KISSING GEORGE Chapter Two

 

I welcome you to North Carolina, the arena of storms, where the 6,000 foot high Black Mountains constrain invading cold dry Canadian air, so that it clashes with the moist tropical on-shore winds born up from the Gulf Stream,  just off Cape Hatteras. The spinning earth puts a twist on the collision,  dropping the barometric pressure at the ever tightening center of each newborn tempest. The leading edge of these storms is first felt by the farmers and seamen from New Jersey to New England coming from the northeast, which is why the storms came to be called Nor'easters

Christmas morning of 1776 in the Delaware River Valley was overcast, with temperatures well below freezing in a soft northeast wind. After a meager breakfast, the foot soldiers of the Continental army were told there would be no drilling, but were issued fresh flints for their muskets, and told to pack three days rations.  After almost a year of service they knew what this meant.  The few who had paper, composed letters to loved ones at home. Most spent the morning struggling to repair their clothing,  tying rags about their disintegrating shoes,  fashioning their new blankets into repairs for overcoats and pants and gloves.  In those hours, even the most fanatical must have wondered what the hell they were doing, suffering for a commander who had so far had brought them nothing but defeat, retreat and misery.

After noon, as the thermometer struggled to climb under lowering clouds, the men were were told to leave their personal effects in their huts and tent dugouts, and form into companies. The roll was called, and then the companies formed into battalions. The men were now each issued 60 musket balls and powder, and about three in the afternoon, with the winter solstice sun fading, 2,400 marched eight abreast in tight formations, three miles south to the ferry operated by Samuel McConkey.  Major John Wilkinson, following on horseback, tracked his unit's progress through the hard packed week old snow “tinged here and there with blood from the feet of the men who wore broken shoes.”  Near the ferry the troops formed up again, hidden from the river by high ground, to wait for darkness in a spitting rain. And to pass the time, the officers read to them a new pamphlet from the quill pen of Thomas Paine.

Ben Franklin had recruited Thomas Paine (above) to the American cause two years earlier, just as the ruling English conservatives were about to have the author of “Common Sense” arrested.  Paine served on Washington's staff, and suffered the grinding retreat across New Jersey, inspired by the experience to scribble out a new monograph. Once safely across the Delaware, Paine had hurried ahead to Philadelphia, but found the government gone, and the town filled with “fears and falsehoods”. It had taken him ten days to find a printer who could have “The American Crises” produced as a pamphlet, but it's inspiring cadence would prove as effective for the American cause as a broadside from a 44 gun man-of-war.

“These are the times that try men's souls. The summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will, in this crisis, shrink from the service of their country; but he that stands it now, deserves the love and thanks of man and woman. Tyranny, like hell, is not easily conquered; yet... it would be strange indeed if so celestial an article as freedom should not be highly rated. Britain, with an army to enforce her tyranny, has declared that she has a right...”to bind us in all cases whatsoever,”....Even the expression is impious; for so unlimited a power can belong only to God...There is a natural firmness in some minds which cannot be unlocked by trifles, but which, when unlocked, discovers a cabinet of fortitude; and I reckon it among those kind of public blessings...that God hath blessed (General Washington) with...a mind that can even flourish upon care....”

The 44 year old George Washington had personally planned the entire crossing, having the Durham boats brought down river over several nights and hidden behind Taylor Island near the ferry point. The Congress had not provided funding for a dedicated staff, so Washington surrounded himself with fellow FFVs, members of the First Families of Virginia, a social class he understood and could trust. But his new responsibilities also brought him into a new world. A year ago, when he first arrived in Boston he had been accompanied by a “body slave”, dressed in an exotic oriental costume. But he had noticed the reaction of men like Hancock and Adams, and he was beginning to doubt slavery was economically viable or morally defensible for a man leading a war for freedom. In a year, he would be writing to the manager of his Virginia plantation that he intended to free all his slaves in his will. The password he gave to his command this night was "Victory". And the answer was to be, "Or Death."

The first to be polled across the Delaware River in the gathering winter gloom were 40 mounted dragoons under Captain William Washington (second cousin to the General), and including future President Lieutenant. James Monroe, another FFV'er. Their assignment was to ride three miles north of Trenton and block the road to Princeton for six hours, then rejoin the army either at Trenton, or back on the Pennsylvania shore. 

