To Try Men's Souls - George Washington 1

by Newt Gingrich

  They had slipped past the two small patrol boats. The shoreline of Manhattan, and a church spire, were visible.

  “Surely they saw us?” Washington whispered.

  Glover chuckled softly, exhaling noisily. “Fog plays queer tricks, it does. Easier to see up than down at times. Another ten minutes, though, and with the tide changing . . .”

  He fell silent, cocking his head, looking back, pointing.

  Someone on the stern of the boat they had passed was pointing straight at them, another man joining him, disappearing. Seconds passed, and the distinct long roll of a drum began. A bell began to ring.

  “Five minutes more,” Glover whispered. “I’ll be damned, I’ll be damned.”

  He looked over at Glover and shook his head. “We’re not damned yet.” Washington forced a smile as he slapped Glover on the back. “I think we are blessed instead.”

  He had nearly lost his footing as the boat slammed in hard against the Manhattan dock. Those waiting for them urged all to get the hell out before the frigate opened fire.

  He had taken his time, though, getting out, making a show of stretching, and with hands clasped behind his back gazing defiantly back at the British Fleet out in the bay as its crew was beat to quarters.

  Whoever was captain of that ship would have a lot to answer for this day, he had thought with smile.

  “I think our appointment in hell will have to wait, Mr. Glover,” he said, extending his hand.

  “Sir, it might come sooner than you think if you don’t get off this dock right now. It’s going to be hot here in another minute.”

  “You there, damn it, get that damn horse off this dock!”

  Stirred from his thoughts Washington looked back to where Glover, storming about and cursing, was helping to shove a skittish horse ashore.

  He opened his watch again, memories of Long Island gone and the challenge of the Delaware getting all his attention once again.

  It was nearly three now.

  He sighed and closed the watch.

  Surely the Hessians would be aroused by now. Merciful God, dare I ask for yet another miracle?

  Trenton, New Jersey

  2:55 A.M., December 26, 1776

  “My colonel!”

  “Enter.”

  He had actually managed to doze off for a few minutes. Münchasen was again at the open door. He sat up. The room was cold, his damp uniform clammy. He had stretched out, not even daring to take his boots off. Mrs. Potts would say nothing, of course, though he feared he had ruined the bed coverings, smearing them with mud and filth.

  “Another alarm?”

  “Yes, sir. Raiders on the Pennington road.”

  “I’m coming.”

  With a groan he sat up, Münchasen coming over to help him get to his feet with one hand while holding a lantern with the other.

  He followed Münchasen down the steps and out to the street. The guard company was ready, deployed in column.

  He gasped as he stepped out the door. The storm had increased in fury in the short time he had been dozing. It was a mad, insane mix of freezing rain, sleet, heavy snow, all of it driven into his face by the gale-force wind.

  The men ready to advance as a relief force were huddled over, shivering, teeth chattering, all of them soaked. He could see they had oiled rags wrapped around their musket locks, but doubted that would do any good now, so intense was the fury of the storm.

  An anxious courier, mounted on a horse, saluted.

  “Your report.”

  “Sir. Rebel raiders struck along the Pennington road. Report is that some looked like jaegers. They are armed with rifles.”

  He took that in. The cowardly band that had been harassing them for days, led by someone named Ewing or Wing were apparently local rabble, militia armed with fowling pieces and an occasional musket.

  “How do you know they were riflemen?” As he spoke he gestured up toward the sky.

  “Did you see them yourself?”

  The messenger hesitated, then shook his head.

  “No, sir. The sergeant of the guard said he thought they were riflemen.”

  He took that in.

  It would have meant they were literally face to face on a night such as this.

  “Any killed or wounded?”

  “No, sir. Just some shots fired at the house on the road to Pen Town,” the courier announced, not sure of the name of the village north of Trenton, “and then they fled.”

  “Any prisoners taken?”

  “No, sir.”

  “Then how is it that the sergeant is sure of his report?”

  The courier did not reply.

  Rall considered——the intensity of the storm, the men waiting to be ordered out to provide relief, the young courier with a confused report.

  Damn this country.

  “Return to your sergeant and tell him next time, if he thinks he is fighting riflemen, to bring one to me as proof. You have dragged these men out on a miserable soaking night with this alarm about an attack which is obviously over, and roused nearly every man in this town.”

  As he spoke, his voice rose with exasperation. He gestured down the street, to houses where lights were lit, men coming out, forming up, as was the routine when an alarm sounded during the night. The lead company was already formed, and now freezing with the cold.

  “Go back and tell your sergeant what he has accomplished.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  The courier, obviously crestfallen, turned his horse about, the animal slipping on the ice, losing its footing, falling, nearly knocking the colonel over as the rider struggled to stay mounted. Münchasen leapt forward to grab the bridle and steady the panicky animal, which kicked and thrashed as it fought to stay up.

  The young soldier, now thoroughly shaken, blurted apologies as he rode off.

  Rall watched him disappear, then turned to the officer of the watch.

