 When the British took Philadelphia, they kicked the Continental Congress out, and they pretty much spread out. Some of them went to York, Pennsylvania. Some of them simply went home. Some of them disappeared. There was no functioning government, for the most part, of the United States anymore. So George Washington, at Valley Forge, was the United States government. When Valley Forge began in December 1777, the Army went in there with 12,000 soldiers, and they built huts.