The Crossing

by Howard Fast

  If Washington had tragically miscalculated the time it would take to load the men, cannon, gun carriages, baggage carts, horses and supplies, and again to unload them in the darkness across the river, he had nevertheless accomplished a task that seemed impossible. And in a sense, the whole army was aware of the incredible achievement that night, as if indeed each soldier was threaded onto the commander’s nervous system and thereby connected to his implacable determination.

  [21]

  IT WAS THREE O’CLOCK in the morning, and in three hours more, it would be dawn. There was no possibility now of a surprise attack upon the Hessians at night in the darkness or even in the early morning hours while the entire Hessian encampment slept. But for Washington the issue was already decided. They would march and they would attack.

  He was not alone in his determination to move south. With him and of his mind were his beloved friend Hugh Mercer, General Sullivan, General Nathanael Greene and that rock of a man upon whom he leaned so often, William Alexander, Lord Stirling, and, of course, Johnny Stark of Vermont.

  Colonel Stark was hopping with excitement and purpose. Already, the evening before, during the Meeting of Decision, he had denounced the use of troops to dig ditches and wield pickaxes. Soldiers, Stark had said, were for fighting, and now he turned to the commander in chief and demanded to know how soon they marched. Hugh Mercer, wracked with rheumatism and arthritis, living with his own conviction of impending death, joined his question to Stark’s, and Sullivan, too, demanded that they march. At that moment Glover himself, perhaps because he would prefer to die rather than face the river again that night, echoed the suggestion to move south.

  Glover’s son John, Alexander Hamilton, James Monroe, Winthrop Sargent, young William Washington and a dozen other young officers in their teens and in their twenties let out a shout of enthusiasm, a wild Indian holler. Then the troops caught the mood, and they would have walked into hell itself if the big, skinny Virginian had demanded it.

  The last boat to cross carried two pieces of the artillery, which had been reserved for the rear guard, and also four horses and ninety cannonballs. The boat was overloaded and almost went down in mid-river; the good fortune of its survival gave additional heart to the troops.

  During the next hour, Washington divided the army into two sections and gave his final instructions to the commanders of the section that would march along the River Road without him. He himself would lead the other half of his troops along what was then known as the Pennington Road. No more than a few miles would ever separate the divided troops. The River Road section would be under the leadership of General Sullivan, with Colonel Stark of Vermont beside him and in a sense sharing his command. Colonel Glover would be with them, leading the 14th, 3rd, 19th, 23rd and 26th Continental regiments, all of them part of what were commonly known as Glover’s Marblehead fishermen. Most of Sullivan’s section consisted of New Englanders, men from Connecticut, Rhode Island, Massachusetts, Vermont, New Hampshire and Maine.

  By his own side Washington kept his brilliant aide, Alexander Hamilton. Three close personal friends, Greene, Stirling and Mercer, remained with his column, as did General Stephen, who led the Virginians.

  At about four o’clock in the morning the march began. The first stage would be inland to the tiny hamlet of Birmingham, about three miles’ distance. Birmingham was no more than a crossroad, with a handful of houses around it, but it was the point where the River Road and the Pennington Road separated. On a clear evening a night march is slow, and even lightly armed troops in good health can average no more than three miles an hour. Here, if the men marched two miles in an hour, they would be continuing a miracle, for the troops were burdened with all they owned and with three days’ food as well. And as we noted before, many of them were barefoot and most of them were exhausted after the crossing, soaked to the skin and shivering with cold. They had little energy left. Weeks of hunger and bad diet and dysentery had woefully sapped their strength.

  Since Washington’s northern route along the Pennington Road was slightly longer than the southern route along the River Road, Sullivan was instructed to rest his troops for fifteen or twenty minutes at a place called Howland’s Ferry, thereby giving Washington’s column enough leeway to march into position. Once that was done, both columns were to coordinate and attack Trenton at the same time. Since immediately before the attack the columns would be only a short distance apart, no more than seven or eight hundred yards, they were to make contact with each other just before the assault. Washington specified a dirt road that led from the Pennington Road to Beatty’s Ferry as a means of communicating from army to army when they were on the outskirts of Trenton.

