George Washington's Surprise Attack

by Phillip Thomas Tucker

  Stephen’s hands-on role in molding the First Virginia Regiment during the French and Indian War were impressive, after Washington retired in 1759 to marry Martha Curtis. Stephens boasted how his disciplined Virginia soldiers could “parade as well as prussians [ironically as if writing about Colonel Rall’s troops now stationed at Trenton], and the fighting in a Close Country as well as Tartars.” With aggressive tactics, Stephen had helped to save the Ohio County and Fort Pitt, the future site of Pittsburgh. Stephen, a Renaissance man, earned a Master of Arts Degree from King’s College of the University of Aberdeen, Scotland. He then excelled in medical school at the University of Edinburgh for three years. Imbued with liberal Age of Enlightenment thought gained from the inspirational writings of leading Scottish intellectuals, Stephen served on early revolutionary committees established by the Second Virginia Convention in March 1775, where he sat with Washington and Thomas Jefferson.

  Ironically, Washington was now able to launch his strike upon Trenton in part because Stephen had already played a vital role in neutralizing the troublesome Ohio Valley tribes by playing a key role in convincing them to declare neutrality instead of allying with the British, and then ravaging the Virginia, Maryland, and Pennsylvania frontier—a dangerous second front that would have forced Washington to simultaneously face enemies both in front and behind at this crucial time—as during the French and Indian War. Stephens had been instrumental in the signing of the Treaty of Pittsburgh with the Ohio Valley tribes in October 1775. This treaty was yet holding firm on December 26, 1776: a most fortunate development for America.

  On the march to Trenton, therefore, Washington needed the hard-bitten Stephen, his leadership expertise, and considerable tactical ability, which had been well-honed after more than two decades of commendable service and nearly a dozen military campaigns. Stephen had even survived the Fort Necessity July 1754 debacle by Washington’s side, seemingly leading a charmed life. Indeed, if anyone could effectively lead the way for Greene’s Second Division column to overwhelm any initial Hessian resistance standing before Trenton, it was this consummate frontier warrior named Stephen. After all, he even carved a road over the untamed Allegheny Mountains for a British-American expedition to push deep into the Ohio Country to attack New France’s most easternmost outpost known as Fort Duquesne, today’s Pittsburgh. As he had penned, Stephens demonstrated that he could “Hurl Mountains out of their Seat,” in leading veteran Virginia troops, who were “Capable to do anything.” Yet a relative newcomer to the New World, Stephen had journeyed to America as a hopeful immigrant from Aberdeenshire, Scotland, in 1748.80

  Most importantly and as Washington fully realized, General Stephen was now backed up by some very good top lieutenants, who now led the three Virginia regiments of his small brigade onward through the snow and east toward the Pennington Road. Charles Scott was the foremost among these dependable Old Dominion colonels. An experienced soldier at age thirty-eight, he was known as Charley Scott by his admiring troops, who would follow him to hell and back if necessary. Scott’s rise, from a private’s rank, had been meteoritic. Life’s hard experiences had well prepared the ambitious Scott, a future general and Kentucky governor despite little education, for the upcoming Trenton challenge.

  Colonel Scott hailed from the Virginia planter class and a once-prosperous family that owned Tidewater tobacco plantations along the muddy James River near Richmond. His family traced its Virginia roots back to the mid-1600s. Forsaking a dreary future as a carpenter when Virginia faced a host of new threats during the French and Indian War, the independent-minded Scott enlisted in Washington’s First Virginia Regiment at age sixteen, before the Cumberland County court officially assigned him a guardian, after his father’s 1755 death. Therefore, Washington’s regiment early became the young man’s surrogate home.

  With black hair and eyes, Scott was distinguished by a dark and swarthy appearance. But Scott was not as dark as one First Virginia Regimental comrade, Moses Johnson, who was a product of a black-white union, a white father and black slave mother. Like Stephen, Scott had served in the military, including under Washington, for more than twenty years before the dramatic showdown at Trenton. Therefore, Stephen and Scott knew Washington very well and vice versa, explaining in no small part why they were primary leaders of his vanguard and a most effective leadership team, leading the way for Greene’s Second Division.

