I know that, while maintaining his outward calm to troops and congressmen, the General despaired during the war. I, too, despaired, at least to myself, for our whole effort. Over a glass of Madeira, the General had me put down his musings again about resigning in a letter to his cousin Lund. As ever concerned about his reputation, the General said that if he did not resign, he would lose what was left of his reputation, but if he did resign, ruin would follow. Then, as if taken aback by his own words, he quickly said, “Josiah, don’t tell anyone.” I didn’t, but felt the war was on the verge of being lost. I didn’t realize—and perhaps the General didn’t either—that we were entering the third major campaign that was to change the course of the war and restore, perhaps forever, the General’s reputation.
As I look back, many positive things came out of our retreat through New Jersey and across the Delaware River. First, one of the General’s chief rivals, Charles Lee, was captured by the British after he left his troops for a sexual escapade with a woman engaged in prostitution. Second, while our forces were much smaller than in Boston or New York, they had become far more professional. Third, as the British approached the Delaware River and Philadelphia, the congressmen panicked, and, with only the General standing between them and the British, in early December issued directives giving the General full powers over the army. No longer would Congress be meddling in military strategy. General Gates, seeing the change, started moving his troops southward to join us. Finally, those who welcomed the British and Hessians soon had cause for regrets as, despite General Howe’s orders against it, farms and homes were pillaged. I remember hearing the stories of rapes committed by British and Hessian soldiers, stories that even now I cannot comfortably repeat.
If General Howe could do things over again, I am sure he would have sent everything he had at our weakened army and destroyed or captured us and the General. I believe there is a good chance that he could have succeeded. Instead, after spreading his forces across New Jersey, he followed the European custom of suspending operations for the winter.
Nonetheless, I have never seen the General so depressed. He knew that the British had us on the run and that, not only in New Jersey but throughout the colonies, the feeling was growing that the war would soon be over. “Josiah, we must somehow find a way to achieve a victory or else the play will be over,” the General told me. I don’t believe the General was thinking of some major triumph on the battlefield but some event that would rally public support and restore morale. The General read newspapers avidly, and, while I thought it odd, sometimes he seemed more concerned with the public’s opinion of events than the map of the battlefield. But I now realize he also read the newspapers to gauge how Americans felt about the independence effort. Their feelings in late 1776 were, to say the least, quite pessimistic. In retrospect, this is not surprising, given the huge number of Americans who were either loyalist or neutral.
Despite writing letters of despair to Superintendent of Finance Robert Morris about the probability of a congressional evacuation of Philadelphia, the General saw some hopeful signs. With the enemy in winter quarters, with our forces starting to rise with reinforcements from Southern states, with our ships running the blockade from the West Indies bringing blankets and clothing, and with our foundries producing more arms and powder, the General mused that perhaps the winter was the time to implement the second part of his strategy—to attack where surprise and numbers created an advantage.
III. TRIUMPH—THE FIRST CROSSING OF THE DELAWARE
Many officers and aides claimed credit for the idea for crossing the Delaware and attacking the Hessians at Trenton. All I can say is that many may have had the idea, but the General had talked to me already in mid-December about recrossing the Delaware to surprise the Hessians at Trenton or the British at Princeton. He knew that, by concentrating our forces on a New Jersey Hessian outpost, for the first time we would have a rare numerical advantage. Trenton was a village where the Hessians were camped for the winter, just south of the lower falls of the Delaware River that separated Pennsylvania from New Jersey. If we could get our artillery across the Delaware, we would have a huge advantage in guns. Just as important, the General knew that, while our forces had risen to near 2,400 with arrivals from the South, we were again about to be decimated at the end of the year as enlistments expired.
The decision was made in one of those councils the General loved to call to pick apart a proposal. By the end of the meeting, he had gathered unanimous support. Some of the generals who might have counseled caution were not there. Gates, after finally heeding the General’s order to come down from the North, refused a command. Pleading illness, he went on to Philadelphia to criticize the emerging plan to his friends in Congress and, I was told, to lobby for the General’s removal in favor of himself. Then also, Charles Lee, the General’s other major rival and critic, was still held a prisoner by the British.
My, it was cold that Christmas evening! The trail to the river was filled with the bloody footprints of shoeless soldiers. The troops lined up beside the dark, icy river, not knowing if they were marching back to Philadelphia or across the Delaware. (The General had grown very wary about leaking plans to enemy spies.)
The raid involved four parties, and two of the smaller parties never made it through the ice across the river, while a third party crossed the river and created a diversion in southern New Jersey. Fortunately, the General was with the main and far most numerous party. The Pennsylvania boatmen and the Marblehead mariners had lined up all the boats within sixty miles on the river. The larger Durham boats, almost eight feet wide and forty feet long, were used to ship the artillery across, which was no easy task.
As we started across the river, I remember thinking the whole operation should be called off. It seemed preposterous. The nickname the General chose for the operation, Victory or Death, seemed melodramatic to me, but the last word seemed more appropriate as I envisioned the destruction of our remaining army, the capture of the General, the inevitable fall of Philadelphia, and, last but not least, my own demise. If these events happened, they would so destroy the spirit for independence that the pledging of allegiance to the king, which had swept through New Jersey, would sweep through the rest of the colonies and end the war. We’d fail to gain independence just as the Scottish had thirty years earlier.