The Crossing

by Howard Fast

  [27]

  SITTING IN THE KEITH HOUSE, his new headquarters, on the eighteenth of December, 1776, General Washington watched a light snow fall from a dark sky and penned one of the saddest notes of his career. Addressing himself to the Pennsylvania Council of Safety, he wrote:

  “Your collection of old clothes for the use of the army deserves the warmest thanks.”

  The snow drifted down, and the Americans shivered and waited. They were on the west bank of the river, and they were alive. Being there meant that they must try to keep warm and to stay fit; and since it was a cold day, they huddled in their shelters and counted the hours to the end of their enlistments. The officers quartered in the various houses along the river huddled around their own fires, and in these homes there was little joy, no celebration, no yuletide cheer and very little willingness to contemplate a future that offered nothing.

  Across the river at Bordentown, on the same day, Colonel von Donop wrote another letter to his superior, the British General Grant, apologized for his overestimate of Putnam’s strength in his letter of the day before, and went on to say:

  “Sir: I have this moment received your letter of the seventeenth instant. Since I had the honor to advise you that there was four thousand of the enemy at Cooper’s Creek the best report I can obtain reduces the number to Five hundred. I do not care to take the trouble to march with all my force for these gentlemen will not wait for me.”

  Indeed, if there actually were five hundred Continental soldiers on the east bank of the Delaware—something that cannot be verified now and which appears quite impossible—they certainly would not have waited for Colonel von Donop and his Hessians.

  On this day, a Mr. Smith arrived from Philadelphia. Mr. Smith moves through history facelessly, only known by his family name, which is recorded in the Hessian notes. He brought information from Philadelphia to sell to the Hessians, and since the information would have to contain enough drama to earn its price, he told Colonel von Donop that the people in Philadelphia were “hard at work fortifying the city.”

  However, another informant told Colonel von Donop: “From the way they are doing it, the work will not be finished in two years,” which was less dramatic but more truthful.

  By the eighteenth of December the Hessian commanders were beginning to satisfy themselves that no enemy worth their apprehension or their effort still existed on the west bank of the Delaware River. During the next three days they would reinforce that observation, and by Christmastime they would be willing to write off the Continental army entirely.

  [28]

  FOR TWO WEEKS, the mood of the people of Philadelphia had been one of total despair concerning the cause for independence and the security of their city. On December 19, however, the Pennsylvania Evening Post cheerfully published the following:

  “There is no doubt that the enemy will be repulsed with great slaughter, if they should attempt to cross the river.”

  This kind of boastful confidence was not actually founded in reality, but it was helped by the publication on the same day, December 19, 1776, of Thomas Paine’s first Crisis paper.

  Thomas Paine had been with the American troops all through the month of November, during their retreat through New Jersey and most likely up to the point of their first crossing of the Delaware River from east to west. It is difficult to ascertain what position he held during that period. Some of the men on that march suggest in their memoirs that he was brevetted an officer of sorts, and this is just possible, so loosely were officers made and unmade then. Washington took a great liking to Paine; and the two of them, Washington and Paine, spent many hours discussing the meaning and the direction of the war. Paine informed Washington that he would attempt to write something that might help the army, and Washington was enthusiastic about his project. They both shared a sort of mystical faith in the power of the printed word, and the astonishing success of Tom Paine’s book, Common Sense, had left every literate person in America with the feeling that somehow Paine’s pen could perform miracles.

  This was hardly the case, and it is doubtful whether, after the November retreat of the American forces, even a miracle would have changed the depressed mood of the defeated soldiers.

  However, when Paine left the troops at the Delaware, he had already written some pages of manuscript. Legend has him sitting among the shivering troops in the light of a campfire, writing down the words of the first Crisis paper. But the greater likelihood is that he only jotted down notes of the retreat—as so many others did—and actually wrote the Crisis in Philadelphia.

