George Washington's Surprise Attack

by Phillip Thomas Tucker

  Clearly, achieving a success in the hours ahead at Trenton was all about resurrecting the will to resist among the American people, because the darkest of moods now dominated America, whose fortunes had reached their lowest point. Fortunately and most important, neither Washington or his ragged followers, slogging with stoic fortitude and grim determination through the swirling snow in the lengthening column of suffering troops, believed that they were now “vanquished,” however. At this crucial time in the dark New Jersey woodlands north of Trenton, Washington’s strike force of around 2,400 men, the cream of the Continental Army, now represented the largest contingent of American soldiers in any one place. Most important and mirroring the views of their commander who practically stood alone among leadership in his determination to reverse America’s fortunes, these men yet believed in themselves and that they could accomplish against the odds.32 Among these relatively few remaining Continentals were troops who Washington had first proudly designated on July 3, 1775 upon taking command at Cambridge as “the American Army,” which was the first official use of the term in American history.33

  During this most exhausting of marches through the swirling snow and impenetrable darkness, Colonel John Stark, commanding a hard-hitting New Hampshire Regiment in St. Clair’s brigade, Sullivan’s Division, possessed extensive knowledge about winter warfare’s challenges, necessary requirements, and elusive mysteries. As second only to legendary Major Robert Rogers as the foremost partisan leader of Rogers’ Rangers during the brutal northern frontier fighting of the French and Indian War, Stark was early recognized for his tactical skill, coolness under fire, and leadership ability. Most important, he was familiar with winter warfare’s unique demands, including the tactical advantages of moving swiftly on sleds and snowshoes across snowy terrain.34

  When large flakes of snow were not tumbling down, a cold rain, mixed with sleet, also fell silently on the lengthy, quiet column of meagerly clad soldiers, who continued to fully rely on Washington’s much-ridiculed tactical skill to rise to the fore while they trudged south along the Bear Tavern Road. In an eerie, haunting rhythm that provided the only sound in the surreal silence, the faint platter of heavy droplets of icy water hitting the snow-covered ground was heard, while heavier sleet made a sharper sound in striking nearby tree branches hanging over the long column. But nothing could break the strange, wintry stillness of the New Jersey hardwood forests during this nightmarish ordeal. Indeed, much like America’s soldiers in their silent suffering, even the surrounding natural world and its nocturnal creatures remained perfectly quiet in the early morning darkness, as if transfixed in viewing what might well be Washington’s greatest folly.

  The relentless, steady rhythm of ice dropping upon the slow-moving ranks and the ground mixed with the plodding sound of marching feet of hundreds of soldiers were the only muffled sounds along the route. Washington’s Continentals, numbed by the cold and sleep deprivation, continued to demonstrate a remarkable degree of discipline, obeying the commander-in-chief’s strict orders to maintain “a profound silence.”35 Consequently, Washington was encouraged by such positive signs which revealed that his men were determined, and that, in the Virginian’s words, “Americans will fight for their Liberties and property” to the very end.36 More than ever before, Washington was beginning to see another dream fulfilled on the arduous march to Trenton: “The General hopes and trusts, that every officer and man, will endeavour so to live, and act, as becomes a Christian Soldier defending the dearest Rights and Liberties of his country.”37

  All the while, Washington’s formations inched ever-southward in this most haunting of nights, heading farther into an unknown countryside draped in crystalline white. With the situation now especially critical because of the pressing need to makeup as much lost time as possible with the shattered timetable, it now seemed to an anxious Washington that his troops were only moving only at a snail’s pace.

