by Howard Fast
Until the foothold was established on the Jersey shore, Washington was tense and short with those around him, as if his desperate desire to be on both shores at once was more than he could bear. And the moment word came back that the Virginians had secured a section of the shore large enough to defend, Washington decided to cross over. Prior to this, he had felt that perhaps he should wait out the crossing and remain on the Pennsylvania shore until the last boat went over; now he could not wait.
Most Americans derive their information about this crossing from the famous painting by Emanuel Leutze, and while the children of other generations may have been inspired by the painting, in terms of a more practical approach to history it has become rather ludicrous. In the first place, by the time the crossing began night had fallen. In the second place, in the painting three men—Washington included—are standing, which would not only mark them for fools, but irritate the New England fishermen. Thirdly, the painting shows a flag that is not yet in existence. And finally, a dozen soldiers are packed into a fourteen-foot-long boat that is certainly too small for twelve men. In the background other boats are spread out across perhaps a mile of water, as if the army pushed off at a given moment, like an amphibious landing in our own time.
In actual fact, the boat Washington crossed in was between forty and fifty feet long, and it could hold forty men without crowding. It was commanded by Captain William Blackler, a Massachusetts fisherman, and in the boat with Washington were over twenty enlisted men and about a dozen officers, among them General Nathanael Greene and young Colonel Henry Knox.
The mood among the men and officers was sliding downhill. The cold, the wet snow turning to rain and the slowness with which the big Durham boats were loaded in the darkness all served to depress them. Hardly anyone was properly dressed for the weather, and the men in the boat that Washington would cross in were huddled down against the wind.
Washington stepped into the boat, picked his way among the men to where Henry Knox sat, nudged him with the toe of his boot and said vibrantly: “Shift that fat ass, Harry—but slowly, or you’ll swamp the— —boat.”
It dissolved the spell of despondency, and it broke up the men in the boat. As the boat pushed off, the laughter could be heard out into the river, less because of what he had said than the way he had said it. The men on the shore came to life, and everywhere, up and down the line of shivering soldiers: “What did he say?”
“Did you hear him?”
“What was it?”
In an age given to uninhibited freedom of language and a rich use of four-letter Anglo-Saxon words, Washington had an unmatched reputation for colorful speech in a crisis. What was not heard was invented, and Washington’s observation gained in color and direction until it had swept through the little army. Henry Knox’s buttocks became the symbol of the moment, and in that strange way that men communicate under awful conditions, the Virginia fox hunter, the haughty, reticent aristocrat, reached and touched them as he never had with noble sentiment.
[18]
WASHINGTON HIMSELF was high and eager, his whole body tense with excitement and purpose. Whatever occurred now, it would not happen to a man or an army in retreat or in flight or in fear. He was taking the battle to the enemy; and under these circumstances danger and discomfort had absolutely no meaning for him.
By the time the Virginian had disembarked on the east shore, it was almost eight o’clock in the evening or perhaps a half hour after eight. As yet, only a few hundred of his men had crossed the river. He set up an uncovered, unprotected headquarters in the cold sleet of the east shore—that is, a piece of wet, muddy pasture. His servants hovered around him, but he rejected their attentions. He had no intention of being coddled or of changing into dry clothes. One of the officers suggested that they build a fire, and Washington turned on him in such anger that the suggestion was not repeated. No light, no fires except the covered ember boxes for the cannon.
Someone found a box about two feet square that had once been used as a beehive, and Washington acquiesced to this as a substitute for headquarters or shelter. His men pleaded with him to sit down and rest, and he seated himself on the old beehive.
To the younger men, Hamilton, Monroe and Washington’s own distant relative, the gallant Captain William Washington, the commander in chief was an old man. He was almost forty-five years old then, and the younger men were constantly amazed at his endurance and his strength. To Washington, a man’s body was a servant from which he would brook no disobedience whatsoever.
As he watched the boats arriving, his frustration and annoyance mounted. He had hoped to get his army across the river and formed up on the bank and on the march toward Trenton by midnight. This timetable was absolutely necessary if he intended to launch his attack on Trenton under the cover of darkness. But midnight came and went and the army was not yet across. By two o’clock in the morning, Washington realized with a sinking heart that the opportunity for a night attack against Trenton had been lost and that if he went up against Trenton, he would do so in daylight or not at all. And to cap this wretched turn of events, he had no news from either Cadwalader or Ewing, who should have already crossed the river.
When at last he would proceed to march with his twenty-four hundred men toward Trenton, it would be under the assumption that fifteen hundred men under Ewing were to attack Trenton from the south, while at the same time another thousand men under Cadwalader would be across the river nine miles farther south attacking the Hessian encampment of Von Donop. Perhaps of all the things that happened on this strange night, Washington can be most grateful not for what he knew, but for what he did not know. Indeed, among other things, he did not know that the Hessian commander, Colonel Rahl, was aware of every detail of the plan to make the crossing.
[19]
NOW WE MUST GO BACK on the same day to about 5 P.M. and see what happened at the Hessian encampment at Trenton, where Colonel Rahl was in command.
