his own substantial services; more than all, during these dark days the American envoys were concluding the treaty with France which was to save the Union.
General Montgomery wrote: "The privates are all generals, but not soldiers;" and Baron Steuben wrote to a Prussian officer a little later: "You say to your soldier, 'Do this, and he doeth it; but I am obliged to say to mine, 'This is the reason why you ought to do that, and then he does it."
Trust in Him and the Lord will provide." Henry Badgerow was a man about seventy years of age at the time of the incident, and a resident of Steuben county, State of New York. This was in the year about A.D. 1830-31. He had been for many years an invalid so much so that he couldn't walk the result of a horse running away with him.
The American cause had also been strengthened by the voluntary services of a number of foreign officers, who energetically drilled the American recruits and taught the revolutionary army the science of war as it was fought by the greatest military countries. Among these men was the Marquis de Lafayette, a gallant young French nobleman, and also Baron de Kalb and Von Steuben.
The last letter which Washington wrote before he resigned his command at the end of the war was to thank Steuben for his invaluable aid. Charles Lee did not believe that American recruits could be quickly trained so as to be able to face the disciplined British battalions. Steuben was to prove that Lee was wrong to Lee's own entire undoing at Monmouth when fighting began in 1778.
The Baron von Steuben was, like La Fayette, a man of rank in his own country, and his personal service to the Revolution was much greater than that of La Fayette. Steuben had served on the staff of Frederick the Great and was distinguished for his wit and his polished manners. There was in him nothing of the needy adventurer.
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