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BARON VON FREDERICK WILLIAM AUGUSTUS ...

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Originally appearing in Volume V25, Page 905 of the 1911 Encyclopedia Britannica.
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BARON VON FREDERICK WILLIAM AUGUSTUS HENRY FERDINAND STEUBEN (1730–1794)  , German soldier, was born at
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Magdeburg, Prussia, on the 15th of November 1730, the son of William Augustine Steuben (1699–1783), also a soldier . At fourteen he served as a volunteer in a
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campaign of the
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Austrian Succession War . He became a
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lieutenant in 1753, fought in the Seven Years' War, was made adjutant-general of the
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free corps in 1754 but re-entered the
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regular army in 1761, and became an aide to Frederick the
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Great in 1762 . Leaving the army after the war, he was made
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canon of the
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cathedral of
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Havelberg, and subsequently was
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grand-marshal to the prince of
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Hohenzollern-Hechingen . In 1777 his friend, the count St Germain, then the French minister of war, persuaded him to go to the assistance of the
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American colonists, who needed discipline and instruction in military tactics . Steuben arrived at Portsmouth, New Hampshire, on the 1st of December 1777, and offered his services to Congress as a volunteer . In March 1778 he began drilling the inexperienced soldiers at Valley Forge; and by May, when he was made inspector-general, with the rank of major-general, he had established a thorough
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system of discipline and
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economy . Results of his
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work were shown in the next campaign, particularly at Monmouth, where he rallied the disordered, retreating troops of General Charles Lee . His Regulations for the Order and Discipline of the Troops of the
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United States (1779) was of great value to the army . He was a member of the court-martial which tried Major John Andre in 178o, and after General Horatio Gates's defeat at Camden was placed in command of the
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district of Virginia, with
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special instructions " to collect, organize, discipline and expedite the recruits for the
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Southern army." In
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April 1781 he was superseded in command of Virginia by La Fayette and later took
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part in the siege of
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Yorktown . Retiring from the service after the war, he passed the last years of his
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life at
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Steubenville, New York, where he died on the 28th of November 1794 . New York, Virginia, Pennsylvania and New Jersey gave him grants of
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land for his services, and Congress passed a
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vote of thanks and gave him a gold-hilted sword in 1784 and later granted him a pension of $2400 .

See Frederick Kapp, The Life of Frederick William von Steuben (New York, 1859) ; and

George W . Greene, The German Element in the War of American Independence (Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1876) .

End of Article: BARON VON FREDERICK WILLIAM AUGUSTUS HENRY FERDINAND STEUBEN (1730–1794)
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