CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

The Crossing

WASHINGTON WAS NOT SURPRISED that thousands of New Jersey residents rushed to take the loyalty oath offered by the British and scrapped the cause of independence as a foolish pipe dream. Expecting a hefty influx of New Jersey militia, he had entertained hopes of making a brave stand against the British at Hackensack or New Brunswick. “But in this I was cruelly disappointed,” he informed Connecticut governor Jonathan Trumbull. “The inhabitants of this state, either from fear or disaffection, almost to a man, refused to turn out.”¹ He was down to a beleaguered rump army, a raggedy band of a few thousand men. During the trek across New Jersey, they had worn out their shoes and crafted makeshift footwear by slaughtering cattle, skinning their hides, and wrapping crude sections around their bare feet.

It took five days for the disheveled, footsore Americans to cross the Delaware River into Pennsylvania near Trenton, a rearguard action designed to protect nearby Philadelphia. Eager to conduct his army to safety, Washington kindled large bonfires onshore, so that boats could ply the waters through the night; he later recalled this anxious time as one of “trembling for the fate of America.”² His heart sank as he watched his men, supposed saviors of the country, acting like “a destructive, expensive, disorderly mob.”³ One observant spectator of the crossing was Charles Willson Peale, who had painted a younger and happier Washington and now served with the Pennsylvania militia. Studying this “grand but dreadful” sight, Peale noted the hazardous drudgery of ferrying horses and heavy artillery across the water.⁴ He characterized the spectacle as “the most hellish scene I ever beheld” and left an unforgettable anecdote to illustrate the sorry state of the begrimed troops. As Continental soldiers filed past him, “a man staggered out of line and came toward me. He had lost all his clothes. He was in an old dirty blanket jacket, his beard long and his face full of sores . . . which so disfigured him that he was not known by me on first sight. Only when he spoke did I recognize my brother James.”⁵

Acting with dispatch, Washington had his men scour the Delaware for sixty miles and commandeer or destroy any boats that might tumble into British hands. For future use, he had all sturdy boats secreted in nearby creeks or sheltered by islands in the river, laying special stress on the Durham boats, bargelike craft, some sixty feet in length, that ordinarily carried iron ore and other freight. These black boats, outfitted with two masts and sails, could be steered in inclement weather by huge eighteen-foot oars or pushed along by long poles—a feature that would make them a godsend on a snowy night a few weeks later. Washington also posted guards along the river to bar the passage not just of British soldiers but of any Pennsylvanians who might smuggle vital information to the enemy.

On December 8 General Howe and his army arrived in Trenton and exchanged fire with American troops on the Delaware. With twelve thousand men, Howe was tempted to snatch Philadelphia but, in true aristocratic style, he preferred to make a gentlemanly retreat for the winter to the softer haunts of New York City. To fortify Trenton, he left three Hessian regiments under Colonel Johann Gottlieb Rall. Howe was feeling, with good reason, that the tide had turned decisively in his favor, the British having reasserted their sway over three former colonies: New York, New Jersey, and Rhode Island. Panic had gripped Philadelphia, prompting many towns-people to padlock their homes and flee. On December 13 Congress abandoned the now-indefensible city and decamped to Baltimore.

To Washington’s credit, instead of simply dwelling on the misery of his situation, he spied a possible opportunity in British complacency. A cold snap in mid-December fostered fears that the Delaware might freeze over, inviting the British to cross and attack. To forestall any prospect of Howe snatching Philadelphia and as a tonic to his dejected compatriots, Washington began to think creatively. He was now endowed with the clarity of despair, which unleashed his more aggressive instincts and opened his mind to unorthodox tactics. On December 14 he predicted to Governor Trumbull that a “lucky blow” against the British would “most certainly rouse the spirits of the people, which are quite sunk by our misfortunes.”⁶ He was awakening from the mental torpor that had shadowed his footsteps since the Long Island disaster. With fresh plans stirring in his brain, he ordered Horatio Gates to bring his regiments, now encamped in northern New Jersey, across the Delaware.

So many enlistments were set to elapse by year’s end that it set an effective deadline for offensive action. Washington believed that British units, scattered along the New Jersey side of the Delaware, were “hovering” like vultures, waiting to swoop down after New Year’s Day. Unless every nerve was “strained to recruit the new army with all possible expedition,” Washington warned his brother Samuel, “I think the game is pretty near up.”⁷ He was more concerned by the accelerating decay of patriotic support than by Howe’s overwhelming military strength. Adding further pressure for quick attention-getting action was the extreme disarray of American finances. “We are all of opinion, my dear General,” Joseph Reed told him, “that something must be attempted to revive our expiring credit, give our cause some degree of reputation, and prevent a total depreciation of the continental money.”⁸

Sensitive to public opinion, Washington knew that he had to act fast and he often seemed abstracted. “I saw him in that gloomy period,” recalled one officer, “dined with him and attentively marked his aspect; always grave and thoughtful, he appeared at that time pensive and solemn in the extreme.”⁹ By December 22 Washington’s army had been bolstered by regiments that had previously marched under Charles Lee and Horatio Gates, as well as some new militia units, boosting its strength to more than 7,600 men. Because of short enlistments, Washington had ten days to strike a mortal blow against the British; otherwise his troops would vanish into the woods. When Trenton residents reported to the Hessians rumors of an impending rebel attack, the foreign soldiers seemed incredulous. “We did not have any idea of such a thing,” said one Hessian, “and thought the rebels were unable to do so.”¹⁰

A timely spur to patriot spirits was the publication of a soul-stirring manifesto by Thomas Paine, who had been amazed by the Continental soldiers’ pluck during their dreary hundred-mile march across New Jersey. To honor the thirteen states, he published thirteen essays in a collection entitled The Crisis. Scratched out by candlelight and campfire, these essays appeared in pamphlet form on December 23, and Washington had them read aloud to small clusters of men up and down the Delaware. The shivering listeners surely glowed with pride at the words: “These are the times that try men’s souls. The summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will, in this crisis, shrink from the service of their country; but he that stands it now deserves the love and thanks of man and woman.”¹¹ Washington had befriended the radical firebrand during the Jersey retreat, and Paine now celebrated his stoic fortitude: “Voltaire has remarked that King William never appeared to full advantage but in difficulties and in action; the same remark may be made on General Washington, for the character fits him.”¹²

Washington and his generals decided to cross the Delaware on the night of Christmas Day and pounce upon the Hessian garrison in Trenton an hour before daylight as they slept off their holiday revels, gambling everything on one final roll of the dice. “For heaven’s sake, keep this to yourself,” Washington told Joseph Reed on December 23, “as the discovery of it may prove fatal to us . . . dire necessity will—nay must—justify any [attempt].”¹³ His men had braved hunger, fatigue, sickness, and defeat from personal loyalty to him. On December 24 Colonel William Tudor explained to his fiancée in Boston why he stayed with the motley crew gathered on the Delaware: “I cannot desert a man . . . who has deserted everything to defend his country, and whose chief misfortune . . . is that a large part of it wants [i.e., lacks] spirit to defend itself.”¹⁴ Crossing the Delaware, Washington knew, would produce either storied success or utter calamity, and he seemed ready to pay the price. Dr. Benjamin Rush encountered Washington during the tense evening before the operation. “While I was talking to him,” Rush recalled, “I observed him to play with his pen and ink upon several small pieces of paper. One of them by accident fell upon the floor near my feet. I was struck with the inscription upon it. It was ‘Victory or Death.’ ” ¹⁵ Rush had glimpsed the password of the secret operation, which summed up its desperate all-or-nothing quality.