Being George Washington (6 page)

“Don’t worry,
Captain
!” von Donop barked. Then he softened his tone as he eyed his newfound companion, who was ever so slyly glancing back at him. “
Colonel
Rall isn’t going anywhere. Besides, just look at that weather out there—and it will only be worse when set upon the road. Remember, it’s eighteen miles to Trenton!”

Once more von Donop cast his glance toward his comely hostess. “Don’t you agree, my dear?”

“I could not agree more,” she answered. “Would you care for some brandy?”

The name of the woman who entertained von Donop that Christmas night is not really known. Nor are her reasons for remaining in Mount Holly when all other women had fled. But among the locals there is a story still told: that her name was Betsy Ross—and that not all patriots shouldered muskets on that Christmas night.

December 25–26, 1776

Delaware River

Great, hard slabs of jagged ice, as big and thick as coffins, slammed with incredible force into the sides of George Washington’s Durham boat.

There was no place to sit in these immense, canoe-like vessels. So Washington and all the other men in the black boat with bright yellow trim wrestled to steady themselves, fearing they would be tossed into the
dark, rushing, ice-choked waters. Four sailors, snug as they could hope to be in their short seaman’s coats and tight woolen caps, struggled to steer Washington’s boat, to keep it from being swept downstream. Slush and ice lapped over the craft’s low sides and onto their feet, making a dangerous and miserable voyage still more wretched. Hard, cold winds stung everyone’s faces.

Washington peered through the darkness and struggled vainly to catch sight of solid Jersey ground. It was nearly impossible. A bright moon had arisen early that evening, but great black clouds had then rolled in, causing the December sky and everything under it to disappear into cold, inky blackness.

And as Washington struggled to look forward, words began to roll through his mind. They were words that he’d recited from his earliest childhood, but they had never possessed greater meaning than they now did on this faithful night, the birthday of the One who had first offered these sacred words to the whole world.

“… and deliver us from evil,” George Washington’s silent, but fervent, prayer concluded. “Amen.”

Morning of December 26, 1776

Western bank of the Delaware River

Opposite Beatty’s Ferry

On the Pennsylvania side of the Trenton ferry, eight miles downriver from George Washington and McConkey’s Ferry, General James Ewing, a tough Scotch-Irishman hailing from the Pennsylvania frontier, stood not in a boat, but on the snow-covered shore, swearing mightily. He was near Trenton Falls, and the rushing mass of water hurtling upon the jagged rocks below it had created a massive ice jam nearly five feet deep. Pockets of water flowed only sporadically, and those pockets, where they existed, were just thirty to forty feet wide.

It was the worst of circumstances. The Delaware was too frozen for boats to sail, yet not frozen enough for Ewing’s seven hundred soldiers to trudge across.

Washington had ordered Ewing’s troops to join him as he battled the Hessians at Trenton. But there was no way to do that. His boats and men
were being held up by a barrier more powerful than what any Britisher or Hessian might have constructed. He had tried as hard as possible, given it everything he could—yet he had failed.

If George Washington were to secure victory, it would be without General James Ewing’s reinforcements.

Early morning, December 26, 1776

Eastern Bank of the Delaware River

Opposite McConkey’s Ferry

Campfires blazed along the Jersey side of the Delaware.

Despite Henry Knox’s bellowing commands and tireless enthusiasm, the crossing had proved far more harrowing than anyone had imagined. The tide had been swifter, the ice thicker, the wind colder. Horses bucked and resisted boarding the ferryboats that had been designated for their transport. They wanted no part of this voyage.

Perhaps they were smarter than their commanders.

And moving cannon … well, that was the most impossible task of all. It was hard enough to transport Henry Knox’s guns on rutted roads and through rolling fields and hillsides. Shoving them on—and off—these boats, and over these rough waters was harder and slower still. “Put your shoulder to it, men!” Knox shouted. “Put your shoulder to it!”

George Washington waited for the last of the cannon to complete the crossing. Only then could they begin the march to Trenton. He had loitered on this shore for so long that he had made a little seat for himself, a broken wooden box that had once contained a beehive.