Colonel Rahl had received news of the impending Continental attacks not only from Dr. Bryant and the British General Grant but from his own informants. Once he accepted the reality of that news, swallowed his contempt for the Americans and admitted to himself that there was a possibility that the Americans could mount an attack of size and importance, he proceeded to take certain defensive measures.
He posted guard detachments that were alert and well armed all around Trenton. He also had a sort of mobile guard that marched up and down every street of the little town.
The weather in Trenton was as cold and miserable as it was at McKonkey’s Ferry, where Washington and Glover and the others were undertaking the crossing. This was Christmas Day, and the Hessians, who had looked forward to the pleasures of Christmas and to a fine celebration of Christmas, were solemn and angry at the lack of piousness on the part of the Americans and particularly aggravated at their being ordered out to duty in such foul weather.
The Christmas tradition was stronger among them than it was among the Americans, and so few were their comforts that the privilege of a day of rest on December 25 was almost unassailable. Nevertheless, they were disciplined mercenary soldiers, and they responded to the orders of their officers. Now at about five o’clock, just as dusk had fallen—and on a cloudy winter day with sleet turning into rain, this dusk would be more impenetrable than usual—the Hessian encampment was attacked.
A group of Americans, possibly no more than twenty, possibly as many as sixty or seventy, dashed out of the woods, raced toward the Hessian outposts and let loose a volley from their muskets. Their gunfire was rather ragged since their powder was wet, but it had sufficient effect to kill three Hessians and to wound three others. Coming as they did so suddenly out of the darkness, the Americans appeared to be far more formidable than they actually were. At the roar of their guns, the Hessian drummers immediately beat to arms, and those Hessians who garrisoned the outpost that received the attack stood to arms calmly and began to return the American fire.
At the first
sign of a Hessian response, the Americans ran away with all the speed of which they were capable. The whole affair lasted no more than two or three minutes. First there had been silence and snow falling, then the Americans dashed out of the night, firing their muskets almost point-blank at the Hessians, then the Hessians returned fire and then the Americans ran back into the night and the falling snow.
However, the brief American attack triggered the entire Hessian encampment into alertness. The Hessian troops ran to their defensive positions, and Colonel Rahl, whose horse was waiting, leaped onto the saddle and rode to the outpost that had been attacked. There he saw the three wounded and the three dying Hessians, but no Americans. Rahl dismounted and intensively questioned soldier after soldier.
The Hessians insisted that they had driven away the Americans with very heavy losses to the Continentals. But when Rahl ordered them into the woods to find the bodies of those they claimed to have slain, they returned empty-handed. They retreated into the contention that the Americans had carried away their dead. But this conflicted oddly with their description of the haste with which the Americans had departed, running from the Hessians as if indeed the devil were after them— and pausing to pick up nothing but their feet.
Rahl ordered the entire stretch of woods in front of the attacked outpost beaten and searched, and indeed Hessian scouts moved into the forest to a mile’s distance from Trenton, searching the wet woods. But the search revealed no sign of Continentals. It was the kind of attack and subsequent flight that underscored Rahl’s low opinion of the Americans as soldiers. He regretted the fact that he had lost three men, but at the same time he was absolutely delighted that the predicted crossing of Washington’s army and the much touted American attack on Trenton had been so wretched in character and courage and so easily beaten off.
This flaw in Rahl’s character—that is, his inability to understand the mentality of men so different from the Hessian mercenaries he led—proved his eventual undoing and led to his death. At this moment, however, he was relieved and delighted.
His junior officers gathered around him, and they argued in high spirits that since the icy rain was so intense that no soldier could keep his powder dry, would it not be realistic for them to give up any thought of standing guard for the rest of Christmas Day? Rahl responded to their argument in good humor: he declared that guard duty was over and that the troops could return to quarters and pick up their festivities, eat their feast, drink their liquor and relax fully, as though this were a safe and ordinary Christmas Day at home in Germany.
Now arises the most curious and mysterious question of the whole incident of the crossing. There is no doubt that Washington’s little army was saved by this attack. One would think that since this fact was soon known to so many, the attackers would come forth to demand credit, and the people at the same time would be able to determine who made the attack. But this is not the case. To this day no one knows the identity of the band of Americans who assaulted the outpost.
A claim was made afterward by Captain Anderson of the 5th Continental Infantry that this party was an advance patrol sent out by Washington, but Washington himself denied this; and since the circumstances of the crossing are so well known, no such patrol would have existed without his knowledge. For one thing, it was not until two hours after the mysterious attack that the first boatload of Virginians landed on the east shore, and they immediately set out their sentry circle for the protection of the landing spot.
Colonel Joseph Reed, in his memoirs, Life and Correspondence, refers to this attack as being made by an advance party that was returning from the Jerseys to Pennsylvania. But he lets it go at that, without proof or identification. What advance party were they? Why were they in the Jerseys? Why were they returning to Pennsylvania? Why did they never contact Washington? Reed identifies no one who was a member of the party, and therefore his guess is no better than anyone else’s.
