Most significantly, the highly motivated African-American soldiers of Glover’s regiment were not slaves but free men. Last summer, both black and white seamen of Glover’s ever-flexible command worked together side-by-side to save Washington’s forces during the risky evacuation off Long Island. When only an ambitious captain commanding “Company Nine,” Glover, before becoming colonel of the Massachusetts state regiment before it evolved into the Fourteenth Massachusetts Continental Regiment, had served beside an African-American soldier named Romeo, who initially marched off to war with two of Glover’s brothers: Samuel, a French and Indian War veteran, and Jonathan, who owned slaves, in the Marblehead company’s ranks. And from Marblehead’s neighboring port of Beverly, Massachusetts, the Seventh Company of Glover’s Fourteenth Massachusetts Continental Regiment, now consisting of eight companies, under the command of Captain Moses Brown, a 1768 law graduate from Harvard College, included another African-American warrior, Esop Hale. But the vast majority of Glover’s black soldiers hailed from Marblehead. Given mostly ancient Roman names from the annals of classical history like Caesar, Pomp, Coffee, Primus, and Pompey, these African-American patriots, both slave and free, were members of Marblehead’s distinctive African-American community, located near the so-called Negro Burying Ground.
Because the fishing industry had long relied in part upon black labor, Marblehead’s separate African-American community had evolved independently out of inclination rather than due to strict segregation as in the South. This small but vibrant black community located on a high point of the Marblehead peninsula had kept some vestiges of ancient West African cultural traditions, perhaps even religion, alive for generations. Consisting of around one hundred individuals of African descent by 1776, this black community was known for its liveliness, including good times at Black Joe’s establishment perched atop the rocky Gingerbread Hill, which offered a wide, sweeping view of Marblehead and its bluish harbor filled with a throng of tall-masted sailing ships.
This merry place, where the rum, gin, and grog flowed like water, was owned by Joseph Brown. Brown’s musical talents with the fiddle were unsurpassed and well-known along the Massachusetts coast. Like other members of the black community, Brown was proud of his African roots. He also possessed some Indian blood, extending back generations. When the exciting news of the Declaration of Independence’s July 1776 signing in Philadelphia first reached Marblehead to cause the ringing church bells to echo across the rocky Marblehead peninsula, Joseph and his wife Lucretia were freed by their master to enjoy liberty’s blessings. In gratitude to the prevailing Age of Enlightenment thought and desiring to fight for his country, Joseph joined the Continental Army, evidently serving in Glover’s regiment.
For generations, free blacks worked as fisherman and sailors in New England’s thriving fishing industry. Even slaves served as sailors and shipwrights on the high seas. White and black New Englanders had long served side-by-side not only on New England’s fishing vessels but also on American privateers, including ships sailing out of Marblehead to raid French shipping during the French and Indian War. And New England’s distinguished privateer tradition continued unabated during the American Revolution, with African American and Caucasian seamen from Marblehead serving together in strikes at the British Navy that had forcefully impressed many Marblehead citizens into English service.
Both slaves, including Africa-born Cato Prince, and freemen from Marblehead served in the Continental Army, continuing the deeply ingrained seafaring tradition of blacks and whites working, fighting, and dying together both on land and on the high seas. After having faced the same arctic gales and maritime hardships in laboring the cold, turbulent waters of the Grand Banks, black and white Marbleheaders were about to once again work closely together as a highly effective team in a comparable harsh environment in transporting Washington’s troops and cannons across the Delaware under the most adverse conditions. And then they would soon be fighting side-by-side against the Hessians in Trenton’s snowy streets.
