by Kate Messner
When he opened them, he was standing in the mudroom, and Luke was walking through the door.
Ranger lowered his head and let the old first aid kit fall onto his dog bed. He pawed at his blanket until it was covered up. Then he dropped the old, frayed rope on top.
“Hey, Ranger!” Luke stood by the door with a bag of marshmallows. “Whatcha doing?” He bent and picked up the rope. “Where’s this from?”
Ranger took the end of it in his teeth and tugged.
“You want to play tug-of-war?” Luke pulled back for a while. Then he let go. Carefully, Ranger nuzzled the old rope under his blanket.
“Okay, I can take a hint,” Luke said, laughing. “We don’t have to play anymore. But do you want to come outside?”
Ranger trotted up to Luke and licked his marshmallow-sugary hand. Then he sat and waited for an ear scratch. When Luke didn’t do that right away, Ranger nudged his hand.
“You need some love, huh?” Luke put down the marshmallows, knelt beside Ranger, and gave him a big hug. “Sorry those fireworks scared you. But they’re over now. You should come outside.” He went to the door and held it open. “Come on, Ranger … let’s go.”
Ranger sat by his dog bed. He didn’t want to go out unless the fireworks were really over. It didn’t sound loud out there anymore, but you could never be sure with fireworks. Luke was going no matter what, though. And he was taking the marshmallows.
Ranger trotted to the door. He was glad to be home, but he’d never forget Isaac. Ranger understood that even though his work was done for now, Isaac still had journeys and battles ahead of him. But somehow, Ranger knew that the brave boy with the strong rowing arms would be all right.
“I’m going out to the fire.” Luke was holding the door. “You coming, Ranger?”
Ranger went outside and followed Luke into the yard, over to the firepit, where Dad was adding more wood. The fireworks were over. Only the moon lit the sky. All Ranger could hear were Sadie and Mom laughing and the fire crackling. It smelled good. Like wood smoke and toasted marshmallows and home.
Isaac Pope is a fictional character, but his story is based on the experiences of real soldiers who served in Colonel John Glover’s Fourteenth Continental Regiment. They were called the Marblehead Mariners because nearly all of them had served on fishing boats together, based in the town of Marblehead, Massachusetts. The Fourteenth Continental Regiment included a number of African-American and Native soldiers, and they really did sneak George Washington’s army across the East River in the middle of the night to escape from the Redcoats after the Battle of Long Island. In less than nine hours, they ferried almost nine thousand men across the river.
From there, the Marblehead Mariners fought in several more battles in New York and retreated through New Jersey. They arrived at Washington’s camp in Pennsylvania just days before he launched the Christmas night raid on Trenton. That effort may well have been impossible without Glover’s mariners to man the boats and without the Continental Army spies who supplied Washington with critical information necessary to carry out the attack.
The officer who gives Isaac his spying mission is fictional. But the letter from General Washington was real. In December of 1776, Washington wrote to his officers and asked them to look for men who might be helpful as spies. They were asked to find “some person who can be engaged to cross the river as a spy, that we may, if possible, obtain some knowledge of the enemy’s situation, movements, and intention. Particular inquiry should be made by the person sent, if any preparations are making to cross the river; whether any boats are building and where; whether they are coming over land from Brunswick; whether any great collection of horses is made, and for what purpose. Expense must not be spared in procuring such intelligence, and it will readily be paid by me.”
Isaac Pope’s spy mission was inspired by the stories of real-life spies who worked for the Continental Army. James Armistead was an enslaved man who joined the Continental Army in 1781 and served under the Marquis de Lafayette, the commander of the French forces who had come to help the Continental Army. Armistead posed as a runaway slave who’d been hired by the British to spy on the Americans, and British General Cornwallis welcomed him into his camp. Armistead went back and forth from there to the American forces, relaying information that ultimately helped the Continental Army win the Battle of Yorktown, which ended the war.
