by Ron Carter
“I would treasure it.”
It was freezing as Paine strode out into the campground. Men huddled around fires, blankets clutched around them, vapor rising from their faces to disappear as it rose. He walked among them, watching, listening, nodding a silent greeting. At half past nine o’clock Paine approached the fire where the regimental drummer was seated, blanket held about his shoulders, shivering.
“Could I use your drum for a time?” he asked.
“For what?”
“To write on. I have some things to write.”
The drummer shrugged indifferently. “Go ahead.”
At ten-thirty the drummer interrupted Paine to sound tattoo, then returned the drum and Paine once again laid his writing pad on top of it. He drew his pencil from within the folds of his cape, and in the flickering yellow light of a campfire he continued to write. His fingers became numb in the cold, and still he continued. He laid the pencil down and clamped his hands beneath his arms for a time until feeling came again, and he once again picked up his pencil and wrote, pausing thoughtfully, continuing, pausing, adding to, taking from. It was past midnight before the fire had burned down to glowing embers, and Paine slipped his pad and pencil back inside his cape, and gathered his blanket about him.
The dawn broke clear in a world white with frost. Shivering men blew on coals in fire pits until wisps of smoke curled, and then added dry wood shavings, then twigs, then sticks until fires were going, and they broke through the shore ice on the Hackensack River to get water for cooking. Tench Tilghman was bringing a tray to the tent of General Washington when the sound of an incoming rider spurring his horse at full gallop turned him around and he stared at a soldier, cape flying, thundering straight through camp while men leaped out of his path, and he reined in before Washington’s tent. He leaped from his sweated, steaming horse and stopped at the tent flap only long enough for the picket to challenge him. Then he was inside.
“Sir, General Howe just landed about four thousand regulars six miles north, on the Hackensack. They’re coming this way.”
Washington was outside his tent in four strides, sprinting for the rope line where the horses were tied and the saddles were racked. He saddled his own mount in ninety seconds and vaulted into the saddle, then looked at the nearest officer and barked orders.
“Get these men across the Hackensack Bridge and move them on west at least one mile. Do it right now. Take muskets and ammunition, and whatever else you can gather in a few minutes, and leave. Take the cannon if you can but don’t delay. Do you understand?”
The major stammered, “Yes, sir,” and Washington socked his spurs into the flanks of his mare and in two jumps she was pounding through camp at a gallop. Washington swept out onto the dirt road leading east to Fort Lee, holding her in to save sufficient strength for the nine-mile run to Fort Lee. Five minutes later Tilghman caught up with him, and together they held their mounts at a steady, ground-eating lope, feeling the rhythm of the breathing and the reach and gather of the driving legs as they rode on into the rising sun. Twice they slowed and stopped to let their horses blow, then remounted and went on, carefully spending their horses in their desperate run to reach Fort Lee.
The pickets on the ramparts recognized the tall figure, cape flying, while Washington was still half a mile away, and had the gates open for him, and he passed on through and reined in his lathered, sweated mount, then leaped to the ground. He thrust the reins into the hands of the nearest officer and demanded, “Where’s General Greene?”
“In his quarters, sir,” the startled lieutenant replied.
Washington broke into a run, Tilghman on his heels, and pounded once on the door, then threw it open. Startled, Greene turned to see who had the impertinence to burst into his quarters without invitation. His mouth fell open when he recognized the tall figure in the doorway. “General! In the name of heaven what—”
Washington cut him off. “Get the men moving. Now.”
Greene grabbed his tunic and threw it on and began fumbling with the buttons. “What’s happened?”
“Howe! He’s six miles above the Hackensack bridge and moving south. If he gets to that bridge before we do, we’re cut off. With Howe in front of us and Cornwallis behind, we’re finished! Get moving.”
“Sir, we’ve got munitions and food and—”
“Forget it! The men and their muskets. That’s all.”
“They have kettles with hot food cooking for—”
“Forget the kettles. The men and their muskets. Leave everything else. We can get food and blankets, but we cannot get more men and muskets.”
