Her brief allusions to Valley Forge would hardly lead the reader to infer the horrors that nearly ten thousand American soldiers were suffering.
"Your Mamma has not yet arrived," Washington writes to Jack Custis, "but ...expected every hour.

[My aide] Meade set off yesterday (as soon as I got notice of her intention) to meet her.
We are in a dreary kind of place, and uncomfortably provided." And of this reunion Mrs.Washington wrote: "I came to this place, some time about the first of February when I found the General very well, ...

in camp in what is called the great valley on the Banks of the Schuylkill.

Officers and men are chiefly in Hutts, which they say is tolerably comfortable; the army are as healthy as can be well expected in general.

The General's apartment is very small; he has had a log cabin built to dine in, which has made our quarters much more tolerable than they were at first."[1] [Footnote 1: P.L.Ford, _The True George Washington_, 99.] While the Americans languished and died at Valley Forge during the winter months, Sir William Howe and his troops lived in Philadelphia not only in great comfort, but in actual luxury.