Accounts of houses sacked, of families robbed of all they had, became commonplace. American reports of atrocities were often propaganda, but many were also quite accurate. The Pennsylvania Journal, the Pennsylvania Evening Post, and the Freeman’s Journal carried reports of the sick and elderly being abused, of rape and murder. No one was safe, according to the British officer Charles Stedman. “The friend and the foe from the hand of rapine shared alike.”
The New Jersey Loyalists were the most villainous of all, Nathanael Greene reported to his wife Caty.
They lead the relentless foreigners to the houses of their neighbors and strip poor women and children of everything they have to eat or wear; and after plundering them in this sort, the brutes often ravish the mothers and daughters and compel the fathers and sons to behold their brutality.
“The enemy’s ravages in New Jersey exceed all description,” Greene would report to Governor Nicholas Cooke of Rhode Island. “Many hundred women ravished.”
At Newark, according to the report of a congressional committee, three women, one of whom was in her seventies, another pregnant, were “most horribly ravished.”
Fear and outrage spread across New Jersey and beyond. “Their footsteps are marked with destruction wherever they go,” Greene said of the enemy.
What remained of Washington’s army, the “shadow army,” as Greene called it, was pitiful to behold. “But give me leave to tell you, Sir,” Greene would write to John Adams, “that our difficulties were inconceivable to those who were not eye witnesses to them.”
BRITISH AND HESSIAN FORCES got under way from Brunswick on December 7 and came on faster than ever, William Howe having decided that, “The possession of Trenton was extremely desirable.” With the continuing success of the Proclamation of November 30 and hardly any opposition from the rebels, Howe intended to secure another large part of New Jersey where Loyalists were plentiful, and where, as he also said, Philadelphia was in easy striking distance.
Washington was on his way from Trenton to look things over at Princeton when he received word of the enemy’s strength and rapid advance. Immediately he turned back.
“Our retreat should not be neglected for fear of consequences,” advised Nathanael Greene, who had also ridden to Princeton earlier in the day. In the trek across New Jersey, Washington had become increasingly dependent on Greene. But it was “beyond doubt” that the enemy was advancing, Greene reported. Lord Stirling expected them by noon. Lee was also said to be “at the heels of the enemy,” but Greene cautioned Washington that, whatever happened, Lee ought to be kept under control “within the lines of some general plan or else his operations will be independent of yours.”
Washington had already made his decision, and he calmly, deliberately, carried it out. A fleet of boats was standing ready at Trenton. By nightfall, the weary troops and their commander were crossing the Delaware to the Pennsylvania shore, where bonfires had been set ablaze to light the way.
One of those watching from the Pennsylvania side was the artist Charles Willson Peale, who had arrived with a Philadelphia militia unit in answer to Washington’s call for help. Peale wrote later of the firelight on the river and shore, of boats laden with soldiers, horses, cannon, and equipment, of men calling out orders. It was “a grand but dreadful” spectacle: “The hallooing of hundreds of men in their difficulties getting horses and artillery out of the boats, made it rather the appearance of Hell than any earthly scene.”
The long retreat that had begun in New York and continued from the Hudson to the Delaware was over. Casualties had been few in New Jersey, and its pitiable appearance and miseries notwithstanding, the army, or the semblance of an army, had once again survived.
“With a handful of men we sustained an orderly retreat,” wrote Thomas Paine in The Crisis, which soon appeared in Philadelphia. No sign of fear was to be seen, he insisted. “Once more we are collected and collecting…. By perseverance and fortitude we have the prospect of a glorious issue.”
Henry Knox, writing on the morning of December 8, his first letter to his wife in weeks, said she might be surprised to find he was in Pennsylvania. Though physically exhausted, he, like Paine, refused to be downcast. It was “a combination of unlucky circumstances” that had brought things to such a pass, he told her. “We are now making a stand on the side of the Delaware toward Philadelphia.”
