by Ron Chernow
Trenton consisted of a hundred or so houses, long since deserted by their occupants. Knox’s cannon began to fire with pinpoint accuracy down the two main streets, King and Queen, with Alexander Hamilton again in the thick of the fray. “The hurry, fright, and confusion of the enemy was [not] unlike that which will be when the last trump shall sound,” said Knox, who forced the German gunners to abandon their weapons and scatter to the southern end of town.30
Colonel Rall mobilized a group of men in an apple orchard, then tried to steer a charge toward Washington. Responding to this move, Washington adroitly positioned his men on high ground nearby. As John Greenwood recalled, “General Washington, on horseback and alone, came up to our major and said, ‘March on, my brave fellows, after me!’ and rode off.”31 Washington’s quick-witted action stopped the Hessian advance in its tracks. Colonel Rall, who was riddled with bullets, “reeled in the saddle” before being rescued from his horse and carried to a church. Washington conversed with the dying Rall and ordered that all Hessian prisoners be treated honorably. When he learned from Major James Wilkinson of the surrender of the last regiment, he beamed with quiet pleasure. “Major Wilkinson,” he replied, shaking his hand, “this is a glorious day for our country.”32 Since he had crafted the strategy and led his men to glory, the stunning victory belonged to Washington lock, stock, and barrel.
The American triumph was accomplished in less than an hour.“It may be doubted,” wrote George Trevelyan, “whether so small a number of men ever employed so short a space of time with greater and more lasting effects upon the history of the world.”33 The battle toll was a bloody one for the Hessians: 22 killed, 84 wounded, and nearly 900 captured (500 escaped to safety) versus only 2 American deaths in combat plus another 4 or 5 from exposure to cold. A huge bonanza of muskets, bayonets, cannon, and swords fell into American hands. The patriots also took possession of forty hogs-heads of rum. Trying to enforce sobriety, Washington ordered the rum spilled on the ground, but many men, unable to resist the comfort of warming liquor, grew wildly intoxicated. The patriotic myth about Trenton inverts the reality: it wasn’t the Hessians who were inebriated before the battle, but the patriots afterward.
Mindful of the frigid weather and the wobbly state of the drunken troops, Washington and his officers decided to hasten back to the Pennsylvania side of the Delaware, an operation complicated by the need to shepherd Hessian prisoners as well. The proud but weather-beaten army had endured a sixty-hour marathon of frostbite, disease, and exhaustion and needed rest. In his general orders for December 27, Washington thanked his men with unstinting fervor, banishing all traces of the snobbery he once felt toward them: “The General, with the utmost sincerity and affection, thanks the officers and soldiers for their spirited and gallant behavior at Trenton yesterday.”34 The army had harvested a trove of Hessian trophies, ranging from guns to horses, and Washington had the cash value of these spoils distributed proportionately among his soldiers. Even though some had gotten roaring drunk at Trenton, Washington relaxed his usual practice and had more rum ladled out to his thirsty men.
In truth, Washington had little time to rejoice after this bravura performance. Now headquartered in the “old yellow house” of widow Hannah Harris, he convened a war council on December 27 at which the generals digested a startling piece of news: that morning, Colonel Cadwalader had belatedly crossed the Delaware with eighteen hundred militiamen, hoping to mount a second New Jersey offensive. The generals grappled with a tough predicament. They voiced doubts about recrossing the Delaware and tempting fate again, but they were loath to strand Cadwalader and wanted to prove that the first crossing hadn’t been a fluke. A consensus slowly took shape to strike again at Trenton. “It was a remarkable and very instructive success for Washington’s maturing style of quiet, consultative leadership,” notes David Hackett Fischer.35 The Trenton victory had wrought a wondrous transformation; the deliberations of Washington and his generals were now informed by a newfound confidence.
