The Crossing

“The Game Is Pretty Near Up”

By December 1776, the American Revolution was dying. Not slowly — rapidly. Catastrophically.

The Continental Army had been driven out of New York in a series of humiliating defeats. Long Island, Kip’s Bay, Fort Washington, Fort Lee — one disaster after another. General Washington had retreated across New Jersey with the British literally at his heels, losing men, supplies, and what little credibility he had left as a military commander. Ninety percent of the soldiers who had fought at Long Island were gone — dead, captured, or deserted.

The army that limped into Pennsylvania in early December was barely an army at all. Perhaps 6,000 men remained, of whom 1,700 were too sick to fight. They were starving. They were freezing. Many had no shoes — their feet wrapped in rags, leaving bloody footprints in the snow. They had almost no ammunition.

And the enlistments of most of them expired on January 1, 1777 — six days away.

Washington knew the math. If he didn’t do something dramatic before New Year’s Day, the Continental Army would simply cease to exist. The men would go home. The Revolution would be over. The United States of America would be a failed experiment that lasted eighteen months.

The Plan

Washington chose the most audacious option available: attack. Not retreat further. Not negotiate. Not wait for spring. Attack now, on Christmas night, when the enemy least expected it.

The target was Trenton, New Jersey, where roughly 1,500 Hessian soldiers were garrisoned for the winter under Colonel Johann Rall. The Hessians were professional soldiers — German mercenaries hired by King George III, trained in European linear warfare, and considered among the best infantry in the world. They had crushed the Americans at Fort Washington and White Plains. They were not men to be trifled with.

Washington’s plan called for three separate crossings of the Delaware River. General Cadwalader would cross south of Trenton as a diversion. General Ewing would seize the bridge at Assunpink Creek to block the Hessian retreat. Washington himself would lead the main force — 2,400 men — across the river nine miles north of Trenton, then march south through the night to attack at dawn.

It was a plan that required split-second coordination between three independent forces crossing an icy river in a December storm. On paper, it was insane. Washington knew it was insane. He also knew it was the only option left.

The password for the operation was “Victory or Death.” It wasn’t melodrama. It was literally true.

Christmas Night

On the evening of December 25, 1776, Washington’s 2,400 men assembled at McConkey’s Ferry on the Pennsylvania side of the Delaware River. The weather was brutal — a nor’easter that brought snow, sleet, and freezing rain. The temperature was dropping toward single digits. The river was choked with ice.

The crossing was supposed to be completed by midnight. It wasn’t even close. Colonel Henry Knox — a former Boston bookseller who had taught himself artillery from the books he sold — supervised the loading of men, horses, and eighteen cannons onto flat-bottomed Durham boats. The Marblehead fishermen from Colonel John Glover’s regiment manned the oars, pushing through ice floes in total darkness.

It took nine hours. The last troops didn’t reach the New Jersey shore until 3:00 AM. Washington had planned to attack before dawn. Dawn was at 7:23 AM. He was three hours behind schedule, and he still had a nine-mile march ahead through a blizzard.

The other two crossings failed completely. Cadwalader got some men across but couldn’t move his artillery over the ice. Ewing never crossed at all. Washington was on his own with 2,400 men — 3,000 fewer than planned — and no diversionary attacks to draw the enemy’s attention.

A lesser commander would have turned back. Washington pressed on.

The March

On the New Jersey side, Washington split his force into two columns. Greene’s division would take the inland Pennington Road. Sullivan’s division would take the River Road along the Delaware. Both would converge on Trenton from the north and northwest simultaneously.

The march was a nightmare. The road was a frozen mud track covered in snow and ice. Men without shoes left blood on the road. The nor’easter drove sleet into their faces. Two soldiers died of exposure during the march — they simply lay down and didn’t get up.

At one point, Sullivan sent a message to Washington that the storm had soaked his men’s muskets and they couldn’t fire. Washington sent back a single order: “Tell General Sullivan to use the bayonet. I am resolved to take Trenton.”

They reached the outskirts of Trenton at approximately 8:00 AM — an hour after dawn. The surprise pre-dawn attack was no longer possible. But it turned out to matter far less than anyone expected.

Trenton

The Hessians were not expecting an attack. Colonel Rall had been celebrating Christmas the night before at the home of Abraham Hunt. A Loyalist spy had actually tried to deliver a note warning Rall that the Americans were crossing the river. Rall put the note in his pocket without reading it. It was found on his body the next day.

At 8:00 AM, both American columns hit Trenton simultaneously. Knox’s artillery unlimbered at the heads of King and Queen Streets and began pouring canister shot down the length of the town. The Hessians stumbled out of their quarters into the streets, half-dressed, disoriented, trying to form battle lines in a blizzard while American cannons tore through them.

Colonel Rall tried to rally his men for a counterattack. He formed his regiment in an orchard east of town and led a charge. It failed. Rall was hit twice by musket balls and fell from his horse, mortally wounded. His men broke.

The battle lasted approximately 45 minutes. When it was over, the Americans had killed 22 Hessians, wounded 83, and captured between 800 and 900 — nearly two-thirds of the entire garrison. A few hundred Hessians escaped across Assunpink Creek (the bridge Ewing was supposed to have blocked).

American casualties: two dead from exposure on the march. Five wounded in the fighting. Zero killed in action.

The Revolution Lives

The military impact of Trenton was modest. A single Hessian garrison destroyed. Some captured supplies. A small town held temporarily.

The psychological impact was seismic.

Word of the victory spread across the colonies like an electric shock. The army that everyone thought was finished — that Washington himself thought might be finished — had attacked professional European soldiers on Christmas morning and annihilated them. The invincible Hessians weren’t invincible. The amateur Continentals could win.

Soldiers who had been ready to walk away on January 1st chose to stay. New recruits appeared. Money and supplies began flowing again from a Continental Congress that had been preparing to flee Philadelphia. The Revolution, which had been on life support, lurched back to its feet.

Washington wasn’t done. He crossed the Delaware again, won the Second Battle of Trenton on January 2, then slipped around Cornwallis’s army and won at Princeton on January 3. In ten days, he had transformed the strategic situation of the entire war.

The unread note was found in Colonel Rall’s pocket as he lay dying. It warned him, in plain language, that Washington was crossing the river. If Rall had opened it, the Hessians would have been waiting. The battle would have gone differently. The Revolution might have died on Christmas night in the snow.

Instead, a bankrupt army with no shoes crossed an icy river in a blizzard, marched nine miles through the worst storm of the year, and saved the idea that people could govern themselves.

That’s what happened at Trenton.