So many of the fundamental truths and realities of the battle of Trenton have been obscured by myths that even the most basic questions have been seldom asked. At least one historian William E. Woodward posed a most intriguing question that very few American historians have dared to investigate because of the sheer power of the iconic Washington mystique and the seemingly endless romantic mythology surrounding the battle of Trenton: “The short Trenton-Princeton campaign revealed a military mind of a high order [but] there is some doubt . . . as to whose plan it was.” 9
What has been overlooked was the fact that Washington had not formulated strategy and tactics on his own, especially in regard to the development of his brilliant Trenton tactical plan. He relied heavily upon the sound tactical advice of his talented team of experienced top lieutenants and “general officers,” in Washington’s words, in multiple December 1776 Councils of War, as required by the Continental Congress. Because the much-criticized American commander, who feared losing his job by dismissal from Congress for ample good reason, had lost a series of key battles on New York soil, Washington’s most one-sided victory of his career shocked the English people and British Parliamentarians in London. Leading British politicians and strategists quite correctly “wondered, as many in Britain did, how [the] best soldiers in the world could be defeated by much smaller, generally untrained, and badly equipped forces, and how the most brilliant and seasoned generals in the Empire could be out-foxed by a wheat farmer?”10
For generations of Americans, Washington’s own natural genius by itself has long served as the solitary, unquestioned explanation of his sparkling success at Trenton, while the alleged widespread Hessian drunkenness provided a secondary traditional explanation for Washington’s most remarkable victory. German defeat has also been long explained by Colonel Rall’s alleged incompetence and leadership failures at every level. However, the truth of the situation was far more complex and antithetical to the popular myths and stereotypes. His self-serving British and German superiors, who desperately needed a scapegoat for Trenton’s disastrous loss to mask their own strategic miscalculations and tactical errors, widely condemned Rall, whose death at Trenton provided the golden opportunity to place all blame squarely on him.
Moral and religious factors have also provided traditional explanations for Washington’s almost inexplicable success at Trenton. One popular story has emphasized how Washington was inspired by Old Testament’s lessons about how ancient Hebrew zealots had vanquished Roman legionnaires in a holy war. One of the “best Washington fables” that developed from local New Jersey folklore focused on the alleged contributions of super spy John Honeyman. He supposedly provided Washington with vital intelligence about Trenton’s vulnerabilities. Long accepted as gospel by even America’s leading Revolutionary War historians and endlessly repeated in one book after another, such colorful stories like the popular Honeyman tale (another Trenton “legend”) have little, if any, basis in fact.11
Only relatively recently have groundbreaking analytical studies explored tactical aspects of Revolutionary War battles in great detail. But, ironically, the far more crucial confrontation at Trenton has been overlooked and unexplored: a rather bizarre, almost inexplicable, omission in the historical record. The foremost of these “new military history” works has been Lawrence E. Babits’s 1998 work, A Devil of a Whipping: The Battle of Cowpens. Ireland-born General Daniel Morgan’s one-sided victory at Cowpens, South Carolina, on January 17, 1781, has been proclaimed as having resulted from the American Revolution’s most brilliant battle plan. However, Washington’s far more significant and critical success at Trenton, reaped in the revolution’s decisive “cockpit” theater of operations and at the struggle’s most critical moment, was based upon a more innovative and enterprising battle plan that garnered more significant long-term results: saving the revolution and republic’s life at the last minute. Indeed, in what was his master stroke of the war, Washington’s skillful utilization of the classic tactical concept of the double envelopment led to the most improbable of victories to astound friend and foe alike. In essence, Washington repeated Hannibal’s tactical masterpiece at Cannae in 216 BC at Trenton, eliminating an entire Hessian brigade of battle-hardened troops with the boldest of strokes and in relatively short order.12
Achieving the most difficult and rarest of tactical battlefield feats, Washington skillfully orchestrated a pincer movement (or double envelopment) at Trenton to reverse not only the American Revolution’s course, but also America’s destiny. In the highest stakes showdown of the war, Washington’s brilliant orchestration of flexible, innovative tactics, based upon a well-balanced blend of mobility, surprise, and stealth, triumphed over the complex intricacies and formalities of conventional Eighteenth Century European warfare, especially those inspired by Prussian Frederick the Great. Washington reaped his remarkable success at Trenton by relying upon innovative asymmetrical tactics—born mostly of the frontier experience and Indian warfare (asymmetrical or guerrilla warfare) in which the element of surprise was paramount—of the stealthy pre-dawn surprise attack in wintertime, which was a rarity in the annals of traditional eighteenth-century European warfare. In overall terms, the true key to Washington’s remarkable victory was the sudden emergence of a distinctive American way of waging war. Washington’s success at Trenton, combined with his follow-up victory at Princeton, New Jersey, on January 3, 1777, would not have been possible without his timely and literally last-minute incorporation of fundamental axioms of the lessons of Indian warfare, especially the lightning-strike and surprise attack.
