To Try Men's Souls - George Washington 1

by Newt Gingrich

  He stood by helplessly as a mad frenzy of despair seized the army. Men racing about in panic, gathering up what they thought they should carry off, and within minutes bonfires erupted across the encampment area as everything else was put to the torch. In the panic, items that could have been saved burned as well, including three wagonloads of precious shoes newly arrived from up the Hudson, hundreds of trousers and winter jackets, men snatching just what they needed for themselves and then burning the rest with no thought of tomorrow.

  There was no semblance of an army left as by the thousands they poured on to the road west, away from the accursed battlefields around New York, fleeing down from the heights toward the marshy open ground that was the only route to safety, the bridge across the Passaic River at Hackensack.

  Throughout the day they had run——he riding at the back of the column; the side of the road littered with cast-off equipment, tents, food, muskets, empty bottles drained by men who were now drunk; and more than a few simply turning off the road, heading into the marshes to hide until all had passed, so that they could then slip away toward home.

  All the time he raged inwardly at the utter folly, the waste, and could see in the eyes of the men he rode past increasing despair, and in more than a few, contempt for him, after yet another defeat.

  His only hope was to gain the bridge ahead of the pursuers. In the distance he could hear their trumpet calls, some of them no longer even military, but instead the mocking, disdainful call of the fox hunt.

  That had been almost too much to bear. He had struggled against the impulse to turn about, ride straight back with drawn saber, and make an end to it all. He could see from the way Billy Lee watched him throughout the day, as if reading his mind, that he was ready to stop him.

  They had yet to seize the Hackensack bridge. A corporal’s guard could have ended the war right there with a single volley into the mob that seethed about, pushing, shoving, fighting with one another to get across the narrow plank bridge.

  He did not even bother to try to reestablish order, to ride through the mob. Instead, he had waited, resolved as always to be the last to cross, looking back anxiously up the road, seeing in the distance the enemy leisurely coming on, stopped only by a few skirmishers, as usual the undaunted men of the frontier, armed with their long rifles, trading shots with the Hessian jaegers, firing, falling back a few hundred paces as they reloaded, turning to fire again.

  The last of the line infantry, militia, and two dozen precious field pieces were finally across. The ground on the east side of the bridge was a sickening field of litter and refuse, enough rations to feed the army for days tossed on the ground as men shed the few extra pounds of food in their exhausted state so as to lighten their loads, muskets by the hundreds, cartridge boxes, canteens, more than a few horses some dead, others just collapsed from exhaustion, cut from the traces of the guns and the few precious surviving supply wagons just left behind. The refuse of an army in panicked retreat is a sight which he had become all too familiar with during the last three months.

  They had marched into New York from Boston with such exuberant confidence in the spring, and, as winter closed in, fled in such ignominious terror and despair.

  He could not imagine then that the despair could ever deepen and become worse. But it had.

  And now, at this moment, a voice whispered within him that they were marching to their final fight. As he watched the men passing, staggering toward Trenton, he had a different sense of it all. Despair yes, but also defiance. If this was indeed the last day, they would die facing the enemy rather than running away.

  He turned his mount and urged him forward. The road was packed with his troops, artillery pieces interspersed, men standing, huddled together for warmth. Waiting in the darkness . . . freezing in the darkness . . . a darkness which was beginning to shift to the first pale shadows of a stormy dawn.

  “Forward, men. Forward!” he cried. “Victory or death. Now forward!”

  “Thank God,” Jonathan gasped.

  He had been shaking so hard he felt that he was about to break apart at the joints. Each breath was an agony. The men of the headquarters company, at the head of the column, stood together in a tight knot. Peter had positioned himself to the windward side of Jonathan and without embarrassment had his arms tight around him, the two standing together, shivering, shaking. All around them men were bowed over, the heavy snow gathering on their battered hats and turned backs so that they looked almost like frozen lumps or snow-covered rocks firmly affixed to the road.

  “Forward, men! Forward!”

  They could hear his command, and the company captain repeated it. There were no drums to set the marching pace, no flags to mark the head of the column. The men began to shuffle forward. Several horsemen trotted past, one of them nearly pitching over as his mount stumbled on the ice, gaining the front of the column. A moment later Washington himself trotted past.

  “Advance scouts?” Washington shouted. “Any reports?”

  “Nothing, sir,” the captain replied.

  Jonathan barely noticed Washington’s passage. Head bent, he pressed forward. In places the road was frozen solid; in others the ice was broken by the passage of the advance company sent to probe ahead of the main column. Lost in silent misery, he staggered on, step by labored step. Lift one foot out of the freezing mud, move it forward, for an instant test whether the ground beneath was solid and slippery, waiting to pitch him over, or solid enough that his numb bare feet could get a grasp; set that foot down, pull the other out of the sludge, move it forward. Step by step. He had run the calculation in his head while waiting for the previous hour, to think of anything to make the agonizing minutes pass. Six miles to Trenton. A man makes a step of two and a half feet. About two thousand steps per mile. Six miles equals . . . He couldn’t quite sum the numbers; he didn’t want to, the thought was too overwhelming.

