Throughout his account, Joseph Plumb Martin made multiple critical comments about the inadequate food, supplies, and respect provided to the Continental Army. Was his assessment correct or did he allow a handful of bad experiences to distort his perception of events? Respond to this question by writing an essay based on the material found in Memoir of a Revolutionary War Soldier.
Writing Your Essay: In your introduction, introduce your subject matter and pose a thesis about your topic. You must state your thesis in your first paragraph.
In the body, develop your arguments proving the thesis. Organize each paragraph around a topic sentence (the first sentence in the paragraph). The sentences that follow flesh out the topic while supporting your claims with evidence. Paragraphs should be linked by transitions.
The most constant and acute form of hardship Martin describes is the pervasive hunger, which he demonstrates was a failure of supply chains, not an isolated event. Martin dedicates substantial portions of his memoir to detailing the agonizing lack of food, stating plainly that the men often went “two, three, and even four days without a morsel.” His experiences during the infamous winter at Valley Forge, which he describes not just as a cold encampment but as a “starving time,” illustrate the systemic breakdown. If his experience were a distortion, the scarcity would have been temporary; instead, Martin recounts having to forage for wild onions and roots, and describes the soldiers as habitually looking “like gaunt wolves.” This consistent, life-threatening scarcity, confirmed by numerous other historical accounts of the period, proves that the failure to provision the army was not bad luck, but a chronic administrative defect that defined the Continental soldier’s existence.
Furthermore, Martin’s criticism regarding the lack of basic supplies and clothing is overwhelmingly validated by the historical conditions of the war. He vividly recounts marching through the snow “half-naked,” with feet so badly frozen he could see the tracks of his bloody footsteps. The inadequacy of clothing was not a matter of poor-quality uniforms, but often the total absence of necessities like shoes, trousers, and blankets, even when winter approached. Martin records the spectacle of men using ragged pieces of blankets for protection and building makeshift huts for shelter. If these were isolated incidents, Martin would have eventually received replacements, but his narrative shows a cycle of decay and exposure that lasted for years. His detailed descriptions of the men's physical suffering—the chills, the fevers, and the endless exposure—provide irrefutable evidence that the Continental soldier was perpetually undersupplied.
Sample Answer
The Unvarnished Truth: Joseph Plumb Martin’s Accurate Assessment of Continental Army Hardship
Throughout his remarkable firsthand account, Memoir of a Revolutionary War Soldier, Joseph Plumb Martin made multiple critical comments about the inadequate food, supplies, and respect provided to the Continental Army. Far from allowing a handful of bad experiences to distort his perception, Martin’s narrative serves as a fundamentally accurate, visceral, and detailed documentation of the systemic failures that plagued the Continental Army, confirming that the suffering of the common soldier was a widespread, enduring reality caused by a disorganized and often indifferent government. His testimony is not merely a complaint, but a reliable historical record that chronicles the struggle of keeping an army together through sheer willpower when material support consistently failed.