In truth, men were dreadfully dispirited. Many had given up, in addition to the 2,000 who had refused to sign on again after December 1. Hundreds had deserted. Many of those left were sick, hungry, altogether as miserable as they appeared.
To Charles Willson Peale, walking among them by the light of the next morning on the Pennsylvania shore, they looked as wretched as any men he had ever seen. One had almost no clothes. “He was in an old dirty blanket jacket, his beard long, and his face so full of sores that he could not clean it.” So “disfigured” was he that Peale failed at first to recognize that the man was his own brother, James Peale, who had been with a Maryland unit as part of the rear guard.
THAT THE ENEMY MIGHT CROSS the Delaware at one or several points and move quickly to seize Philadelphia, as they had New York, no one doubted. On Washington’s orders every boat not commanded to bring the army across had been destroyed for sixty miles along the east bank of the river, which was no small accomplishment. But broad and swift as it was, the river could remain a barrier to Howe only so long, as Washington warned the members of Congress repeatedly in a series of urgent dispatches.
“From several accounts, I am led to think that the enemy are bringing boats with them,” he wrote.
If so, it will be impossible for our small force to give them any considerable opposition in the passage of the river…. Under the circumstances, the security of Philadelphia should be our next object.
In another letter to John Hancock, he stated flatly that “Philadelphia beyond all question is the object of the enemy’s movements,” that “nothing less than our utmost exertions” could stop Howe, and that his own force was too thin and weak to count on.
Washington and his staff had taken up quarters in a brick house directly across the river from Trenton, where he hoped to keep watch on the enemy. His troops were scattered close by the river for nearly twenty-five miles, camped in the woods and brush out of sight from the river, the greater part of them about ten miles to the north of Washington’s headquarters.
While Joseph Reed had gotten nowhere with his recruiting efforts in New Jersey, Mifflin’s efforts had produced some results. The Philadelphia volunteer militia (or Philadelphia Associators as they were called) that Charles Willson Peale had arrived with numbered 1,000 and marched into camp “in a very spirited manner,” as Washington noted approvingly.
On December 10, word came at last that Lee and 4,000 troops commanded by General Sullivan had reached Morristown to the northeast.
“General Lee…is on his march to join me,” Washington wrote to the governor of Connecticut, Jonathan Trumbull. “If he can effect this junction, our army will again make a respectable appearance, and such as I hope will disappoint the enemy in their plan on Philadelphia.”
Everything depended on Lee.
The letter to Trumbull was written December 14, when Washington knew nothing of events of the day before, Friday the 13th—events wholly unexpected and of far-reaching consequences. As time would show, that Friday the 13th had been an exceedingly lucky day for Washington and for his country.
IN AN INEXPLICABLE LAPSE of judgment, General Lee had spent the previous night of the 12th separated from his troops, stopping at a tavern about three miles away at Basking Ridge, for what reason is not known.
With Lee was a personal guard of fifteen officers and men. The next morning, in low spirits and no apparent hurry, Lee sat at a table in his dressing gown attending to routine paperwork, then took time to write a letter to General Gates for no other purpose than to blame Washington for all his troubles and for the woeful state of affairs in general.
“Entre nous, a certain great man is damnable deficient,” Lee told Gates.
He has thrown me into a situation where I have my choice of difficulties: if I stay in this province, I risk myself and army; and if I do not stay, the province is lost forever…. In short, unless something which I do not expect turns up, we are lost.
It was just after ten when a swarm of British cavalry appeared suddenly at the end of the lane. They were a scouting party of twenty-five horsemen commanded by Colonel William Harcourt, who had once served under Lee in Portugal. They had been sent out from Trenton by Cornwallis to gather intelligence on Lee’s “motions and situation.” At Basking Ridge, a local Loyalist had given them the answer.
From the end of the lane to the tavern was a distance of about a hundred yards. Six of the horsemen, led by Lieutenant Banister Tarleton, came at a gallop. In minutes they had the building surrounded, killed two of the guards, and scattered the rest.
