The Crossing

by Howard Fast

  The success of the whole project hinged on the river crossing, and that evening, as Washington pondered the problem, it began to snow. The weather had been a poor ally. It was a bitterly cold and wretched December; indeed, the presence of so much ice in the Delaware would indicate a much colder winter than we ever experience today.

  As Washington worked out his plan, one thing became evident to him; either he would cross the river under the cover of darkness or the crossing would fail. If the Hessians mounted even one light cannon on the other shore, his big Durham boats could be picked off like ducks on a pond. Thus, no matter how carefully his plan was drawn, its success depended upon Colonel John Glover and his brigade of Massachusetts fishermen.

  Washington sent for Glover and presented his plan for attack. One can imagine Glover, small, tight-faced and dark-eyed, sitting there opposite the tall, handsome, fair-skinned Virginian and listening to this grandiose scheme of attack, which departed casually from all realities of the army’s condition at that moment. Not only that, but the mad plan was planted squarely upon the backs of the New England fishermen. The chronic bitterness that seems to have been generated whenever General Washington faced Colonel Glover must have flowered here, and from all we can learn, Glover’s initial reaction was no better than General Gates’s.

  The fact of the matter was that the men in Glover’s brigade wanted no more of the Revolution as it was being fought. When war had been waged in New England, there had been a series of signal successes for the Massachusetts volunteers, not only in the long flight of the British from Concord to Boston, but afterward in the battle of Bunker Hill, outside of Boston.

  Glover, like many New Englanders, tended to blame the present condition of the army and the present political and military disaster upon the predominance of the southern leadership. Glover’s fishermen were proud, decently educated, reserved men, Congregationalists and Presbyterians: different in outlook, background, and in religion from the southerners and the Pennsylvanians.

  They felt that from its very beginning they had carried the major burden of the war with no reward and no pay. Neighbors of these New England fishermen, who had remained at home and fitted out their own ships, were engaged in privateering and were in the process of becoming rich. In fact, every mail from New England brought to the fishermen in Glover’s brigade news of new fortunes. There were banks in New England whose vaults were stuffed with chests of gold and silver taken from rich British ships, and, since the thin line between privateering and piracy was frequently overlooked, some of that New England money had also come from French and Spanish ships when the opportunity presented itself.

  Now, sitting opposite Washington, the snow falling outside, so great a distance from his own home, his own country and his own trade, Glover pointed out to the Virginian that he and his men had overstayed their leave. Their enlistments had expired. Furthermore, he reminded the general, Congress, acting through the general, had promised the fishermen two small frigates, which they could sail to their Massachusetts home ports, and which would become the nucleus of an American navy.

  It was this promise of warships and the accompanying hope of prize money with it that had held Glover’s brigade together. Now they were being asked to underwrite a suicidal maneuver here in a strange land, in an icy river, far from home, and to surrender any hope of the frigates, any hope of sailing home, any hope of anything but a bloody finish to a disastrous war.

  What then could Washington have replied to Glover? The Virginian was past promises; every promise made had been broken, for his promises were for a congress and a nation, and always they were ignored and rejected. Like Glover, he had no easy way of reaching out to another man.

  Yet he convinced Glover. He might have mentioned that while Glover could return home, he, Washington could not, and that Mount Vernon was as fair a place as Marblehead, Massachusetts. He had never been to one, nor had Glover been to the other. He might have told Glover that he too hated war; but that they stood on their own soil. There was no other justification for a man to raise a weapon against another. Yet Nathanael Greene, who was a Quaker, would cross the river with him. And if the odds were too great …

  Glover might have angrily refuted any intimation that he was afraid. He was a physically small man, and in the presence of Washington, six feet and three inches in his bare feet, he could feel overwhelmed and very defensive. One can imagine him saying: “And did I say that I was afraid? Did I say that I would not take your lousy army across? Have I not taken them across every piece of water you came to? But I will not go down to Bristol, and I will not ferry those damned Philadelphia men. I have not enough men for that. It’s a damned impossible thing to do it with your force alone, and that’s all I will do and that’s all that the Durham boats will do in the course of one night with the river filled with ice. And don’t thank me. It’s not for you that I do this but for myself and my own cause.”