  “Get your men back inside. Have them strip down and put on something warm. Have Captain von Carl’s company relieve yours for the rest of the night.”

  “Sir, it is still an hour before changing of the watch.”

  “Just follow my orders, captain. Your men are frozen and now useless in a fight. Do as you are told.”

  “Thank you, sir.” He could hear the relief in the young officer’s voice.

  The company, ordered to turn about, tried to make some show of marching off, even as more than one of the men, wearing hobnailed boots, slipped and fell on the ice, muskets clattering. Rall held his breath expecting at least one to fire off, but then again, the powder in their pans was most likely wet by now.

  He stepped into the foyer of Potts’s house, pulled out his watch and muttered a curse.

  Water had seeped into the works; the watch had stopped.

  “The time, Münchasen?”

  Münchasen carefully unbuttoned his overcoat, uniform jacket, and vest, drew his watch out from underneath all the layers of clothing, and snapped it open.

  “Just after three, sir.”

  Four hours to first light. If indeed it had been raiders in any kind of force, they had struck to annoy, to rouse the garrison, and cause it to fall out, as they had, and the scum were most likely settling down now into some tavern miles away, laughing about their heroics and the discomfort they’d caused.

  Damn cowardly rebels.

  Four hours till dawn. Few in his command had slept at all; most were cold and wet. The alarms for the night were likely over. Any rebels out in this weather would be far wetter and colder, and just as frozen as his own men. It would be midmorning at the earliest before they were dried out, sobered up, for surely they were all drunkards to be running about on such a night.

  “Münchasen. Get some rest. Let the men stay inside until this storm is passed. Morning parade is canceled.”

  “Are you certain of that, sir?” Münchasen asked.

  That caught him by surprise. How dare this young man question his thirty-five years of experience.


  He paused for an instant, trying to gather his thoughts. Even as he did so a shiver ran through him. His heavy woolen uniform was soaked, weighing twice as much as usual with all the water in it. He was cold, had not slept right in days, longed for a damn good drink but dared not take one.

  This godforsaken country was worse than Russia.

  If it was Austrians he was facing, or French, even those damn Turks he had fought while serving the czarina, he might heed Münchasen’s questioning. But here, against this cowardly rabble? Washington might send out his worthless militia to run about with false heroics on a winter night and play at harassing decent men out of their sleep. But Washington himself? Damn him, he was abed, and in the morning would without doubt laugh when Wing, Ewing, whoever it was, came in to report.

  “You heard my orders,” he snapped, and without waiting for a reply he went back up to his bed. He debated the issue for a moment and then with a struggle pulled his boots off. He didn’t need some hausfrau glaring at him and muttering about her ruined sheets.

  CHAPTER NINE

  McConkey’s Ferry

  3:15 A.M., December 26, 1776

  The storm increased in fury. Wind tore at cloaks and coats. Frozen rain mixed with snow drove into men’s faces. Horses huddled from the storm and moved reluctantly.

  General Washington edged his way down to the landing dock, staying to the side of the path as infantry staggered up the icy, mud-churned path to the main road.

  To his right he saw his headquarters guard gathered, several of them stripped naked, around a flickering fire. He caught the eye of one of their officers, and gestured.

  “Form up!” the sergeant cried. “Come on, men! It’s time to move.”

  One of them, naked, moved woodenly, two men helping him to slip his tattered trousers on, then pull on a jacket and a blanket cape. The boy held up two long strips of burlap, looked down at his bare feet as if debating, and then let them drop and fell in with the last of the men heading up the slope to the road.

  The scent of wood smoke was heavy on the wind. Watching his headquarters detachment move, Washington could see where, at regular intervals along the road, fires were burning. Men were gathered

  around them, but orders were now being shouted for the column to fall in and form ranks.

  He guided his mount the last few feet to the dock. Colonel Knox stood there, waiting. A line of empty boats was drawn up along the riverbank.

  “We still have at least six more boatloads coming across,” Knox reported. “Stragglers, and one last gun.”

  Washington drew out his pocket watch, heavy in his hand, and, turning his back to the wind to shield it from the driving storm, he clicked open the lid. It was past three in the morning. The plan had called for the column to move out at midnight.

  He closed the watch and slipped it into his vest pocket.

  “I’m moving them out now,” Washington announced. “We cannot wait any longer. Get the last of them across, then move up the column and join me. Two men to be left behind with each boat. They know their orders.”

  Knox nodded.

  “If attacked, get the boats back across the river.”

  Knox turned and looked to the west. There was a momentary break in the storm, pale moonlight shining through, illuminating the white-capped river and its ice floes.

  Neither needed to say more. If while the army was on the move, a flanking force, perhaps an alerted British garrison in Prince ton, sent a raiding force over here, then the army would be truly cut off and pinned against the river. Saving the boats would be an act of futility, for there would no longer be an army to rescue.

  “Sir, I am sorry about the delays,” Knox offered, head a bit lowered, as if ashamed that he had somehow failed.

