We All Need a Valley Forge

It would be hard to imagine a more fitting name for what would be required of that undisciplined army.

"George Washington and Lafayette at Valley Forge," by John Ward Dunsmore, 1907. Public domain

It would be easy to look at those who have succeeded in life and point to their success as the product of a constant succession of kind years.

It would be easy to look upon a Charles Willson Peale painting of George Washington and see the general as all-conquering. Or John Trumbull’s “Surrender of Lord Cornwallis” and see the Continental Army as an unstoppable force.