Who was Baron von Steuben?
Friedrich Wilhelm von Steuben (1730 to 1794) was a former Prussian captain who joined Washington's army at Valley Forge in February 1778. As inspector general he gave the Continental Army one common drill, wrote its first official manual, the Blue Book of 1779, and commanded a division at the siege of Yorktown in 1781.1
Steuben fought in two wars. As a young Prussian officer he was wounded at the Battle of Prague in 1757 and again at Kunersdorf in 1759. In America he helped re-form the retreating troops at the Battle of Monmouth in 1778 and led a division at the siege of Yorktown in 1781.2
Was von Steuben really a baron and a Prussian general?
He was never a Prussian general, and his barony is uncertain. He left the Prussian army in 1763 as a captain and former aide-de-camp to Frederick the Great. The National Park Service says the Prince of Hohenzollern-Hechingen made him a baron in 1771; the Neue Deutsche Biographie says he used the title from 1766 without proof of ennoblement.3
He was born on 17 September 1730 in the fortress town of Magdeburg and spent much of his childhood in Russia, where his father served as a military engineer. He joined the Prussian army in 1747, according to the National Park Service, or in 1746, according to the Neue Deutsche Biographie.4
In the Seven Years' War he was wounded at Prague in 1757 and at Kunersdorf in 1759, served on the quartermaster general's staff and was taken prisoner by the Russians at Treptow in 1761. Released in 1762, he became a captain and one of the king's aides-de-camp, and he left the army in 1763.5
From 1764 he ran the court of the Prince of Hohenzollern-Hechingen as court marshal, but by 1775 he was in debt and looking for a new post. In 1777 he went to Paris to look for a commission. The American envoys Benjamin Franklin and Silas Deane could promise him neither rank nor pay, so he crossed the Atlantic as a volunteer, with his passage paid by the French.6
The letters of recommendation he carried described him as a Prussian lieutenant general, a rank he had never held. He sailed from Marseille on 26 September 1777, landed at Portsmouth, New Hampshire, on 1 December and, after meeting Congress at York, Pennsylvania, reached the army's winter camp at Valley Forge in late February 1778.7
What was Baron von Steuben famous for?
Steuben is famous for drilling the Continental Army at Valley Forge in the spring of 1778. Each state had used its own drill. He wrote one system for the whole army, taught it through a model company and a corps of inspectors, and later turned it into the Blue Book, the army's official regulations from 1779.8
The army of the Ten Crucial Days and of Germantown had courage but no common system. George Washington made the newcomer temporary inspector general. Steuben began with a model company of about 120 men, by his own account and the National Park Service's; the American Battlefield Trust describes 100 picked men added to 50 Virginians of Washington's guard. Breaking with the British habit of leaving drill to sergeants, he drilled the company himself and took up the musket to show the movements.9
He worked day and night, a few days ahead of the army. He could neither speak nor write English, so his secretary, Pierre-Étienne Du Ponceau, turned his drafts into English, and Washington's aides John Laurens and Alexander Hamilton helped him. Inspectors chosen for each division and brigade attended the drills and taught the lessons to their units. In May 1778 Congress made him inspector general with the rank of major general.10
The best-known story about the drill has Steuben running out of oaths in German and French and calling on an aide to swear at the soldiers for him in English. It comes from a letter Du Ponceau wrote in 1837, nearly sixty years later, and is best read as an anecdote.11
He also taught the troops to use the bayonet, which New York's state historic sites office describes as a weapon for attack, not only a last resort in defense.12
What did von Steuben do at Monmouth and Yorktown?
At Monmouth on 28 June 1778 Steuben scouted the British, then, on Washington's order, stopped the troops retreating from Charles Lee's advance and re-formed them near Englishtown. At Yorktown in 1781 he commanded one of the three Continental divisions and, as one of the few American officers with siege experience, helped plan the siege works.13
His own testimony at Lee's court-martial describes the day: after placing a battery he formed parts of Maxwell's brigade and Scott's detachment behind the creek at Englishtown, then marched three brigades of the second line forward when Washington called for reinforcements. The National Park Service calls the battle essentially a draw in which the Continental Army fought the British to a standstill.14
In 1780 Steuben went south with Nathanael Greene and stayed in Virginia to raise recruits and supplies for Greene's army. In June 1781 a British force under John Graves Simcoe approached the depot at Point of Fork on the James River; Steuben withdrew, and Simcoe destroyed part of the stores. On 19 June Steuben joined the army of the Marquis de Lafayette.15
At Yorktown the Continentals formed three divisions under Lafayette, Steuben and Benjamin Lincoln. In the words of the National Park Service historian Charles Hatch, Steuben, "one of the few veterans of siege warfare in the American wing, had a leading role in planning and constructing the siege works." His division held the forward trenches when Cornwallis made his first offer to negotiate.16
What is von Steuben's Blue Book?
The Blue Book is the popular name of Steuben's Regulations for the Order and Discipline of the Troops of the United States, approved by Congress on 29 March 1779. It set out the drill, camp routine, guard duty, inspections and the duties of every rank from recruit to regimental commander, and it stayed in use into the nineteenth century.17
He wrote it in Philadelphia in the winter of 1778 to 1779. His biographer Friedrich Kapp describes each chapter passing from German into French, polished by François de Fleury, put into English by Du Ponceau and revised by Captain Benjamin Walker, after which Steuben could not read the result himself; Pierre Charles L'Enfant drew the plates. The National Park Service dates the army's use of it to 1814.18
The book also told officers how to lead. A captain's first object, it said, should be "to gain the love of his men, by treating them with every possible kindness and humanity."19
How did Baron von Steuben die?
Steuben died of a stroke on 28 November 1794 at his log house near Utica, New York. He was found paralyzed before dawn on 26 November, soon lost the power of speech and died two days later. He was buried on his own land. He had never married.20
Peace had been hard on him. He left the army in 1784 and ran up heavy debts in New York until Congress granted him a pension of $2,500 a year in 1790. In 1786 New York gave him 16,000 acres of former Oneida land, where he built the log house.21
His will left most of his estate to two former aides, William North and Benjamin Walker, whom he regarded as adopted sons. His grave was later moved deeper into the woods, to the spot now called the Sacred Grove.22
His legacy
On 23 December 1783, the day he resigned as commander in chief, Washington wrote to Steuben from Annapolis to thank him for his "faithful and meritorious services," adding: "This is the last letter I shall write, while I continue in the service of my country."23
Statues and place names in the United States and Germany honor him, among them Albert Jaegers' statue in Lafayette Square in Washington, D.C., dedicated in December 1910.24
The Continental Army did not lack bravery before Steuben. It lacked a shared language of drill, inspection and camp routine, and he supplied one. Like Casimir Pulaski, he crossed the Atlantic for a cause not his by birth, and the army he trained fought the later battles of the American Revolution with one drill.