  Scott affectionately referred to the autocratic Washington as “the old boss,” which delighted his homespun Fifth Virginia soldiers. Like Stephen, Scott had also early excelled as an Indian fighter on the western frontier, possessing invaluable qualities that rose to the fore during this winter campaign on New Jersey soil. Early highly esteemed by Washington for his abilities, Sergeant Scott had capably led small parties that scouted Indian and French movements deep in hostile country, including around strategic Fort Duquesne. These frontier Virginians took the scalps of both Indians and Frenchmen during the bitter wilderness struggle for possession of the Ohio Valley. Because of Scott’s contributions as the finest scout, woodsman, and sergeant of the First Virginia Regiment, Washington had personally promoted the promising young man to an officer’s rank.

  Then in 1760, Scott served as a hard-hitting captain in the southern campaign against the troublesome Cherokee, earning additional acclaim, including from his new regimental commander, Stephen, after Washington’s retirement. Scott’s precarious existence as a daring frontier scout ended when he married a pretty Irish girl, Francs Sweeney, on February 22, 1762, on Washington’s thirtieth birthday. Scott and his beloved Frankey, who brought nearly a dozen slaves with her to the union, lived together on Scott’s Muddy Creek farm near the James River around thirty miles upriver from the bustling tobacco port of Richmond. Here, he built a gristmill on Muddy Creek, and then acquired additional fertile land for growing wheat and tobacco. Benefitting from 650 acres in the James River country, the Scott family grew rapidly. Scott’s first daughter was born around 1763, followed by four sons before the American Revolution.

  After the “shots heard around the world” at Lexington Green, Scott early organized a company of young volunteers from the Tidewater’s Cumberland County, located just west of Richmond, to defend the land he loved. Anticipating a British invasion by sea, Virginia concentrated its troops at Williamsburg, Virginia’s capital. Here, Scott was elected overall commander-in-chief and the first commander of Virginia’s forces, because of his “great reputation” and ability. From the beginning, Scott was one of the most diehard, radical revolutionaries in all Virginia. He early advocated not only independence but also in taking the initiative against the Old Dominion’s enemies.

  After the battle of Bunker Hill, Scott became the second in command of the Second Virginia Regiment, while his younger brother, Joseph, served in the same regiment as a lieutenant. Scott also played a key role in leading Virginians to victory over Lord John Murray Dunmore, the royal governor, his loyalists, and recently liberated Virginia slaves of his “Ethiopian” regiment, including at the battle—the first engagement in Virginia—of Great Bridge on December 9, 1775. Not dwelling upon a paradox’s complexities and America’s early contradictions, this freedom-loving owner of slaves fought against armed African Americans in uniforms on Virginia soil.

  After the sharp clash at Great Bridge, Scott then took command of all Virginia troops in the lower Tidewater region. In February 1776, he gained a lieutenant colonel’s rank in the Second Virginia Continental Regiment, and then served as the Fifth Virginia Continental Regiment’s colonel in early May. This veteran regiment, now one of Washington’s best, was composed of soldiers from Henrico, Spotsylvania, Bedford, Loudoun, Richmond, Bedford, Lancaster, Northumberland, Chesterfield, and Hanover Counties. Scott had then led his regiment north with the other Old Dominion regiments of Stephen’s brigade—now Washington’s vanguard—to join the main army just in time for the Trenton challenge, while wife Frankey deftly managed not only their five children, four boys and one girl, but als
o the Muddy Creek farm and slaves in Scott’s long absence.81 During “This most Horrid War,” Colonel Scott’s sense of determination to succeed on December 26 can perhaps be best seen in his own words from a letter: “I set little value upon my health when put in competition with my duty to my country and the glorious cause we are engaged in.”82

  General Stephen’s other capable regiment commander on the march to Trenton was Colonel Mondecai Buckner. He likewise bolstered the Virginia vanguard’s overall quality and combat capabilities under Stephen’s steady hand and leadership. Buckner also possessed extensive experience during the French and Indian War on Virginia’s western frontier. Now ably leading the Sixth Virginia Continental Regiment, which consisted of zealous volunteers from New Kent, Prince George, Spotsylvania, Charles City, Amherst, Pittsylvania, Buckingham, Dinwiddie, and Lunenburg Counties, Virginia, Buckner had served as a captain under Stephen in his First Virginia Regiment beginning in 1758, or nearly two decades ago. He married the wealthy Elizabeth Stanard in 1768, and then settled down in the fertile Piedmont of Spotsylvania County, where he was elected judge in 1742 and justice of the county. In mid-February 1776, Buckner was appointed the Sixth Virginia Continental Regiment’s colonel.83

