General Friedrich von Steuben

General Friedrich Von Steuben

During the American Revolution a German officer, Friedrich Wilhelm Augustin, Baron von Steuben, b. Magdeburg, Prussia, Sept. 17, 1730, d. Nov. 28, 1794, helped instill discipline in the Continental Army through his drilling techniques.

Despite his claims, the genial von Steuben was only a captain, not a former Prussian general; but he was a superb drillmaster. Although they were good individual fighters, the Americans' ignorance of the elementary principles of drill or maneuvering often put them at a fatal disadvantage against their well-trained enemy. Von Steuben set out to change all this, and incidentally kept the men well occupied during the Valley Forge winter.

He served with distinction through the Seven Years' War, became a captain on the general staff, and in 1762 was appointed an aide-de-camp to King Frederick II. When peace came in 1763, he was discharged. For the next 14 years he was unable to find military employment, but he somehow acquired the title of baron.

At Paris in the summer of 1777, Steuben undertook to obtain a commission in the American Continental Army. Count Claude Louis de Saint-Germain, the French minister of war, recommended him to Beaumarchais, who in turn vouched for him to the American commissioners, Benjamin Franklin and Silas Deane.

They agreed that he would be a valuable asset to the American army, but that he would have little chance to prove his worth if he arrived on the scene as a mere captain. Accordingly, they represented him as “a lieutenant general in the king of Prussia's service.” Steuben ably played his part in the deception. He arrived at Portsmouth, N.H., on Dec. 1, 1777, accompanied by a military secretary and an aide-de-camp. In January 1778 he was received with high honors by the Continental Congress at York, Pa.

His offer of service was accepted, and he reported to Gen. George Washington at Valley Forge, Pa., on February 23. Washington at once assigned him the task of training the troops. In this he proved so quickly successful that Washington obtained for him the appointment of inspector general, with the rank of major general, on May 5, 1778. The next winter, Steuben prepared his Regulations for the Order and Discipline of the Troops of the United States (1780), which became the army's standard drill manual.

Von Steuben (left) and Washington At Valley Forge

In 1781 he served under the Marquis de Lafayette in Virginia when the British General Charles Cornwallis invaded the state, and at the siege of Yorktown he commanded one of the three divisions of Washington's army. After the war he was an organizer of the Society of the Cincinnati, whose members were all army officers. He was granted American citizenship. New York State gave him a 16,000-acre (6,480-hectare) domain near Utica, and Congress gave him an annual pension of $2,500. Steuben died in Steubenville, N.Y., on Nov. 28, 1794.

Von Steuben drilling troops at Valley Forge

(See Bibliography Below)

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Contributing Author: John R. Alden
Picture Credit: New York State Historical Association (top); The Granger Collection (middle); State Capitol, Harrisburg, Pennsylvania (bottom).
Bibliography: Doyle, Joseph B., Frederick William Von Steuben and the American Revolution (1913; repr. 1970); Palmer, John McAuley, General von Steuben (1937; repr. 1966); Ketchum, Richard M., editor, The American Heritage History of The American Revolution (1971).