Significantly, the black Marbleheader’s seafaring tradition extended back for centuries to mother Africa, especially along the west African coast. Black seafaring traditions had early merged with the cultural Cornwall- and Massachusetts-derived seafaring traditions of white Marbleheaders to create New England’s master seamen. Slavery existed in Marblehead, but in an overall relatively benign form (mostly house servants) compared to the South (mostly field hands). Colonel Glover owned slaves, including black teenagers Boston and Merrick Willson, who served in the Seventh Massachusetts Continental Regiment by 1781. But Boston and Merrick were privileged and somewhat pampered house servants, which was commonplace in New England’s so-called codfish aristocracy. Here, in Mablehead, both free and slave black individuals, especially those African Americans owned by clergymen, received baptisms, got married, and sat as equals while worshiping the same God together in the wooden pews of Glover’s church, First Church, or Old North Church. At their own choosing and perhaps in reverence to their west African ancestors, African Americans were laid to rest in their own “Negro burying place” in Marblehead’s rocky soil. In Marblehead, like when working together far out at sea, a man was judged not as much by his color as how well he performed his seafaring duties, upon which the fate of the captain, the entire crew, and even the sailing ship itself often depended. Consequently, skin color was of relatively little significance in the seafarer’s harsh world, where mutual survival depended upon ability, work ethic, and content of character, unlike on land where superficiality often reigned supreme.
At Cambridge, Massachusetts, during the winter of 1775-1776, the inevitable racial clash had occurred after Southern volunteers arrived in camp. Glover’s men, including former slaves, and Daniel Morgan’s Virginia riflemen, including slaveowners and their privileged sons, had brawled in a wild melee over the fundamental issue of race, until broken up by Washington himself. The mere presence of fully armed black soldiers who walked with pride and dignity, such as Romeo, Esop Hale, or other African Americans in the distinctive uniform of the Marblehead regiment, represented the ultimate racial threat and nightmare to slave-owning Virginians.32
Ironically, at this time, these Southerners, both western frontiersmen and city boys from towns like Williamsburg and Fredericksburg, might well have begun to alter their stereotypical concepts about race and the value of ebony Continental soldiers, because they now depended entirely upon Glover’s men, including black mariners, to transport them safely across the Delaware. After all, the safety of the Old Dominion home state, homes, and families now depended upon what Glover’s men accomplished against the odds. Therefore, in such a crisis situation, a pervasive Southern racism finally took a bad seat among Washington’s ragged revolutionaries on this Christmas evening and night. As fate would have it, the stern demands of the Delaware crossing and the Trenton challenge now united black and white as one: the necessary emergency, high stakes, and winner-take-all situation that eventually assisted in forging an unprecedented unity. Along the Delaware, class and racial differences finally took a back seat among the members of this stratified, hierarchical society, thanks to the magnitude of the Trenton challenge. As never before, Washington’s men of all colors now truly became a band of brothers united by the crucial mission of crossing the Delaware and capturing Trenton.
As Washington realized, Colonel Glover and his seafarers were just the kind of determined men who could be depended upon to keep the revolution’s flickering flames alive in its darkest hour. Everything now depended upon the skill of Glover’s men in deciphering the Delaware’s tricky currents, nuances, and idiosyncrasies to successfully negotiate this treacherous river on an inky night in stormy conditions. Unknowingly bestowing a compliment, a Tory newspaperman of the New York Gazette, the first newspaper published in New York City, had severely lambasted Glover’s fiery revolutionaries as early as 1774, deriding—and indirectly complimenting—them as “the mad-men of Marblehead [who already] are preparing for an early campaign aga
inst his Majesty’s troops.” But, ironically, to transport Washington’s ragtag task force across the turbulent Delaware, nearly a quarter of a mile wide, during a severe winter storm at night in a desperate bid to catch some of the best troops in America by surprise was indeed a challenge only undertaken by absolute madmen, according to the conventional wisdom of leading military experts and graduates of military academies on both sides of the Atlantic.33
Another key factor also explained why Glover and his prized New Englanders were so highly motivated on December 25 and 26. Marblehead’s close-knit community was even now in its death throes, and its people were suffering severely. With its able-bodied men no longer working out at sea to provide an income from fishing “the banks,” Marblehead was now racked by backbreaking poverty that reduced its people to squalor. Living conditions became so dismal that impoverished citizens were forced to dig up roots and cut turf, as in Ireland, to fuel fires on this Christmas Day in Marblehead.
Infuriating Glover’s men to no end and fueling the desire for revenge, this crushing poverty stemmed from the British Navy’s closure of the Grand Banks, starting on July 20, 1775, to American vessels to economically destroy New England’s fishing industry. Great Britain possessed the world’s most powerful navy that enforced its harsh decree. As planned by London’s calculating officials, who keenly knew how to wage economic warfare to shatter lives and families of rebels, the British blockade was now choking Marblehead to death. Clearly, stripped of their traditional livelihoods, the innocent families of Glover’s hard-fighting Marblehead mariners continued to pay a high price for their undying patriotism, while their conscience-troubled menfolk along the faraway Delaware River now prepared to save the day for America.