  Lieutenant Colonel Robert Lawson now served as Stephen’s remaining regimental commander of Washington’s vanguard, after having been promoted from major since mid-August 1776. Destined to eventually gain a general’s rank in the Virginia militia by the time of the Yorktown Campaign in 1781, he now led the Fourth Virginia Continental Regiment ever-closer to Trenton. Lawson, age twenty-eight and the youngest of Stephen’s top lieutenants, hailed from Prince Edward County, in central Virginia’s Piedmont in the Appomattox River country. Only recently on December 13, 1776, he had barely missed his seventh anniversary of his marriage to pretty Sarah Meriwether Pierce, who presented him with his first child, Sarah Meriwether Lawson, on September 13, 1770. The child’s sudden death on April 19, 1771 sent Lawson into a spiral of deep grief. Lawson named his next child, who would be conceived this coming spring, in honor of that great republican dream and struggle for liberty that now motivated him in the early hours of December 26 during the descent upon Trenton: America Lawson.

  All the while as Stephen and his trusty top Virginia lieutenants, Scott, Buckner, and Lawson, continued to lead the vanguard onward through the snow and deeper into the storm-lashed night, Washington also rode to the left, or east, with Greene’s lumbering column. Washington once again continued to demonstrate more of his legendary equestrian skill in riding down the column’s length, as if on a summer day in Tidewater Virginia. Indeed, the commander-in-chief was continuing to prove that he was one of the “the greatest horseman of his age,” especially on this bone-chilling night in Hunterdon County. Pushing east and farther away from the icy Birmingham crossroads, Washington led Greene’s Second Division through the incessant shower of snow flakes that gently tumbled down upon the lengthy column. The entire battle plan now hinged upon the dynamic team of the paternal Washington and young Greene quickly gaining the Scotch Road, which was buried up ahead in the blackness under the freshly fallen snow amid this unfamiliar terrain to the east.

  Meanwhile, in contrast to Greene’s column, Sullivan’s First Division only had to advance straight south along the River Road, a mere continuation of the Bear Tavern Road that led south from Birmingham. On his trusty steed, Washington encouraged Greene’s soldiers onward into the night’s and storm’s depths in the hope of gaining the Scotch Road, which lay somewhere in the blackness to the east, according to his knowledgeable Hunterdon County scouts. Fortunately, this seemingly endless march for Greene’s Second Division troops was made slightly easier because the terrain now gently slope downward almost all the way, although leveling out for a lengthy stretch at one point, along the Upper Ferry Road to the Scotch Road, a distance of just more than a mile. Once again and like the intersection of the Johnson’s Ferry Road and the Bear Tavern Road and then the Bear Tavern Road and the Upper Ferry Road because the area’s narrow roads—former game trails that had then evolved into Indian trails before becoming pot-holed wagon roads for New Jersey farmers—generally followed high ground or ridge-tops, this was also the case with the Upper Ferry Road that led the pitch-black forests to the Scotch Road. With time of the essence, Washington’s most pressing immediate objective was for Greene’s column to reach the strategic intersection of the Upper Ferry Road and the Scotch Road as soon as possible, as more precious time was running out. All the while, Washington’s men continued to slog onward on little more than a hope and a prayer.

  Upon finally reaching the vital intersection of the Upper Ferry and the Scotch Road, which was nearly four miles southeast of the two-story Bear Tavern where the lengthy march south had first begun, Washington conferred with his most knowledgeable Hunterdon County guides. They informed Washington that this snow-covered trail cutting through the thick woodlands was indeed the coveted Scotch Road during a brief, hasty conference on horseback. With the ground covered in a thick sheet of white and with visibility near zero in the stormy darkness, the anxious commander-in-chief had to make absolutely sure that the proper road was taken by Greene’s column for the final descent upon Trenton. To be sure, no error could be made in this regard at this crucial moment.