  He would not give the fox hunter an inch, and the gulf between them remained unbridged, but likely enough Washington would have traded half his army for a few hundred men like John Glover.

  Washington agreed to Glover’s conditions. He knew that there were oar-propelled galleys and what were called gondolas, a sort of narrow ferry freighter, moored at Philadelphia, and he decided that somehow or other he would have these boats moved up to take the men across at the other two points. It might be supposed that in a sense he was relieved that Glover and his brigade would remain under his own command. For all of the constant estrangement and bitterness between himself and Colonel Glover, throughout the long retreat Glover’s men had been the steadiest, the best disciplined and always the most dependable.

  [10]

  JOHNNY STARK of Bennington, Vermont, was one of those rare persons who are singularly blessed. Buoyant in spirit, fearless, charming, tall, long-boned, wide-shouldered, he never knew a day of ill health and he lived to be almost a hundred years old. Again and again, he risked his life, and always emerged unscathed. He was married to Molly Stark, and they could dance a night through without pause for breath. And she was wise enough to know that there were men born whom women went to like bees to honey, thus she counted her blessings and smiled instead of scowling. As for the men, they would have died for Johnny Stark, and times were that they did.

  Was it any wonder that he and his Vermont boys—who were called the Bennington Rifles—were known, north to south, right through the colonies?

  When Johnny Stark was twenty-four, he was taken by the Saint Francis Indians, and they held him for six weeks. He loved the life of an Indian, but he loved the girls in Bennington better; so he escaped, using his wits for a way. He had a large measure of wit. In the Battle of Saratoga, he led his men in a wild charge against a British position, and took it too, with clubbed rifles against bayonets. And they say that before he led his men into the British and Hessian guns, he called out to them:

  “Yonder are the Hessians, lads. Seven pounds and ten-pence a man. What is a Bennington man worth? Tonight the flag floats from that hill or Molly Stark sleeps a widow!”

  But that was still in the future when Johnny Stark and a round dozen of his Bennington boys came riding into the encampment along the Delaware. One can imagine the wild cheers as the Vermont men in their fringed shirts and leggings and fur caps came cantering down the river road, conceivably singing that wonderful song of theirs:

  Why come ye hither redcoats,

  Across the briny water?

  Why come ye hither redcoats,

  Like bullocks to the slaughter?

  Oh listen to the singing

  Of the trumpet wild and free!

  Full soon you’ll hear the barking

  Of the rifle from the tree!

  Oh the rifle! Oh the rifle!

  In our hands it will prove no trifle!

  Why come ye hither redcoats,

  Your mind with madness filled?

  There’s danger in our valleys,

  There’s danger in our hills!
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  Washington welcomed him with as much delight as the enlisted men. Johnny Stark was exactly what they needed to break the spell of despair that defeat had cast over them. His first demand of Washington was not would there be an attack, but when?

  They must cross the river, Washington told him.

  What else are rivers for?

  He talked to Glover and soothed him. They were both Yankees and they understood each other, and when he was assured by Glover that the army would be brought across, there were no doubts in his mind.

  The air was electric now. The same day, Washington wrote to Colonel Reed:

  General Washington to Colonel Reed.

  23 December 1776.

  Dear Sir: The bearer is sent down to know whether your plan was attempted last night and if not to inform you, that Christmas-day at night, one hour before day, is the time fixed upon for our attempt on Trenton. For Heaven’s sake keep this to yourself, as the discovery of it may prove fatal to us, our numbers, sorry am I to say, being less than I had any conception of: but necessity, dire necessity, will, nay must, justify an attempt. Prepare, and, in concert with Griffin, attack as many of their posts as you possibly can with a prospect of success: the more we can attack at the same instant, the more confusion we shall spread and greater good will result from it. If I had not been fully convinced before of the enemy’s designs, I have now ample testimony of their intentions to attack Philadelphia so soon as the ice will afford the means of conveyance.

