The Crossing

The Crossing

Howard Fast

For my good friend, Paul R. Reynolds,

who gave me no peace until this book was written;

and for my wife, Bette,

whose love and patience made the writing possible.

List of Maps

Washington's Retreat and First Crossing

Washington's Second Crossing

The Battle of Trenton

Contents

PREFACE

THE FIRST CROSSING

East to West

THE SECOND CROSSING

West to East

An Afterword

Bibliography

Notes

Preface

The Crossing
was my first attempt at American historiography; and though I had written several novels with the background of the American Revolution, I found that there was very little that expressed the truth of the Battle of Trenton. The formal historians characterized the battle as a murky miracle, and murky it was; nor did any one of the historians I read even mention that a flintlock musket, the Colonial weapon of the time, cannot be fired in the rain although that was the key to an understanding of the crossing.

Compared to the weapons of today, the flintlock was a primitive instrument. Powder had to be fed into the muzzle of the gun, and then a lead ball was jammed down the muzzle. Above the trigger was a powder pan with an opening into the barrel of the gun. A bit of gunpowder was dropped into this pan, and when the trigger was pulled, a flint would strike a metal tooth above the powder pan and ignite the gunpowder. This worked most of the time, but not all the time, and almost never in the rain. A phrase still in use, “a flash in the pan,” describes the powder flashing in the firing pan without igniting the gun.

Knowing this, and realizing that when hostilities began, the Americans had no bayonets, or very few, and were armed for the most part with their hunting muskets, the British preferred—after their first two battles, Concord and Bunker Hill—to attack in rainy weather and to use the bayonet. Against the bayonets, the Americans had no defense. In the battle for New York, they were slaughtered, both in Brooklyn and in Manhattan—which resulted in utter terror of a bayonet charge. Desperately, Washington called for bayonets, and by the time of the crossing, they had several thousand bayonets.

Finding the truth of that December night in 1776 was as exciting to my wife and myself as any detective story. We found old manuscripts that apparently had never been read during the 20th century. We traced and traveled the paths of the armies. We found letters written by Washington's staff officers, and finally we were able to put all the pieces of the puzzle together.

And indeed it was a puzzle, as you will see as you read what follows. At the time it was published, I took comfort that it was the first account of that December night in all of its detail.

For thirty years I have dreamed that some day this incredible story would be told in film—and at long last it has happened and
The Crossing
has become a film, produced by the Arts and Entertainment Network. I am grateful to them for their dedication to the project, and I hope that generations of Americans will profit from the retelling of the moment when the dream of a United States of America became a possibility.

Howard Fast

November 1999

THE FIRST
CROSSING

East to West

[1]

A
T THE VERY BEGINNING, they did not think of themselves as soldiers. Most of them were deeply religious, with more of a feeling for life than for death. But in the twenty-four hours after the first meeting with the British regulars on Lexington Common, they got over their fear and they learned how to kill. Between the town of Concord in Massachusetts and Boston in Massachusetts, they tore a whole British army into shreds, sent it running back to Boston screaming in its pain; and it was then that their attitudes changed and they became cocky and contemptuous of every kind of British or European soldier.

From all over New England, from Vermont and New Hampshire and Maine and Massachusetts and Connecticut and Rhode Island, and from the midlands, New York, New Jersey and Pennsylvania, and even from Virginia and other places in the South, the people converged on Boston, where a British army was cornered with only a way out by sea. There were Minutemen and Committeemen and Militiamen and musketeers and riflemen and pikemen off the fishing boats, youngsters, and grown men, all of them pouring into the Boston area, and at Bunker Hill they defeated the British again.

At Bunker Hill, they entrenched themselves and built earthworks, and the British marched full and flat against them, expecting them to panic and run away. But instead of fleeing, the Americans opened a deadly fire. The Americans gave way finally before the British, but they took a toll of almost a thousand of the enemy in dead and wounded.

And all this filled them with confidence and with contempt for their enemies, for men who “fight for hire.”

A year later, having marched down from Boston to New York City, with a tall, skinny, long-nosed Virginian, George Washington, as their new commander in chief, they were more confident than ever. In all their lives and dreams they had never seen so many men together in one place as there were in New York on the ninth of July in 1776, when they were drawn up in their brigades to hear a public reading of the Declaration of Independence, written by a young man, Thomas Jefferson, and signed by the members of the Continental Congress. On that day, by actual count, there were 20,275 of them, tall, long-legged healthy lads, half of them under eighteen years old, and most of them cocky beyond belief.

The very number of them fed this feeling of security and superiority over the enemy, and every day additional groups of young volunteers, hot for freedom and full of pride, entered their camp. It was true that against them, Sir William Howe, the commander of the British army, could muster thirty thousand men—but his home base was over three thousand miles away, while theirs was just around the corner or across the river or over yonder a bit.

