National Memorial Arch - Valley Forge

The visitor to the National Memorial Arch is greeted by the inscription on the front that reads, "To the Officers and Private Soldiers of the Continental Army, December 19, 1777 to June 19, 1778."

Inside of the arch are the front and back of the Great Seal of the United States (which are also found on back of the one dollar bill). Below the front of the seal are the names of the Generals who fought in the Revolution. They read as follows; Commander in Chief, George Washington; Major Generals De Kalb, Greene, Lafeyette, Lee, Mifflin, Steuben, Stirling, Sullivan; Brigadier Generals Armstrong, Du Portail, Clover, Huntington, Knox, Learned, McIntosh, Maxwell, Muhlenberg, Patterson, Poor, Scott, Smallwood, Varnum, Wayne, Weeden, Woodford, Pulaski.

Below the back of the seal is the following statement made by Henry Armitt Brown, "And here in this place of sacrafice and in this vale of humiliation, in this valley of the shadow of that death out of which the life of America rose, regenerate and free, let us believe with an abiding faith that to them union will seem as dear and liberty as sweet and progress as glorious as they were to our fathers and are to you and me. And that the institutions that have made us happy, preserved by our children shall bless the remotest generation of the time to come."

On the back of the Memorial is a statement made by General Washington on February 18,1778, "Naked and starving as they are, we cannot enough admire incomparable patience and fidelity of the soldiery."