  “Jersey!”

  He was shaken out of his misery and contemplation. It was the sergeant.

  “General wants you two up forward with him. Let’s go!”

  The sergeant led the way, running as best he could, nearly pitching over, stumbling, regaining his feet. Jonathan ran as if in a nightmare. Strange thoughts surfaced. He remembered when he and James had stolen the rum from behind the tavern and gotten drunk for the first time in their lives. How his legs no longer obeyed what his brain commanded, and at the time how hysterically funny it had seemed to him.

  It felt the same now, but there was nothing to laugh about. He could not feel his legs. It was as if he were removed from his own body and trying to will it to move. The weight of his water-soaked cape, bore down on him, as did the musket on his back, slung inverted to prevent the sleet and snow from lodging in the barrel . . . as if it mattered, since he did not have a single dry cartridge.

  He followed the sergeant and then saw the General’s white horse, in the lead, his servant riding beside him.

  The sergeant came up by the General’s side.

  “Here are the local boys, sir.”

  Washington nodded and looked down.

  Jonathan struggled to keep alongside of him, moving at a slow jog. The General, mounted, was forcing a fast pace now. The near jog was beginning to restore sensation to his legs and feet, and he wished it would not, for each step produced a stinging pain.

  “Do you boys recognize this road?”

  Jonathan, breathing hard, turned his attention forward.

  Merciful God, he realized with a start, dawn was coming.

  We were supposed to attack in the dark, while the Hessians were asleep.

  Now he could see a split rail fence by the side of the road bedecked with an inch or more of snow. And beyond it the shape of a house, well made of brick, a light within. And apple orchards on either side of the road.

  It was the Gaines’s farm, with acres of apples, pears, and even peaches on the southern slopes of the land.

  Gay and Stanley Gaines had no children. All had died in
a smallpox epidemic before Jonathan had been born, and they had always been indulgent of the boys, letting them take an apple or two as they passed by, the old woman sometimes giving them a hot apple turnover on a winter’s day when he and his friends were afield hunting or exploring. She would smile at them, that wistful smile of a mother bereaved of her own children and thus embracing any child who might wander by. On occasion the elderly couple would come all the way into town to attend church and then, after services, linger for a while in the cemetery by the row of five small headstones.

  He could see someone coming from the house now, holding a lantern.

  “Gaines’s farm,” Peter announced, and motioned toward the house. “Yes, sir, we know where we are now.”

  “Good. Then stay close by.”

  “Yes, sir.” Peter replied.

  The elderly couple stood by the gate leading into their farm.

  “General Washington?” It was a woman’s voice.

  The General wordlessly touched the brim of his hat as he passed.

  “Morning, Mrs. Gaines,” Peter announced. There was an almost boyish tone in his voice, prideful, even though without doubt she would not know who he was.

  “Here, my lads,” and she stepped through the gate, holding something out for Peter and Jonathan.

  Shaking with the cold, Jonathan took the offering, feeling the warmth, smelling it. A warm apple turnover. The woman had a basket under her arm, filled with her offering.

  “God bless you, my boys. God bless you.”

  She fell away from their side. He looked back. She and her husband were handing out the turnovers, to hands reaching out from the passing column. “Thank you, ma’am, oh, bless ya, ma’am . . . ,” and her repeated refrain, breaking down into tears. “God bless you, boys. God be with you.”

  She drifted away into the predawn mist, her voice first an echo, and then lost.

  “Aren’t you going to eat it?” Peter cried.

  Jonathan looked down at the turnover, actually wanting to keep it in his hands for another minute. The warmth was a gift as well.

  He raised the offering as if it were a communion host and took a bite. It was painful to work his jaws after the hours of chattering from the cold. He devoured the rest in several bites, feeling the warmth, a small ember of hope within, tears in his eyes from this simple act of charity, the tears now freezing.

  “Keep moving! Keep up the pace, boys!”

  It was the General, moving toward to the head of the column at a trot, the two boys having to all but run to keep up. Behind them they could hear the familiar sounds of an army on the move, the clatter of muskets banging against tin cups, the low undertone of voices, men gasping, cursing, the sound of the wind rising and falling in the trees as they passed through a tunnel-like woodlot, the slippery road dipping into a hollow and rising again, the going tough for a moment. Washington’s horse nearly lost its footing more than once. One farm after another passed by and he could not recall their names.

  And with each step the light was changing. There was no color to it at all, just darker shades of gray shifting to lighter, deep shadows of darkness in the woods, reflecting dully off the ice and snow that carpeted fields where corn had been harvested and shucked, orderly apple, pear, and peach orchards, the trees bent low, off glistening farmhouses, outbuildings, and barns. At each farmhouse there was a light, smoke from chimneys. Some had shutters bolted, sentries posted around the building; a few had doors open, those within watching the army pass.

  How easy it would be to say he could not take another step, to go to an open door and pass within to find warmth by a fire.

  “The sunshine patriot . . .”

  That drove him onward. I am not one of them. I am not like James . . . I am not one of them . . . I am not like James . . .

  And always there was the refrain, the General turning to ride back for several hundred yards, standing in his stirrups, shouting: “Forward! Keep moving, men! Forward!”