Washington reportedly had at least one spy who studied the roads and terrain around Trenton and reported back to him about that and about the number of Hessian troops there. Historians believe this intelligence helped him plan the Christmas night attack.
Interestingly enough, Rall also got important information from spies just before the attack on Trenton. Two brothers who had remained loyal to England, Abraham and Moses Doane, apparently saw Washington’s troops preparing for the crossing. They hurried to tell Rall, but he was at a party and refused to be interrupted, so his servants wouldn’t let the brothers in. The brothers wrote a note instead, and when the servant delivered it, Rall was busy playing cards and shoved it in his pocket instead of reading it.
When Christmas night arrived, men like Isaac really did man the boats that moved Washington’s entire army across the Delaware River, and the weather was every bit as miserable as it’s described in this story. John Greenwood, a fifer from Boston, described the brutal weather that night:
“Over the river we then went in a flat-bottomed scow … and we had to wait for the rest and so began to pull down fences and make fires to warm ourselves, for the storm was increasing rapidly. After a while it rained, hailed, snowed, and froze, and at the same time blew a perfect hurricane …”
Today, the site of the crossing of the Delaware is a state park, with a museum that shares the story of the Fourteenth Continental Regiment’s role in the attack on Trenton.
After the crossing was complete, the Battle of Trenton itself only lasted a couple of hours. Washington didn’t lose any men to enemy bullets during the battle, though several did die from exposure in that awful weather. Twenty-two Hessians were killed, and many more were taken prisoner.
A famous painting that depicts this historic river crossing hangs in New York City’s Metropolitan Museum of Art. But historians are quick to point out that this particular piece is more art than history. It was painted by a German artist named Emanuel Leutze, more than seventy years after the battle. The Delaware River doesn’t look like this at the point where Washington’s army crossed. It’s likely that Leutze actually painted the Rhine, a river in his homeland, to portray it instead. The boats shown in the painting aren’t the Durham boats that were actually used that night. Those were larger, carried forty men, and had higher sides. Finally, given the stormy conditions and swirling ice chunks that came careening down the river, George Washington’s noble stance in the painting is quite a stretch as well. If he’d been standing like that on the night of the crossing, he’d almost certainly have toppled right into the icy river. And that flag shown in the boat? It wasn’t around yet on the night they crossed the river. That version of the American flag didn’t exist until 1777.
Isaac’s battle with smallpox was also based on historic accounts of disease during this time period. In the early days of the American Revolution, far more members of the Continental Army died from diseases than from battle. Smallpox turned out to be more dangerous than the enemy’s bullets or bayonets. George Washington had smallpox himself when he was a teenager, so he knew of its horrors and he realized that it was threatening to wipe out his army. Finally, he made the decision to have all his troops inoculated, or given vaccines. In February 1777, Washington wrote, “Finding the Small pox to be spreading much and fearing that no precaution can prevent it from running through the whole of our Army, I have determined that the troops shall be inoculated. This Expedient may be attended with some inconveniences and some disadvantages, but yet I trust in its consequences will have the most happy effects. Necessity not only authorizes but seems to require the measu
re, for should the disorder infect the Army in the natural way and rage with its usual virulence we should have more to dread from it than from the Sword of the Enemy.” Washington’s decision was controversial at the time. Many people were still afraid of the vaccine, but ultimately, historians agree that it probably saved his army.
Isaac and Joe are fictional characters, but they were inspired by more than five thousand African-American men, both free and enslaved, who served with the Patriots at some point during the Revolutionary War. These men fought with no promise of freedom, and most of them found themselves enslaved again when the war ended.
Isaac’s reflections on George Washington’s policy toward black soldiers are based on historical facts. When Washington took command of the Continental Army in 1775, he ordered an end to the recruitment of black soldiers, whether those men were free or enslaved. Those who were already enlisted in the North, many of whom fought bravely at Lexington, Concord, and Bunker Hill, were only allowed to finish their terms of service.