  [22]

  THERE ARE INDICATIONS that at this time, between three and four o’clock in the morning, Washington’s excitement disappeared and great calm replaced it. This side of the man, the stonelike stability that alternated with fury and excitement, has been observed by many who knew him and, interestingly, about a week before the crossing, Thomas Paine had written in the first Crisis paper:

  “Voltaire has remarked that King William never appeared to full advantage but in difficulties and in action. The same remark may be made of General Washington, for the character fits him. There is a natural firmness in some minds, which cannot be unlocked by trifles; but which when unlocked, discovers a cabinet of fortitude; and I reckon it among those kinds of public blessings which we do not immediately see, that God had blessed him with uninterrupted health, and given him a mind that can flourish upon care.”

  An eyewitness picture of the crossing and march was later recorded by Elisha Bostwick of the 7th Connecticut Regiment:

  “Our whole army was then set in motion and toward evening began to recross the Delaware, but by obstructions of ice in the river did not all get across till quite late in the evening, and all the time a constant fall of snow, with some rain, and finally our march began with the torches of our fieldpieces stuck in the exhalters. They sparkled and blazed in the storm all night, and about daylight a halt was made, at which time his Excellency and aides came near to front on the side of the path where the soldiers stood.”

  “I heard his Excellency as he was coming on speaking to and encouraging the soldiers. The words he spoke as he passed by where I stood and in my hearing were these:

  “‘Soldiers, keep by your officers. For God’s sake, keep by your officers!’”

  The artillery was divided, ten pieces under the command of Knox, to go along with Washington in the northern section of the army, and eight pieces to go along with Sullivan in the southern section of the army.

  The rain grew heavier, and about half past five in the morning, young Captain John Mott, who led a regiment of Jersey Continentals, found it impossible to keep the powder in the priming box of his musket dry. He ran along checking the guns of his own regiment and found that this was the case with all the muskets he touched. He then went to General Sullivan and to Colonel Johnny Stark, who were in command, and told them that as far as he could determine every gun in the division was incapable of being fired. Sullivan and Stark stopped the march and sent runners out along the column to tell each regimental leader to examine the powder pans on the muskets. After a few minutes the reports came back and they both decided that while it would be possible to fire the artillery, it would be only by a miracle that any of the muskets in the column could spark and ignite. There was no way to keep the flints dry. And such was the moisture in the air and the horizontal cut of the driving rain of what had turned into a true northeaster, that any thought of keeping the powder dry too was at this moment only a dream.

  Johnny Stark insisted that they go on, and be damned with whether the guns could be fired. Stark, backed up by his handful of Vermont riflemen, had a very small opinion of muskets in any weather, and as far as he was concerned, most musket fire was all sound and fury. He had heard the story of what happened to the Virginia and Carolina riflemen in Brooklyn. But they were not his Bennington boys,
and he said to Sullivan that he would think a damn sight more of a Continental lad with an unloaded musket and a bayonet than of one with a loaded musket and no bayonet. As for his own lads, they would swing their rifles like clubs, and if they broke their rifles, they’d break a Hessian head or two with them.

  Sullivan, however, could not accept the fact that soldiers were planning to attack a strong and disciplined garrison without any firepower, and he told Captain Mott, one of his aides, to ride north across the fields to the Pennington Road and intercept the other column and ask General Washington for orders.

  Going across the icy fields in the blackness of that night was no small feat, yet Mott found Washington, summed up the situation briefly and asked Washington for orders.

  At that moment, Washington’s controlled calm collapsed and he roared that Sullivan had his damned orders. Then he stared at the shriveled Mott for a moment and added, more calmly, “Tell him to advance and charge!”

