by Ron Carter
Washington called to him. “And bring Colonel John Glover back here. We’ve got a river to cross!”
______
Notes
The description of General Washington’s despondency at the condition of his army and of the Revolution in mid-December at McKonkey’s Ferry can hardly be overstated (see Ketchum, The Winter Soldiers, pp. 209–10; see also Fast, The Crossing, pp. 64–69). His own adjutant general, Joseph Reed, had written a letter praising General Lee at the expense of General Washington (see Leckie, George Washington’s War, p. 293).
The passage from the letter written by Abigail Adams to her husband, John Adams, that, in the novel, is forwarded on to General Washington appears verbatim in this chapter (see Johnston, The Campaign of 1776, part 1, p. 201).
The American Crisis by Thomas Paine was printed in Philadelphia by a newspaper named the Pennsylvania Journal on December 19, 1776. Thomas Paine hired a rider to carry several copies of the newspaper to General Washington’s camp at McKonkey’s Ferry, which he did that same day. Selected portions of this famous writing are quoted herein (see Ketchum, The Winter Soldiers, p. 211; see also Fast, The Crossing, pp. 76–78).
Selected Bibliography
* * *
Bolton, Jonathan, and Claire Wilson. Joseph Brant: Mohawk Chief. New York: Chelsea House, 1992.
Carrington, Henry B. Battles of the American Revolution: Battle Maps and Charts of the American Revolution. New York: New York Times, 1968.
Claghorn, Charles E. Women Patriots of the American Revolution: A Biographical Dictionary. Metuchen, N.J.: Scarecrow Press, 1991.
Earle, Alice Morse. Home Life in Colonial Days. 1898. Reprint, Williamstown, Mass.: Corner House Publishers, 1975.
Fast, Howard Melvin. The Crossing. New York: William Morrow and Co., 1971.
Fitch, Jabez. The New York Diary of Lieutenant Jabez Fitch. Edited by W.H.W. Sabine. New York: New York Times, 1954.
Flint, Edward F. and Gwendolyn S. Flint Family History of the Adventuresome Seven. Baltimore, Md.: Gateway Press, 1984.
Godfrey, Carlos E. The Commander-in-Chief’s Guard: Revolutionary War. Baltimore, Md.: Genealogical Publishing Co., 1972.
Graymont, Barbara. The Iroquois. New York: Chelsea House Publishers, 1988.
———. The Iroquois in the American Revolution. Syracuse, N.Y.: Syracuse University Press, 1972.
Hale, Horatio, ed. The Iroquois Book of Rites. 1883. Reprint, New York: AMS Press, 1969.
Higginbotham, Don. The War of American Independence: Military Attitudes, Policies, and Practice, 1763-1789. New York: Macmillan, 1971.
Johnston, Henry P. The Campaign of 1776 Around New York and Brooklyn. 1878. Reprint, New York: Da Capo Press, 1971.
Ketchum, Richard M. The Winter Soldiers. Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1973.
Leckie, Robert. George Washington’s War: The Saga of the American Revolution. New York: HarperCollins, 1992.
Mackesy, Piers. The War for America, 1775–1783. 1964. Reprint, Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1993.
Martin, Joseph Plumb. Private Yankee Doodle. Edited by George F. Scheer. Boston: Little, Brown and Co., 1962.
Parry, Jay A., and Andrew M. Allison. The Real George Washington. Washington, D.C.: National Center for Constitutional Studies, 1990.
Peterson, Harold L. Round Shot and Rammers. Harrisburg, Pa.: Stackpole Books, 1969.
Pool, Daniel. What Jane Austen Ate and Charles Dickens Knew: From Fox Hunting to Whist—the Facts of Daily Life in 19th-Century England. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1993.
Stokesbury, James L. A Short History of the American Revolution. New York: William Morrow and Company, 1991.
Ulrich, Laurel Thatcher. Good Wives: Image and Reality in the Lives of Women in Northern New England, 1650–1750. New York: Vintage Press, 1991.
Wilbur, C. Keith, The Revolutionary Soldier, 1775-1783: An Illustrated Sourcebook of Authentic Details About Everyday Life for Revolutionary War Soldiers. Old Saybrook, Conn.: Globe Pequot Press, 1993.
Acknowledgments
* * *
Richard B. Bernstein, a constitutional historian specializing in the Revolutionary generation, made a tremendous contribution to the historical accuracy of this work, for which the writer is deeply grateful. The staff of the publisher, Bookcraft, most notably Garry Garff, editor, and Jana Erickson, art director, spent many hours immersed in the details of preparing the manuscript for publication. Harriette Abels, consultant and mentor, graced this volume with her wisdom and encouragement and, ultimately, her approval.
And finally, the spirit of those heroes of so long ago seemed to reach across time and touch the words as they formed on the pages.
Without all of these, this volume would have been lacking.