About six, as the sun set and the wind increased, the light rain began to come down harder, and to turn into sleet. Washington sent a note to Lieutenant Colonel John Cadwalader, preparing to cross over at Bordentown, “I am determined, as the night is favorable, to cross the River.” .  But the night was not favorable. One soldier described conditions as a “violent storm of rain, hail, and snow [the nor’easter] coupled with the ice flows and high winds, (which) slowed operations.”  Said another, "It blew a hurricane."

In direct command of the crossing was 26 year old barrel chested 280 pound Henry Knox (above) . Henry helped throw tea into Boston Harbor, had witnessed the Boston Massacre, and it was Henry who had manhandled captured cannon 100 miles across snowbound Massachusetts to Dorchester Heights, forcing the British to evacuate Boston. 

Henry had barely escaped British capture after the disaster at Manhattan, and now Washington was relying on Henry's booming voice to keep the 2,400 infantry, 18 cannon and 100 draft horses ferried safely and efficiently across the 300 yard water. Noted John Greenwood, “no sooner had the sun set than it began to drizzle, and when we came to the river, it rained.”

Washington went across with the second wave, landing on the New Jersey shore about 7:00 pm. He stood on the bank, “...wrapped in his cloak, superintending the landing of his troops. He is calm and collected, but very determined. The storm is changing to sleet and cuts like a knife.” Said Greenwood, “...it commenced to snow about eleven, and the river ran strong with ice. “ Henry Knox said , “It hailed with great violence.” 

With each minute, the crossing fell farther behind schedule. Washington considered canceling the attack, but as there was no alternative, he sat on a box and kept his concerns to himself.  By midnight, all the infantry were over, and Knox started to load the 18 cannon, their draft horses and ammunition. It was Knox who took the cannon out of order, in case Washington decided to attack with only infantry. By the time the big Durham boats could be adjusted to carry their new load, it was snowing heavily. Wrote Greenwood later, "The noise of the soldiers coming over and clearing away the ice, the rattling of the cannon wheels on the frozen ground, and the cheerfulness of my fellow-comrades... I felt great pleasure..."

At the same time, and some 20 miles to the south, near Bristol, Pennsylvania,  Colonel Cadewalder ferried his 1,500 infantry across the river, to begin his diversionary attack against Bordentown. But river ice kept his artillery on the Pennsylvania shore. Not wanting to move without artillery support, after midnight Cadewalder pulled his infantry back to Pennsylvania. Thus, Washington's diversion did not bring von Dunop rushing back to Bordentown, just 9 miles or half day's march south of Trenton. As Napoleon would say a generation later, “I do not want a good general, I want a lucky one.”

The last gun and dray horse landed on the Jersey shore, about 3 in the morning of Thursday, 26 December, 1776 - Boxing Day. At about 4 am, as the army set off on the nine mile march to Trenton, the snow, which had slowed, whirled down the Delaware Valley  with renewed force. Private Greenwood captured the night decades later. "During the whole night it alternately hailed, rained, snowed, and blew tremendously...when we halted on the road, I sat down on the stump of a tree and was so benumbed with cold that I wanted to go to sleep....(but) Sergeant Madden came and rousing me up, made me walk about. We then began to march again...until the dawn of day, about half-past seven in the morning."  By eight in the morning, Washington's small army had covered 7 miles and was in position to attack. The men could not know, the hardest part of the battle was already over.   

 - 30 -

KISSING GEORGE WASHINGTON Chapter One

 

I gott'a admit, there was one lesson in military science that General George Washington never learned – Keep It Simple, Stupid. Consider George's plan for his greatest victory: First, 3,000 men under Lieutenant Colonel John Cadwalader would slip across the icy Delaware river near Bristol, Pennsylvania, and threaten the redcoats and their hired mercenaries (the Hessians) billeted around Bordentown, New Jersey. 

Once the British were distracted, Washington himself would lead 2, 500 men across McKonkey's Ferry, 15 miles to the north, and march 7 miles south to attack the 1,500 Hessian troops camped at Trenton, while 700 militiamen under General James Ewing would cross just south of Trenton, and block the Hessian's retreat.   If all these moving parts managed to work, Washington plan would be judge brilliant. Luckily for Washington, it did not work.

