The Man Who Could Be King: A Novel

by John Ripin Miller

  Despite writing letters of despair to Superintendent of Finance Robert Morris about the probability of a congressional evacuation of Philadelphia, the General saw some hopeful signs. With the enemy in winter quarters, with our forces starting to rise with reinforcements from Southern states, with our ships running the blockade from the West Indies bringing blankets and clothing, and with our foundries producing more arms and powder, the General mused that perhaps the winter was the time to implement the second part of his strategy—to attack where surprise and numbers created an advantage.

  III. TRIUMPH—THE FIRST CROSSING OF THE DELAWARE

  Many officers and aides claimed credit for the idea for crossing the Delaware and attacking the Hessians at Trenton. All I can say is that many may have had the idea, but the General had talked to me already in mid-December about recrossing the Delaware to surprise the Hessians at Trenton or the British at Princeton. He knew that, by concentrating our forces on a New Jersey Hessian outpost, for the first time we would have a rare numerical advantage. Trenton was a village where the Hessians were camped for the winter, just south of the lower falls of the Delaware River that separated Pennsylvania from New Jersey. If we could get our artillery across the Delaware, we would have a huge advantage in guns. Just as important, the General knew that, while our forces had risen to near 2,400 with arrivals from the South, we were again about to be decimated at the end of the year as enlistments expired.

  The decision was made in one of those councils the General loved to call to pick apart a proposal. By the end of the meeting, he had gathered unanimous support. Some of the generals who might have counseled caution were not there. Gates, after finally heeding the General’s order to come down from the North, refused a command. Pleading illness, he went on to Philadelphia to criticize the emerging plan to his friends in Congress and, I was told, to lobby for the General’s removal in favor of himself. Then also, Charles Lee, the General’s other major rival and critic, was still held a prisoner by the British.

  My, it was cold that Christmas evening! The trail to the river was filled with the bloody footprints of shoeless soldiers. The troops lined up beside the dark, icy river, not knowing if they were marching back to Philadelphia or across the Delaware. (The General had grown very wary about leaking plans to enemy spies.)

  The raid involved four parties, and two of the smaller parties never made it through the ice across the river, while a third party crossed the river and created a diversion in southern New Jersey. Fortunately, the General was with the main and far most numerous party. The Pennsylvania boatmen and the Marblehead mariners had lined up all the boats within sixty miles on the river. The larger Durham boats, almost eight feet wide and forty feet long, were used to ship the artillery across, which was no easy task.

  As we started across the river, I remember thinking the whole operation should be called off. It seemed preposterous. The nickname the General chose for the operation, Victory or Death, seemed melodramatic to me, but the last word seemed more appropriate as I envisioned the destruction of our remaining army, the capture of the General, the inevitable fall of Philadelphia, and, last but not least, my own demise. If these events happened, they would so destroy the spirit for independence that the pledging of allegiance to the king, which had swept through New Jersey, would sweep through the rest of the colonies and end the war. We’d fail to gain independence just as the Scottish had thirty years earlier.

  I don’t know how the men did it, but it was so cold I believe they preferred moving to standing still in that weather. The men passed the General as they moved onto the boats, and his commanding presence inspired confidence. Our force had shrunk to mostly battle-tested and resolute veterans, many of whom had been with the General for the whole war. We bumped into and off blocks of ice, and the waves crested over the sides of our boats, drenching every inch of our ragged clothing. Some were standing and paddling, and others were holding oars to ward off the ice. On a normal, more placid crossing, those of us in the middle would have sat down, but not on that night—no one wanted to sit in the icy water that had already submerged our shoes and the bottoms of our leggings. It took so long for our main party to cross the river that, even if everything went well thereafter, I thought we would never reach Trenton before morning and surprise the Hessians.

  The most amazing incident took place after the crossing when we came to Jacobs Creek. Under the light of a few swinging lanterns, it was hard enough for the men to climb up the icy bank but far more difficult for the horses. As the General tried to bring Old Nelson up the embankment, the white chestnut-faced horse slipped and started sliding down into the creek. The General grabbed his mane and, with one swift movement, righted the horse. I was not much of a horseman, but I was left marveling at how strong and skilled the General was. Those who described him as the finest horseman in the colonies did not exaggerate by much.

  The General divided his force into two parts, with one marching straight toward Trenton where the Hessians were encamped and the other sweeping around to the side and rear. Then one of those peculiar things happened that the General’s critics again attributed to luck and he to Divine Providence. While we were indeed running late and the sun had started to rise, snow began falling so that none of the Hessian sentries could see our approaching forces.

  You may have read that the Hessians were drunk with Christmas revelry. Don’t believe it. The Hessians were on alert—we learned on our way to Trenton that they had skirmished that evening with a small group of American militia—and when we attacked the outlying guard posts, they turned out smartly with their weapons and showed great discipline. But our force was overwhelming, and our artillery fired with devastating effect down the main streets of the town. Then the General shouted, “March on, my brave fellows, after me,” and our troops did just that, their spirits rising as more and more Hessians either fell in our hail of bullets or surrendered.