Anyway, if General Howe was foolish enough to attack them, they'd give him back his own coin in full measure. Most of the young men in the American army were farmers. Their fathers had let them go off after the planting but told them they were to get back for the harvest or get their necks wrung.

They could just look around at the army that was assembled here to know that it would all be over and done with long before harvest time.

[2]

THERE WERE FEW SECRETS in that curious war. There appears to have been a whole army of spies who would sell any bit of information to any buyer, and when Sir William Howe decided that he would land half of his army—fifteen thousand men—on the Brooklyn shore to take Long Island and perhaps cut off the Americans on Manhattan Island, the news soon got to Washington. He sat down to consult with his staff, among whom there was one officer, General Charles Lee, who was trained in the British army and of whom we will hear a good deal. Charles Lee was of the opinion that the British were stupid and rigid, and that they would go on repeating all the tactics that had led them to previous disaster. If the Americans made a show of force, the British would confront the rebels and attempt to brush them away.

Unfortunately, the great majority of General Washington's staff agreed with Lee. They were most of them bright, exuberant young men who felt that the one important problem was to get the British to fight, so that they might whip the daylights out of them.

The commander in chief was less young and exuberant than some of the others, but modest and unwilling to press his opinions or put himself forward as a military genius. He preferred to sit quietly in his beautiful buff-and-blue uniform, which had been tailored for his position as commander in the Virginia Militia and which was so admired that every officer who had the price had given orders to his own tailor to make him one of the same. After he had listened enough, it appeared to him that the counsel of these bright and articulate young officers made very good sense.

Thereupon, he worked out a scheme that might end the affair of the Revolution properly and quickly. He took eight thousand of his very best men, almost half of them riflemen and excellent marksmen, and had them ferried across the East River to Brooklyn. Their transportation across the river was contrived by a regiment of Massachusetts fishermen and sailors, who were under the command of Colonel John Glover; and once they were on the Brooklyn side, Washington had them take up positions on the high hill of Brooklyn Heights and there build earthwork barriers and trenches.

The reasoning behind this was very simple. The Americans would display indifference as to where the British landed on the Brooklyn shore. Actually, it did not matter where they landed, because wherever they came they would face the problem of the American position on Brooklyn Heights and the necessity to sweep it away before they could be secure in Brooklyn and ready to cut off the Americans in Manhattan. Thus, their landing would be unopposed. The British would step on shore, form their men in regiments and then march against the American position, and from behind their earthworks, the American riflemen would cut them down as they had at Bunker Hill.

However, Washington felt that there was a very real possibility that the landing in Brooklyn—so poorly kept secret—was no more than a diversion, and that the rest of the British forces would be directed against New York itself, perhaps in small boats from the great British ships of the line. Because it appeared so eminently sensible a course for his enemies to pursue, Washington kept the bulk of his artillery in New York, and his troops there on an even more intense alert than those in Brooklyn.

On August 22nd, fifteen thousand British and Hessian soldiers were landed at Gravesend Bay on the Brooklyn shore just south of the Narrows. Old Israel Putnam, a brave but rather simplistic soul, conceived of the astonishing notion of sending strong bodies of riflemen to take up positions in the woods facing the landing area. As the British advanced, the riflemen would shoot down the first ranks of the British and then retreat, leading the British army into the trap that awaited them on Brooklyn Heights.

And then the British refused to do any of the things that the Americans had planned for them. When the riflemen had taken up their positions in the woods, facing the main roads, the Hessians advanced on the double along little-used footpaths and cut off the riflemen, attacking them from the rear. Instead of wasting themselves in a frontal attack on the fortified positions on Brooklyn Heights, the British and Hessians concentrated on the slaughter and capture of the several thousand riflemen that had been sent out of the fortifications to intercept them.

Taken from behind, the riflemen—undisciplined at best—reacted in panic. They twisted around to fire at anything that moved and in many cases at their own comrades. Southerners and Pennsylvania woodsmen, their training was in the hunting of squirrel and deer, not men. Their long Pennsylvania rifles were difficult to load. The bullet had to be jammed down the long length of the barrel of the gun. And with those riflemen who preened themselves on an extra-long range and accurate weapon, the bullet actually had to be hammered into the barrel so that the inner screw literally threaded the soft lead.

Suddenly, their long, beautifully wrought rifles were worthless. In the fierce onslaught of the Hessian troops, there was not even time for the Americans to begin to load. If they turned to run away, the Hessians bayonetted them through the back. If they tried to club their long, unwieldly rifles and fight back, the Hessians drove in low and bayonetted them in the belly. In the thick woods, hand to hand, there was no more useless, more impossible weapon than the long Pennsylvania rifle.