On December 28, amid thickening snow flurries, Washington ordered militia units in northern New Jersey to stymie the enemy and “harass their flanks and rear.”36 Then on December 29 he set in motion the enormous gamble ratified by his generals, sending his men back across to Trenton. This second crossing, even more ambitious than the first, encompassed eight crossing points and twice as many cannon. A fresh sheet of ice impeded the boats and retarded the operation. Washington himself didn’t cross the Delaware until December 30, when he stationed his men on a secure slope behind Assunpink Creek, a narrow, fast-moving creek at the southern end of Trenton. This entrenched position posed more formidable risks than the swift hit-and-run raid launched on Christmas Night.
The first Delaware crossing had afforded graphic proof of the advantages of speed and flexibility in improvising military operations. With many enlistments about to expire, General Greene had lobbied Congress to give Washington additional powers while “reserving to yourself the right of confirming or repealing the measures.”37 Greene insisted that Washington would never abuse a wide-ranging new grant of authority. “There never was a man that might be more safely trusted,” he asserted.38 On December 27 a once-carping, meddlesome Congress granted extraordinary powers to Washington for six months, allowing him to muster new troops by paying bounties, to commandeer provisions, and even to arrest vendors who didn’t accept Continental currency. These powers, breathtaking in scope, aroused fears of a despot in the making—fears that Washington quickly laid to rest. He understood that liberties should be affirmed even as they were being temporarily abridged, and he planned to set aside emergency powers the instant they were no longer needed. As he informed Congress, “I shall constantly bear in mind that, as the sword was the last resort for the preservation of our liberties, so it ought to be the first thing laid aside when those liberties are firmly established.”39 In this manner, Washington strengthened civilian authority over the military.
The immediate task at hand was to persuade men to linger whose enlistments expired on New Year’s Day. By bringing his soldiers to Trenton, Washington made it more difficult for them to decamp, and he mustered all his hortatory powers to retain them. On December 30 he had a recalcitrant New England regiment lined up before him. Sitting erect on his horse, he made an impassioned appeal, asking them to extend their service by six weeks and offering them a ten-dollar bounty. As one sergeant recalled, Washington “told us our services were greatly needed and that we could do more for our country than we ever could at any future date and in the most affectionate manner entreated us to stay.”40 The word that leaps out here is affectionate. Here was George Washington, patriarch of Mount Vernon, addressing farmers, shoemakers, weavers, and carpenters as intimate comrades-in-arms. A year earlier this hypercritical man had frowned on these soldiers as an unsavory rabble; now he lavished them with praise. When Jacky Custis told him of squawking in Virginia about New England troops, Washington took umbrage: “I do not believe that any of the states produce better men, or persons capable of making better soldiers.”41 Though he still believed in hierarchical distinctions, especially between officers and their men, the war was molding him into a far more egalitarian figure.
When drums rumbled out a roll call for volunteers, nobody at first stepped forward. One vocal soldier piped up and spoke of their shared sacrifices, how much they had dreamed of heading home. Pulling up his horse, Washington wheeled about and rode along the entire line of men. With his reserved manner and austere code of conduct, he didn’t frequently voice his feelings, only making it more impressive when he did so. “My brave fellows,” he said, “you have done all I asked you to do and more than could be reasonably expected. But your country is at stake, your wives, your houses, and all that you hold dear . . . If you will consent to stay one month longer, you will render that service to the cause of liberty and to your country which you probably can never do under any other circumstances.”42
As the drums resumed beating, the soldiers huddled and conferr
ed among themselves. One was overheard to say, “I will remain if you will,” while another told his fellows that “we cannot go home under such circumstances.”43 A small knot of men stepped forward grudgingly, prompting several more to do so; finally all two hundred joined in. For Washington, the war had become a constant game of high-stakes improvisation, played out under extreme duress. For these two hundred men, the extra six weeks entailed no small commitment: half would perish from combat wounds or illness. The same scene was soon reenacted with other regiments as Washington, showing dramatic flair and plainspoken eloquence, held on to more than three thousand men. In another inspired gesture, he told subordinates that the men who agreed to stay didn’t need to be formally enrolled but would be trusted to make good on their verbal pledges. He was treating them not as commoners, but as tried-and-true gentlemen.