There was no reason why it should. The Continental Army had numbered 20,000 men outside New York back in August. But by Friday, 20 December, 1776, it was reduced to less than 6,000 exhausted, starving, freezing, dispirited and nearly naked men, huddled on the south bank of the Delaware River, Washington admitted most of his men were “so thinly clad as to be unfit for service.” Desertions were melting the army into slush, and half of the enlistments would be up on New Year's Day,  

“I rather think the design of General Howe is to possess himself of Philadelphia this winter,” Washington warned Congress, “and in truth I do not see what is to hinder him...”.  In February the Delaware River would likely freeze over, and Howe's 30,000 men could march across the ice into the American capital. Knowing this, the bickering Continental Congress had already retreated to Baltimore. It all made Washington's grandiose plan seem a pipe dream. But Washington did have a few advantages.

First, there was the Delaware River (above) , named after Thomas West, the Third Baron De la Ware. 

Iron ore and grains were carried on the Delaware by 40 foot long flat bottom Durham boats (above) on the upper river as it cut a gap southeastwards through the last ridges of the Appalachian mountains to the 8 foot falls of the river at Trenton. 

The river turned southward 20 miles later at Bordentown, before the last 30 mile reach to the Philadelphia docks. When Washington retreated across the mile wide river he had gathered every Durham boat capable of carrying artillery or cavalry within 70 miles upstream, onto the south bank. And with American defenses dug in at every ford, it left General Howe the choice of either building a new fleet of boats, or just waiting for the freeze.

The second item in Washington's favor was the well known and well hated pro-British Tory, John Honeyman (above), a butcher and weaver from Griggstown, New Jersey. In mid-December Honeyman was captured and dragged before General Washington for a personal interrogation. 

The truth was, Honeyman was a spy for Washington.  In private the butcher informed his spymaster that General Howe was not waiting for the river to freeze. On Saturday, 14 December Howe had ordered his 20,000 regulars to disperse into winter quarters in northern New Jersey, where the accommodations and accommodating companionship were plentiful.  That left 10,000 Hessian's in a string of outposts within mutually supporting distance across southern New Jersey.

Then on Saturday, 21 December 1776, the amazing John Honeyman somehow managed to escape Washington's clutches and re-cross the Delaware, where he sought refuge with Colonel Johann Gottlieb

Rall, commanding the three regiments of Hessians at Trenton. While being congratulated for his escape, Honeyman assured Rall the Americans could not possibly mount any operations until spring. This confirmed Rall's personal appraisal of the undisciplined Americans, and convinced him he needed no trenches to defend Trenton. “Let them come!”, he boasted, “We'll at them with the bayonet!”

But also on that Saturday, 400 Philadelphia militia surprised a Scottish redcoat picket company at the tiny Petticoat Bridge, north of Mount Holly, New Jersey. The Scotsmen fell back on their regiment, billeted a mile north in a village called Blackhorse, and they alerted the man Howe had left in charge of most of southern New Jersey, the Hessian General Count Carl Emil Ulrich von Donop (above). The Count was a competent soldier, and ambitious enough to despise Colonel Rall, who had been left out of his chain-of-command. 

Disturbed by the rebels growing boldness, von Donop roused his two Hessian regiments at Bordentown and put them onto the road, south to Blackhorse.  Normally, faced with such an active response, the American militia would have scattered, but their commander, a Virginian Colonel named Samuel Griffin, got a visit from General Washington's aid, Joseph Reed, who urged the militia to hang on for a little while. However,  Reed did not tell Griffin why he was asking his men to make the effort, ",..as the discovery of it may prove fatal to us".

Although ill, Griffin was willing. So on 22 December, when von Dunop's 2,000 men crossed over the Petticoat Bridge and pushed toward Mount Holly (above, center- right), the militia stayed in contact, taking causalities and even trading some long range artillery fire. But they avoided a full fight.  The dilatory shooting continued into the short day of 23 December. The Hessian planned a full assault for the morning of  24 December, but Griffin sensed the blow and retreated during the night. Frustrated, von Donop would decide to tempt the Americans and remain in Mount Holly another day. He was also, charged one of his disgruntled subordinates, enjoying the company of an attractive local widow -  who might have been seamstress Betsy Ross.  Whatever the truth, the skirmish had drawn von Dunop a full day's march south of Bordentown, even farther away from Trenton just when Washington's would be assembling his men for an attack on Trenton.