Even though the better-known battles of Saratoga, New York, and Yorktown have been the most celebrated of America’s revolutionary victories, thanks to French weaponry in the former and the extensive benefits of the French Alliance in the latter (advantages only made possible by Washington’s victory at Trenton), no battle of the Revolution was more purely and distinctly American or more important in overall terms (politically, morally, and psychologically) than the battle of Trenton. After all, successes at Saratoga (1777) or Yorktown (1781) would not have been possible without Washington’s remarkable victory on December 26, 1776 to set the stage for those later victories. Quite simply, the battle of Trenton marked a turning point of not only the American Revolution, but also in world history.
By accomplishing the impossible in reaping victory at Trenton at the very lowest ebb of America’s fortunes and darkest hour, Washington rejuvenated the fledgling republic’s faith and spirit of resistance effort, restoring a new sense of optimism for ultimate success among the American people like no other single event in the war. Before the battle of Trenton, America’s great republican dream and egalitarian vision had already all but suffered a premature death, except in the hearts and minds of very few resolute Americans, who never lost their religious-like faith in America’s egalitarian promise, especially Washington’s young men and boys who fought so magnificently at Trenton.13
Fortunately for America on December 26, 1776, the foremost fighting men among these precious few diehard revolutionaries, the truly “useful ones,” who yet battled against a seemingly cruel fate and for a forlorn cause, were Washington and relatively few of his surviving citizensoldiers, who were mostly Continentals. Unlike so many other Americans who had lost faith, these soldiers refused to forsake the cherished dream of independence and the utopian vision of a new beginning for the common man. By refusing to allow the revolution to succumb to a premature death, Washington and his men saved the utopian, idealistic promise that the common people, regardless of class, family background, social rank, or birthplace, deserved equality. With musket, bayonet, and saber, Washington and his threadbare soldiers of liberty resurrected America’s faith in the ultimate fulfillment of that egalitarian dream in one of the most surprising of victories in the military annals of world history.
Consequently, what Washington achieved at Trenton was a timely rescue of not only a people’s revolution, but also the preservation of th
e very dream, vision, and essence of the very meaning of America. In this sense, the climactic showdown at Trenton was in fact a decisive struggle not only over the very heart and soul of America, but also about the possession of the North American continent. Indeed, what was later called Manifest Destiny was salvaged by Washington’s victory at Trenton. Symbolically, Washington’s crossing of the turbulent Delaware played a key role in setting the stage for America’s westward expansion, ensuring the eventual crossing of the North American Continent and all the way to the Pacific in one of the great migrations in human history.
All in all, no single armed clash in American history was more important in determining America’s future destiny than Washington’s victory at Trenton, which resulted in a great symbolic philosophical, ideological, and spiritual regeneration of a new people, the Americans, and a new nation conceived in liberty. Quite simply, Washington’s success on December saved the infant American nation from extinction and everlasting oblivion. Leading mostly farm boys of an army of homespun revolutionaries, who only rarely won a battle against better trained British and Hessian troops, the finest professional soldiers in the world, Washington’s amazing triumph with his citizensoldier revolutionaries was not only over a veteran Hessian brigade, but also over the entrenched ancient concept of monarchy and autocratic rule of the Old World. Out of the lowest, darkest depths of America’s misfortunes, the bright luminosity of Washington’s remarkable victory at Trenton became a shining beacon of hope, pointing the way for America’s eventual decisive victory and independence.
By any measure, this special place, where the American dream and republican experiment in nationhood were miraculously resurrected against the odds by Washington, who led his soldiers through a pitch-black, stormy night and to a rendezvous with a special destiny at Trenton like an Old Testament prophet and holy warrior, should be revered today as America’s most sacred ground. Instead, Trenton has been scarred by a sad desecration while Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, thanks to commercial, tourist-oriented, and consumer culture excesses, has become America’s most popular and iconic historical shrine only 150 miles to the west.
Today, the congested center of today’s modern Trenton has been desecrated by a sad, if not tragic, scene of urban blight, impoverishment, drugs, and crime: a dark stain on this truly hallowed ground that represents a major turning point in American and world history. Here, on the most important single day in the American republic’s young life, Washington and his men reached their full potential as both Americans and soldiers for the first time, having their finest day in a battle of notable firsts: the American Army’s first urban battle and first use of “flying artillery.”
Today, the United States military has focused on urban warfare challenges to counter global threats for the twenty-first century, but has continued to teach the military lessons of conventional battles, especially Gettysburg, to each new generation of young leaders, while overlooking America’s first battle in an urban environment.
Although America’s founding was nothing short of miraculous, no chapter of America’s story was more miraculous than the most improbable victory in the annals of American military history at Trenton, where America’s fast-fading life was resurrected to almost everyone’s disbelief on a dark, stormy morning, when the stakes could not have been higher not only for America, but also for the world.