  And then he would return to the front of the column, ensuring that the sharp pace of the march was maintained.

  Keeping pace with the General, Peter rattled off the names of places passed, distances to go. The General looked down, nodding and now with the rising light they could distinguish his face, drawn with exhaustion, but filled, it seemed, by some inner light, a passion to his eyes.

  “There, sir,” Peter announced, pointing to his left. “It’s a lane up to a wood lot. The Kindermans’, I think. The lane, though, it continues from the northeast side of the woodlot, links up to the road that comes down from Princeton a mile or so farther on.”

  Washington turned, snapped an order to one of the men riding nearby. He reined about, calling for several of the infantrymen marching behind the headquarters company to follow him, and started up the lane.

  Washington looked down at Jonathan.

  “You, lad?” he asked. “You’re the one who jumped into the river, aren’t you?”

  Peter had been doing most of the talking while Jonathan struggled to keep pace. Feeling had most definitely returned to his legs and the agony was nearly overwhelming. He had looked down only once, and in the early morning light the sight had frightened him. He had just stepped into a puddle of slush, which had washed the mud off, but there was something dark oozing out even as he pressed on . . . His feet were bleeding. He saw bloodstains in the snow. He looked back at the men pushing behind them, the way their feet were moving, the men staggering. Would the road be paved with blood? he wondered.

  But it was breathing that he was most focused on. Each gasp of the damp air took effort. The faint warm glow of the offering of the Gaineses had long ago been extinguished. He just pushed on. He could not give in, but he had let Peter do the talking.

  “Son, did you hear me?”

  “Ah, yes, sir,” he replied haltingly. “Yes, sir.”

  “Lad, are you feeling fit to continue?”

  He wondered if this was an offer for him to fall out.

  How far back to the Gaineses? Surely they would take him in. Surely they might remember him from years past.

  The sunshine patriot . . .

  No, damn it.

  “Yes, sir. I’m with you, sir. I feel fine now, sir,” he lied.

  “How much farther to where the road forks?”

  Did he detect something in the General’s voice. Almost like it was about to break?

  “It should just be ahead, sir,” Jonathan offered.

  Washington turned to one of his staff.

  “Tell General Sullivan to come up.” He pressed on, the courier turning back and minutes later returning with Sullivan by his side.

  Jonathan looked up at the famed officer who was considered one of the backbones of the army. His face was grim, and he was shivering from the cold, riding without a cape or cloak, his uniform clearly visible.

  In the rising light Jonathan could resolve the shadows ahead into a small knot of men standing in the middle of the road, the advance scouts. He recognized the place, the hamlet of Birmingham. It was now just four miles or so to Trenton.

  Washington slowed to engage Jonathan again. “Is this Birmingham and the Scotch Road?” he asked.

  “Yes, sir.”

  The crossroad was marked by half a dozen homes, one of them an inn, another owned by a cabinetmaker of local renown. The crossroads had obviously been occupied by the advance guard, who were posted in front of each house, guides waiting in the middle of the road.

  Washington rode forward at a trot, stopped for a moment to ask a hurried question, then turned back.

  “General Sullivan, here is where our column divides,” Washington announced. “Your troops will continue straight ahead. Deploy as close to the town as you dare, then drive straight in the moment you hear our guns open up. Do you understand?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Then God be with you, sir,” and he leaned over to shake Sullivan’s hand.

  “Victory or death, sir,” Sullivan replied loudly.
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  Jonathan could see the General force a smile.

  “I will see you after the battle, sir.”

  Though not privy to the plan of march Jonathan understood what was now happening. The road straight ahead was the one he had usually tramped along as a boy when venturing northward out of Trenton. Some called it the River Road, for in another mile it would drop down toward the Delaware and then run close to its banks for the rest of the way into Trenton. The General would turn his horse east, to lead the column on another line of march, swinging out and away from Trenton for a mile or so before turning south again, the road then taking them into Trenton on the eastern side of town.

  Jonathan knew enough of strategy to grasp that Sullivan was to close the approach from the north side of town while the column led by General Washington with men mostly of General Greene’s command would close from the northeast and east. It was the longer route, and he was shaken to realize he was nowhere near as familiar with this road as the one that Sullivan would take.

  He looked over nervously at Peter.

  “Do you know this way,” he hissed.

  “Of course I do. Remember when I got that deer two years ago? It was over near the Whitman farm. That’s on this road.”

  It was hard to hold on to his thoughts, to remember the roads, lanes, and narrow paths he had explored as a boy. It was all becoming even more confusing, but he said nothing as the column led by the General turned left and pressed on, while Sullivan waited for his men, farther back in the line of march, to come up and then press straight in toward the town.

  The march to the east was anguishing, for they were facing into the wind. The General had also quickened the pace, in spite of the condition of the road. In places it was frozen almost solid, and it was nearly impossible to keep one’s footing. They turned down into a gentle hollow, crossing a marshy stretch that was flooding calf deep with icy water, then back up again.

  Another crossroad appeared ahead, a few more advance scouts marking the way, and the column turned south.