That same Monday, 23 December, General Washington (above)  was at his modest headquarters in William Keith's Pennsylvania farm house, about 10 miles north of Trenton.. In the afternoon he was visited by the handsome, urban and catty Doctor Benjamin Rush, signer of the Declaration of Independence, and distinguished member of the Continental Congress. Dr. Rush found Washington moody. “While I was talking to him”, Rush wrote later, “I observed him to play with his pen and ink upon several small pieces of paper. One of them by accident fell upon the floor near my feet. I was struck with the inscription upon it. “Victory or Death.” Rush decided the general was depressed, and probably would have prescribed his favorite treatment - a bleeding. Luckily for the United States, Washington could not spare the time to open a vein.

The spirits of Washington's men were improving. It had snowed, the cloud cover moderating the overnight temperatures, and a supply of long promised blankets from Virginia had finally reached the army. The colonists were getting a first painful lesson -   that a nation of 50 independent sovereign states, is not a nation. A year earlier, the Continental Congress had established the soldier's daily ration as one pound each of meat and bread, a pint of milk and a quart of beer or cider per man. But the rations were almost never met. Without an internal system of roads, or a navy, the colonies occupied by the army, were really the only ones that could supply the army. And they would always short of resources. Washington's little army was in such terrible condition, that a few blankets could raise the spirits of the men. But change was on the wind.

Around noon, on Christmas Eve, 1776, Washington called his commanders to a meeting in his headquarters. It was only then that he informed them of his plan. The next evening the army would cross the river at McKonkey’s Ferry, at the mouth of Knowles' creek. The Delaware River was only 300 yards wide here, and Washington calculated it would take about six hours to carry 2,500 men to the New Jersey shore.

Once reformed, the army would march 7 miles south to Trenton, surprising Rall's Hessians before dawn and trapping them against General James Ewing's 700 man militia, which would cross after midnight at the Trenton ferry. The Hessians at Bordentown would be prevented from reinforcing by Colonel John Cadwalader's force.  After Trenton was captured, and joined by General Ewing's militia, the victorious army would march the 13 miles north to Princeton, and attack the British force there under Major General James Grant.

It was a bold plan. It took account of Colonel Rall's unprepared position at Trenton and General Howe's dispersed forces. But it could not allow for the huge storm winding up off the Carolina coast, and about to slam into the American army.  And the plan was certainly was not simple.

                                 - 30 - 

KISSING GEORGE Chapter Two

I think of North Carolina as the arena of storms. It's where the 6,000 foot high Black Mountains constrain the invading cold dry Canadian air, so that it clashes with the moist tropical on-shore winds born up from the Gulf Stream,  just off Cape Hatteras. The spinning earth twist these collision of conflicting air currents, and the jet stream rushes each cyclonic eddy away, drawing in even more warm and cold air, dropping the barometric pressure at the ever tightening center of each tempest. The leading edge of these storms is first felt by the farmers and seamen of New Jersey, New York and New England coming from the northeast, which is why the storms came to be called Nor'easters

Christmas morning of 1776 in the Delaware River Valley was overcast, with temperatures well below freezing in a soft northeast wind. After a meager breakfast, the foot soldiers of the Continental army were told there would be no drilling, but were issued fresh flints for their muskets, and told to pack three days rations.  After almost a year of service they knew what this meant. They were soon going into action. The few who had paper, composed letters to loved ones at home. Most spent the morning struggling to repair their clothing,  tying rags about their disintegrating shoes,  fashioning their new blankets into repairs for overcoats and pants and gloves.  In those hours, even the most fanatical must have wondered what the hell they were doing, suffering for a commander who had so far had brought them nothing but defeat, retreat and misery.

After noon, as the thermometer struggled to climb under lowering clouds, the men were were told to leave their personal effects in their huts and tent dugouts, and form into companies. The roll was called, and then the companies formed into battalions. The men were now each issued 60 musket balls and powder, and about three in the afternoon, with the winter solstice sun fading, 2,400 marched eight abreast in tight formations, three miles south to the ferry operated by Samuel McConkey.  Major John Wilkinson, following on horseback, tracked his unit's progress through the hard packed week old snow “tinged here and there with blood from the feet of the men who wore broken shoes.”  Near the ferry the troops formed up again, hidden from the river by high ground, to wait for darkness in a spitting rain. And to pass the time, the officers read to them a new pamphlet from the quill pen of Thomas Paine.