  As the Colonels of the Continental Regiments might kick up some dust about command, unless Cadwalader is considered by them in the light of a brigadier, which I wish him to be. I desired General Gates, who is unwell, and applied for Leave to go to Philadelphia, to endeavor, if his health would permit him, to call and stay two or three days at Bristol on his way. I shall not be particular: we could not ripen matters for our attack before the time mentioned in the first part of this letter; so much out of sorts and so much in want of everything are the troops under Sullivan Etc. Let me know by a careful express the plan you are to pursue. The letter herewith sent, forward on to Philadelphia: I could wish it to be in time for the Southern post’s departure, which will be I believe by eleven o’clock tomorrow.

  I am, dear Sir Your most obedient servant

  G. D. Washington

  P.S.–I have ordered our men to be provided with three day’s provision ready cooked, with which and their blankets they are to march: for if we are successful, which Heaven grant and the circumstances favor, we may push on. I shall direct every ferry and ford to be well guarded, and not a soul suffered to pass without an officer’s going down with the permit. Do the same with you.

  Washington’s hope that General Gates might recover from his petulance and lend his advice to the amateur soldiers at Bristol was without foundation. Gates washed his hands of the whole affair and went on to plead his cause before Congress and to continue with his efforts to usurp the commander in chief and occupy the position himself.

  [11]

  COLONEL HENRY KNOX was commander of the Continental artillery, but actually he commanded only eighteen guns, all that were left of the hundreds of pieces of artillery that the Continentals had begun the war with. Knox was a corpulent, indulgent young man who had been a bookseller in Boston, and whose life style consisted of unshakable loyalty to and adulation of his commander in chief. His relationship to the few cannon that remained to the Continentals was like a father’s relationship to his surviving children after others have perished. Knox had always proved a thorn in Glover’s side; the loading and unloading of cannon every time they crossed a river, with Knox scolding and petulant, tried Glover sorely and left his men frustrated and angry.

  The British dealt with an army of trained men under possibly the most severe discipline in the military world of that time; Washington, on the other hand, led an army of untrained volunteers in which perhaps thirty percent of his men were already serving past their enlistment term. In other words, he had hundreds of men in his command whose contract of service had expired and who remained with him only because of his personal persuasiveness or because of the persuasiveness of hometown officers under whom they served. The army was wracked with regional jealousies, with cliquism and with divisive bitterness between enlisted men and officers. It was Washington’s task to hold the diverse elements of the army together and to turn them into a fighting force.

  On the twenty-third of December, he faced the gigantic effort of organizing and mounting a counterattack with only a few days remaining before the end of the month of December and the dissolution of the army, which would follow upon the mass expiration of enlistments for the year of 1776. It is likely that well before the twenty-third, Washington had personally chosen the exact place where he would cross with his own division; and probably in his discussion with Glover, the New Englander had emphasized the fact that it would be impossible to begin the embarkation of men and cannon after dusk and take them across to the other shore in time to march on Trenton and actually strike Trenton before daylight. In order to get around this situation and be able to load during daylight, Washington chose as his point for the crossing sheltered narrows behind a tiny strip of land called Taylor Island. This island was just a few yards from the west shore of the river and grown with pines, thus shielding the west shore from observers on the east shore. With this camouflage he could begin the loading of the cannon early during the day of the attack and thus gain five or six hours for the crossing.