  My goodness, it was a bloody scene. I had never seen such carnage, and I desperately tried to control my increasingly upset stomach. When I commented to the General on the bloody corpses and crying wounded, the General would only say, “Josiah, it was just as bad at the massacre with Braddock. The groans of the wounded pierced my heart then. Believe me, Josiah, it is much better to see the corpses of the enemy rather than your own men.” I thought General Knox, who like me had not fought in the previous war, described the scene quite well when he reminisced to me later: “The hurry, fright and confusion of the enemy was [not] unlike that which will be when the last trumpet shall sound.”

  Our losses were small, and I do believe the Hessians lost almost a thousand men to death, wounds, or capture. I saw no signs of drinking, except when some of our men broke into the Hessians’ rum supply and celebrated, much to the General’s annoyance. But this breach of discipline did not stop the General from turning to me and saying, “Josiah, this is a glorious day for our country.”

  What we learned later was that the victory set off all sorts of recriminations between the British and the Hessians and a frenzy of debate in Britain about the morality of hiring mercenaries to fight Britain’s wars, particularly against British subjects.

  We withdrew back across the Delaware. The General, always alert to popular opinion, dictated numerous letters to governors and congressmen, north and south, relaying the news of our Trenton success. I think the letters also had another purpose: allaying fears of the General. Some said the added powers the Congress had given the General made him a dictator, although I think it finally just made him, in truth, the commanding general. If he was a dictator, at that time he certainly continued to show deference to the Congress. Whether he would do so that week in Newburgh was another matter.

  IV. TRIUMPH AGAIN—THE SECOND CROSSING OF THE DELAWARE

  The first battle of Trenton had ended, but what many do not know is that the second battle of Trenton was far more crucial to our success. The idea of recrossing the Delaware for another surprise attack on enemy outposts may have
come from Colonel John Cadwalader, who had led the other crossing party into New Jersey and reported the panic among the British and Hessians after the first battle of Trenton. There then came another one of those endless councils the General called, this one at the widow Harris’s house on the Pennsylvania side of the Delaware. The General presented the recrossing as Cadwalader’s idea, whether it was or not. The General, as I’ve said, never seemed to present any idea as his own. I always assumed this was to make sure there was free discussion. It was amazing how the General, with his questions, guided that meeting from almost outright opposition to unanimous support. After all, here was the proposal that our army, after two days’ rest, still exhausted and bedraggled, should move to attack again.

  I believe the deciding factor, besides the chance to sow more panic among the enemy, was that many enlistments were to expire at the end of the year. While our forces were growing—it was amazing how news of one victory could lead to new enlistments even in two or three days—hundreds were unfit to march, and at the end of the year our forces might fall dramatically with the loss of the Delaware regiment, Glover’s Marblehead Regiment, and many other individual troops.

  The General knew that the undermanned outposts in southern New Jersey offered tempting targets, but the supply obstacles were greater than before the first crossing. Merchants in Pennsylvania had joined merchants in New Jersey in refusing to sell food and clothing for the increasingly worthless Continental currency. The army’s commissary in Pennsylvania, Carpenter Wharton, was incompetent, corrupt, or both, and the General had to go over his head to Superintendent of Finance Robert Morris in Philadelphia to bring supplies from Virginia and New England. Worse, the Delaware was now completely frozen, which, while enabling the men to cross on foot, would make it more difficult for horses, artillery, wagons, and tents, which moved more safely across water in boats. Most important was that the end of the year was upon us; if the General could not convince many of the troops to reenlist, there would not be the numbers or time for one more surprise attack.

  I saw the General himself address most of our troops. I am told that today the terms of service are longer and, besides, the money offered is greater. But then it was a close thing. I remember the General’s first appeal, even with a ten-dollar reenlistment bounty, moving few. The General had told me, quoting his favorite play, Cato, “I’ll animate the soldiers’ drooping courage, with love of freedom, and contempt of life. I’ll thunder in their ears their country’s cause, and try to rouse up all that’s Roman in them.” But it was not easy.

  They had signed up for a year or six months, and they wanted to return home. But the General would not be denied. I remember his words, “My brave fellows, you have done all I asked you to do, and more than could reasonably be expected; but your country is at stake, your wives, your houses, and all that you hold dear.”

  This appeal resonated because the men had heard many tales of British and Hessian rape and plundering as their armies pursued us across New Jersey. The General went on, “You have worn yourselves out with the fatigues and hardships, but we know not how to spare you. If you will consent to stay one month longer, you will render that service to the cause of liberty, and to your country, which you can probably never do under any other circumstances.”