Ben Franklin had recruited Thomas Paine (above) to the American cause two years earlier, just as the ruling English conservatives were about to have the author of “Common Sense” arrested.  Paine served on Washington's staff, and suffered the grinding retreat across New Jersey, inspired by the experience to scribble out a new monograph. Once safely across the Delaware, Paine had hurried ahead to Philadelphia, but found the government gone, and the town filled with “fears and falsehoods”. It had taken him ten days to find a printer who could have “The American Crises” produced as a pamphlet, but it's inspiring cadence would prove as effective for the American cause as a broadside from a 44 gun man-of-war.

“These are the times that try men's souls. The summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will, in this crisis, shrink from the service of their country; but he that stands it now, deserves the love and thanks of man and woman. Tyranny, like hell, is not easily conquered; yet... it would be strange indeed if so celestial an article as freedom should not be highly rated. Britain, with an army to enforce her tyranny, has declared that she has a right...”to bind us in all cases whatsoever,”....Even the expression is impious; for so unlimited a power can belong only to God...There is a natural firmness in some minds which cannot be unlocked by trifles, but which, when unlocked, discovers a cabinet of fortitude; and I reckon it among those kind of public blessings...that God hath blessed (General Washington) with...a mind that can even flourish upon care....”

The 44 year old George Washington had personally planned the entire crossing, having the Durham boats brought down river over several nights and hidden behind Taylor Island near the ferry point. The Congress had not provided funding for a dedicated staff, so Washington surrounded himself with fellow FFVs, members of the First Families of Virginia, a social class he understood and could trust. But his new responsibilities also brought him into a new world. A year ago, when he first arrived in Boston he had been accompanied by a “body slave”, dressed in an exotic oriental costume. But he had noticed the reaction of men like Hancock and Adams, and he was beginning to doubt slavery was economically viable or morally defensible for a man leading a war for freedom. In a year, he would be writing to the manager of his Virginia plantation that he intended to free all his slaves in his will. The password he gave to his command this night was "Victory". And the answer was to be, "Or Death."

The first to be polled across the Delaware River in the gathering winter gloom were 40 mounted dragoons under Captain William Washington (second cousin to the General), and including future President Lieutenant. James Monroe, another FFV'er. Their assignment was to ride three miles north of Trenton and block the road to Princeton for six hours, then rejoin the army either at Trenton, or back on the Pennsylvania shore. 

About six, as the sun set and the wind increased, the light rain began to come down harder, and to turn into sleet. Washington sent a note to Lieutenant Colonel John Cadwalader, preparing to cross over at Bordentown, “I am determined, as the night is favorable, to cross the River.” .  But the night was not favorable. One soldier described conditions as a “violent storm of rain, hail, and snow [the nor’easter] coupled with the ice flows and high winds, (which) slowed operations.”  Said another, "It blew a hurricane."

In direct command of the crossing was 26 year old barrel chested 280 pound Henry Knox (above) . Henry helped throw tea into Boston Harbor, had witnessed the Boston Massacre, and it was Henry who had manhandled captured cannon 100 miles across snowbound Massachusetts to Dorchester Heights, forcing the British to evacuate Boston. 

Henry had barely escaped British capture after the disaster at Manhattan, and now Washington was relying on Henry's booming voice to keep the 2,400 infantry, 18 cannon and 100 draft horses ferried safely and efficiently across the 300 yard water. Noted John Greenwood, “no sooner had the sun set than it began to drizzle, and when we came to the river, it rained.”

Washington went across with the second wave, landing on the New Jersey shore about 7:00 pm. He stood on the bank, “...wrapped in his cloak, superintending the landing of his troops. He is calm and collected, but very determined. The storm is changing to sleet and cuts like a knife.” Said Greenwood, “...it commenced to snow about eleven, and the river ran strong with ice. “ Henry Knox said , “It hailed with great violence.” 

With each minute, the crossing fell farther behind schedule. Washington considered canceling the attack, but as there was no alternative, he sat on a box and kept his concerns to himself.  By midnight, all the infantry were over, and Knox started to load the 18 cannon, their draft horses and ammunition. It was Knox who took the cannon out of order, in case Washington decided to attack with only infantry. By the time the big Durham boats could be adjusted to carry their new load, it was snowing heavily. Wrote Greenwood later, "The noise of the soldiers coming over and clearing away the ice, the rattling of the cannon wheels on the frozen ground, and the cheerfulness of my fellow-comrades... I felt great pleasure..."