  However, the march’s overall slowness that could not be prevented allowed the foremost cannoneers to keep their guns up front as ordered by Washington, while pushing south down the Bear Tavern Road. Among Knox’s “youthful gunners” were members of a sprightly artillery company hailing from Philadelphia’s busy docks and wharves. Commanded by Captain Moulder and eager to unleash devastation from their three French four-pounders against the Teutonic invaders of America, these tough city boys of the Second Company of Artillery, Philadelphia Associators, had caused Washington headaches in the past, but not on this all-important night when this inherent toughness was put to good use for once. With a determination to reach Trenton in unison with the veteran infantrymen, these high-spirited Philadelphia gunners advanced at the head of one of Sullivan’s leading infantry brigades. For these hard-bitten cannoneers who seldom ever acted like they were actually from the “City of Brotherly Love,” Washington’s upcoming strike on Trenton was also very much about protecting their own city, homes, and families located just to the southwest and farther down the Delaware River.38

  The eerie silence that dominated the woodlands lining the road continued to accompany Washington’s sprawling column, whose length seemed to have no end, casting a strange pall over this nighttime march that seemed most ominous. All the while, Washington’s soldiers pushed ever-south through the tempest, toiling across a relatively high, relatively flat tract of tableland. South of, and below, the small log tavern that bore its name, the Bear Tavern Road was yet little more than a mere path that had been cut through the virgin forests of Hunterdon County, which was yet largely a wilderness area, especially along the Delaware that flowed in the valley to the column’s right, or west. With the storm blowing from the northeast to their backs, Washington’s veterans steadily trudged up gradually ascending ground to a high plateau known today as Kerr Ridge.

  Here, the Bear Tavern Road continued to run straight south through the dense, New Jersey woodlands. This higher and more level ground allowed for the column of Washington’s snow trekkers to pick up the pace, making up for some lost time, but not enough. And now the windy blasts sweeping from the northeast raged more fiercely across the higher ground to cut more keenly through thin civilian clothes and uniforms of shivering men, who had never been so cold in their lives. Each soldier, suffering, praying in silence and thinking of the home that he might never see again, endured his own private hell on his frigid morning.

  On such a nightmarish night, this narrow roadway remained especially treacherous to the footing of Washington’s men. The increasing weariness that only deepened as the night lengthened, the early stages of hypothermia setting-in because of wet (from the crossing) and half-frozen feet helped to make footing difficult for ill-shod soldiers floundering south with increasing weariness, especially in the column’s rear. Clearly, despite their best efforts, not enough time could be made up by the slogging Continentals, with muskets on shoulders now feeling even more like heavy leaden weights, to come even remotely close in salvaging Washington’s shattered timetable of reaching Trenton’s outskirts for unleashing an attack an hour before dawn.39 Nevertheless, Washington was determined to succeed at any cost to reverse the war’s course, because of a simple equation that he had emphasized in the conflict’s beginning: “the once happy and peaceful plains of America are either to be drenched with Blood, or Inhabited by Slaves.”40

  Covered in a sheet of ice and snow, the slick roadbed, balking artillery horses, the overall lack of visibility in blizzard-like conditions, and the seemingly endless other inevitable problems of a large strike force moving at night over unfamiliar ground caused Washington’s column to repeatedly halt. Therefore, even more precious time was lost by Washington, whose optimistic plans continued to crumble around him. In the Fifteenth Massachusetts Continental Regiment’s ranks and not yet knowing of Washington’s ultimate objective, Private Greenwood, the enthusiastic New Englander who had yet to shave, was perplexed by this frustrating and “apparently circuitous march . . . and stopping frequently, though for what purpose I know not [and]
During the whole of the march it alternately hailed, rained, snowed, and blew tremendously.”41

  But then thankfully, the agonizing march was about to become more steady in its overall general progression, gaining even an yet unseen measure of momentum in the night’s cold tranquillity. Rising gradually from the heavily timbered valley of the Delaware River to the west, the commanding plateau, the Kerr Ridge area, gained by Washington’s troops was good ground—level, fertile, and uneroded—for agriculture. This elevated terrain had been early cleared and made productive by industrious farmers in consequence. On the top of this flat plateau through which the Bear Tavern Road now ran south in generally a straight line, a commanding view—if not for the night or stormy weather—would have been offered to the south, because the land was so relatively high, dropping on every side in this distance. To the right, or west, the terrain plunged into the Delaware Valley’s depths. This high ground atop windswept Kerr Ridge was open and relatively good for marching soldiers to finally bring some minor relief to weary legs that had grown steadily heavier because the plateau, upon which the road ran generally straight and true, was generally level. At a better and fairly good pace, therefore, the slogging men of Washington’s column, continued to move south across Kerr Ridge along Bear Tavern Road, which then turned slightly southeast imperceptibly, with relative ease, despite the storm’s fury that seemed to hold a special grudge against rustic revolutionaries, who had rebelled against their king in London.

