GeneralGeorge Washington used a pair ofcampaign tents throughout much of theAmerican Revolutionary War. In warm weather, he used one for dining with his officers and aides, and the other as his military office/sleeping quarters.Canvas panels and poles from both tents survive, and are currently owned by four separate historical organizations.[1]
Washington's headquarters staff consisted ofhis military secretary and (usually) four aides-de-camp. The office/sleeping tent was their workplace, where they managed the commander-in-chief's correspondence and made copies of his orders. A divided section of the tent was where Washington slept. His enslaved valetWilliam Lee also slept there.[2] The dining tent was used for meals. Washington's first pair of campaign tents were made byPhiladelphia upholsterer Plunket Fleeson in Spring 1776.[1] They were used at thefirst Middlebrook encampment in 1777 and inWashington Valley nearMiddlebrook, New Jersey:
The Army is now drawn together at this place, at least that part of it, which have been Cantoned all Winter in this state. The whole of them now Encamped in Comfortable Tents on a Valley covered in front and rear by ridges which affords us security. His excellency our good Old General, has also spread his Tent, and lives amongst us.[3]
The first pair of tents were used until the end of the 1777–78 winterencampment atValley Forge.[1] New tents were ordered by Deputy Quartermaster General James Abeel in June 1778, but the maker was not identified.[4]
There were two marquées attached to the headquarters during all the campaigns. The larger, or banqueting tent, would contain from forty to fifty persons; the smaller, or sleeping tent, had an inner-chamber, where, on a hard cot-bed, the chief reposed. Within its venerable folds, Washington was in the habit of seeking privacy and seclusion, where he could commune with himself, and where he wrote the most memorable of his despatches in the Revolutionary war.[5]
In 2017, Philip Mead, chief historian at theMuseum of the American Revolution inPhiladelphia, and museum curators determined that a panoramic watercolor painting byPierre Charles L'Enfant was of the 1782 encampment atVerplanck's Point and depicted the office/sleeping tent in field use.[6]
The panels and poles from both tents were inherited byMartha Washington's grandson,George Washington Parke Custis. He passed them on to his daughter,Mary Anna Custis Lee, and her husband,Robert E. Lee. Their enslaved housekeeper,Selina Norris Gray, kept the tent fabric safe whenUnion Army soldiers ransackedArlington House during the American Civil War.[2]
The tents were among the Washington artifacts seized by thefederal government in January 1862,[1] and the grounds ofArlington House were converted intoArlington National Cemetery.
The tents were exhibited at theU.S. Patent Office, and transferred to the Smithsonian Institution in 1881.[1] It wasn't until 1901, nearly 40 years after their seizure, that the tents and Washington artifacts were returned to the Lees' son,George Washington Custis Lee.[1][7] In 1906, Robert E. Lee's daughterMary Custis Lee donated George Washington's military tents for a benefit sale to raise funds for the Home for Needy Confederate Women in Richmond.[7]
In 1909, the exterior of the office/sleeping tent was purchased by ReverendW. Herbert Burk for the Valley Forge Museum of American History, predecessor to theValley Forge Historical Society.[8] It was exhibited in a museum on the grounds of the 1777–1778Valley Forge encampment.[9]
Pieces of the tents are currently owned by four different historical organizations:
This article incorporates text from this source, which is in thepublic domain.