At the same time, and some 20 miles to the south, near Bristol, Pennsylvania,  Colonel Cadewalder ferried his 1,500 infantry across the river, to begin his diversionary attack against Bordentown. But river ice kept his artillery on the Pennsylvania shore. Not wanting to move without artillery support, after midnight Cadewalder pulled his infantry back to Pennsylvania. Thus, Washington's diversion did not bring von Dunop rushing back to Bordentown, just 9 miles or half day's march south of Trenton. As Napoleon would say a generation later, “I do not want a good general, I want a lucky one.”

The last gun and dray horse landed on the Jersey shore, about 3 in the morning of Thursday, 26 December, 1776 - Boxing Day. At about 4 am, as the army set off on the nine mile march to Trenton, the snow, which had slowed, whirled down the Delaware Valley  with renewed force. Private Greenwood captured the night decades later. "...it alternately hailed, rained, snowed, and blew tremendously...when we halted on the road, I sat down on the stump of a tree and was so benumbed with cold that I wanted to go to sleep; ....(but) Sergeant Madden came and rousing me up, made me walk about. We then began to march again...until the dawn of day, about half-past seven in the morning."  By eight in the morning, Washington's small army had covered 7 miles and was in position to attack. The men could not know, the hardest part of the operation was already over.   

 - 30 -

KISSING GEORGE Chapter One

 

I gott'a admit, there was one lesson in military science that General George Washington never learned – Keep It Simple, Stupid. Consider George's plan for his greatest victory: First, 3,000 men under Lieutenant Colonel John Cadwalader would slip across the icy Delaware river near Bristol, Pennsylvania, and threaten the redcoats and their hired mercenaries (the Hessians) billeted around Bordentown, New Jersey. 

Once the British were distracted, Washington himself would lead 2, 500 men across McKonkey's Ferry, 15 miles to the north, and march 7 miles south to attack the 1,500 Hessian troops camped at Trenton, while 700 militiamen under General James Ewing would cross just south of Trenton, and block the Hessian's retreat.   If all these moving parts managed to work, Washington plan would be judge brilliant. Luckily for Washington, it did not work.

There was no reason why it should. The Continental Army had numbered 20,000 men outside New York back in August. But by Friday, 20 December, 1776, it was reduced to less than 6,000 exhausted, starving, freezing, dispirited and nearly naked men, huddled on the south bank of the Delaware River, Washington admitted most of his men were “so thinly clad as to be unfit for service.” Desertions were melting the army into slush, and half of the enlistments would be up on New Year's Day,  

Washington warned Congress, “I rather think the design of General Howe is to possess himself of Philadelphia this winter, and in truth I do not see what is to hinder him...”.  In February the Delaware River would likely freeze over, and Howe's 30,000 men could march across the ice into the American capital of Philadelphia.  Knowing this, the bickering Continental Congress had already retreated to Baltimore. It all made Washington's grandiose plan seem a pipe dream. But Washington did have a few advantages.

First, there was the Delaware River (above) , named after Thomas West, the Third Baron De la Ware. 

Iron ore and grains were carried on the Delaware by 40 foot long flat bottom Durham boats (above) on the upper river as it cut a gap southeastwards through the last ridges of the Appalachian mountains to the 8 foot falls at Trenton. 

The river turned southward 20 miles later at Bordentown, before the last 30 mile reach to the Philadelphia docks. When Washington retreated across the mile wide river he had gathered every Durham boat capable of carrying artillery or cavalry within 70 miles upstream, onto the south bank. And with American defenses dug in at every ford, it left General Howe the choice of either building a new fleet of boats, or just waiting for the freeze.

The second item in Washington's favor was the well known and well hated pro-British Tory, John Honeyman (above), a butcher and weaver from Griggstown, New Jersey. In mid-December Honeyman was captured and dragged before General Washington for a personal interrogation. 

The truth was, Honeyman was a spy for Washington.  In private the butcher informed his spymaster that General Howe was not waiting for the river to freeze. On Saturday, 14 December Howe had ordered his 20,000 regulars to disperse into winter quarters in northern New Jersey, where the accommodations and accommodating companionship were plentiful.  That left 10,000 Hessian's in a string of outposts within mutually supporting distance across southern New Jersey.

Then on Saturday, 21 December 1776, the amazing John Honeyman somehow managed to escape Washington's clutches and re-cross the Delaware, where he sought refuge with Colonel Johann Gottlieb

Rall, commanding the three regiments of Hessians at Trenton. While being congratulated for his escape, Honeyman assured Rall the Americans could not possibly mount any operations until spring. This confirmed Rall's personal appraisal of the undisciplined Americans, and convinced him he needed no trenches to defend Trenton. “Let them come!”, he boasted, “We'll at them with the bayonet!”

