They had signed up for a year or six months, and they wanted to return home. But the General would not be denied. I remember his words, “My brave fellows, you have done all I asked you to do, and more than could reasonably be expected; but your country is at stake, your wives, your houses, and all that you hold dear.”
This appeal resonated because the men had heard many tales of British and Hessian rape and plundering as their armies pursued us across New Jersey. The General went on, “You have worn yourselves out with the fatigues and hardships, but we know not how to spare you. If you will consent to stay one month longer, you will render that service to the cause of liberty, and to your country, which you can probably never do under any other circumstances.”
A pause followed with much murmuring in the ranks, such as “I’ll stay if you will.” A few men stepped forward, and then more and more. Those men, and what they were to do in the next two weeks, would turn the tide of the war. They deserve the utmost credit. But I doubt it would have happened without a general who was willing to plead with his troops. I remember thinking at the time that British generals did not have to make such appeals. The thought of them appealing to rather than commanding their men was ludicrous.
Lately I have read that the General was both distant and imperious, as my great-grandchildren say their teacher has told them, but he was not that day. The men responded because they respected and admired a general who shared their privation. The General faced a problem: he didn’t have the twenty-dollar bounty money he was now offering. An urgent appeal to Robert Morris produced enough funds, thanks, I am proud to say, to the contributions of some of my fellow Quakers—Philadelphia merchants who objected to fighting but less so to aiding those who did fight for independence. What the General would have done if that money had not arrived, I am not sure. Perhaps he would have made another appeal to the troops or perhaps he would have paid at least part of the bounties out of his own pocket. In any event, with the reenlistments and new enlistments inspired by our first Trenton victory and the news of enemy atrocities, our force had grown to thirty-three hundred men, the largest force we’d had in months. The militias operating in New Jersey were also starting to grow.
The General again moved the bulk of our forces across the Delaware to attack, but his plans soon had to change. General Howe in New York, alarmed by the reports from Trenton, stopped General Cornwallis from a leave trip to England and ordered him with reinforcements to Princeton. Upon his arrival, learning of our recrossing of the Delaware into Trenton, Cornwallis moved a column of over ten thousand British troops from Princeton for a direct attack on our forces.
The General seemed unconcerned. “Josiah, the British like to move in columns along roads. They may be ten thousand strong, but there can only be a few hundred at the head of the column. We will harass them from the woods along the road and then withdraw. It will be sunset before they reach Trenton. They will then attack as they always do, but they will have to cross the Assunpink Creek bridge. I noticed in our success a few days ago that the bridge can be covered well by both artillery and rifle fire. The lead elements of their column will not be able to cross the bridge. By that time it will be nightfall, and I can tell you from my experience in the French and Indian War that the British do not like to fight in the dark.”
All of this came to pass. Over a thousand of our men held up the advancing column, exacting a heavy toll. Then the men fell back in an orderly manner across the bridge, where the General had stationed himself to offer thanks and encouragement. He saw that all men were instructed to fire low as the British and Hessians approached. Our troops tended to waste bullets firing over the heads of the British, but as the General pointed out to me, there was another reason for his instruction: a wound in the leg is better than a wound in the arm, because two other troops will have to drop their weapons in order to help the wounded soldier to the rear.
When the British tried to move their columns and guns across the bridge at Assunpink at sunset, they met such fire that the bridge was soon covered with redcoated bodies spouting blood. This was not just the Hessians but His Majesty’s finest. I knew the Parliament would hear about this defeat.
Not all Americans managed the retreat across the bridge. With the General, I watched from the hill behind the creek as an American chaplain was forced to strip naked and kneel while he was bayoneted over and over by the Hessians as surrounding British soldiers cheered. Later, I learned from the captured Hessians that their overall commander, Colonel Rall, outraged at the defeat at the first battle of Trenton, had urged his troops to take no prisoners. I thought of all the Hessian prisoners we held and the effect the preacher’s murder would have on the hundreds of our troops who had witnessed it. Even though I was raised a Quaker, I found myself lusting for revenge. The General must have sensed what I was thinking because after grimacing, he turned and said, “Josiah, write an order that all Hessian prisoners are to be treated well and see that every commander receives the order and reads it to his troops. Include an explanation that we fight for a greater cause and that with good treatment we will convince the Hessians to change sides.”
I don’t know whether the General acted out of Christian principle or whether he was just pragmatically focused on how best to win the war. One could never tell with the General. I am told that no Hessian prisoners of war tried to escape, even when they had the opportunity, and that over a third decided to settle in America after the war.
As the General predicted, the British did not attack at night, but they brought up further reinforcements. This brought another council, which I assumed would end with us withdrawing across the Delaware. The other obvious choice was to stand and fight in the morning, not a tempting strategy given that Cornwallis would probably try to cross the creek at other places during the coming day and hit us from the sides and the rear.
In the end, we made a third, unexpected choice: to make an end run around enemy forces and strike the main British post, now more lightly defended, at Princeton. The idea came from General Arthur St. Clair, or else the General put him up to it. At first the idea was met with derision. Most of the men had not slept for almost forty-eight hours. But as the meeting, directed by the General with his usual skill, continued, opinions started to change. The General called in local citizens who reported that Cornwallis was marching still thousands more troops from Princeton to Trenton in anticipation of what, I later learned, the British general believed would be “the final battle of the war.” A captured British officer later told me that Cornwallis had told his commanders, “We’ve got the Old Fox surrounded now. We’ll go over and bag him in the morning.”