  When Mott rejoined Sullivan, Stark and Glover and repeated precisely what the commander had said, it had the same effect upon the men as Washington’s observation in the Durham boat on the width of Knox’s backside. It was greeted by the soaked, freezing officers with a burst of laughter, and then the language of Washington, and the laughter raced up and down the line, once again bringing the men to life.

  [23]

  SOLDIERS, MARCHING BY NIGHT in ranks, can and do fall asleep on their feet without halting their march until they come to some obstacle that tumbles them. This happened to both columns of the attacking army. At first they marched on their feet through the freezing rain, dozing for the first two or three miles. Then they began to stumble and fall with increasing frequency.

  They would fall into the slush and cold mud and lie there sleeping, and the officers would spur back and forth, shouting, kicking the men awake, pleading with them. Washington himself rode up and down the column constantly, calling to the men, begging them to keep their eyes open.

  There were no surfaced roads in America in those days, except for small paved stretches in the cities. Ordinary traffic under a rain would turn the rutted surface of the dirt roads into slippery mud, and the passage of so many men as this would create a muddy slough six or seven inches deep. Again and again, the men fell and the horses slipped, and sometimes crippled themselves. Not only was the confusion almost beyond repair, but the men—and of this they were supremely unaware—were being transformed into perhaps the most threatening-looking body of men that had ever constituted an army.

  Their arms, legs and faces were caked with mud. Their long hair was tangled, filthy, and the clothes of most of them were in tatters.

  [24]

  THE BATTLE OF TRENTON began a few minutes before eight o’clock in the morning, on the day after Christmas, 1776. At that time, the column led by Washington, Stirling, Mercer and Greene paused at the edge of Trenton. The village was now visible, misty in the rain.

  Captain Thomas Forrest was at the head of the column, with two light fieldpieces. Forrest was a Philadelphia youngster with a passion for artillery, and he commanded two of Knox’s precious cannon. Now Forrest was approached by a local farmer, who had come out early to replenish his woodpile. The farmer was surprised but not frightened by the materialization of this incredible-looking army out of the morning mist.

  “Where are the Hessian pickets?” Forrest asked him.

  Now the other officers had ridden up and dismounted, and the farmer found himself the center of attention, with fine, if wet, gentlemen listening to every word he said. He knew the preciousness of the moment that had hanged him on a peg of destiny, and afterward he stated that he had spoken directly to Washington, whom he knew because he was a good head taller than anyone else.

  The farmer pointed out a Hessian sentry, a small blur of a man through the rain. “He’s asleep,” the farmer said with contempt. “I walked by his nose and he never saw me.” The house right behind him contained the Hessian outguard, eight to twelve men, but they, too, were likely enough sound asleep. There had been trouble the day before. The Hessians were up late and they would sleep late.

  Young Captain William Washington and young Lieutenant James Monroe—later to be President of the United States—sat on their horses on either side of the older Washington. They were delightful and courageous young men, who lived their war experience with style and bravado. Captain William Washington was twenty-four years old at that time and had already made himself an unmatched reputation for courage and daring. William Washington served under Hugh Mercer, whom he adored, and who regarded him much as an adopted son. In the Battle of Brooklyn, Captain Washington acted with outstanding bravery, and he was severely wounded. Still not recovered from his wounds, he made the retreat through the Jerseys with the army, never lagging or complaining. Now he stood tight in his stirrups, trembling with eagerness and excitement.

  Washington pointed to the sentry at the house and indicated that it would be very much to their advantage if they could cut down the sentry, isolate the house and silence the guard detail inside it.

  Certainly Washington never meant this to be done by two men. But without waiting for reinforcements or for any additional instructions, William Washington and James Monroe spurred away. They drew their sabers, cut down the sentry before he was properly awake and then flung themselves off their horses, smashed into the house and began the Battle of Trenton.