Washington spun on his heel and ran outside and shouted orders. “Stop whatever you’re doing. Stop it right now. Assemble into your regimental units immediately. This instant. Get your muskets and your ammunition and your knapsacks if you have any, and start out the gates of the fort now. Move due west to the Hackensack Bridge, and do not stop until you cross it.”
The entire camp stopped dead in its tracks. Soldiers looked at each other, astonished at the sight of their commander in chief shouting direct orders, overriding his subordinate officers. They looked at their officers in question, and their officers looked at Washington, dumbstruck.
The man to whom Washington had thrust the reins of his horse had walked the horse in a circle to cool it out in the freezing air, and Washington ran to him, seized the reins, and swung up. As his right foot caught the stirrup he drew his saber and spun the horse towards the nearest cluster of men. He smacked the first one he came to on the back with the flat of his sword. “Move! Out the gate.”
He swung his sword again and the second man felt the sting as the flat of it raised a welt one foot long across his shoulders. “Move!”
Only then did the camp come to life. Men sprinted to their blankets to sweep them off the ground, then their muskets, and their knapsacks if they had any. They left their breakfast cooking pots boiling and fled out the gates, looking for others in their company or regiment, Washington riding among them, shouting, swinging his saber. Down the dirt road they streamed, across meadows, past neat Dutch farmhouses, through orchards and pastures, scrambling across stone fences. They dropped their knapsacks when they could go no further, then their blankets, and they struggled on. The sick stumbled and went down, panting, sweating, and could not rise, and others paused to lift them, carry them, as they worked on west.
And then they crested a gentle rise, and before them was the Hackensack River and the broad wooden bridge. They pushed on through the abandoned knapsacks and blankets and camp litter left behind by the regiments that had retreated that morning, and the first of them crowded onto the bridge and moved across. The few wagons loaded with muskets and cartridges followed, the horses’ hooves and the wagon wheels ringing hollow on the wooden planks. They passed on to the open ground west and collapsed to lie panting, fighting for breath, exhausted in body and soul, not caring if the British caught them. The last of the fleeing army was on the bridge when they heard the shouts of Howe’s army from the north, and they looked to see the Scottish plaid kilts of the Highlanders coming at a trot.
Quickly Henry Knox and Alexander Hamilton reined their horses down, and from the wreckage of the abandoned camp they dragged two cannon clattering over the bridge and swung them around, muzzles pointing east. With the Highlanders less than eight hundred yards away they jammed powder, straw, then grapeshot down the muzzles of the two cannon, and struck flint to steel and lighted two linstocks.
They stood there, two lone men, tears of rage streaming down their cheeks, linstocks hovering above the touchholes of their cannon, waiting, silently challenging the Highlanders to come take the bridge if they could. The Highlanders stopped, out of grapeshot range, and they began to play their fifes and rattle their drums, and then they stopped, and began shouting insults at the dirty, ragged, filthy Americans who knew only one thing about war.
How to run.
Washington gave his men one hour to rest, and then h
e was back among them, driving them, pushing them on farther west and south. Day became night and then day again, and then time became a blur of nights filled with cold that cut to the bone and days filled with no food as they pushed on—Equacanaugh—Springfield—Newark—Boundbrook—run—run until you drop —New Brunswick—Cornwallis is behind us—don’t stop.
Winter rains came and they slogged through freezing mud in the daytime and shivered in it at night—ice on the road cutting bare feet—run—can you see them behind? Princeton—Trenton—there’s a great river ahead—what river? the Delaware.
Get Humpton and Maxwell—send them to get the big ore boats—Durham boats at Riegelsville ten miles up the river—used to carry iron ore down to Philadelphia. Do we pay for them? no money, give them American script—give them my note—give them anything but get the boats—in two days—and smash every other boat you find within thirty miles of here—leave the British nothing they can use to follow us.
And get John Glover—we’ve got to cross the river—can you take this army across the Delaware in one day? if Cornwallis traps us on this side we’re finished—if he catches us crossing, his cannon will pick us off like ducks on a pond—can my Marbleheaders and I move this army across in one day? yes—if Humpton and Maxwell get those Durham boats I’ll take your army across the Delaware in one day.