Most important, the unforgettable story of Trenton is truly a national epic saga, America’s Illiad. In the annals of American history, never have so few Americans accomplished so much against the odds and chances for success to reap the most dramatic battlefield victory and the most important success in American military history, when “the fate of America” hung in the balance.14
Chapter I
Crossing the Rubicon: Washington’s Most Imposing Obstacle
December 1776 was the darkest and worst of times for the infant American republic and its often-defeated amateur army of ill-trained citizen-soldiers. Consequently, the stakes could not have been higher not only for America, whose life hung by a mere thread, but also the world on Christmas Day 1776. In the unforgettable words of Thomas Paine: “The cause of America is in a great measure the cause of all mankind [and] we have it in our power to begin the world over again. The birthday of a new world is at hand.”14
But by near the end of December, the golden, utopian dream of America was about to die. On the most bitterly cold Christmas evening that anyone could remember, George Washington stared in deep thought at the wide, menacing expanse of the ice-clogged and rain-swollen Delaware River with a deepening sense of foreboding. Not even his thick, woolen military cloak kept Washington, the only Founding Father to have gone to war, warm from the biting, cold winds that howled down the river. Now America’s Rubicon, this raging river of destiny had suddenly become the most important in the fast-fading life of the infant American republic. For Washington, a successful crossing of the Delaware now amounted to nothing less than the saving of America.
Washington, therefore, was not deterred by the daunting prospect of his most risky and perilous undertaking of the war, despite the veil of darkness and stormy conditions. Born of the lowest depths of desperation, the cornerstone of Washington’s most daring battle plan called for first crossing the Delaware with his relatively few remaining Continental soldiers, and a far lesser number of state troops: what little was left of a dying army. Quite simply, if Washington failed to cross the Delaware on Christmas night and then overwhelm the crack German garrison at Trenton, New Jersey, just before the dawn of December 26, then the United States of America was fated to succumb to an early death.
In consequence, Christmas Day 1776 was the bleakest day in the America’s young life that was seemingly about to be extinguished forever. Inexperienced General Washington, the forty-five-year-old commander of the depleted Continental Army, had lost every battle in 1776, proving no match for experienced, professional British opponents. Independence had been declared in the previous summer during the zenith of American hopes and aspirations, but this bright optimism had faded away by late December.
But that hallowed declaration penned in Philadelphia no longer mattered because victory had to be won on the battlefield before America’s independence truly became reality. While cornered on the Delaware River’s west side and commanding a ragtag army, Washington had only a few days left in December to produce a military miracle to save the infant republic before the enlistments of most of his Continentals expired at year’s end. With his back figuratively against the wall on Christmas Day, Washington was not contemplating peace on earth, good will to mankind, or the Yuletide. Instead, the determined Washington now possessed an obsession and burning resolve: “Victory or Death.”
Indeed, America’s fate, destiny, and future now lay in the boldest and most brilliant battle plan as well as the most audacious tactical movement of the American Revolution: crossing the wide Delaware River from eastern Pennsylvania to western New Jersey, and then marching around 2,400 ill-clad soldiers nearly ten miles in order to resume the offensive and catch the Hessian garrison at Trenton by surprise. During late summer and early days of autumn when the dense woodlands of the Delaware Valley were bright with glorious fall colors, the Delaware was a quiet, placid river. At that time, the wide river flowed lazily through a colorful patchwork of virgin forests, grassy meadows, and well-manicured farmlands. As since times immemorial, this majestic river ran gently south at its lowest stages in August and September, flowing toward the open expanse of Delaware Bay and then the Atlantic’s cold waters. But now on Christmas Day and with the end of America’s most traumatic year drawing to a close, the Delaware’s usual tranquility and normal placid state had been altered dramatically.
Unlike when Washington’s Army had last crossed this river during the fairer weather of early December at the end of its long, miserable retreat through New Jersey after the disastrous New York campaign, the Delaware was now an unpredictable, turbulent river that threatened to thwart Washington’
s desperate ambitions and America’s last hopes. Whenever the heavy runoff of winter rains or snow poured into the Delaware and raised the water level, this untamed river became wild and unruly, overflowing its banks and flooding the surrounding low-lying countryside. Churning waters and swift currents carried huge logs, fallen trees, and other debris swiftly downstream, causing havoc among vessels on the Delaware. As an unkind fate would have it, Washington now planned his crossing at the exact time that the river was at its ugliest, highest, and most turbulent. Washington was now seemingly burdened with too many obstacles to possibly overcome. With time running out for America’s most often-defeated general and his reeling Continental Army, Washington must first conquer the formidable natural elements and the tempestuous Delaware even before he had a chance to meet a full Hessian brigade, well-trained and disciplined German soldiers, at Trenton.
Fortunately, however, one defeat after another had already prepared not only Washington but also his main strike force (one of three columns designated to cross the Delaware) of around 2,400 men for launching their most amphibious night operation before embarking upon a nearly ten-mile nighttime march south upon Trenton. Now an experienced master at the intricate art of strategic retreats across wide, swift-flowing bodies of water, including this same river that he had recently gotten to know so intimately, Washington now benefitted from the hard lessons learned from repeated recent defeats in a strategic theater of operations surrounded by interconnecting bodies of water. That most disadvantageous situation in the recent campaign around New York City ensured that Washington never won a single battle.
George Washington's Surprise Attack Page 2