What was behind this racism? Washington was from Virginia, and plantation owners in the South worried that arming African-American men could result in slave uprisings. They feared that more than they feared the British Army.
But Washington’s policy didn’t last. In 1775, the British Army started actively re-cruiting enslaved men, promising them freedom as long as they’d run away from Patriots and not Loyalists. Within a month, eight hundred men had joined the unit known as Lord Dunmore’s Ethiopian Regiment.
This forced the Continental Army to change its policy. In January 1776, Washington allowed free black men with prior military experience to enlist, and that offer was extended to all free black men in 1777. Soon after, Washington approved a plan for Rhode Island to raise a regiment of free blacks and enslaved men.
What happened to the enslaved people who fought with the British in the Revolutionary War? Many were captured and forced back into slavery after the Battle of Yorktown. Others escaped to New York.
In 1782, American and British officials signed the treaty that granted Americans independence. As part of that deal, Americans demanded the return of their property, including enslaved men who had run away to fight with the British. Britain’s officers said no. They created a list of the African-Americans who had served Britain in the war and made arrangements for some of them to be evacuated. Ultimately, three to four thousand African-American people boarded ships in New York and left for Nova Scotia, as well as Britain and Jamaica. Unfortunately, those who ended up in Nova Scotia didn’t find a much better living situation there. Many became indentured servants, working under terrible conditions with few rights in a cold place far from home.
As for the enslaved men who fought for the Continental Army, a few were freed when the war ended. Most, however, were still considered property. They were sent back into slavery by the country they’d helped to found, and never tasted the freedom for which they’d fought.
If you would like to learn more about the American Revolution, the role of African-American soldiers, Revolutionary spies, smallpox, and working dogs, check out the following books and websites:
Answering the Cry for Freedom: Stories of African Americans and the American Revolution by Gretchen Woelfle, illustrated by R. Gregory Christie (Calkins Creek, 2006)
A Spy Called James: The True Story of James Lafayette, Revolutionary War Double Agent by Anne Rockwell, illustrated by Floyd Cooper (Millbrook Press, 2016)
DK Eyewitness Books: American Revolution by Stuart Murray (DK Children, 2015)
George Washington, Spymaster: How the Americans Outspied the British and Won the Revolutionary War by Thomas B. Allen (National Geographic, 2007)
Sniffer Dogs: How Dogs (and Their Noses) Save the World by Nancy Castaldo (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2014)
“Crossing of the Delaware.” George Washington’s Mount Vernon digital encyclopedia. http://www.mountvernon.org/library/digitalhistory/digital-encyclopedia/article/crossing-of-the-delaware/
“Disease in the Revolutionary War.” George Washington’s Mount Vernon digital encyclopedia. http://www.mountvernon.org/library/digitalhistory/digital-encyclopedia/article/disease-in-the-revolutionary-war/
Washington Crossing Historic Park. https://www.washingtoncrossingpark.org/#
Alden, John Richard. General Charles Lee: Traitor or Patriot? Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1951.
Billias, George Athan. General John Glover and His Marblehead Mariners. New York: Henry Holt & Company, 1960.
Chernow, Ron. Washington: A Life. New York: Penguin Press, 2010.
Daigler, Kenneth A. Spies, Patriots, and Traitors: American Intelligence in the Revolutionary War. Washington, D.C.: Georgetown University Press, 2014.
Dobyns, Lloyd. “Fighting … Maybe for Freedom, but probably not.” Colonial Williamsburg. CW Journal, Autumn 2007, accessed March 10, 2018. http://www.history.org/foundation/journal/autumn07/slaves.cfm.
Fenn, Elizabeth A. Pox Americana: The Great Smallpox Epidemic of 1775–82. New York: Hill and Wang, 2001.
Fischer, David Hackett. Washington’s Crossing. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004.
Gilbert, Alan. Black Patriots and Loyalists: Fighting for Emancipation in the War for Independence. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2012.