  However, Washington’s veteran soldiers, especially former hunters, trappers, and other woodsmen, who could almost instinctively read even an unfamiliar landscape’s most reclusive secrets, based upon the nuanced complexity of topographical intricacies, knew that at some point this lofty high ground perch, commanding the entire area, had to eventually descend sharply because of its sheer height, because Trenton was low-lying in the river bottom to the south. Even the name of this little, forgotten road, that continued to curve gently southeastward through an untamed region, had been christened by a long-forgotten, early pioneer, who had killed a black bear near it, indicated that this sparsely settled region was black bear country. And the veteran hunters in Washington’s ranks knew that only the roughest terrain and deepest wilderness were the black bear’s favorite haunts. Indeed, for less astute, backwoods-savvy soldiers, especially city and farm boys, the relatively easy marching terrain along the high, windswept plateau of Kerr Ridge was actually deceiving, because the greatest challenge, after the Delaware crossing, on this time-consuming march south to Trenton lay just ahead: “a deep chasm” in this remote wilderness that was about to present Washington with his most serious natural obstacle on the long trek to Trenton.

  So far, Washington and his men had been relatively fortunate in having encountered generally and relatively favorable terrain in pushing east along first the Johnson’s Ferry Road and then south down the Bear Tavern Road, both of which were relatively straight except when the troops first gained the Bear Tavern Road, which caused them to turn sharply to the right, or south, off the ferry road. The roughest spot that Washington’s men had encountered during the march had come almost immediately when the troops struggled from the river valley’s depths and up the small, but sharp, bluff and past the Johnson’s Ferry House to reach the plateau’s top just east of the quaint ferry house. Then, all the way to remote Bear Tavern, seemingly secure in its isolation so far north of Trenton, and along the roughhewn road of the same name, Washington’s Continentals had pushed across generally accommodating terrain along the just more than a mile and a half stretch of road running south and then slightly southeast from where they had first gained the Bear Tavern Road.

  But all of that relatively good fortune was about to quite suddenly change for Washington’s trekkers, who were ill-prepared for the upcoming challenge that was about to catch them by surprise. Swept by a merciless frigid wind, the high ground of the Kerr Ridge plateau and the snowy Bear Tavern Road were about to plunge dramatically downward, as the road continued southeast from this snowy high ground perch to descend into the most densely wooded, deepest, and roughest terrain yet encountered by them on the grueling march to Washington’s ultimate objective, Trenton.

  Jacob’s Creek Crossing

  Meanwhile, Washington’s thin column of troops continued to move relentlessly onward along the level stretches of the Bear Tavern Road. Washington hoped for the best despite seemingly little chance for success. In a resistance effort gone terribly wrong, Washington’s men pushed steadily through the frozen woodlands, masked in an inky blackness, with an almost blind faith that kept them driving onward. This most bitter of nights was darker because of the storm’s intensification and sheer force. Driven by blustery northeast winds, the ceaseless bands of rain, sleet, and snow lashed Washington’s troops without mercy. All the while, an eerie quiet yet hung heavy over the dark-hued column, now stretched out across the white-shrouded Kerr Ridge in a mostly southeastward curve stretching more than a mile, like a funeral shroud. Almost as if a premonition of yet another upcoming defeat at the Hessians’ hands as during the New York Campaign, the northeaster’s unbridled fury and the black woodlands, of mostly hickory and oak, had seemingly wrapped up the toiling column, mocking Washington’s grandiose ambition of ever reaching Trenton in time.