As he sat there, dressed in his great blue cloak, in the cold and dark, he pondered whether he had already lost his chance. Could he still reach Trenton before daybreak? Would General Ewing—and General Cadwalader, who was launching his own force from Dunk’s Ferry—be there to meet him?

So much had to go right. So much had already gone wrong. The Continental Army had lost the great majority of its men since its first losses on Long Island. Its back was against the wall. There could be no more defeats, no more retreats. Today it was all or nothing—“Victory or Death,” as he had once written.

Suddenly, Henry Knox, puffing mightily and clapping his pudgy gloved hands together for warmth, approached.

“General,” he said, “we are all across.”

Washington arose quickly, his little seat toppling over.

“To Trenton, men! Before the sun rises.”

Morning, December 26, 1776

Western bank of the Delaware River

Near Dunk’s Ferry

General John Cadwalader was a cultivated Philadelphia merchant. He was not a ferryman.

Yes, he had men from his city’s waterfront to assist him in making his crossing of the Delaware, but he was still getting absolutely nowhere. The same ice floes that stymied General Ewing to the north hamstrung Cadwalader. He had been assigned to cross at Dunk’s Ferry, across the river from Burlington, New Jersey, but his boats could barely be put in the water there, let alone be rowed or poled toward the opposite shore. Changing plans, he moved north along the river, but it was the same story there. Slabs of ice the size of mattresses and as hard and sharp as bayonets filled the river. An advance party had made it across earlier, but that was it. No one else could.

The British might yet somehow be defeated, but this wretched river could not.

Cadwalader just stood there, forlorn and staring, his hands jammed hard into his pockets, a scarf covering his face. He was too much the gentleman to swear as General Ewing did. All he could do was order his men—tired from lack of sleep and disheartened from failure—to march home to camp and pray for General Washington.

Morning, December 26, 1776

Bear Tavern Road, beyond Jacob’s Creek

Western bank of the Delaware River

Now it was sleeting.

Not just squalls of heavy snow, but the worst and wettest sleet anyone
in the Continental Army had ever seen. Freezing and stinging, it made moving forward even more difficult.

Washington’s march to Trenton had commenced a full four hours late. Shoeless men, their feet swaddled in rags, deposited an ominous trail of blood along their path. Washington saw a drummer lad, a redheaded boy from nearby Delaware, so weary that he lay down in the snow to rest, perhaps even to sleep.

“Rouse him! Shake that boy!” George Washington shouted from horseback, through gales of sleet. “To sleep this night is death!”

The road had run upward from the river, a good two-hundred-foot change in elevation, with portions of that incline extremely pitched. That made the hard work of Henry Knox’s burly gunners into something that was more akin to impossible. Then came even more trouble, this time in the form of Jacob’s Creek—which, despite its name, was no ordinary stream, no bucolic brook in sunlit meadows. Lying in a steep ravine, it required Knox’s men to lash their longest drag ropes to trees to winch their guns down—and then up—its perilous slopes, placing at risk their guns’ often fragile wooden carriages and high wheels.

Washington rode alongside his men. Watching, yes, for others who might fall sleep, but all the while encouraging them onward—faster, faster, and, yet, faster still. “Press on, boys, press on!” he shouted. Time and weather had already allied themselves against his cause. He could not risk any more delay.

Galloping on sloping, icy ground, his horse skidded to a stop. Bucking and panicking, the beast started tumbling downward, threatening to crush the general under its weight. Washington panicked not for a second. Dropping his reins, he extended his arms and grabbed the horse’s mane with his powerful hands. Miraculously, he pulled the mane—and the animal itself—upward, steadying it enough to keep it, and him, from falling to earth.

“Was I dreaming?” exclaimed the drummer boy whom Washington had only just roused. “Was that real?”

“No, lad,” said the soldier standing next to him. “I saw it, too. We all did. And this I know:
nothing
can stop George Washington from reaching Trenton this day. I just hope we make it with him.”

• • •

Perhaps that anonymous soldier was wrong. Perhaps there was something that could stop Washington from reaching Trenton: his own men.