  A pause followed with much murmuring in the ranks, such as “I’ll stay if you will.” A few men stepped forward, and then more and more. Those men, and what they were to do in the next two weeks, would turn the tide of the war. They deserve the utmost credit. But I doubt it would have happened without a general who was willing to plead with his troops. I remember thinking at the time that British generals did not have to make such appeals. The thought of them appealing to rather than commanding their men was ludicrous.

  Lately I have read that the General was both distant and imperious, as my great-grandchildren say their teacher has told them, but he was not that day. The men responded because they respected and admired a general who shared their privation. The General faced a problem: he didn’t have the twenty-dollar bounty money he was now offering. An urgent appeal to Robert Morris produced enough funds, thanks, I am proud to say, to the contributions of some of my fellow Quakers—Philadelphia merchants who objected to fighting but less so to aiding those who did fight for independence. What the General would have done if that money had not arrived, I am not sure. Perhaps he would have made another appeal to the troops or perhaps he would have paid at least part of the bounties out of his own pocket. In any event, with the reenlistments and new enlistments inspired by our first Trenton victory and the news of enemy atrocities, our force had grown to thirty-three hundred men, the largest force we’d had in months. The militias operating in New Jersey were also starting to grow.

  The General again moved the bulk of our forces across the Delaware to attack, but his plans soon had to change. General Howe in New York, alarmed by the reports from Trenton, stopped General Cornwallis from a leave trip to England and ordered him with reinforcements to Princeton. Upon his arrival, learning of our recrossing of the Delaware into Trenton, Cornwallis moved a column of over ten thousand British troops from Princeton for a direct attack on our forces.

  The General seemed unconcerned. “Josiah, the British like to move in columns along roads. They may be ten thousand strong, but there can only be a few hundred at the head of the column. We will harass them from the woods along the road and then withdraw. It will be sunset before they reach Trenton. They will then attack as they always do, but they will have to cross the Assunpink Creek bridge. I noticed in our success a few days ago that the bridge can be covered well by both artillery and rifle fire. The lead elements of their column will not be able to cross the bridge. By that time it will be nightfall, and I can tell you from my experience in the French and Indian War that the British do not like to fight in the dark.”

  All of this came to pass. Over a thousand of our men held up the advancing column, exacting a heavy toll. Then the men fell back in an orderly manner across the bridge, where the General had stationed himself to offer thanks and encouragement. He saw that all men were instructed to fire low as the British and Hessians approached. Our troops tended to waste bullets firing over the heads of the British, but as the General pointed out to me, there was another reason for his instruction: a wound in the leg is better than a wound in the arm, because two other troops will have to drop their weapons in order to help the wounded soldier to the rear.

  When the British tried to move their columns and guns across the bridge at Assunpink at sunset, they met such fire that the bridge was soon covered with red-coated bodies spouting blood. This was not just the Hessians but His Majesty’s finest. I knew the Parliament would hear about this defeat.

  Not all Americans managed the retreat across the bridge. With the General, I watched from the hill behind the creek as an American chaplain was forced to strip naked and kneel while he was bayoneted over and over by the Hessians as surrounding British soldiers cheered. Later, I learned from the captured Hessians that their overall commander, Colonel Rall, outraged at the defeat at the first battle of Trenton, had urged his troops to take no prisoners. I thought of all the Hessian prisoners we held and the effect the preacher’s murder would have on the hundreds of our troops who had witnessed it. Even though I was raised a Quaker, I found myself lusting for revenge. The General must have sensed what I was thinking because after grimacing, he turned and said, “Josiah, write an order that all Hessian prisoners are to be treated well and see that every commander receives the order and reads it to his troops. Include an explanation that we fight for a greater cause and that with good treatment we will convince the Hessians to change sides.”

  I don’t know whether the General acted out of Christian principle or whether he was just pragmatically focused on how best to win the war. One could never tell with the General. I am told that no Hessian prisoners of war tried to escape, even when they had the opportunity, and that over a third decided to settle in America afte
r the war.

  As the General predicted, the British did not attack at night, but they brought up further reinforcements. This brought another council, which I assumed would end with us withdrawing across the Delaware. The other obvious choice was to stand and fight in the morning, not a tempting strategy given that Cornwallis would probably try to cross the creek at other places during the coming day and hit us from the sides and the rear.

  In the end, we made a third, unexpected choice: to make an end run around enemy forces and strike the main British post, now more lightly defended, at Princeton. The idea came from General Arthur St. Clair, or else the General put him up to it. At first the idea was met with derision. Most of the men had not slept for almost forty-eight hours. But as the meeting, directed by the General with his usual skill, continued, opinions started to change. The General called in local citizens who reported that Cornwallis was marching still thousands more troops from Princeton to Trenton in anticipation of what, I later learned, the British general believed would be “the final battle of the war.” A captured British officer later told me that Cornwallis had told his commanders, “We’ve got the Old Fox surrounded now. We’ll go over and bag him in the morning.”