  There, he had it printed in a Philadelphia weekly, the Pennsylvania Journal, and the first bundle of newspapers came off the press either late on the eighteenth of December or perhaps very early in the morning of the nineteenth. In any case, on the morning of the nineteenth, Paine had a rider load his saddlebags with copies of the newspaper and gallop off post haste to the encampment. The rider must have left sometime before dawn, because Washington had the first Crisis paper in the morning and read it through at luncheon on the same day. There is evidence that Washington was thrilled with what Paine had written, for he immediately ordered copies of the Pennsylvania Journal distributed up and down the river to every brigade, with instructions that it be read aloud at each corporal’s guard.

  “These are the times that try men’s souls. The summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will, in this crisis, shrink from the service of his country, but he that stands it now, deserves the love and thanks of man and woman.”

  It echoed and reechoed up and down the frozen bank of the Delaware, until there hardly was a man in the Continental army who did not know the words; and all things considered, there certainly must have been some who detested them. Paine’s first Crisis paper, of course, has increased in stature with the passing years, but one can hardly imagine that the reiteration of platitudes to the bitter, defeated army of shivering and hungry men on that winter day gave them any great purpose or passion.

  Washington’s old, good friend, General Hugh Mercer, had been doubling as a physician, and since the crossing of the Delaware on the seventh of December, sickness had increased. Rash, dysentery, jaundice—apparently there was no end to it. On the same day, December 19, while Tom Paine’s words were being read aloud at the corporal’s guard, General Mercer wrote to Joseph Blewer, the secretary of the Philadelphia Council of Safety: “With regard to my people’s sleeping, we have only three rugs and three blankets …”

  So to all effect and purpose, it had come to an end. The fine and grand volunteer Continental army had run headlong into the brutal animal game of war, and it had been defeated and shattered. The braggarts, the vainglorious, the loudmouths, the thieves, the cutthroats—all those who come together out of the heady variety of a nation when some great common project is under way—all had deserted; others were in the British prisons or had died, and still others packed the hospitals with their wounds and scurvy and disease.

  The officers began to turn surly and to take it out on the men, and the Connecticut dowsers predicted the worst winter in years and the days grew shorter and bleaker, until the solstice was only two days away.

  So the first part of the crossing was finished.

  THE SECOND

  CROSSING

  West to East

  [1]

  ALEX SCAMMEL WAS a Harvard graduate, then a schoolteacher and then a surveyor. He was over six feet tall and very good-looking and possibly vain of his hair, which he wore long and ribboned at the back. He had been in love with Abigail Bishop of Medford, Massachusetts, and when she wouldn’t have him, he lost all interest in the law he was reading in John Sullivan’s office; and when Sullivan said to him, “I’m closing up the office because other more important things have come up,” Alexander Scammel replied that he was with him all the way. Sullivan became a brigadier, and Scammel was given a colonel’s rank over the 3rd Massachusetts Continentals. It did not matter that Sullivan was a lawyer and Alex Scammel a teacher, beca
use the soldiers they led were no more soldiers than they were officers.

  However, time had its way with the lot of them, and when Sullivan took command of the army–after Lee had been captured–Alex Scammel became his immediate aide and second in command. Scammel had turned into a good leader, and the 3rd Massachusetts was one of the most effective regiments in the army.

  Sullivan had marched his men almost on the double since Lee’s capture; they were exhausted after crossing the river, and Sullivan rested them while he sent Scammel riding down to McKonkey’s Ferry to see what the Virginian desired.

  Washington’s headquarters were at the Keith house, but as often as not he centered his affairs and his command post at McKonkey’s. For one thing, McKonkey ran a public house; and if a hundred men in wet boots and dragging spurs clumped in and out in the course of a day, well, that was what the house was for, and Old Man McKonkey liked the trade, not only for the money it brought but because he was heart and soul a rebel. He was flattered with the big Virginian and all the other fine gentlemen giving him their patronage, and since he had never catered to so genteel a trade before, he could never quite get over their courtesy. He took to bowing to ladies and changing his shirt twice a week.