“I ordered my men to fire into the house through every window and door, and cut up as many of the guard as they could,” Tarleton later wrote.
Some of those inside fired back. Then the owner of the tavern, a woman named White, appeared at the door. Screaming that Lee was inside, she begged for mercy.
Tarleton shouted that he would burn the building unless Lee gave himself up. In a few minutes Lee appeared and surrendered, saying he trusted he would be treated as a gentleman.
A young American lieutenant who had been inside and managed to escape, James Wilkinson, would later describe how a cheer went up among Lee’s captors and a trumpet sounded. Then off they dashed with their prize, the “unfortunate” Lee, hatless, still in his dressing gown and slippers, mounted on Wilkinson’s horse, which happened to have been tethered at the door. The astonishing raid had taken no more than fifteen minutes.
News of Lee’s capture spread in all directions as fast as the fastest horses could move. The British were jubilant. At Brunswick, where the prisoner was put under lock and key, Harcourt’s cavalrymen celebrated by getting Lee’s horse (Wilkinson’s horse) drunk, along with themselves, as a band played into the night.
A Hessian captain wrote in his journal, “We have captured General Lee, the only rebel general whom we had cause to fear.” The hero of the hour, Lieutenant Tarleton, wrote triumphantly to his mother, “This coup de main has put an end to the campaign.”
When the news reached England it was thought at first to be too improbable, then set off bell-ringing and joyful demonstrations as if a great battle had been won.
Among the British, it was thought that because Lee was a British soldier and gentleman, he was therefore, of course, superior to any raw American provincial who had assumed high rank, but then for the same reason, he was also that much more of a traitor to his King.
To the American officers and troops deployed along the west bank of the Delaware, and all whose hopes were riding on them, the loss of Lee seemed the worst possible news at the worst possible moment.
To Nathanael Greene it was one of a “combination of evils…pressing in upon us on all sides.” Washington, on first hearing what had happened, called it a “severe blow,” then said he would comment no further on “this unhappy accident.” Privately he was furious with Lee for having been such a fool. “Unhappy man! Taken by his own imprudence,” he told Lund Washington. And privately he must also have breathed a sigh of relief. After the continuing frustrations and anxieties Lee had subjected him to, there must have been a feeling of deliverance for Washington.
The popular, egotistical general who considered the members of Congress no better than cattle and longed for the “necessary power” to set everything straight was no longer a factor. In little time, fearing he might be hanged as a traitor and hoping to ingratiate himself with his old military friend William Howe, Lee would resort to offering his thoughts to Howe on ways the British could win the war.
The same day as Lee’s capture, Washington learned that Congress had adjourned in order to move to a safer location at Baltimore. It was abandoning Philadelphia for the first time since convening there for the First Continental Congress in 1774.
EVERYTHING SEEMED TO BE HAPPENING at once. On December 13, at his Trenton headquarters across the river from Washington, William Howe made one of the fateful decisions of the war. He was suspending further military operations until spring. Beginning immediately, he and his army would retire to winter quarters in northern New Jersey and New York. To secure the ground gained in the campaign, he would establish a string of outposts in New Jersey.
There had been a change in the weather. The days had turned much colder. The nights were the coldest yet with a “hard frost” and snow flurries, and this was all Howe had needed to make up his mind, “the weather,” as he wrote, “having become too severe to keep the field.”
It was commonly understood that eighteenth-century professional armies and their gentlemen commanders did not subject themselves to the miseries of winter campaigns, unless there were overriding reasons to the contrary. Considering all he had accomplished in the year’s campaign and knowing the helpless state of the rebel army, Howe saw no cause to continue the fight or to remain a day longer than necessary in a punishing American winter in a place like Trenton.
And there were, besides, compelling reasons to retire to New York City, for quarters for the army, and for the comforts and pleasures that so appealed to the general himself.