  Indeed, everything now hinged upon the lengthy column of Greene’s exhausted soldiers of the First Division not missing this last critical turn for the final push south on Trenton. Having been assured with conviction, Washington then signaled for the column to turn right, and Stephen’s hardened Virginia Continentals were the first troops to shift south. Now facing his troops in the proper direction and feeling more confident for eventual success, the determined commander-in-chief continued to lead Greene’s Second Division column, which lurched forward once again. Going down the right road, Greene’s troops marched straight south and down the gently sloping ground that led toward Washington’s long-sought objective of Trenton.

  As Washington and other veteran soldiers, especially the woodsmen, trappers, and hunters in the ranks, now sensed by the gradually dropping terrain, this was indeed now a final descent toward the silent valley of the Delaware, after the river curved gradually eastward from McConkey’s Ferry to form a sharp elbow at Trenton. Despite the near-zero visibility and without maps, Washington had managed to get the main strike column on the proper road during the raging snowstorm after marching Greene’s Second Division just more than a mile east through the blinding darkness and dense forest. Below both the remote Birmingham crossroads and the Scotch Road-Upper Ferry Road crossroads, the land now dropped gradually toward Trenton, because the Delaware had turned to flow more southeastward to curve toward the town’s southern end. Just south of the relatively high ground of the Upper Ferry Road and its intersection with the Scotch Road, this sudden change of topography also indicated to Washington, blessed with well-honed frontier instincts, that he was finally now on the correct course for the final descent off the last high ground before Trenton, and down gently descending terrain that led south.

  Likewise, Washington’s Continentals, especially the western frontiersmen in the ranks, whose lives had often depended upon accurately understanding and instantly interpreting the land’s and forest’s many hidden nuances, now realized that their strategic objective was looming ever-closer, because the descending ground eventually ended along the low-lying river bottoms at the southern end of Trenton. Most importantly, not a single Hessian scout, picket, or patrol, had been seen or encountered by Washington’s troops at any point during the long march. Therefore, the prospects for future success at Trenton brightened the spirits of the savviest veterans, who now deciphered an increasing number of positive signs and omens. In consequence, the overall pace of Washington’s march south down the descending ground of the rough-hewn Scotch Road picked up, fueling more hopeful expectations among the common soldiery. Trenton now lay a little more than three miles to the southeast, the Promised Land, if everything went right for Washing
ton’s men.

  While this “most violent storm” increased its fury in the night and Greene’s column surged south down the Scotch Road, Colonel John Stark and his New Hampshire Regiment led the advance of Sullivan’s column south. Captain Flahaven’s and his New Jersey soldiers, who had rejoined the main column of Sullivan’s First Division by this time, likewise pushed forward with the foremost New Hampshire veterans trudging through the snow. In slogging down the River Road from the Birmingham crossroads and compared to Greene’s Second Division troops to the east, the movement was now relatively easy for Sullivan’s soldiers because of the gently sloping ground leading to the Delaware.

  With hope in their hearts and well-worn flintlocks on shoulders, the New England and New York infantrymen of the First Division moved down the slippery River Road in a slightly southeast direction. Sullivan’s lengthy column inched across the whitish landscape that contrasted sharply with the dark, hardwood forests under churning skies. While a bitterly cold wind whistled through the tall trees lining both sides of the road, General Sullivan rode down the River Road to inspire confidence and to make sure that everyone was trudging onward. All the while, he encouraged his First Division troops of the western column like Washington and Greene in the eastern column, now moving on a parallel course down the Scotch Road.

  In protective fashion similar to the ancient Praetorian Guard, Washington was escorted down the ice-covered Scotch Road by Captain Samuel Morris’stwenty-five cavalrymen of the First Troop of Philadelphia Light Horse. Nearly half of these young horse-soldiers were either Ireland-born or descendants of Irish immigrants, including many members of the Friendly Sons of St. Patrick. Especially from the cynical viewpoint of Washington’s western frontiersmen, this diminutive cavalry command was an ostentatious unit, consisting of young men from wealthy families and established individuals of “independent means.” After having ridden out of Philadelphia in colorful uniforms, that they had purchased themselves at considerable expense from the capital’s best tailors, on Sunday December 1, 1776, to a cheering crowd, this band of cavalrymen had first linked with Washington at Trenton during the recent withdrawal.