  Washington liked Scammel and asked him how the men were. He wanted the truth.

  Well enough, Scammel replied.

  Washington said that they were all well enough, since they were still alive. But how well? How many sick?

  There were less than a hundred in carts, Scammel replied. The rest were walking.

  Clothes?

  Charlie Lee, Scammel began.

  Charlie Lee—no, the commander in chief frowned. General Lee. He was still a general officer.

  He had made them wash their clothes every fortnight. General Lee had commandeered eleven hundred jackets with scrip. Most of the men had shoes. There were four hundred Rhode Island soldiers, and some of them were so seedy they walked barefoot out of preference, even in winter time, with no more sense about things than a red Indian.

  Washington wanted to know what Scammel thought about Charlie Lee, and Scammel said that he didn’t like him, but he could not fault him for being an officer. It was just the man who was lacking. Then Washington said he wanted Scammel and Sullivan and every damned officer to be dressed in clean linen as white as snow, and how they washed and dried it out in this weather was their problem, not his; but he would have them skinned if their shirts or jabots were dirty. He wanted uniforms stitched and pressed, no torn coats, no bare heads. He wanted them in wigs, powdered, boots blackened, swords shining, and then he wanted the whole damned army, two thousand strong, to come marching down the Delaware River Road as if they hadn’t a care in the world.

  And as Scammel regarded him incredulously, Washington asked, did they have drums? Fifes? Trumpets?

  Four trumpets, seven fifes, maybe twenty drums.

  The Virginian wanted music, good, bad–he couldn’t care less, so long as it was loud and strong.

  [2]

  SO ON DECEMBER 20, 1776, John Sullivan and Alexander Scammel—both in clean shirts, decent coats, black boots, cocked hats, both sporting real epaulets, polished sword hilts, both prancing their horses in real smart style and both followed by a fine flurry of fife and drum—led two thousand Continental troops who came marching to join the army on the Delaware. General Washington had lined up his own men along the road, and when Sullivan’s troops came stepping smartly along, the Continentals broke into the first heady cheer in many a long month, yahooing and yelling “Razza-doodle-doo for Rhode Island!”, for there were four hundred smart Rhode Island lads, all in knee-length hunting shirts, all of them armed with big Brown Betsys, the English-made muskets that couldn’t shoot straight but held a long bayonet.

  And then there was a surprise. Sullivan and Scammel were grinning as they watched the tall Virginian as he stood up high in his saddle and saw behind Sullivan’s two thousand men, eight or nine hundred more, led by General Horatio Gates and Colonel Benedict Arnold. They had all come in together, and now his own Continentals broke ranks, screaming; and Sullivan’s men and Gates’s men also broke ranks. And there was embracing and wrestling and kissing and weeping, as brothers and cousins and even fathers and sons found each other.

  Washington’s own eyes were wet, and he could not have spoken then. He had three thousand more men in his army now, and the news ran like wildfire, south to Philadelphia and Baltimore, and north to the British. The agent was Mr. Hovenden, and he reported to the British:

  That the main body of the army lies at Beaumonts between Telits and Baqers ferry about eleven miles above Trenton ferry commanded by General Washington and Lord Stirling. That a party of about three thousand men under General Sullivan had joined General Washington and it was said that they were immediately to march and make their quarters at Newtown. That of this number more than two hundred sick and wounded invalids were arrived at the hospital at Newtown. A party of two hundred or three hundred men are stationed at Robinsons ferry about seven miles above Beaumont. Dont know of any other party higher up the river. That General Washington had with him six eight pounders but were removed from thence, know not where. They are opposite to Slacks Island and about five miles below Beaumonts four eight pounders. That below Slacks Island and at Yardley’s are about six hundred men, commanded by Gen. Dickinson, with two pieces of cannon. Gen. Mercer was there but often shifts his quarters. That upon the most diligent inquiry and best intelligence he can procure, General Washington’s army did not consist of more than eight thousand men. That General Sullivan went to Philadelphia on the Fifteenth inst. from Washington’s quarters. General Gates had not passed the river on Thursday last, but was informed, that he was coming forward with about five hundred men.