Along he rode. In the snow-whitened distance, men marched toward him. Hessians in their fine brass helmets? The British, venturing from snug winter quarters?

“Hello!” came the call. “Don’t shoot! We’re Virginians!”

“What are you doing here?” Washington demanded. He knew they could not be Ewing or Cadwalader’s troops. They were, to a man, Pennsylvanians and Rhode Islanders.

“Those damnable Hessians snuck like the skunks they are across the river and killed one of our boys. So we had to even the score. We just came from Trenton. Gave them a little taste of their own medicine! I reckon we got one or two of ’em.”

Washington’s heart sank. The element of surprise he had plotted so carefully had vanished, simply flung away like a chicken bone by a few dozen buckskin-wearing squirrel shooters.

“What now, General?” asked a voice barely heard above the general’s own seething breath.

“We have come this far, Hamilton,” Washington answered, “if we go forward we may very well lose our lives. The element of surprise is gone. The chance of arriving before the sun rises is evaporating by the second. But if we march these men back to the river after all this, we will surely lose our army.

“Captain Hamilton—we have no choice: we go forward!”

Morning, December 26, 1776

Outskirts of Trenton

At 7:20 the sun had risen in the morning skies over Trenton.

George Washington was not there. He had failed yet again.

He stared toward the town in the distance, or at least where the town should have been. He could see nothing. Another storm had commenced, and it was historic. The sleet and snow that filled the air was completely blinding and deadened all sound.

And that was exactly the break Washington needed.

A horizontal avalanche of white may not have allowed the rebels to see the town, but at least they knew where it was. The Hessians inside that town, on the other hand, had no idea that American muskets and bayonets and cannon now advanced upon them.

George Washington’s prayers had not failed him; they’d just been answered in an unexpected way.

The storm also had another benefit: any enemy advance sentries had been forced inside. But while Washington might have guessed that, there was something he could not: the British had spies—and they were much better paid than the ones working for the rebels.

One of those spies had infiltrated Washington’s headquarters and scurried back to bring word of Washington’s plans to his masters. Washington had no way to know it, but the Hessians
expected
to be attacked this holy season. When those foolish Virginians had shot up their town and hightailed it back upon the Bear Tavern Road, Colonel Rall and his men had made the only reasonable conclusion that they could: the rebel attack, such that it was, had been easily turned away. What wretched soldiers these fools were! Rall thought. It was hardly an attack even worthy of his attention.

And so Rall and his lieutenant Wiederholdt let down their guard and got back to the important task of recovering from the holiday festivities of the previous night.

“Gentlemen, your watches, please,” Washington commanded General Greene and General John Sullivan, who would lead separate wings of the attack. “We will synchronize them all so that we will all strike at once.”

“This damnable snow,” Sullivan whined, “causes our gunpowder to grow wetter by the minute. We won’t be able to fire a shot upon the enemy!”

“Then use your bayonets!” Washington retorted.

By some small miracle, all segments of the army that had reached Trenton were advancing at once.

Inside Trenton’s barrel maker’s shop, Lieutenant Wiederholdt huddled with his seventeen men. No use keeping them outside on such a morning—especially not with the Americans on the run, their pathetic
attack having been easily turned away. It was stuffy, though, with so many men cooped up within the small space. He stepped outside and thought he saw some men advancing toward him. Probably Captain Brubach’s detachment. But then there were more of them—and then still more.

“Der feind! Heraus!”
Wiederholdt exclaimed—“The enemy! Turn out!”

The fight, Wiederholdt knew in that moment, was far from over. It was just beginning.

Colonel Rall, still in his nightclothes, stood dumbly at his window. All Hades was exploding round him. Washington’s units advancing. Knox’s batteries bombarding the town. Yet Rall, having spent a very late evening playing chess and drinking brandy, barely understood what was happening.

His adjutant, Lieutenant Jakob Piel, burst into the room.

“What is happening?” Rall demanded. The reality of his situation was now sinking all too painfully into his sleepy Hessian brain.