Two-hundred and thirty-four years ago, the colonies of America declared independence from the British. But it was six months later — on a frigid night, crossing an icy river into New Jersey — that the people of this rebellion dared hope that they might succeed.
On the morning of Dec. 24, 1776, Gen. George Washington, commander-in-chief of the Continental Army, held a meeting in Pennsylvania to discuss a raid on Trenton he would be conducting the following night.
Washington paced the room, greatly agitated by recent events. When he did sit, he occupied himself by writing something on a piece of paper. After the meeting, Continental Congressman Benjamin Rush read the paper, which Washington had dropped on the floor, and found that the general had written down a simple phrase: “Victory or death.”
While intended as the codeword for the soldiers at Trenton, this phrase was not chosen at random.
Between late August and mid-November, Washington, felled by what Continental Army General Charles Lee once called a “fatal indecision of mind,” led his army to several stunning defeats. The worst, on Nov. 16 at Fort Washington in Manhattan, saw his two days of equivocating about whether to defend the fort lead to its capture. Washington watched helplessly from across the river as more than 2,800 American soldiers surrendered en masse, many of them later dying in captivity.
“This was his first experience leading large armies in the field,” says Edward Lengel, author of “General George Washington: A Military Life.” “As a tactician, he didn’t know what he was doing.”
Capture, desertion and death had slashed the Continental Army from 20,000 men to 5,000 over several months — compared to more than 34,000 for the British — and conditions for those that remained were bleak.
Jaundice and dysentery were rampant, and the wounded were often laid on piles of straw still caked with others’ blood. Soldiers sometimes had only one or two meals a week, and many fought shoeless, naked but for a thin coat.
With conditions seemingly hopeless, civilian support was fading. The British offered amnesty to all who pledged allegiance to the crown, and many accepted.
On Dec. 13, Lee was caught by the British. A fierce rival of Washington’s, Lee is historically regarded as incompetent, but was highly respected by the British, whose commander, William Howe, believed him to be “the only rebel general we had cause to fear.” His capture, then, when paired with the sorry state of the rebel army, was seen by the British as a crucial, revolution-ending triumph.
Howe declared the fighting done for the season, as professional European armies rarely fought through harsh winters. He retired to the New York City home of his beautiful blond mistress, and released his army until spring.
Washington, unaware of this, anticipated a potentially deadly set-back for the revolution.
Continental Army enlistments lasted one year, which meant that Washington was about to lose his entire army. Given the dire state of the cause, he saw no hope of attracting new recruits. Things had grown so awful that he even considered selling his beloved Mount Vernon estate in order to pay soldiers. In a letter to his brother, he wrote, “I think the game is pretty near up.”
But Washington was not ready to quit. He believed that if he could produce a major victory in the field that it could reverse the national mood, and allow him to recruit his army. So he hatched a plan, and ordered all Continental Army boats to the banks of the Delaware River.
In addition to their own dominant military force, England had long employed Hessians — professional German soldiers — to assist them in the fight against the colonists. By December, the Hessians had 1,400 men stationed in homes throughout Trenton.
Washington’s plan was to conquer the Hessians on Dec. 26 by sending troops across the Delaware in three sections — under cover of darkness — the night before.
Colonels John Cadwalader and Daniel Hitchcock would lead 1,800 men to block potential Hessian reinforcements from arriving from Burlington, N.J. General James Ewing would bring about 800 men to seal off the escape route over the bridge at Assunpink Creek. Washington would lead the main attack force of 2,400 men directly into the city.
Washington believed that the element of surprise was crucial, which meant leaving by sundown on Christmas night, arriving on the Trenton side of the river by midnight to begin marching the nine miles inland, and invading before daybreak.
The plan came with tremendous risk.
“In a worst-case scenario, [Washington] would not catch the Hessians by surprise, they would counterattack, and they would pinion his army against the river,” says John Ferling, author of “Almost a Miracle: The American Victory in the War of Independence.”
“He really was risking everything. When he said ‘victory or death,’ he meant that not only for himself, but for that whole army.” And for all hope of American independence.
The Continental Army spent Christmas morning preparing their muskets and bayonets, cooking salt pork, and, for the soldiers with no shoes, wrapping their feet in cloth.
Marching toward the boats that afternoon, each man carried 60 rounds of ammunition, and three days worth of food.
When a British spy got word to the Hessian commander in Trenton, Colonel Johann Rall, that the Americans were packing several days worth of food and ammo — a clear sign of a planned invasion — Rall dismissed it as “woman’s talk,” and said that if the Americans did invade, the Hessians could simply repel them with bayonets.
Harsh winds started blowing soon after the soldiers set out, and snow quickly followed. These were the first gusts of a nor’easter that would last the length of the battle, and prove both a cruel accompaniment and a secret weapon for the Continental Army.
For inspiration, Washington handed out copies of the new pamphlet from Thomas Paine, “The American Crisis.” The men read it aloud before departing.