  Half true, half out of whole cloth. But that was what was sold and what the British bought.

  [3]

  LIKE GENERAL CHARLES LEE, General Horatio Gates was a British officer who had joined the American causé. He came of a better background—that is, in British class terms of the time—than did General Lee. General Lee. Born in Maldon, England, in the year 1728, he was a godson of Horace Walpole. Though he was the son of a household servant, he was raised as an English gentleman, more or less in the bosom of the British army. He was wholly a product of the British army, enlisted by his parents when still a boy and achieving, finally, the rank of major. Sent to America during the French and Indian War, he fought with Braddock and was severely wounded in 1755. Recovered from these wounds, he joined the British expedition against Martinique in 1762. However, he was poorly rewarded in the British army; disgruntled, a plotter, a man who could get along with almost no one, Gates, like Charles Lee, would constantly create for himself untenable situations.

  One such situation made him decide to move to America permanently, and he purchased an estate in Virginia. Whether his sympathies were with the Continentals or simply against the British, it is hard to say; but when the Revolutionary War broke out, he immediately offered his services to the Continental army.

  The War Committee of Congress was thrilled with the opportunity of having a professional soldier of Gates’s stature; and some time in June of 1775, they appointed him adjutant general of the Continental army, carrying with it the rank and pay of brigadier general. In such circumstances, it was inevitable that he would see himself as the first rival to General Washington for the command of the army, and from the very moment of Washington’s appointment, Gates felt that he himself had been overlooked and slighted. Like Lee, he had small opinion of Washington’s military capabilities, and again like Lee, he had an equally small opinion of the courage or capability of the American soldier.

  By December of 1776, both Gates and Lee had surrendered any hope of a victory by the Continentals; it would appear they were both thinking of how to bargain to the best advantage with the British. And certainly, when General Horatio Gates arrived at the encampment on the banks of the Delaware River, he saw no possibility of retrieving the
fortunes of the defeated army.

  On the other hand, Washington welcomed Gates’s arrival, relieved that he had a military man of his experience and stature to replace General Lee. In a world where malice is omnipresent, it is difficult to understand someone without it. The humility of a meek man is far more comprehendible than the humility of a proud man like Washington, who had qualities of enormous strength and unshakable will. These qualities he combined with gentle demeanor that misled people into thinking that he was either a fool or a bungler.

  In this manner of gentleness, he turned to Gates because he felt that Gates might help and advise him.

  [4]

  PERHAPS HE ALSO TURNED to Benedict Arnold, but this we don’t know; nor is there anything to indicate what happened between him and Arnold except that Arnold saddled his horse and rode out of the encampment, ostensibly to go to Boston and recruit men. But from there to Boston in even the best of weather was two weeks by horse, and in three days less than two weeks, the game would either be played differently or past any playing at all.

  Washington had come to the decision that it must be played differently, and for days he had been turning over in his mind a scheme he had and perhaps passing a word or two about it to those two friends upon whom he depended so much, Hugh Mercer and William Alexander. But not to anyone else; mouths were bitterly tight about this, for when it came to the end of something, there was no one to trust, and men marching together to the gallows put a cheap price upon each other.

  But he would put his scheme to Gates. Wasn’t everyone saying that Gates was the most brilliant military man in North America, and did they not group him always with Cornwallis? No one placed the Virginian with Cornwallis. Washington was still very much the civilian, the husbandman; the man who could ride through his garden and name every shrub, when it was planted or transplanted; who worried about a sick colt and approached every game of whist with excitement and some trepidation. Gates was the pro; Washington was the pretender.