Howe departed for New York on Saturday, December 14, joined by Cornwallis, whom he had granted leave to return to England to visit his ailing wife.
General Howe cozily accommodated in New York, as pictured in the minds of many, would rekindle old gossip and give rise to some popular doggerel:
Sir William, he, snug as a flea,
Lay all this time a-snoring;
Nor dreamed of harm, as he lay warm
In bed with Mrs. Loring.
NO BOATS WERE TO BE BUILT or hauled overland by the British to cross the Delaware. And for now there was to be no march on Philadelphia. The members of Congress could as well have stayed where they were.
But of this Washington seems to have known little or nothing. Close as he was to the enemy he had almost no idea of what they were doing, no knowledge that Howe and Cornwallis had departed, and that neither he nor Congress were any longer under immediate threat.
“The Delaware now divides what remains of our little force from that of General Howe whose object, beyond all question, is to possess Philadelphia,” Washington wrote on December 18, four days after Howe’s departure, to James Bowdoin, a member of the Massachusetts Council. Were the river to freeze, Washington feared, the enemy might attack over the ice. “Strain every nerve for carrying out the necessary works,” he told Israel Putnam, who was charged with the defense of Philadelphia. “There seems to be the strongest reason to believe the enemy will attempt to pass the river as soon as the ice is sufficiently formed.”
Desperate for reliable intelligence—for information of almost any kind—Washington let it be known he was willing to pay for it, at almost any price. In a dispatch to his general officers, he implored them to find a spy who would cross the river and determine whether any boats were being built or coming overland. “Expense must not be spared in procuring such intelligence, and will readily be paid by me.” To Lord Stirling, he wrote, “Use every possible means without regard to expense to come with certainty at the enemy’s strength, situation, and movements—without this we wander in a wilderness of uncertainties.”
As early as December 15, he had received a report from a commander of Pennsylvania militia posted below Trenton, John Cadwalader, saying, “General Howe is certainly gone to New York, unless the whole is a scheme to amuse and surprise.” Perhaps Washington found it impossible to believe, or suspected that it was indeed a ruse. Whatever the reason, he seems to have ignored it.
The foe gathered on the other side of the river was the British army no longer, but a holding force of 1,500 Hessians settled in for the winter un
der the command of Colonel Johann Rall, the veteran officer who had led the fierce Hessian assaults at White Plains and Fort Washington.
Concerned about “the apparent designs” of the enemy—the “wilderness of uncertainties”—Washington moved his headquarters ten miles upstream to Buckingham Township, closer to the main body of the army, where Greene, Stirling, and Knox had their headquarters.
In two weeks, on New Year’s Day, all enlistments would expire. And what then? “Our only dependence now is upon the speedy enlistment of a new army,” he wrote to Lund Washington. “If this fails, I think the game is pretty near up.”
On December 20, in the midst of a snowstorm, General Sullivan rode into Buckingham at the head of Lee’s troops, having marched at a pace four times what Lee had set in order to join Washington as soon as possible. But instead of the 4,000 that Washington had been expecting, there were only half that number, and the men were in more wretched condition even than Washington’s own ranks. When Lee had complained of his troops having no shoes, it had been no exaggeration for effect. General Heath would later write of seeing Lee’s troops pass through Peekskill, many “so destitute of shoes that the blood left on the frozen ground, in many places, marked the route they had taken.”
One of those who had made the trek from Peekskill was Lieutenant Joseph Hodgkins. In a letter headed “Buckingham in Pennsylvania, December 20, 1776,” Hodgkins reported to his wife Sarah:
We have been on the march since the 29th of last month and we are now within 10 or 12 miles of General Washington’s army. We expect to be there tonight. But how long we shall stay there I can’t tell. Neither can I tell you much about the enemy, only that they are on one side of the Delaware River and our army on the other.
They had marched about two hundred miles, Hodgkins thought, and the greatest part of the way was dangerous—“the enemy being near,” but also because so much of the country was “full of them cursed creatures called Tories.”
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