It was perceived that the difficulties which had produced such melancholy effects, were created more by the want of due exertion in the commissary department, and by the efforts of the people to save their stock for a better market, than by any real deficiency of food in the country.
This severe demonstration seems to have convinced congress that their favourite system was radically vicious, and the subject was taken up with the serious intention of remodeling the commissary department on principles recommended by experience.

But such were the delays inherent in the organization of that body, that the new system was not adopted until late in April.
At no period of the war had the situation of the American army been more perilous than at Valley Forge.

Even when the troops were not entirely destitute of food, their stock of provisions was so scanty that a quantity sufficient for one week was seldom in store.
Consequently, had General Howe moved out in force, the American army could not have remained in camp; and their want of clothes disabled them from keeping the field in the winter.

The returns of the first of February exhibit the astonishing number of three thousand nine hundred and eighty-nine men in camp, unfit for duty for want of clothes.
Scarcely one man of these had a pair of shoes.

Even among those returned capable of doing duty, many were so badly clad, that exposure to the cold of the season must have destroyed them.