  He had little rest during the twenty-third. Supplies, ammunition, artillery, the condition of powder and flint, the placement of the artillery and particularly the condition of the medical corps—all of these items had to be checked. Three or four officers in his army were physicians as well as soldiers, and there were also a dozen or so other doctors of varying skills who constituted the medical division. Many of these men were barbers, and their medical practice consisted of only the crudest type of surgery and was hardly something to support a full-scale battle. Washington sent messengers to the nearby towns, desperate to find additional doctors, for in one part of his mind he had to anticipate as bloody a disaster as his army had ever experienced. But out of it all, only one doctor came to him, Dr. Shippan of Bethlehem.

  Another doctor, by the name of Bryant, a physician who lived on Bloomsbury Farm outside of Trenton, came seeking Colonel Rahl, who was in command of the German troops at Trenton. He was not able to find Rahl until well into the afternoon of the twenty-third, at which time he told Rahl that according to information he had from a man who had made his way across the river, rations for several days had been issued to all of the rebel army and they were planning to cross the river and attack Trenton.

  “This is all nonsense! It is all women’s talk,” was the answer Colonel Rahl gave to him.

  [12]

  ON THE AFTERNOON OF MONDAY, December 23, it began to snow, and it snowed all the rest of that day and through much of the night. Under the cover of night and the snow, Commodore Thomas Seymour of Philadelphia brought the boats that would be used by the divisions under the command of General Ewing and Colonel Cadwalader up the river from Philadelphia to the two separate points of embarkation that had been chosen.

  On the morning of the twenty-fourth of December, Washington came to the door of the Keith house and looked out on a snow-covered world, a silent, beautiful landscape marred only by the footsteps of the sentries and the tracks of animals. He may have reflected with some bitterness that nature appeared to have a firm alliance with the British.

  After an early breakfast, he mounted and rode south along the river road to make a personal inspection of the arrangements that had been made by the two sections of his army that were under the command of Ewing and Cadwalader. This was a long, hard ride over a bad snow footing. Four Virginians of his bodyguard rode with him, and at times he was joined by General Greene, Alexander Hamilton, who was Washington’s aide, and others.

  During the afternoon he met with Nathanael Gre
ene and Hugh Mercer, and they agreed that the best procedure for planning a proper attack would be to call a general staff meeting for that evening at Samuel Merrick’s house, where General Greene was quartered.

  In the week or so that he had been with the Merricks, Nathanael Greene had endeared himself to the family. Thirty-four years old, Greene was a self-educated and highly literate blacksmith, a Quaker who had fought the inner struggle between his Quaker principles and his empathy with the rebel cause, and who in the end had turned his back on his religion and joined the rebellion.

  He was a man who combined gentleness and charm with courage, a personality not unlike Washington’s. The commander in chief valued him and cherished his friendship. Without ambition, without rancor or malice or hypocrisy, he very soon became one of the idols of the army. It was to him and Lord Stirling that Washington most frequently turned, and now Washington asked him if he could not persuade the Merricks to lend them the house that evening and to go elsewhere while they had a long meeting of the general staff.

  The Merricks agreed to Greene’s proposal, and just before dark, on the afternoon of the twenty-fourth, the officers of the general staff began to converge on the Merrick home. A roll call here is interesting, and these are the officers who were at the council of war, which is remembered as the “Meeting of Decision,” the Merrick house being recalled as the “House of Decision,” although in all truth the decision had been made already, out of necessity and desperation:

  General Washington, of course, and General Greene, General Sullivan, General Mercer, Lord Stirling (that is, General William Alexander), Colonel Knox, Colonel Glover, General Adam Stephen and General Arthur St. Clair, Colonel Paul D. Sargent, Colonel John Stark and General Roche de Fermoy.

  Brigadier General Arthur St. Clair was a Scotsman, who had been born in Thurso, Caithness County, Scotland, in 1734, and who had fought in the French and Indian War. He was a difficult man, surly, quick to anger and hard put to get along with his fellow officers, a man talented in making enemies and himself his own worst enemy. Subsequently, later in the war, he was charged with treason and cowardice. There was perhaps little substance to the charges; but like Gates and Lee, he had walled himself into a reputation for ill manners and petulance.