Washington

by Douglas Southall Freeman

  Here was a challenge. Washington had to match Cadwalader’s offer, but as soon as the General began to consider ways and means of doing this, difficulties eclipsed hopes. The Continentals had to be rested before they could be trusted in action again. Bad management and worse weather had so nearly emptied the Commissary that the men could not be given the contented vigor of strong meat until December 29 or 30—within two days, or even one, of the time when the greater number of the soldiers who finished their term of service would start home. If that happened, Washington would be almost as badly crippled as before victory at Trenton.

  Washington did not permit the prospect to deter him. The puzzle might perplex; it would not baffle! In that unyielding state of mind he wrote Cadwalader: “If we could happily beat up the rest of the [enemy’s] quarters bordering on and near the river, it would be attended with the most valuable consequence.” He had called a council, Washington explained, and recommended that Cadwalader and Putnam defer movement till they heard from him again. On the twenty-eighth another dispatch from Cadwalader presented breath-taking opportunity: Although cooperation with troops from Philadelphia had not seemed probable on Christmas, General Mifflin was moving five hundred men from that city towards Burlington and would send more. Cadwalader himself had acted with the greatest boldness: At the head of about fifteen hundred men, he had crossed the Delaware into New Jersey December 27 in the expectation of finding the main Army still there; but even after he learned of its return to Pennsylvania he had decided to stay on the left bank. More than that, he had occupied Burlington.

  Washington ascertained that the Commissary wagons would bring up sufficient provisions December 29 and 30 to supply the Army until it was reestablished in Jersey. Somehow, the Army must get across. Orders were issued for the troops to move into Jersey on the thirtieth. The crossing proved altogether as difficult as Washington had anticipated. Snow was six inches deep; everywhere the cold was cruel. Except for darkness, shivering soldiers underwent all the suffering they had endured Christmas night. So slowly was the battle with ice won by each boat’s crew that it was manifest some troops would not get to the left bank until the thirty-first. Washington himself went to the Jersey shore on the thirtieth and proceeded to Trenton. Nowhere on the road was there any opposition. Information was meagre. Reports of the enemy were vague, conflicting or blank. Washington could learn nothing more definite than that Howe probably was effecting a new concentration and fortifying Princeton. Washington sent a detachment of Philadelphia Light Horse to reconnoiter in the direction of the college town and posted his troops at Trenton, south of Assunpink creek, where he felt they would be secure from surprise while he considered the possibilities of maneuver.

  Then Washington played his last card in the gamble of American independence. Before he had left the Pennsylvania side of the river he had resolved to offer a special bounty of ten dollars, besides continuance of pay, to each man who would agree to remain with the Army six weeks after the expiration of service on December 31. As an economical manager he felt this a “most extravagant price,” but the bounty had to match Pennsylvania’s offer of that sum to militiamen who would bear arms in a brief, winter campaign. If the New England regiments disbanded on the thirty-first, the Virginians remaining with Washington would not be sufficiently numerous to set the pace for the militia. To keep men of any state after their time had expired, Washington had learned that one appeal only was effective, the dollar.

  So—sound the drums and put a New England regiment in line; the Commander-in-Chief wanted to address it. He described the success of the twenty-sixth and explained why the veterans were needed. They could do more for their country during the next few weeks than ever they could again. He announced the bounty and, as one Sergeant wrote years afterward, “in the most affectionate manner [he] entreated us to stay.” Regimental officers took charge and called on those who would accept the bounty and would remain six weeks to step forward. The drums rolled; Washington ran his eye along the line. Not a man moved, not one.

  Was that the humiliating, disgraceful answer? Would it be given by all the regiments in silent and sullen refusal? It must not be so! Washington wheeled his horse again and rode back to the centre of the immobile line. He would renew his plea; he must get the men’s consent—he must, must, must! When he had finished and the drums had rolled a second time, either his earnestness or their own reflection made the soldiers look questioningly at one another. A few stepped boldly out; others followed, and more and more; soon only those who were too feeble to fight or too nearly naked to face the wind remained in the original line.

  It was much the same in the next regiment to which the offer of the bounty was made that day. After that, some of the men of a third regiment volunteered for longer service; then, part of a fourth did. All the Continental troops along the Delaware acted and their decision seemed to increase the élan aroused by the success at Trenton the day after Christmas. The response was by no means as emphatic as needs required, but it took the worst of the gloom from the approaching first of January.

  In offering the bounty that gave him the Continentals he must have if he was to keep an army through the winter, Washington had violated one of the fundamentals of his official conduct: he had made an irrevocable pledge of public credit with no authority whatsoever. In a matter of heavy expense and perhaps of costly precedent, he acted boldly and without even consulting Morris’s committee of three in Philadelphia to whom Congress had delegated large authority. It was a case of pay or perish. His own private credit and that of every responsible and discerning American had to be pledged, if need be, to get money with which to push success.