“Thank you, Colonel.”
Glover saluted and turned, and Washington watched the small man’s rigid back disappear. Washington paused only long enough to get pen and quill and paper, write a message, seal it with wax, and turn to Tench Tilghman. “Get Private Eli Stroud, Boston regiment, as fast as you can.”
He impatiently paced for five minutes before Eli came running. Washington drew him aside, handed him the message and spoke quietly. “That message is for a man named John Honeyman. He lives near Princeton. He’s been posing as a Tory spy. You must find him and deliver it to him at any cost. Do not read it, and let no one else read it. If you’re captured, swallow it—that message cannot fall into the hands of the British.”
Washington was watching Eli’s eyes intently, waiting for understanding to creep in. It came, and Washington continued. “Leave quietly tonight, and tell absolutely no one—no officer, no friend, no one—you’ve done this. Do you understand?”
“Yes. How do I find Honeyman?”
Washington shook his head. “At a small village just north of Princeton named Griggstown is all I can tell you. I leave it to you.”
Eli nodded his head, carefully folded the message into his bullet pouch, nodded to Washington, and walked away. With anxious eyes Washington watch him disappear in the mass of bewildered, exhausted men, then remounted his horse and once again raised the shout, “Move! We must keep moving!”
Slowly, mechanically, the men shouldered their muskets and once again plodded southwest, not knowing their destination, not asking.
Suddenly at the great river—from daybreak to dark—the entire army across the river—stopping in a grove of trees with a barn and a large stone house nearby.
They no longer cared where the British were, or where they themselves were. They only knew that General Washington was no longer riding everywhere among them, whipping them with the flat of his sword, driving them like a demon until they dropped. When they could they slowly gathered firewood and built great fires. They cut the last of their raw pork and stuck it on sticks and thrust it into the flames, and they ate it when it was black, dripping, and it seared their mouths and they did not care.
With dusk settling, a major hesitantly approached George Washington. “Sir, the men don’t know where we are.”
Washington looked at him. “Pennsylvania. Opposite Trenton. Bordentown is down the river and Philadelphia is beyond that.”
______
Notes
On November 15, 1776, the British forces sent a messenger under a white flag to offer terms of surrender to Colonel Robert Magaw, commander of Fort Washington. Colonel Magaw refused the offer, and the message he wrote in return appears in this chapter verbatim (see Leckie, George Washington’s War, p. 291; Johnston, The Campaign of 1776, part 1, p. 278).
Colonel Magaw assigned Colonels Rawlings, Baxter, and Cadwalader to defend designated areas around Fort Washington (see Johnston, The Campaign of 1776, part 1, pp. 277–80).
General Washington, with Generals Putnam, Greene, and Mercer, left Fort Lee in New Jersey to cross the Hudson River to inspect Fort Washington, and while their boat was in midstream the British commenced the bombardment of Fort Washington. The British gunboat Pearl was in the Hudson just below Fort Washington, and exchanged cannon fire with the fort (see Johnston, The Campaign of 1776, part 1, pp. 278–79; Leckie, George Washington’s War, p. 291; Higginbotham, The War of American Independence, p. 162; Carrington, Battles of the American Revolution, p. 249).
In the battle of Fort Washington, Margaret Corbin, wife of William (John in some sources) Corbin, continued firing the American cannon at the north end of the fort after her husband was killed, holding the attacking Hessians at bay for some time. A Hessian cannonball injured her badly, but British doctors saved her life; however, her left arm was permanently disabled. She survived and was returned to the Americans, and in 1779 the Continental Congress voted her a veteran’s pension, the first woman to receive that honor, and she became known as “Captain Molly.” A bronze plaque on a granite stone at West Point commemorates her brave and gallant deed. It was not uncommon for wives to go with their husbands to the army in the Revolutionary War (see Claghorn, Women Patriots of the American Revolution, pp. 55–56).
General Howe ordered the Forty-second Highlanders to get between Cadwalader’s command and the fort, which they partially accomplished, sending Cadwalader’s command running back to Fort Washington (see Johnston, The Campaign of 1776, part 1, p. 280).
