Kings Mountain is the one that more-or-less conforms to this stereotype.
Washington and his staff were not in log cabins. They were in a rented house:
All those sorts of primitive buildings are as warm as you’re willing and able to build a fire inside near where you’re sleeping. Regardless of house or cabin, Washington could probably afford some firewood. Private Noclue & his squad-mates? Not so much.
There were actually officers from a number of European countries joining the American side. Thaddeus Kosciuszko and Casimir Pulaski, for example, were Poles.
In Europe at the time, there was an abundance of underemployed military officers left over from various wars. They gravitated to any war around in hopes of getting employed. The American Revolution was no exception. George Washington at one time expressed frustration at the Continental Cogress for sending him every European officer that came along. Apparently there were a number of them that turned out to be useless, unlike the ones mentioned in this thread who are remembered.
Geo Washingtons army also had inadequate rations, winter clothing, blankets and shelter. So, just a regular cold winter could be seen as a horrible experience.
I just watched the A&E Hornblower series and at least twice the office was able to stand up to short orders or something- in a relatively small boat.
Right. The USA did have a few volunteers with actual rifles- which loaded even more slowly. However, with those dudes the best tactic was for them to hide behind a tree and kill officers at 200+ yards. The British actually complained about that as “unfair tactics”. Really… But there werent many of them.
Wasn’t there an American sniper who took out a British general? IIRC he also flensed the legs of an Indian and wore them as leggings 
Nah, the only thing that would capsize it is a fat ass.
https://www.politico.com/story/2015/12/washington-crosses-the-delaware-dec-25-1776-217067
Wow, an eyewitness account and all. When you were a kid did you like to tease your grandma about having been there to witness the crossing? 
A college chum of mine ended up moving to Yardley PA which is very near VF. Once on a visit to see him when we were both age 35ish, we went to the famous site of Washington’s crossing. This was in the chilly part of Fall, but well above freezing.
I was struck by the fact the point of crossing was a rocky and shallow slow-moving river about 3 feet deep and ~100 feet wide. By modern standards a trivial little barrier. Any yahoo in a Jeep with a snorkel could have forded that in about 45 seconds. And the snorkel might even be optional.
As a kid who’d absorbed all the hagiography of this supremely difficult and daring military maneuver I was sorely disappointed. Seemed now more like a Klink dipsy-doodle.
which the best soldiers can fire off about three rounds a minute, or once every 20 seconds. Having a staggered formation means you’re firing rounds much more frequently than only two or three a minute, which puts the enemy in much graver danger than if they can get closer after each time you fire knowing it’ll take you some time to reload before you can fire again.
Interesting bit of trivia about the original painting: it was destroyed in WWII by an Allied bombing raid of Bremen Germany.
Washington’s Crossing is roughly thirty miles from Valley Forge. Not really related at all.
I wonder if you were at Washington’s Crossing at all. The river at that point is 300 yards wide and 26 feet deep.
In addition to 2400 soldiers, 18 cannon and the horses to pull them crossed the river that night. It was not trivial logistically.
Too late to edit: maybe you were at Fatland Ford (where there is large white mansion) which is very near Valley Forge and is point where the Schuylkill River could be crossed (along with Swede’s Ford a few miles away)?
General Henry Knox, Washington’s head of artillery, was in the boat, boarding before George. In his memoirs he told that when Washington got in he tapped him with his foot and said “Shift your fat ass Harry, but carefully or you’ll swamp it.”
You mean the one that shows a flag that didn’t exist yet? Not very accurate, I’d say.
Good bet I wasn’t then. It was long enough ago I can’t say anything useful about where it really was beyond what I’ve already shared.
Thanks for setting me straighter.
There does seem some conflation in this thread between the Battle of Trenton (Washington crossing the Delaware) which occurred Christmas 1776 and the Vally Forge encampment which was the next year (December 1777 to June 1778).
Interestingly, the real boat was larger and maybe many stood in it-
wiki- Washington’s stance, intended to depict him in a heroic fashion, would have been very hard to maintain in the choppy conditions of the crossing. Considering that he is standing in a rowboat, such a stance would have risked capsizing the boat.[8] However, historian David Hackett Fischer has argued that everyone would have been standing up to avoid the icy water in the bottom of the boat, as the actual Durham boats used were much larger, had a flat bottom, higher sides, a broad beam (width) of some eight feet and a draft of 24–30 inches.[9] Washington’s boats were actually substantially larger than the boat in the painting. Washington and his men sailed on a cargo ship that ranged anywhere between 40 and 60 feet long (12 to 18 m).[10] Also on the ships were heavy artillery and horses,[10] which would not have fit in the boat Leutze painted.
A year off, but yeah.
When did the British/American arse/ass cleft occur? Was it something a Southerner like Washington would be an early adopter of ?
There is some evidence “arse” was pronounced as “ass” in Britain as far back as the 17th Century. Verse from the time often had “arse” rhyming with words like “pass” or “lass”.
Fascinating. Which then raises the question of when did the Brits begin switching towards pronouncing the “r”. Which (I think) is the universal practice in UK and UK-derived dialects today.