From the Hessian side the following explanation is given, which is perhaps more reasonable. Johannes Engelhardt, a lieutenant of artillery, was with Colonel Rahl when Rahl was questioning various officers and trying to determine the true facts about the assault. Lieutenant Engelhardt heard a Captain von Altenbockum tell Colonel Rahl that the attack had been carried out by a few farmers who had gathered together out of their rancor against the Hessians and decided to annoy the Hessians on their own account. He also said that the British General Grant had warned him that such a party of farmers was wandering in the area between Princeton and Trenton, but that Grant was totally contemptuous of them as a threat and believed they could do no harm to anyone.
However, since Colonel Rahl refused to distinguish between American farmers and American soldiers—and in this perhaps there was more than a little truth—he clung to his decision that this was Washington’s doing.
One might guess that when the attack failed so dismally, the small band of farmers, shamed by their cowardice, kept silent and went home. Because communication was so ragged and uncertain in those days, they never knew the full impact of their little attack, nor had they any particular leader who would claim credit.
At McKonkey’s Ferry, the soldiers climbed off the boats onto the Jersey bank of the Delaware, calling out the watchword for the day: “Victory or death.”
But as midnight came and went—and half of the army was still on the other bank of the Delaware—it would appear that the prospects of victory dwindled, while those of death increased.
[20]
ABRAHAN HUNT, the richest man in Trenton, was a Tory. He had a fine house on the corner of King and Second streets. In his stables, directly behind the house, he kept a carriage and four horses. He was a man of substantial local position, and on Christmas Day of 1776, he felt that his social standing was confirmed. Christmas evening he gave a party. Like most parties it revolved around a particular guest of honor, in this case Colonel Rahl, commander of the German troops in Trenton.
Mr. Hunt and even more so Mrs. Hunt were devastated by the fact that the firing at the outpost kept Rahl away from the party until the late hours of the evening. However, when he joined his fellow officers and those few Trenton Tories who were in attendance at Abraham Hunt’s house shortly before midnight, he proceeded to make up for lost time; and when the clock struck twelve, ushering in that very fateful day of the twenty-sixth of December, Rahl was at ease and enjoying himself hugely.
He had already put down several bumpers of hot flip—a colonial concoction of butter and rum—and had partaken of the good food, game, turkey, venison and baked pigeon and stuffed goose and fat roast ham, the good sweet cakes and the rich American pies that were so lovingly cooked and served for his appetite and approval. He relaxed in a chair, conversed with his host and the other Americans present in broken English, proved himself to be both charming and delightful and was quite happy that now, after all, Christmas in this strange, wild land would not be so different from what it might have been at home.
At the same time, nine miles to the north of Trenton, on the Jersey shore of the Delaware River, the twenty-sixth of December began for Rahl’s enemy, General George Washington. Six hours before this, when he first began to move his troops across the river, word came to General Washington that Colonel Cadwalader considered the crossing to be very difficult, if not impossible. Before leaving the Ferry House to cross the river, Washington scribbled these few cold words to Cadwalader:
“… I am determined, as the Night is favorable, to cross the River and make the attack upon Trenton in the Morning. If you can do nothing real, at least create as great a diversion as possible.”
The icy, impatient fury of the commander in chief of the American forces comes bitterly alive. He made his own crossing almost matter-of-factly, and now six hours after he had crossed the river himself, Washington was standing on the east bank, wet through to the skin, his boots sodden with the icy rain that had now replaced the sleet, unhappily contemplating the fact that a large part of his army still remained on the we
st bank. By midnight of December 25, it appeared that his bold scheme had turned into a disaster.
All his hopes and fine calculations had been wrong. He had not been able to anticipate the quantity of the ice in the river, and above all it was the ice that made the crossing so difficult, crashing against the Durham boats and driving them downstream. Neither had he been able to anticipate the difficulty of poling the great Durham boats upstream once they were forced off course to the south. In a larger sense he had misjudged every other detail of the crossing, and now as midnight passed, he stood amidst the ruins of his plans, his dreams and possibly his country’s future.
By midnight the snow and sleet had turned into cold, driving rain, and with all the necessity for the army to see, the night had become as dark as hell itself. Washington stood on the overturned beehive and directed the formation of the brigades on the Jersey side. Whatever anyone else might feel, he was so totally committed that even if all the rest of his army failed him, he alone on his chestnut-sorrel horse, a tall, skinny Don Quixote, sword drawn, war cry thrown at the dark sky, would have stormed down on Trenton, if need be, and fought his battle alone.
Several times that evening, Glover came to him and asked whether he wanted to change his plans or cancel the rest of the crossing. His response was a silent grimace to the negative. Let the army cross, there was no change in plans. Seeing him thus, the men did not question him, indeed no officer dared do so. The crossing continued, and by a half hour after two o’clock in the morning of December 26, the entire army of twenty-four hundred men and eighteen cannon and perhaps two hundred horses had been moved over from the west to the east bank of the Delaware.