♪ Valley Forge would for a time be the fourth largest city in America-- 20,000 men, women, and children from all 13 states.

For many, English was not their native language.

They spoke German, Irish, Scots, Welsh, Dutch, Swedish, French, Mohican, Oneida, Wolof, Kikongo, and more.

Nearly 10% were African American, most of whom served alongside Whites in integrated regiments.

Some 60 men were enrolled in a brand-new all-Black company belonging to the First Rhode Island Regiment.

The state legislature promised those who were enslaved their freedom at war's end and pledged to pay compensation to those whose property they had been.

♪ Among the Native American soldiers and scouts at Valley Forge were Tuscaroras, Oneidas, as well as Mohicans and Wappingers from Stockbridge, Massachusetts.

♪ The hundreds of women who lived among the soldiers did the men's laundry, nursed the sick and wounded, and cared for an unknown number of children.

When men went to war, they were gone and so was whatever pay they were going to get, and many women just could not survive on their own, and so it was actually better for everybody when women traveled with the armies.

♪ Narrator: Martha Washington joined her husband at Valley Forge.

At least 8 servants-- men and women, White and Black, enslaved and free-- lived alongside the Washingtons in a stone house they rented from the family of the mill owner who had built it.

8 of General Washington's closest aides were crowded in there, as well, among them, two especially idealistic young officers in their early 20s-- John Laurens and the Marquis de Lafayette.

♪ Iris de Rode: As soon as Lafayette arrives, he starts to look around and get inspired by everything he sees.

He's young, so he's excited to be in this new country in what, to him, is the New World, and he's going to explore and understand.

He really starts to believe in the cause for equalities, for liberties.

♪ Narrator: John Laurens of South Carolina was the son of Henry Laurens, the current president of Congress and one of the biggest slave traders in North America.

From Valley Forge, the young Laurens wrote to his father.

Voice: I would solicit you to seed me a number of your able-bodied men slaves instead of leaving me a fortune.

I would bring about a twofold good.

First, I would advance those who are unjustly deprived of the rights of mankind, and I would reinforce the defenders of liberty with a number of gallant soldiers.

♪ My dearest friend and father, I hope that my plan for serving my country and the oppressed Negro race will not appear to you the chimera of a young mind, but a laudable sacrifice of private interest to justice and the public good.

[John Laurens] Narrator: Henry Laurens rejected his son's proposal.

Freeing some slaves, he said, would simply "render Slavery more irksome to those who remained in it."

♪ [Wind blowing] In February, the bad conditions at Valley Forge grew still worse.

Some 1,000 soldiers would sicken and die that month.

Voice: I was called to relieve a soldier thought to be dying.

He was an Indian, an excellent soldier.

He has fought for those very people who disinherited his forefathers.

Having finished his pilgrimage, he was discharged from the war of life and death.

His memory ought to be respected more than those rich ones who supply the world with nothing better than money and vice.

Dr.

Albigence Waldo.