It is an odd fact that, though he attended the
Anglican Communion service before and after the war, he did not
partake of the Communion during the war. What was in his mind we
do not know. He was disposed, as he said himself, to let men find
"that road to Heaven which to them shall seem the most direct,"
and he was without Puritan fervor, but he had deep religious
feeling. During the troubled days at Valley Forge a neighbor came
upon him alone in the bush on his knees praying aloud, and stole
away unobserved. He would not allow in the army a favorite
Puritan custom of burning the Pope in effigy, and the prohibition
was not easily enforced among men, thousands of whom bore
scriptural names from ancestors who thought the Pope anti-Christ.
Washington's winter quarters at Valley Forge were only twenty
miles from Philadelphia, among hills easily defended. It is
matter for wonder that Howe, with an army well equipped, did not
make some attempt to destroy the army of Washington which passed
the winter so near and in acute distress. The Pennsylvania
Loyalists, with dark days soon to come, were bitter at Howe's
inactivity, full of tragic meaning for themselves. He said that
he could achieve nothing permanent by attack.
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