Despite heartbreaking letters written from distressed family members that told of the terrible suffering back in Marblehead and fortunately for America at this crucial moment along the Delaware, Glover’s regiment boasted proudly of one of the army’s lowest desertion rates at a time when desertion had reached epic proportions in Washington’s Army. However, this grim situation on the home front only inspired Glover’s young men and boys to do their best on December 25 and 26. Great Britain’s ruthless economic warfare against New England fishing communities especially Marblehead would shortly come back to haunt George III, England, and the legendary Rall brigade, which had never known defeat, in the climactic showdown at Trenton.34 As temperatures plummeted and darkness deepened along the fast-moving river overflowing its icy banks, Connecticut’s Lieutenant Elisha Bostwick described how Washington’s hopeful army, “toward evining [sic] began to recross the Delaware” in the increasing cold.35
With blackness having descended so rapidly upon the Delaware’s wind-swept valley, this inconspicuous setting might have well represented the final sunset for the young American nation if Washington’s long-shot and high-stakes gamble was not won during the next twenty-four hours. Initial attempts by the Continental infantrymen to board the Durham boats were painstakingly slow, to Washington’s endless irritation. The first soldiers to board the Durham boats were delayed because the river bank dropped sharply from the level flood plain—a flat shelf, or terrace, of bottom land—to the water’s edge, where a sheet of ice covered the frozen river bank like a slippery blanket. Especially in the near-darkness, these dual obstacles resulted in hundreds of soldiers remaining motionless and massed close together in formation, waiting for their turn to cross the Delaware. Major Wilkinson, now serving as the trusty aide of Scotland-born General Arthur St. Clair who commanded one of Washington’s brigades, wrote how the “Troops began to cross at sunset,” which coincided with the rapidly-encroaching veil of blackness around 6:00 p.m.36 All the while, masking his considerable anxiety, Washington displayed a calm command presence that steadied his men, reassuring them with his confident example and bold front. Even under these deplorable conditions and in a tense, crisis situation upon which everything hinged, Washington remained especially “self-collected.” Most importantly, the common soldier’s resolve was fortified by their commander-in-chief’s appearance of steely determination. All the while, he exhibited an “invincible firmness and [a sense of] perseverance.”37
As carefully planned by Washington, the Continental troops were to be relayed across the river by Glover’s mariners in regular shifts: a methodical and systematic, but time-consuming, process. The frigid ground around the ferry landing where hundreds of awaiting Continental troops, with knapsacks and accouterments slung over too-thin apparel, were crowded under the tall sycamores bare of leaves, had been churned into a slippery pulp, which additionally slowed the laborious embarkation process. Mud clung to soldier’s shoes and pant legs like a sticky paste. Meanwhile, Washington’s timetable for crossing began to fall further behind schedule. In only twelve hours, Washington had planned to have all his troops of two divisions, under the First Division under General John Sullivan and the Second Division under General Nathanael Greene, in advantageous positions on Trenton’s outskirts to strike an hour before sunrise.38
Because the narrow, barge-like Durham boats were built to carry heavy freight instead of passengers in deep, sunken hulls, Washington’s soldiers were forced to stand up during the precarious sojourn across the angry river. They were jammed close together in the crowded vessels, with men holding to the top of the boat’s chest-high sides for balance, steadying themselves as best they could. Symbolically, not long after Captains William Washington and John Flahaven’s vanguard of Virginia and New Jersey Continentals, respectively, pushed off and became the first soldiers to descend into the depths of the Durham boats, General Washington himself prepared to cross the around eight hundred-foot wide Delaware. He planned to accompany the foremost troops of General Adam Stephen’s Virginia brigade, which were designated as the first infantry brigade to cross. Washington wanted to be one of the first Americans across the Delaware: a smart psychological and leadership decision calculated to inspire his troops during their most trying hour.