  Never in Washington’s life had boldness been vindicated more dramatically: That last evening of 1776 an express from Philadelphia brought him a series of resolves adopted by Congress on December 27. The Delegates had been commanded by necessity and had been compelled to approve what, in any other circumstances, they would have shouted down. The Commander-in-Chief was authorized to establish whatever system of promotion he and his council thought likely to produce the widest satisfaction. Another measure empowered Washington to do the very thing he had done—”to use every endeavor, by giving bounties and otherwise, to prevail upon the troops whose time of enlistment shall expire at the end of this month to stay with the Army so long after that period as its situation shall render their stay necessary.” A third resolve was in this language:

  That General Washington shall be, and he is hereby, vested with full, ample, and complete powers to raise and collect together, in the most speedy and effectual manner, from any or all of these United States, sixteen battallions of infantry, in addition to those already voted by Congress; to appoint officers for the said battallions; to raise, officer, and equip three thousand light horse; three regiments of artillery, and a corps of engineers, and to establish their pay; to apply to any of the states for such aid of the militia as he shall judge necessary; to form such magazines of provisions, and in such places, as he shall think proper; to displace and appoint all officers under the rank of brigadier general, and to fill up all vacancies in every other department in the American armies; to take, wherever he may be, whatever he may want for the use of the army, if the inhabitants will not sell it, allowing reasonable price for the same; to arrest and confine persons who refuse to take the continental currency, or are otherwise disaffected to the American cause; and return to the states of which they are citizens, their names, and the nature of their offences, together with the witnesses to prove them:

  That the foregoing powers be vested in General Washington, for and during the term of six months from the date hereof, unless sooner determined by Congress.

  Washington reacted with none of the pride he would have felt as a younger man. Responsibility outweighed everything except the cause that created it. He wrote: “Instead of thinking myself freed from all civil obligations by this mark of [the Delegates’] confidence, I shall constantly bear in mind that as the sword wa
s the last resort for the preservation of our liberties, so it ought to be the first to be laid aside when those liberties are firmly established.”

  CHAPTER / 12

  Washington estimated that 2200 or 2300 men had made the second crossing to Jersey with him, and he calculated now that the bounty had been accepted by half of those whose time expired on the thirty-first. As nearly as he could compute, those who remained were between 1500 and 1600. He could not expect the immediate arrival of any reenforcements other than perhaps a few more from Pennsylvania, which already had responded largely.

  The British in Jersey numbered between five and six thousand men, chiefly at New Brunswick and Princeton. Report was that General Howe had landed at Amboy an additional one thousand soldiers who were moving forward. Was Howe making ready to advance, or was he going into winter quarters? Washington put first the defensive concentration of his regiments, in belief that the Redcoats were almost certain to attack. He could not repel assault with the force he had at Trenton, but if he retreated he would discourage Jersey militia. The position at Trenton was by no means ideal, but it included a road that led to Princeton as well as the one that followed the course of the river. If the enemy decided to move on Philadelphia was it more likely that the adversary would move via Princeton and Trenton or via Crosswicks and, say, Burlington? Washington chose to gamble on the route by Trenton. This had to do with a defensive. If an opportunity were presented of attacking the enemy, Washington would try to strike one or more of the enemy’s posts in Jersey.

  Without hesitation, therefore, Washington on the thirty-first ordered Cadwalader to move to Trenton and sent similar instructions to Mifflin. Washington knew that many hours would elapse before these troops could take position by the side of the Continentals. Meantime it was prudent to post a reliable body of veterans on the line of the enemy’s most probable advance, the road from Princeton. Fermoy’s brigade, Hand’s regiment, the German Battalion, Scott’s Virginia Regiment and a detachment with two cannon of Forrest’s battery were stationed on Five Mile Run, about halfway between Trenton and Princeton.

  New Year’s Day Cadwalader’s men began to arrive, though some of them did not reach the encampment until the second. Before that time, Washington received word that the British were on the march from Princeton to Trenton. To retard the advance of the British and ascertain their strength, Washington directed the troops on Five Mile Run to hold back the enemy as long as possible. Reports from the front indicated that delaying action, though brisk, was not costly. For a reason he did not explain, Gen. M. A. de Roche Fermoy had left his troops and come back to Trenton, but this helped rather than hurt because it put the detachment under Colonel Hand. That veteran employed time and cover with much skill. His fire and a brief pursuit of an incautious advance guard of Redcoats were so effective that the British thought the Americans intended to make a stand. The enemy formed line of battle, brought up artillery and poured fire into the woods, with little injury to Hand’s troops. His men checked the British for two hours and then withdrew in good order towards Trenton.

  North of the town a ravine offered a defensive line, where the Americans next undertook to face the British. Both sides employed artillery as well as musketry in this clash, which Washington urged the Americans to prolong, because he did not wish to leave the British daylight hours for a general assault. Obediently, the Continentals held out for a short time, and when they had to give ground, they did so stubbornly.