To ferret out enemy intentions, Washington sent a cavalry patrol to reconnoiter around Princeton. Several captured British dragoons revealed that the British had amassed eight thousand men at Princeton and were girding themselves under General Cornwallis to attack Washington at Trenton. As this second Battle of Trenton loomed, the humiliated Hessians were in an especially vengeful mood, and their leader, Colonel von Donop, decreed a bloodthirsty policy of taking no prisoners.
Toward sundown at Trenton on January 2, 1777, Washington spotted the vanguard of Cornwallis, who had brought an army of 5,500 men. Washington arrayed his men on the slope behind Assunpink Creek in three horizontal bands, covering the entire hillside. As Hessian troops hurtled down King and Queen streets, American snipers fired at them. An advance force of Continental soldiers waded back across the rain-swollen creek while others fell back across the stone bridge. When it looked momentarily as if the retreating Americans would be hacked to death by Hessian bayonets, Washington swung into action. Sitting astride his horse at the far end of the bridge, he mobilized his men. Evidently he not only looked but felt like a godlike image of solidity; soldiers who bumped against him couldn’t shake his granite poise. Private John Howland left this evocative portrait:The noble horse of Gen. Washington stood with his breast pressed close against the end of the west rail of the bridge, and the firm, composed, and majestic countenance of the general inspired confidence and assurance in a moment so important and critical. In this passage across the bridge, it was my fortune to be next [to] the west rail, and arriving at the end of the bridge rail, I was pressed against the shoulder of the general’s horse and in contact with the general’s boot. The horse stood as firm as the rider and seemed to understand that he was not to quit his post and station.44
This preternatural composure, coming in the heat of battle, made Washington a living presence to his men.
The British made three courageous attempts to take the bridge, and each time American artillery repulsed them, strewing many cadavers in their wake. “The bridge looked red as blood,” wrote Sergeant Joseph White, “with their killed and wounded and red coats.”45 Several hundred British and Hessian soldiers died in vain attempts to storm the American positions. Nevertheless, the patriots were heavily outnumbered by Cornwallis’s army and had no clear escape strategy. In the dying light of a winter day, Cornwallis and his officers conferred about whether to postpone the main attack. “If Washington is the general I take him to be,” Sir William Erskine said, “he will not be found in the morning.” An overly confident Cornwallis disputed this assertion. “We’ve got the old fox safe now,” he supposedly said. “We’ll go over and bag him in the morning.”46
Washington worried that his men might be encircled by the superior British force—they were cooped up like a flock of chickens, in Henry Knox’s colorful phrase—and knew that any retreat across a Delaware River chock-full of ice floes could be costly. Convening his generals on this frosty night, he stated that the loss of the corps he commanded “might be fatal to the country,” and, under these circumstances, he asked for advice.47 Once again a single misstep could be devastating. The war council decided to have the army slip away during the night, much as it had disappeared across the East River. Still better, it would convert a defensive move into an offensive measure, circling around the left flank of Cornwallis’s army and heading north along unfrequented back roads to confront the British at Princeton. Washington again hid a political strategy behind his military strategy. “One thing I was sure of,” he remarked afterward, was “that it would avoid the appearance of a retreat, which was of consequence.”48 This supremely risky strategy meant penetrating deep into enemy territory and possibly being entrapped. Nevertheless, Washington and his generals, who now operated with exceptional cohesion, embraced the course unanimously.
To camouflage the nighttime retreat, which would start after midnight, Washington reprised the same repertoire of tricks he had applied on Long Island. The wheels of the artillery were wrapped in rags to deaden sounds. Campfires were kept burning to foster the illusion of an army settled in for the night. Loud noises were broadcast with entrenching tools, as if the Americans were digging in for violent reprisals the next day. Again the troops were kept unaware of their destination. In fact, Washington stole away with such artful stealth, wrote one officer, that “the rear guard and many of his own sentinels never missed him.”49 In marching twelve miles through the night toward Princeton, Washington pushed his long-suffering men almost beyond human endurance. It was a long, harrowing march down dark country lanes congealed with ice. The weary men, wrapped in a numb trance, some barely awake, padded against stinging winds; many fell asleep standing up whenever the column halted.