Heyrman, Christine Leigh. Commerce and Culture: The Maritime Communities of Colonial Massachusetts, 1690–1750. New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 1984.
Ketchum, Richard M. The Winter Soldiers. Garden City, NY: Doubleday and Company, 1973.
Markle, Donald E. The Fox and the Hound: The Birth of American Spying. New York: Hippocrene Books, 2014.
McCullough, David. 1776. New York: Simon & Schuster, 2005.
Misencik, Paul R. The Original American Spies: Seven Covert Agents of the Revolutionary War. Jefferson, NC: McFarland & Company, 2014.
Nagy, John. A. George Washington’s Secret Spy War: The Making of America’s First Spymaster. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 2016.
National Park Service. “Stories from the Revolution: African Americans in the Revolutionary Period.” Accessed March 10, 2018.https://www.nps.gov/revwar/about_the_revolution/african_americans.html
Rhodehamel, John, H. The American Revolution: Writings from the War of Independence. New York: Literary Classics of the United States, 2001.
Schecter, Barnet. The Battle for New York: The City at the Heart of the American Revolution. New York: Walker & Company, 2002.
Smith, Samuel Stelle. The Battle of Trenton. Monmouth Beach, NJ: Philip Freneau Press, 1965.
Kate Messner is the author of The Seventh Wish; All the Answers; The Brilliant Fall of Gianna Z., recipient of the E. B. White Read Aloud Award for Older Readers; Capture the Flag, a Crystal Kite Award winner; Over and Under the Snow, a New York Times Notable Children’s Book; and the Ranger in Time and Marty McGuire chapter book series. A former middle-school English teacher, Kate lives on Lake Champlain with her family and loves reading, walking in the woods, and traveling. Visit her online at katemessner.com.
Rescue on the Oregon Trail
Danger in Ancient Rome
Long Road to Freedom
Race to the South Pole
Journey through Ash and Smoke
Escape from the Great Earthquake
D-Day: Battle on the Beach
Hurricane Katrina Rescue
Disaster on the Titanic
Night of Soldiers and Spies
Ranger has never needed his search-and-rescue training more than when he arrives at the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001. There he meets Risha Scott and her friend Max who have come to work with Risha’s mother for a school project. But when the unthinkable happens and the building is evacuated, Risha is separated from her mom. Can Ranger lead Risha to safety and help reunite her family?
Risha Scott held a box of muffins and stared up at the Twin Towers. She loved visiting her mom’s office at the World Trade Center. It was fun to walk through the busy, crowded plaza, with its fou
ntain and sculpture and bright flowers. Risha loved the buzz of thousands of people, all going to work in the Twin Towers. Today she and her best friend, Max, got to spend the whole day there! They had to visit a professional workplace as part of their fifth-grade career project. Max’s dad worked downtown, too, but his office didn’t allow visitors.
“I call that chocolate chip muffin!” Max said as they walked into the lobby with Risha’s mom. They waited to sign in at the security desk. Then they’d take the elevators up to the ninety-first floor of the North Tower, where Risha’s mother worked.
Risha yawned.
“You’re not tired already, are you?” her mom asked, laughing.
“You got me up so early!” Risha said as they waited for the elevator. “But I’m not complaining! Today is going to be amazing.” Risha had on her navy blue dress with Mom’s pretty green-and-gold scarf tied at her neck. Mom wore the bright purple dress Risha loved, with her cool red-framed glasses and black shoes with little bows on top. Last night, Risha and Mom had even painted their fingernails the same color, a sparkly pale pink. Max was dressed up, too, wearing his dad’s favorite red tie.
It was perfect September weather, with a robin-egg-blue sky. On their way to the office, Max and Risha had gone with Mom to vote in the primary election for New York City’s mayor. They’d walked another three blocks to pick up muffins for everyone in the office at the fancy bakery Risha loved. Now Risha and Max would get to help Mom at work all day.