  He scarcely could have asked for a better delaying action than now was ending. Zeal, discipline and intelligent leadership had been shown. When, in the late afternoon, a vigorous cannonade began, Henry Knox’s artillerists handled their guns, some thirty or forty in number, with skill and steadfastness. A “feeble and unsupported effort” by British troops to storm the bridge to Trenton was beaten off easily.

  At nightfall the firing ceased, but to some of Washington’s officers and men his position seemed desperate. In Washington’s eyes the controlling realities of the situation were that the British were in greatly superior force and that they planned to surround and destroy his Army. He did not believe he should risk a battle where he stood, but if he was not to fight on the bank of the Delaware, what was he to do? The alternative to battle was a retreat, but that could not be completed in a single night directly across the river and would destroy hopes raised by defeat of the Hessians. If battle might be ruinous and retreat full of hazards, was there an alternative? The Army might move by its right flank, cross Assunpink creek beyond the British left and then march to Princeton and New Brunswick, where the enemy was believed to have large supplies. Instead of a defensive if, by using roads more or less familiar to numerous officers and men, the Army could reach a crossing called the Quaker Bridge unobserved and unopposed, it then could proceed almost due north to Princeton about six miles from the bridge.

  The chief obstacle to an advance on Princeton was the condition of the roads, which thaw had transformed into deep mud. When details had been resolved and Washington had sent orders for a start at midnight in complete silence, he had a pleasant surprise: In the course of a few hours the weather had changed and the roads were beginning to freeze. Midnight found arrangements complete, and the Army ready to move. Five hundred remained to guard the Assunpink bridge at Trenton, feed the fires temporarily, and use pick and shovel as if they were constructing earthworks; all the other troops stole quietly off to the right and soon were moving eastward. By 2 A.M. of January 3, 1777, the mud was gone, and the ground was hard frozen.

  As the regiments plodded on in the darkness, it was a cruel ordeal even for those who had crossed the Delaware in the first advance to Trenton. If there was any mercy under the black canopy of the heavens, it was the absence of sleet or snow. When, at last, there was a cast of gray in the east, the troops were approaching a stream known as Stony Brook which at that point forms a bow to the south as if to protect the town of Princeton. In another hour Washington began to pass his column over the stream. Ahead was an extension of Quaker Road that followed roughly the course of Stony Brook until it joined the Post Road from Princeton to Trenton. The main Post Road ran from the creek to Princeton. Another, nameless, led from the vicinity of the meeting house to the town. This route could be used advantageously in the execution of the simple plan Washington had formulated. The greater part of the American force was to pass from the Quaker Road into the back road and advance into Princeton. The defences of the town were designed to resist attack up the Post Road and could be turned almost completely from the back road. While the main body of Washington’s troops was undertaking this, approximately 350 men were to proceed under General Mercer along the creek to the Post Road. At that point, close on Mercer’s left, would be Worth’s Mill and the Post Road bridge over Stony Brook. Mercer was to destroy this crossing and thereby make it impossible for any British from Trenton to reach Princeton quickly by the main highway.

  All the preliminaries accorded with the plan. Everything was moving smoothly when Washington received unexpected news: The British had been found on the Post Road, down which their troops had been marching in considerable number on the way to Trenton. These Redcoats turned and started back at a rapid pace towards Princeton. Mercer’s men began to run from the road along the creek. They climbed a little hill in the direction of Princeton and then descended on the opposite slope as if they were making their way towards the back road. As these men were passing through an orchard a small British force fired on them, whereupon the Americans changed front and dislodged the British who had delivered the first fire from the shelter of a fence. Mercer formed his line along this fence and was preparing to contest the advance of the British, who left the Post Road in considerable numbers and turned on him. Close to the enemy, Capt. John Fleming of the First Virginia shouted, “Gentlemen, dress before you make ready.” The British heard him, and answered, “Damn you, we will dress you,” and opened fire. The Virginians stood the blast and delivered so effective a volley “that the e
nemy screamed as if many devils had got hold of them.”

  Washington probably saw just enough of this clash to make him realize that Mercer must have support. Cadwalader’s militia were soon coming over a low hill—only to find Mercer’s men falling back from the orchard and being pursued. The British advance reached a fence not more than a hundred yards from the Americans; the whole scene appeared to be a prologue to ruin. Then, from the hill over which Cadwalader’s column had been moving, two American field pieces began to bark as if they had been awaiting a rescue signal. Their fire forced the British behind the fence to run back to the main body. The British answered with their brace of field cannon and brought into play, also, the pair Mercer had been forced to abandon; but these did not silence the guns on the hill. Exposed to this fire, the British hesitated to attack. While they waited, Washington and his companions did their utmost to rally survivors of the fight in the orchard and halt the retreat of the Pennsylvania militia.