“These are the times that try men’s souls . . . the harder the conflict, the more glorious the triumph.”
Washington left in one of the first boats, and sat on a wooden box on the New Jersey shore awaiting the rest as midnight, the planned arrival time, came and went.
The boats battled the wind, slamming into tremendous jagged chunks of floating ice. By the time they reached shore and unloaded their cargo, it was 4 a.m. Washington was devastated, as the chances of catching the enemy by surprise in darkness were now ruined.
More potentially disastrous, the storm had prevented General Ewing and his men from even leaving the shore. Cadwalader and Hitchcock tried, but found the going too rough. Washington’s three divisions had narrowed to one, and he would face the Hessians with less than half of his 5,000 men. He briefly considered canceling the mission, but concluded that if they sailed back, they would be spotted.
The army began its march toward Trenton, walking horses and dragging cannons as the snow turned to violent sheets of sleet and hail. Even with visibility almost nil, barefoot soldiers left bloody footprints on the icy ground that were so pronounced, they served as trail markers for those behind them.
One witness called this progression of soldiers the most “hellish scene” he had ever witnessed. Recalling one patriot clad in a dirty blanket, with a long scraggly beard and a “face full of sores,” it was only upon hearing the man’s voice that he realized it was his own brother.
Washington rode alongside his men. Concerned about Hessian patrols, he warned them to maintain a “profound silence,” and threatened anyone who broke ranks with “instant death.”
They soon came across around 50 previously unaccounted for American soldiers. They had been sent by a general named Adam Stephen — before he received word of the invasion — to fire on the Hessians, as revenge for the death of one of his men several days earlier.
Hearing this, Washington went ballistic. Stephen, a known patron of prostitutes and a copious imbiber of booze, had once run against Washington in an election for Virginia’s legislature, and the two had long been uneasy rivals. Washington summoned Stephen immediately. “You, sir!” he bellowed. “You, sir, may have ruined all my plans by having put them on their guard!”
Soldiers later recalled having never seen Washington so enraged — which, given his reputation, was saying a lot.
“Washington had a volcanic temper,” says Ferling, who referred to Washington in his book as being in a “white hot rage” during the Stephen affair. “There were incidents at the battle of Monmouth where Washington felt betrayed by General Lee, and one eyewitness said that ‘Washington cursed until the leaves fell off the trees.’ I suspect something like that might have happened in this case.”
What Washington didn’t yet realize is that Stephen inadvertently did him a favor. The Hessians had lugged cannons through the storm after Stephen’s men. Finding nothing but sleet and hail, they returned to their quarters chilled and annoyed, and cancelled their usual morning patrols.
Arriving in the sleepy town after sunrise, the Americans positioned their cannons with the wind at their backs, and waited. When a Hessian outpost commander stepped out of a local copper shop for a breath of fresh air, the first shot was fired. He cried out, “Der Fiend! Der Fiend!” (“The enemy! The enemy!”), but was felled before the final word.
One group of American forces fired cannonballs down the street — the men under Captain Alexander Hamilton igniting the first rounds — as another, wielding bayonets, charged the Hessians man-on-man. Soon, against the deep echo of the kettle drums, thousands of troops were slashing and stabbing each other with bayonets in homes throughout the city.
Snow and gunpowder swirled through the air, and in the chaos, one of Colonel Rall’s men reported that the Americans were attacking from the north, east and west. Here, he made a crucial mistake. According to David Hackett Fischer’s “Washington’s Crossing,” the actual attack proceeded from the north and west, but the Germans could still have escaped — and then regrouped — through the unguarded Assunpink Creek.
Instead, the Hessians forged ahead with the wind blowing directly in their faces, blinding them as cannonballs whizzed by.
Colonel Rall stopped to console a wounded soldier, and was shot while sitting atop his horse. He died later that day.
Within minutes, German soldiers were abandoning their weapons, and placing their hats on their bayonets in surrender.
The Battle of Trenton lasted less than one hour. Surveying the conquered city, an overjoyed Washington turned to a major named James Wilkinson and declared it “a glorious day for our country.”
The Americans had killed 20 to 30 Hessians, wounded around 90, and took 900 prisoners — a number that would have been 500 higher had General Ewing made it across the Delaware to block the Hessian escape route.
Save for two frostbite deaths, not one American soldier was killed in battle, and only four were wounded, including 18-year-old lieutenant, and future US president, James Monroe, who had an artery severed by a musket ball, and would have died if not for a doctor who volunteered for the mission the night before.
Washington’s incredible victory inspired the nation, allowing him to easily recruit a new army for 1777 and beyond. Thanks to Washington’s gamble, the cause of American independence had been saved.
“The Battle of Trenton had a tremendous effect,” author Lengel says. “Washington understood that a symbolic victory was hugely important at this point. That victory revived the nation’s conscience and determination, and refocused Americans on the cause. In thinking about the British, it got them to think, there is hope. We can defeat them.”