The losses of the Continental army were 219 cannon, 2,500 muskets, 400,000 cartridges, tons of food, and thousands of blankets, a catastrophic loss (see Leckie, George Washington’s War, p. 294; Higginbotham, The War of American Independence, p. 162; Carrington, Battles of the American Revolution, p. 251).
Thomas Paine arrived in General Washington’s camp carrying a musket, and requested he be allowed to mingle with the soldiers that he might see the war through their eyes. He enjoyed close conversations with General Washington and reputedly wrote most of The American Crisis on a drumhead in freezing weather (see Leckie, George Washington’s War, p. 318; Higginbotham, The War of American Independence, p. 165).
General Howe landed a major force on the Hackensack River in New Jersey about six miles north of General Washington’s army, and Washington left immediately to move his army from Fort Lee across the Hackensack bridge before Howe’s forces arrived to cut them off (see Leckie, George Washington’s War, p. 294; Fast, The Crossing, pp. 19–20).
The last of the American army was crossing the Hackensack Bridge when the Scottish Highlanders appeared in the distance. Weeping with rage and anger, Colonel Henry Knox and Captain Alexander Hamilton turned two cannon against the British troops, loaded them with grapeshot, and waited for them to come. However, they remained out of cannon range (see Fast, The Crossing, p. 20).
General Washington assigned two officers, Humpton and Maxwell, to get Durham boats to transport his army across the Delaware River from New Jersey to Pennsylvania. They were ordered to get the boats in two days, but performed a miracle in getting them back to the crossing place in five days. He requested Colonel John Glover to move the entire army across the Delaware River in one day. With the boats, Colonel John Glover and his Marblehead regiment accomplished this unbelieveable task (see Fast, The Crossing, pp. 24, 26, 28).
General Washington sent a secret message to an American spy masquerading as a Tory loyal to the British Crown (see Higginbotham, The War of American Independence, p. 168; Leckie, George Washington’s War, pp. 317–18).
McKonkey’s Ferry, Pennsylvania
December 19, 1776
Chapter XXV
* * *
Reveille came too loud in the darkness. Slowly Billy pushed aside the cover of dried leaves heaped over the shallow trench where he had lain. Shaking with cold he stirred the ashes of last night’s fire until he felt heat. Then he blew and added wood shavings until smoke and then a flicker of flame came, and he carefully laid small sticks.
Eli rose from his cover of leaves, picked up his cup, and walked away while Billy emptied the last water from his canteen into a small, fire-blackened pot and set it in the low flames. Billy glanced around as men worked with their fires, stiff, grimy, bearded, teeth chattering in the freezing air. Across the Delaware River he saw the glow of hundreds of campfires where the Hessians had set up their tents in orderly rows to keep the Americans pinned down, content to wait while bitter cold and the lack of food destroyed what was left of the decimated American army. Colonel Johann Rall saw no need to waste his Hessians on what the winter would do for him without firing a shot.
Sunrise came stark through the frigid, bare branches of the trees at McKonkey’s Ferry. It turned the outlying meadows to sparkling fields of diamonds as it caught the thick blanket of frost crystals. Hundreds of thin columns of smoke rose from campfires on both sides of the river, bright in the sunlight against the clear blue sky.
A captain with a blanket wrapped about his shoulders stopped twenty yards away from Billy and read the morning orders. “The regiment will stand down and rest throughout this day.”
Billy’s head dropped forward and his eyes closed in blessed relief. Eli returned and dropped to his haunches beside the fire. In his cup was a handful of coffee beans. He crushed them with a rock, then poured them into the steaming water. From within his shirt he drew out two square pieces of hardtack, wormy, moldy.
“Our rations for today,” he said quietly.
They sat cross-legged for a time, watching the water boil in the small pot, and then they divided the steaming, bitter coffee. They held it in pewter mugs and sipped at it while they dug worms and shaved mold off the hardtack, and they broke pieces and stuffed them in their mouths to soften while they worked on the scalding coffee.