Clearly, Washington intentionally radiated confidence to his young soldiers, especially those men who could not swim and possessed ever-increasing doubts about the wisdom of this risky nighttime crossing. Meanwhile, Major William Raymond Lee, a fine tactician of the Fourteenth Massachusetts Continental Regiment with solid experience, worked hand in hand with Glover in managing the boat crews. He hailed from one of Marblehead’s leading and wealthiest families. While Glover, although a brigade commander, orchestrated the efforts of the Marbleheader crews during the crossing, Major Lee commanded the Fourteenth Massachusetts Continental Regiment.
To ensure the presence of an authority figure to make sure everything went well, Glover prudently assigned a respected officer, either a captain or lieutenant, to manage the rowing and steering crews of from four to five enlisted Marbleheaders in each Durham boat. In successfully navigating the ice-encumbered currents, these veteran officers ensured that the strong-armed crews rowed together in unison and performed smoothly like a well-oiled team, as if yet navigating the tricky waters of the Grand Banks, where the lashings of frigid, high winds and swollen waves had long conditioned them for the arduous task of crossing the Delaware. The river’s swirling, black waters proved especially challenging for Glover’s swarthy seamen, because the rain-swollen water level was higher, the currents faster, and the night darker than anticipated.
Each of these highly maneuverable Durham boats, looking almost like giant canoes except that they were flat-bottomed, had been designed by Robert Durham in the 1750s to carry hefty cargoes of timber, ore and pigiron, timber, and natural produce from upriver down to the Philadelphia market. Most iron ore was mined from the hills of upper Bucks County, Pennsylvania, where the Durham Iron Furnace or Works, located just two miles south of the Northampton County line and ten miles south of Easton, Pennsylvania, had been established in 1727. Since the mid-1750s, Declaration of Independence signer Ireland-born George Taylor and his partner leased and operated the Durham Iron Works.
Ironicall
y, for Glover’s black mariners now manning the Durham boats, these vessels had long transported iron ore mined more cheaply in Pennsylvania for higher profits to undercut England’s manufacturers because of black slave labor. For America’s war effort, the Durham Furnace now produced a steady flow of cannonballs, grapeshot, and cannons. However, this precious iron ore came not only from Pennsylvania’s hills to the north in a wild region known as the Upper Bucks, but also from the Delaware’s other side, where the Oxford Furnace produced war munitions. Iron was New Jersey’s most significant nonagricultural export, and it was transported in sizeable quantities down the Delaware from the northwest New Jersey Highlands.
Enterprising civilian boatmen, most likely Robert Durham himself, of the Durham Iron Works located on the Delaware only several miles below Easton, Pennsylvania, had first created this extremely sturdy Durham boat for shipping tons of iron ore to Philadelphia. Varying from forty- to sixty-six feet in length, eight feet wide, and pointed at each end, the largest Durham boats transported a maximum capacity load of around fifteen tons, including cargoes of primarily pig iron and ore, but also timber, grain, and even whisky down the Delaware to Philadelphia, from where America’s rich natural bounty was then shipped to Europe’s cities and the highly profitable sugar plantations of the Caribbean Islands. But during this perilous crossing of an untamed river that seemed to span forever in the blackness, the Durham boat’s length now became an unexpected liability. The sharp, repeated impact of ice chunks and the heavy current pushed the boats off course and farther downstream. Therefore, more strenuous physical efforts were required from Glover’s hardworking men to get the Durham boats back on proper course and heading directly east toward Garret Johnson’s Ferry yet far away on the blackened Jersey shore lined with tall trees draped in winter’s hue.
However, for Washington’s purposes, these Durham boats were ideal—even down to the black-painted hulls that provided greater concealment in the night just in case enemy scouts lurked nearby—for the task for transporting hundreds of nervous, young infantrymen across the wide river: oversized vessels with the twin, seemingly contradictory advantages of shallow, light drafts (for passing over the fall line’s rapids) combined with an impressive 30,000-pound load capacity. Even though the steering oars on each pointed end of the vessel were manned by the muscular Massachusetts mariners, maneuvering the Durham boats was difficult for Glover’s Marbleheaders with the high water, the darkness, and winter storm. In fair weather conditions, lengthy poles manned by experienced river-men allowed these light-weighing crafts, when unloaded after returning from Philadelphia, to be “poled” back upriver (after the boat had been oared downriver), if the wind was not in their favor to utilize the mast by raising and inflating the canvas of two sails against the current along the river’s most shallow side.
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