(from Henry Cabot Lodge,
American Statesmen: George Washington, 1890)
IN ALL of George Washington’s illustrious career as father of our nation, his singular, most crucial stroke of genius was when he crossed the Delaware River on the night of December 25, 1776, and launched his surprise attack on Trenton. That night his password was “victory or death.” His decision to lead that successful attack saved the American Revolution and breathed new life into the Patriot cause.
The years 1775 and 1776 saw a cascade of events: the battles of Lexington and Concord (1775) were followed by the capture of Fort Ticonderoga. Then came the battle of Bunker Hill, which was lost, after which Washington assumed command of the continental forces. In 1776 the British evacuated Boston and the Declaration of Independence was proclaimed. General Richard Howe invaded Long Island and captured New York. Washington retreated across New Jersey into Pennsylvania, pursued by the British. Congress fled Philadelphia to relocate in Baltimore, as the patriot cause looked hopeless before the overwhelming might of the British. Morale disintegrated as enlistments were due to expire on December 31, which would have emasculated Washington’s little army. Then came Washington’s two bold historic strikes—the victorious battles of Trenton and Princeton, whereby the patriot cause was preserved and the spirit of ’76 prevailed.
The Washington we see today on the one-dollar bill, bewigged and puff-cheeked, gives us no clue of George Washington the warrior, the man of action, the leader who saved, sustained, and won the American Revolution.
Washington encountered his first battle experience in 1755 when he set out with General Edward Braddock to attack Fort Duquesne (on the site of today’s Pittsburgh). The French and the Indians ambushed Braddock, mortally wounding him. Amid the smoke and slaughter, Lieutenant Colonel Washington dashed to rally his Virginia troops, trying to stay the tide of disaster. He had two horses shot from under him, and four bullets pierced his coat.
“Washington laid Braddock in his grave four days after the defeat, and read over the dead the solemn words of the English service. Wise, sensible, and active in the advance, splendidly reckless on the day of the battle, cool and collected on the retreat, Washington alone emerged from that history of disaster with added glory.”
Washington’s midlife was one of constant fighting—for the Revolution would last six and a half years. From Henry Cabot Lodge’s nineteenth-century American Statesmen biography, George Washington, we turn now to Washington in Pennsylvania during December 1776. Cakes of ice are beginning to float down the Delaware, and Washington has commandeered all boats for miles up and down the river, and kept them on the Pennsylvania side.
BY THE MIDDLE of December Howe felt satisfied that the American army would soon dissolve, and leaving strong detachments in various posts he withdrew to New York. His premises were sound, and his conclusions logical, but he make his usual mistake of overlooking and underestimating the American general. No sooner was it known that he was on his way to New York than Washington, at the head of his dissolving army, resolved to take the offensive and strike an outlying post. In a letter of December 14th, the day after Howe began to move, we catch the first glimpse of Trenton. It was a bold spirit that, in the dead of winter, with a broken army, no prospect of reinforcements, and in the midst of a terror-stricken people, could thus resolve with some four thousand men to attack an army thoroughly appointed, and numbering in all its divisions twenty-five thousand soldiers.
This is the dreary winter Washington was planning and devising and sending hither and thither for men, and never ceased through it all to write urgent and ever sharper letters and keep a wary eye upon the future. He not only wrote strongly, but he pledged his own estate and exceeded his powers in desperate efforts to raise money and men. On the 20th he wrote Congress: “It may be thought that I am going a good deal out of the line of my duty to adopt these measures, or to advise thus freely. A character to lose, an estate to forfeit, the inestimable blessings of liberty at stake, and a life devoted, must be my excuse.” Even now across the centuries these words come with a grave solemnity to our ears, and we can feel as he felt when he alone saw that he stood on the brink of a great crisis. It is an awful thing to know that the life of a nation is at stake, and this thought throbs in his words, measured and quiet as usual, but deeply fraught with much meaning to him and to the world.
By Christmas all was ready, and when the Christian world was rejoicing and feasting, and the British officers in New York and in the New Jersey towns were reveling and laughing, Washington prepared to strike. His whole force, broken into various detachments, was less than six thousand men. To each division was assigned, with provident forethought, its exact part. Nothing was overlooked, nothing omitted; and then every division commander failed, for good reason or bad, to do his duty. Gates was to march from Bristol with two thousand men, Eking was to cross at Trenton, Patna was to come up from Philadelphia, Griffin was to make a diversion against Donop. When the moment came, Gates, disapproving the scheme, was on his way to Congress, and Wilkinson, with his message, found his way to headquarters by following the bloody tracks of the barefooted soldiers. Griffin abandoned New Jersey and fled before Donop. Patna would not even attempt to leave Philadelphia, and Eking made no effort to cross at Trenton. Cadwalader, indeed, came down from Bristol, but after looking at the river and the floating ice, gave it up as desperate.