  The pace of these determined but bone-weary Continentals along the road that had been hewn through the pristine Hunterdon County forests remained much too slow for Washington who feared the worst. The march was already several hours behind schedule. Washington realized that no surprise attack on Trenton would be forthcoming just before dawn as planned. And this lag time only increased much to the consternation, if not anger, of Washington, who rode near the column’s head, attempting to hurry everyone onward through the snow. Washington was also increasingly concerned about the column’s ever-expanding length, growing like a cancer with each passing mile.

  Unlike the recent trek over the generally high, level of the plateau, Washington and his cold-numbed soldiers, with Stephen’s three seasoned regiments—the Fourth, Fifth, and Sixth Virginia Continental Regiments—leading the way, now approached the last and most formidable natural obstacle that lay between them and Trenton, the heavily timbered, gorge-like depression of Jacob’s Creek. Thanks to geography’s contours, this serious natural impediment explained why the narrow road had turned ever so slightly southeastward to reach that portion of the creek which was the narrowest, and hence the most fordable for travelers and especially the overloaded farm wagons that had long transported tons of produce to market in Trenton.

  All of a sudden to Washington’s foremost soldiers from the Old Dominion, the ground dipped sharply to the south, and the ice- and snow-slick road plunged downward off the Kerr Ridge plateau. Therefore, Washington’s lengthy column, like a giant brown snake, suddenly eased up tentatively, almost by way of some primeval instinct, upon encountering such a formidable obstacle before entering into the mysterious heavily wooded environs of low-lying Jacob’s Creek and embarking upon its deepest descent of the night. To Washington, who might not have even known of the existence of this most forbidding natural obstacle, and his worn troops, it must have almost like the Bear Tavern Road had simply disappeared, because of the steep, sudden descent, into a deep, black recess that loomed before them. In the pitch blackness and rather ominously, the land sharply dropped from atop plateau into the uncharted, densely timbered depths of Jacob’s Creek, which was much darker than when the troops had been atop the plateau just left behind to the north.

  Strung out for more than a mile, Washington’s column of half-frozen soldiers were forced to come to an abrupt halt because no bridge along Bear Tavern Road, which plunged down into the deep ravine of the heavily wooded creek bottom, ever had been built over Jacob’s Creek. No wooden bridge had been constructed in part because of the unpredictability of this often turbulent watercourse, whose relatively small size masked its inherent tempestuousness, which so often rapidly rose with torrential spring and sum
mer rains or the winter runoff, swelling angrily beyond its banks. Over the centuries, this seasonal flooding of Jacob’s Creek, including rainwater running off the Kerr Ridge plateau just to the north, but primarily from the heavier runoff farther east down more elevated terrain in the descent toward the Delaware, had cut a deep ravine through the relatively soft soil.

  Only learned belatedly by Washington, the Delaware River was hardly the only formidable natural barrier that lay between the main task force and his coveted objective. Jacob’s Creek presented the most serious natural obstacle, especially on such a horrendous night and for worn soldiers, who felt like they could not possibly go any farther, on the New Jersey side. Not only the creek’s high waters, swollen by recent rains, but also the steep descent into a narrow gorge-like ravine, where the flooded creek flowed in a southwest direction to eventually enter the Delaware about two miles below, or south, of McConkey’s Ferry, now offered a far more considerable challenge to the already behind schedule advance on Trenton than Washington had previously imagined.

  For the foot-weary Continentals, just attempting to ease down the icy slope—a steep descent of more than one hundred feet along a narrow path cut through the forest—without falling was difficult enough. Deteriorating ground conditions worsened after the first soldiers, Stephen’s Virginia Continentals, gingerly eased down the snow-covered slope of the deeply cut ravine, descending laboriously into the blackened depths of the heavily wooded creek bottom. Sore feet of the first ranks of marching men quickly uncovered the initial layer of snow and ice, tearing up the topsoil to leave only a sheet of slush and mud that was as slippery as ice. Ironically, providing an unexpected boon, soldiers with feet wrapped in rags and pieces of cloth now discovered that they had slightly better footing than upper class, educated Continental officers in expensive leather boots, which had shrunk and grew tighter from wetness, bought at fancy boot-making shops in Boston, Williamsburg, or Philadelphia.