Defeat, Panel 9, 1954, Inscription: No 6 DYING HORSE, Jacob Lawrence, from Struggle: From the History of the American People, 1954–56, Private collection, © 2019 The Jacob and Gwendolyn Knight Lawrence Foundation, Seattle / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York.
This engraving, published in one of Lawrence’s sources, shows General George Washington pondering the failures of Congress while his army froze and starved at Valley Forge in the winter of 1777–78. In his panel, Lawrence foregrounded the partially covered “dying horse,” extending the experience of struggle to animals.
This letter from General George Washington to aide-de-camp William Buchanan on February 7, 1778, details the Continental Army’s retreat to Valley Forge after a devastating defeat by the British in Philadelphia in September 1777. Soldiers spent the winter at the encampment, enduring freezing temperatures and starvation. Lawrence symbolized the toll of these military setbacks.
Excerpt from Letter from George Washington to William Buchanan, February 7, 1778, George Washington Papers, Series 4, Library of Congress, Washington, DC
Sir: The occasional deficiencies in the Article of Provisions, which we have often severely felt, seem now on the point of resolving themselves into this fatal Crisis, total want and a dissolution of the Army. Mr. Blaine informes me, in the most decisive terms, that he has not the least prospect of answering the demands of the Army, within his district, more than a month longer, at the extremity. The expectations, he has from other Quarters, appear to be altogether vague and precarious; and from any thing I can see, we have every reason to apprehend the most ruinous consequences.