But also on that Saturday, 400 Philadelphia militia surprised a Scottish redcoat picket company at the tiny Petticoat Bridge, north of Mount Holly, New Jersey. The Scotsmen fell back on their regiment, billeted a mile north in a village called Blackhorse, and they alerted the man Howe had left in charge of most of southern New Jersey, the Hessian General Count Carl Emil Ulrich von Donop (above). The Count was a competent soldier, and ambitious enough to despise Colonel Rall, who had been left out of his chain-of-command. 

Disturbed by the rebels growing boldness, von Donop roused his two Hessian regiments at Bordentown and put them onto the road, south to Blackhorse.  Normally, faced with such an active response, the American militia would have scattered, but their commander, a Virginian Colonel named Samuel Griffin, got a visit from General Washington's aid, Joseph Reed, who urged the militia to hang on for a little while. Reed did not tell Griffin why he was asking his men to make the effort, as ",..as the discovery of it may prove fatal to us".

Although ill, Griffin was willing. So on 22 December, when von Dunop's 2,000 men crossed over the Petticoat Bridge and pushed toward Mount Holly (above, center- right), the militia stayed in contact, taking causalities and even trading some long range artillery fire. They avoided a full fight, but the dilatory shooting continued into the short day of 23 December. The Hessian planned a full assault for the morning of  24 December, but Griffin sensed the blow and retreated during the night. Frustrated, von Donop would decide to tempt the Americans and remain in Mount Holly another day. He was also, charged one of his disgruntled subordinates, enjoying the company of an attractive local widow -  who might have been seamstress Betsy Ross.  Whatever the truth, the skirmish had drawn von Dunop a full day's march south of Bordentown, even farther away from Trenton just when Washington's would be assembling his men for an attack on Trenton.

That same Monday, 23 December, General Washington (above)  was at his modest headquarters in William Keith's Pennsylvania farm house, about 10 miles north of Trenton.. In the afternoon he was visited by the handsome, urban and catty Doctor Benjamin Rush, signer of the Declaration of Independence, and distinguished member of the Continental Congress. Dr. Rush found Washington moody. “While I was talking to him”, Rush wrote later, “I observed him to play with his pen and ink upon several small pieces of paper. One of them by accident fell upon the floor near my feet. I was struck with the inscription upon it. “Victory or Death.” Rush decided the general was depressed, and probably would have prescribed his favorite treatment - a bleeding. Luckily for the United States, Washington could not spare the time to open a vein.

The spirits of Washington's men were improving. It had snowed, the cloud cover moderating the overnight temperatures, and a supply of long promised blankets from Virginia had finally reached the army. The colonists were getting a first painful lesson -   that a nation of 50 independent sovereign states, is not a nation. A year earlier, the Continental Congress had established the soldier's daily ration as one pound each of meat and bread, a pint of milk and a quart of beer or cider per man. But the rations were almost never met. Without an internal system of roads, or a navy, the colonies occupied by the army, were really the only ones that could supply the army. And they would always short of resources. Washington's little army was in such terrible condition, that a few blankets could raise the spirits of the men. But change was on the wind.

Around noon, on Christmas Eve, 1776, Washington called his commanders to a meeting in his headquarters. It was only then that he informed them of his plan. The next evening the army would cross the river at McKonkey’s Ferry, at the mouth of Knowles' creek. The Delaware River was only 300 yards wide here, and Washington calculated it would take about six hours to carry 2,500 men to the New Jersey shore.

Once reformed, the army would march 7 miles south to Trenton, surprising Rall's Hessians before dawn and trapping them against General James Ewing's 700 man militia, which would cross after midnight at the Trenton ferry. The Hessians at Bordentown would be prevented from reinforcing by Colonel John Cadwalader's force.  After Trenton was captured, and joined by General Ewing's militia, the victorious army would march the 13 miles north to Princeton, and attack the British force there under Major General James Grant.

It was a bold plan. It took account of Colonel Rall's unprepared position at Trenton and General Howe's dispersed forces. But it could not allow for the huge storm winding up off the Carolina coast, and about to slam into the American army.  And it certainly was not simple.

- 30 -