The troops arrived at the college town later than scheduled, shortly after an exceptionally clear, beautiful dawn that James Wilkinson remembered as “bright, serene, and extremely cold, with a hoarfrost that bespangled every object.”50 The men rapidly repaired a bridge over Stony Brook, south of town, before the army divided into two groups: Sullivan’s division veered northeast while Greene’s moved due north. The first spirited fighting erupted unexpectedly. Lieutenant Colonel Charles Mawhood was about to rush two British regiments to Trenton to aid Cornwallis when, to his infinite surprise, he encountered American forces under General Hugh Mercer in a broad, rolling meadow. “I believe they were as much astonished as if an army had dropped perpendicularly upon them,” declared Knox.51 Mawhood ordered a ferocious bayonet charge that staggered Mercer’s men. Mercer himself was knocked off his horse and given a merciless drubbing as he lay on the ground. In capturing the dapper, handsome Mercer—a physician from Fredericksburg and a friend of Washington’s—the British imagined they had taken the commander in chief himself. “Call for quarters, you damned rebel,” they taunted him. To which Mercer retorted, “I am no rebel,” and slashed at them with his sword. 52 The British mauled him repeatedly with their bayonets, carving seven gashes, until he lay near death. For Washington, it was a disturbing preview of the fate awaiting him if ever he were captured.
The Battle of Princeton gave Washington another chance to show that he was the army’s chief warrior in the antique sense. The eighteenth-century battlefield was a compact space, its cramped contours defined by the short range of muskets and bayonet charges, giving generals a chance to inspire by their immediate presence. When Mercer’s men began to retreat, harried by redcoats flashing bayonets, General Greene directed Pennsylvania militia into the fray, only to have them collide with Mercer’s fleeing men amid “a shower of grapeshot.”53 The American panic was stemmed by Washington himself, who suddenly circled into view and exhorted his rattled men to stand and fight. “Parade with us, my brave fellows!” he exclaimed, waving his hat. “There is but a handful of the enemy, and we will have them directly.” 54 According to his aide-de-camp Colonel John Fitzgerald, Washington rallied the men with an act of unbelievable bravery: he reined in his horse, faced the enemy directly, and simply froze. Yet again the intrepid Washington acted as if he were protected by an invisible aura.
With the British entrenched beyond a hillside fence, Washington lengthened and strengthened
the patriot line, instructing his men not to fire until told to do so. He exhibited exceptional sangfroid as he rode along the line. Then he personally led the charge up the hill, halting only when they had pushed within thirty yards of their adversaries. As he issued the command to fire, Washington, on his white charger, was such a conspicuous target that Fitzgerald clapped his hat over his eyes because he couldn’t bear to see him shot. When the fusillade of bullets ended and the enemy scattered, Fitzgerald finally peeked and saw Washington, untouched, sitting proudly atop his horse, wreathed by eddying smoke. “Thank God, your Excellency is safe!” Fitzgerald said to him, almost weeping with relief. Washington, unfazed, took his hand fondly. “Away, my dear colonel, and bring up the troops. The day is our own!”55 Fitzgerald wasn’t the only one bowled over by Washington’s coolness. “I shall never forget what I felt . . . when I saw him brave all the dangers of the field and his important life hanging as it were by a single hair with a thousand deaths flying around him,” wrote a young Philadelphia officer. “Believe me, I thought not of myself.”56
Washington spurred his horse after the retreating enemy, for once giving way to pure exhilaration. Perhaps repaying the old insult from the Battle of Harlem Heights, he shouted to his men, “It’s a fine fox chase, my boys!”57 Whatever joy he felt, however, was tempered by the horrifying spectacle of a snowy battlefield stained with American blood. One officer lay “rolling and writhing in his blood, unconscious of anything around him.”58 An adolescent lieutenant had a bullet hole in his chest and a skull smashed in by a bayonet. And so on.