  “Hannibal crossing the Alps could not have asked for a better man to lead the way,” Washington replied.

  He knew the line smacked of the stage, but it worked. Knox looked up at him and smiled.

  “I will see you at the head of the column once you get the last boat off-loaded, Henry.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Remember the password.”

  “Victory or death,” Henry repeated firmly, voice suddenly thick with emotion.

  The General saluted, turned, and guided his mount up the slope. The column was nearly formed up. Men were slinging on packs and haversacks, shouldering muskets, stepping away from the fires.

  As he rode alongside of the column, by the light of the flickering fires, he gazed intently at them. It was hard to see faces. Hats were pulled down over eyebrows, most of them using strips of cloth wrapped around the hat and tied off under their chins to keep them on, and also to provide some protection, however scant, for exposed ears and faces.

  A few looked up at him, nodded. An occasional officer offered a formal salute. Few words were spoken; one man shouted “Victory or death!” as he trotted past, while those around him remained silent.

  Nearly all of them stood facing to the south, keeping their backs to the storm as long as possible, shoulders hunched over against the blast, stamping their feet up and down to keep circulation going. Many of them were barefoot.

  He had learned long ago that an officer, a good officer, could sense something about his troops. Nothing needed saying. It was an instinct, developed so long ago, out on the frontier, as a young man traveling with others of more experience. He had learned to watch every movement, gesture, and word, the way men walked, paused, sniffed at the air even, how they waited silently, sometimes for minutes, before moving again. There would be times when he would be with a small party, ambling along, talking, and then, suddenly, one of them would stop, frozen in place . . . for something was different. At first, he could not tell that difference, but a seasoned man of the frontier had better learn it, for those who did not died.

  It might be a change in a background sound, or the opposite, a strange silence. It might be a scent drifting on a breeze——more than a few claimed they could tell whether it was a white man or Indian, and if Indian even which tribe by that scent. Or it might be the way a bit of moss on a rock in the pathway was scuffed, leaving the trace of a footprint, the moss not yet springing back.

  He had learned from them, and he had survived. To survive an officer had to learn to sense what his men were feeling, and he felt he had that ability. An officer had to know when a line of men would go into battle, regardless of odds, and if need be die, and go down fighting. And know, on another day, that the same regiment might very well break and run before the first shot was fired.

  He had learned, and as he rode along the shivering column now, he sensed many things.

  A casual observer would have captured only the utter misery of the moment. All were soaked to the skin. The temperature was steadily dropping; the limbs of trees overarching the road were drooping with heavy loads of ice. Strange how the light from the dozens of fires almost made the moment look beautiful, firelight reflecting off the ice so that the road seemed like a glowing flickering tunnel, the light shifting and changing with each gust of wind.

  What he sensed in them, in addition to exhaustion and absolute abject misery, was a certain defiance. Such suffering as they endured could push a man in one of two ways. For many, in fact most, it would be a collapse, a giving in, a feeling that the elements of heaven had turned against them and any further effort would be futile.

  Men like that, however, were gone, long gone. He found himself thinking of what Paine had written about sunshine patriots. Those men had gone. He had watched them leave by the thousands, even as he argued, told them to stay, and then, as he stood utterly humiliated, begged them. But they had fled.

  But these here, on this road, on this night? These were all that were left. Again, a memory of the frontier. You learned quickly how to spot those new to the world beyond the Alleghenies who would survive and those who would not. The survivors had a certain “something” to their cast . . . they were lean, sinewy, tough, usually laconic, for a man who talked too
much might not hear the quiet sounds that carried death. And around these there was almost a certain light that told you, here is a man you can trust, he will not abandon you. This is a man you want by your side, and at your back.

  That was his army, this bitter, freezing night.

  They were what was left, the final few who indeed were willing to choose victory or death. And if death came, they would face it and not turn away. The trust, he sensed, was mutual, they trusted him as he trusted that they would indeed follow him, this desperate night, to either victory or death.

  As he gazed at them it was hard in a way to believe that this was the same army of but twenty-five days past.

  December the first, he thought, head lowered, was in his heart a day of complete personal humiliation, not just because of the defeat at the bridge but because of what transpired that evening.

  It was after the rout at the Raritan, the army staggering on a muddy road, their personal Calvary, and on that day the enlistments of hundreds had run out. These were men who had signed on for six months, back in the heady days of June, when word had raced across the colonies of the triumph at Boston, when talk of independence was in the air, when the juggernaut of an angry king’s reply had yet to appear off New York Harbor.

  Enlistments were up for a fair part of the army. The men that morning, honorable men who had stayed throughout the debacles, defeats, and numbing retreats, were now legally free to ground arms, turn themselves toward warm homes and firesides in Pennsylvania, Maryland, upstate New York. They had served their time and were free to leave without recourse or restraint. They had believed in their independence, had fought for it, had seen it totter to the edge of final defeat while he led them. There was nothing he could do but offer one final appeal to those free to go.