But there was one man who did not hesitate nor give up, nor halt on account of floating ice. With twenty-four hundred hardy veterans, Washington crossed the Delaware. The night was bitter cold and the passage difficult. When they landed, and began their march of nine miles to Trenton, a fierce storm of sleet drove in their faces. Sullivan, marching by the river, sent word that the arms of his men were wet. “Then tell your general,” said Washington, “to use the bayonet, for the town must be taken.” In broad daylight they came to the town. Washington, at the front and on the right of the line, swept down the Pennington road, and as he drove in the pickets he heard the shouts of Sullivan’s men, as, with Stark leading the van, they charged in from the river. A company of yagers and the light dragoons slipped away, there was a little confused fighting in the streets. Colonel Johann Rall fell, mortally wounded, his Hessians threw down their arms, and all was over. The battle had been fought and won, and the Revolution was saved.
Taking his thousand prisoners with him, Washington crossed the Delaware to his old position. Had all done their duty, as he had planned, the British hold on New Jersey would have been shattered. As it was, it was only loosened. Congress, aroused at last, had invested Washington with almost dictatorial powers; but the time for action was short. The army was again melting away, and only by urgent appeals were some veterans retained, and enough new men gathered to make a force of five thousand men. With this army Washington prepared to finish what he had begun.
Trenton struck alarm and dismay into the British, and Cornwallis, with seven thousand of the best troops, started from New York to redeem what had been lost. Leaving three regiments at Princeton, he pushed hotly after Washington, who fell back behind the Assunpink River, skirmishing heavily and successfully. When Cornwallis reached the river he found the American army drawn up on the other side awaiting him. An attack on the bridge was repulsed, and the prospect looked uninviting. Some officers urged an immediate assault; but night was falling, and Cornwallis, sure of the game, decided to wait till the morrow. He, too, forgot that he was facing an enemy who never overlooked a mistake, and never waited an hour. With quick decision Washington left his camp-fires burning on the river bank, and taking roundabout roads, which he had already reconnoitered, marched on Princeton. By sunrise he was in the outskirts of the town. Mercer, detached from Washington with some three hundred men, fell in with Maxhood’s regiment, and a sharp action ensued. Mercer was mortally wounded, and his men gave way just as Washington’s main army came upon the field. The British charged, and as the raw Pennsylvania troops in the van wavered, Washington rode to the front, and reining his horse within thirty yards of the British, ordered his men to advance. The volleys of musketry left him unscathed, the men stood firm, the other divisions came rapidly into action, and the enemy gave way in all directions. The two other British regiments were driven through the town and routed. Had there been cavalry they would have been entirely cut off. As it was, they were completely broken, and in this short but bloody motion they lost five hundred men in killed, wounded, and prisoners. It was too late to strike the magazines at Brunswick, as Washington had intended, and so he withdrew once more with his army to the high lands to rest and recruit.
His work was done, however. The country, which had been supine, and even hostile, rose now, and the British were attacked, and suppressed, and cut off in all directions, until at last they were shut up in the immediate vicinity of New York. The tide had been turned; and Washington had won the precious breathing time which was all he required.
Frederick the Great is reported to have said that this was the most brilliant campaign of the century. It certainly showed all the characteristics of the highest strategy and most consummate generalship. With a force numerically insignificant as compared with that opposed to him, Washington won two decisive victories, striking the enemy suddenly with superior numbers at each point of attack. The Trenton campaign has all the quality of some of the last battles fought by Napoleon in France before his retirement to Elba. Moreover, these battles show not only generalship of the first order but great statesmanship. They display that prescient knowledge which recognizes the supreme moment when all must be risked to save the state. By Trenton and Princeton Washington inflicted deadly blows upon the enemy, but he did far more by reviving the patriotic spirit of the country fainting under the bitter experience of defeat, and by sending fresh life and hope and courage throughout the whole people.
It was the decisive moment of the war. Sooner or later the American colonies were sure to part from the mother-country, either peaceably or violently. But there was nothing inevitable in the Revolution of 1776, nor was its end at all certain. It was in the last extremities when the British overran New Jersey, and if it had not been for Washington that particular revolution would have most surely failed. Its fate lay in the hands of the general and his army; and to the strong brain growing ever keener and quicker as the pressure became more intense, to the iron will gathering a more relentless force as defeat thickened, to the high unbending character, and to the passionate and fighting temper of Washington, we owe the brilliant campaign which in the darkest hour turned the tide and saved the cause of the Revolution.