When college students of the Revolutionary Warfare hear the phrases Valley Forge, they most likely consider an iconic picture: Gen. George Washington kneeling within the snow, surrounded by log cabins, praying for assist.
The Continental Military endured the winter of 1777–78 at Valley Forge, whereas the British hibernated in close by Philadelphia. It was that winter, so the semimythologized story goes, that the Individuals had been sharpened from a ragtag militia that had executed little greater than strategically retreat throughout the warfare’s first two years right into a drive able to difficult the redcoats.
However earlier than Valley Forge grew to become the “Valley Forge” of American navy historical past, it had already performed a smaller, unofficial function within the combat for independence.
This “forge” in its title was a small ironmaking operation established on the banks of the Valley Creek in 1742 because the Mount Pleasure Forge. It was simply one in every of dozens of small ironworks that popped up throughout the hills of japanese Pennsylvania within the many years earlier than the revolution. The densely wooded area supplied ample gasoline for furnaces that smelted iron ore into pig iron and different types of workable metallic, which may subsequently be cast into instruments and family items. The provision chains ran down the river to Philadelphia and from there to the remainder of the colonies and the world.
In 1750, nevertheless, the British authorities tried to intervene in that burgeoning market. With the passage of the Iron Act, the American colonies had been allowed to provide solely unfinished iron and had been allowed to export it solely to Britain. Completed merchandise must be reimported from Britain—with a excessive tax utilized, naturally.
Present forges, just like the one the place the Continental Military would later encamp, had been allowed to proceed working however couldn’t broaden manufacturing with out permission from the crown.
The regulation was not at all times obeyed, as a small exhibit within the stables at Valley Forge Nationwide Historic Park explains. In some circumstances, it might have been overtly flaunted. John Potts, who purchased the Mount Pleasure Forge in 1757, based one other forge within the space in 1752, seemingly in defiance of the Iron Act (although historians on the web site are uncertain of its precise legality).
In the long term, the Iron Act was an utter failure. The mercantilist regulation incentivized each American producers and colonial officers to disregard it and helped provoke help for independence amongst Pennsylvania’s industrial lessons.
The British military destroyed the Mount Pleasure Forge on its method to occupying Philadelphia within the fall of 1777. However neither brute navy drive nor protectionist commerce coverage may stamp out the marketplace for Pennsylvania iron—with out which there would by no means have been a Valley Forge to function the turning level for Washington’s military.
This text initially appeared in print beneath the headline “How Protectionist Commerce Coverage Created Valley Forge.”