  This house belonged to the Howell family of Trenton, coopers or boxmakers by trade. It was one of several dwellings that the Germans, according to their military customs, had selected as outposts, or guardhouses, during the time of their encampment at Trenton. The guards occupied the ground floor of the building and in the Hessian custom had stacked their arms at the door behind the sentry. When William Washington and James Monroe cut down the sentry and raced to the house, the two young men were at the same time able to ride their horses over the stacked arms, smashing and scattering the muskets, and by so doing deny the arms to the men inside. There were nine German soldiers in the house, and subsequently at court-martial proceedings they claimed that they had driven off the Americans. But the plain fact of the matter was that the Hessians, deprived of their arms, tumbled through the rear windows, surrendering the house thereby, and ran like the very devil toward Trenton.

  In this precipitous retreat, the Hessians were sent on their way by their lieutenant, who kept yelling at the top of his lungs:

  “Der Feind! Der Feind! Heraus! Heraus!”

  “The enemy! The enemy! Out! Out!”

  When General Washington saw the two boys sweep down upon the guardhouse alone, he spurred his horse around to face his troops, shouting at the top of his lungs: “Forward! Damn you—attack!”

  Captain Forrest swept ahead with his two light guns, the men running behind him. Knox was cut off for a moment with his larger battery of six cannon, and Washington yelled at him to get his guns up front where they could assault the enemy, since the muskets were finished as firearms in the pouring rain. Young Alexander Hamilton, at a look from the commander in chief, spurred back to help Knox clear a path for his guns and bring them up. Mercer rode up shoulder to shoulder with Washington, and the two of them cantered in front of the running men, the vanguard of the whole column of twelve or thirteen hundred men that were pouring toward Trenton. (Sullivan’s column on the River Road was still separated from them.)

  And that was the moment when William Washington and James Monroe cut down the sentry and scattered the muskets of the Hessians.

  [25]

  THE SOLDIERS HAD COME TO LIFE. Washington’s excitement and fury were contagious. He drove the sleepiness and fatigue from the exhausted men; and from this moment and for the next hour, the temper of the army tightened and rose to a fever pitch. Hundreds of eager hands grasped the mud-caked gun carriages and rolled them forward as if they were toys. By the time Monroe and William Washington had taken the house, all the guns were rolling at the front of the column.

  Washington�
��s voice was like a trumpet. He shouted for Lord Stirling to take off with his brigade to the left, from the Pennington Road toward the Princeton Road, which lay just to the north of Trenton. Meanwhile he and Hugh Mercer led the other part of his column sideward toward the river and King Street, which ran from Front Street by the river north to the Princeton Road.

  The Philadelphia Troop of Light Horse, the one troop in the army that was well dressed, well fed and well mounted, swarmed around Washington. Thus as the morning light increased, they made for the rest of the army the kind of handsome and encouraging military parade that was so rare in the American experience.

  Now a storm of cheering burst forth, for all that Washington might have wanted the quiet to continue. But guns had been fired, the silence had been shattered and the Hessians by now knew that they had been attacked. The cheering increased until the entire command under Washington were screaming at the top of their lungs with wild excitement and exultation.

  Washington’s shouts of “Forward!” were lost in the noise. He led them on, officers and men racing with all their speed toward the village.

  One must see this sight as the Hessians saw it moments later. Most of the twelve or thirteen hundred men were half-naked. All of them were soaking wet and covered with mud. Most were barefoot, their hair so long that frequently it came down below their shoulders, their faces covered with scrubby beards, yelling, cursing, waving their wet bayonet-carrying muskets, appearing magically and mysteriously out of the rain and mist and pouring down upon the sleepy and unprepared garrison of Trenton. Perhaps in the entire American Revolution, no wilder, no more chaotic scene than this had ever taken place.

  It also had its comic-tragic-mad aspect. From the very beginning of the movement toward Trenton, everything had gone wrong. And here at the end of the road to Trenton things continued to go wrong; yet, in this, too, there was a kind of insane logic, as if fate had stacked a series of lunatic events to add up to some kind of inverted sanity at the final moment.