The Crossing (20 page)

This news was brought to Washington, but he could neither comprehend nor digest it. Washington, who had apparently never known the terror that men can experience in battle, was at a loss to understand or to sympathize with it in others, especially among his own general officers. A private soldier might exhibit fear; in an officer Washington found it unforgivable.

The end of the battle had left him cold as ice, emotionless and depressed. He called grimly for a search of every house, every cellar, every stable in Trenton. He ordered every woodpile turned over. He demanded that all the Hessians in Trenton and in the region around it be taken prisoner and accounted for.

Already, at Mercer's orders, a list of the British losses was being prepared. It would seem from the information they had at hand that Lossberg's regiment had surrendered one lieutenant colonel, one major, one captain, three lieutenants, four ensigns, thirty-eight sergeants, six drummers, nine musicians and nine servants of the officers, with two hundred and six rank and file.

From Rahl's regiment there had been three colonels, a major, a captain, two lieutenants, five ensigns, two surgeon's mates, twenty-five sergeants, three drummers, four musicians, nine servants of officers and two hundred and forty-four of the rank and file.

From Knyphausen's regiment a major and two captains, two lieutenants and three ensigns, twenty-five sergeants, six drummers, six servants of officers and two hundred and fifty-eight of the rank and file.

From the artillery regiment a lieutenant and four sergeants and two servants of officers and thirty-eight of the rank and file.

These were the figures brought to Washington early that day. Later, perhaps, they might be adjusted, but nothing would change the fact that he had taken the vast bag of over nine hundred prisoners, six double-fortified brass three-pound cannon, with carriages complete, three ammunition wagons, twelve drums and all the colors of three Hessian regiments. This last in particular must have given a singular pleasure to the man who had begun to learn the bloody game of war with the slaughter in Brooklyn.

The booty of the great victory went further than Hessian prisoners. There were great piles of muskets, enormous stores of all sorts of military supplies, drums of powder, iron kettles filled with musket balls.

Already the freezing Yankee soldiers were pulling the coats off the Hessians and covering up their own rags. Some of them had found two drums of rum among the Hessian stores. When the first rum was breached, Greene realized that the great victory could still be turned into a fiasco. Rum was the last thing the young soldiers needed, and he confiscated it immediately. By the hundreds the Americans had dropped to the wooden sidewalks and to the muddy streets, sleeping where they fell. Their officers walked among the men, beating them with canes and with the flats of their swords, to get them to stand guard duty over the shivering, defeated Hessians.

Sitting on his horse in something of a daze, Washington moved across the captured town, looking at the booty that was being assembled, piles of thick woolen blankets—his men would be cold no longer—mounds of sheets and linen and scarves and coats and boots. Soldiers watching him wondered afterward why he should have been so deeply depressed and sad, having gained so great and spectacular a victory against all odds, against all reason, against all hopes.

[31]

GENERAL GREENE RODE UP alongside of Washington, took his arm gently, and said to him, “General Washington, Colonel Rahl is dying.”

Washington's response was to the effect that war was always a matter of life and death, and if Rahl was dying, let him damn well die.

Greene argued that Washington could not let Rahl die in this manner, that every dictate of military courtesy urged the commander in chief to go to the Hessian, face him and sympathize with him as gentlemen did with each other, even when they served on opposite sides.

Washington answered to the effect that he wanted no words with any Hessian.

Now Mercer joined them and pressed him to do as Greene suggested. At this point Washington had neither the will nor the strength to argue further, and he rode along with Greene to the Potts house. The house was sealed off by a guard of Pennsylvania riflemen, who opened their ranks to let the commander in chief and Greene through.

Washington and Greene then went upstairs to where Colonel Rahl had been laid out on the bed of the owner of the house. Mr. and Mrs. Potts were in the room and also their daughter, three Hessian officers and a young American lieutenant. Greene, who was a Quaker himself, had hurriedly explained to Washington who the Pottses were and the circumstances that had brought Rahl to the house. Washington did not respond. What Quakers did was their business, not his. He walked into the room and stood with a stony face before Rahl.

Rahl whispered, and his words went unheard. He raised an arm a trifle, and then Washington bent over the bed to hear him. A young noncommissioned Hessian officer wrote down afterward what Rahl said to Washington.

“Meine Männer sind gute tapfere Männer. Berauben Sie sie nicht. Nehmen Sie ihre Waffen, aber lassen Sie ihnen ihr Geld und ihre Würde.”

“My men are good brave men. Don't rob them. Take their arms, but leave them their money and their dignity.”

Washington listened to the German words without understanding them, and no one dared to translate in the presence of the cold, bitter commander in chief. Mercer came into the room then and bent over Rahl's bed as a doctor does. The Hessian closed his eyes. A moment later Mercer raised his eyelids, and they remained open. Colonel Rahl was dead in a strange, cold land thousands of miles from his home.

Washington stood erect and without speaking walked out of the room. The contest was over. It had begun in New York six months before, and now the score was settled. Never again would the Hessian on American soil be the figure of terror that he had once been; but neither could Washington forget on that day. He was too spent.

Greene and Mercer followed Washington out of the room. Instead of commenting on Rahl's death, Washington said coldly to Greene and to Mercer that their position was untenable. He asked them whether they realized the luck that had surrounded them every inch of the way? Cadwalader and Ewing with their two armies were still on the west bank of the river. Nothing had gone right, and the lunatic miracle that had just taken place should not deceive them. So far as any of them knew, the Hessian Von Donop was leading his army against Trenton at this very moment.

Washington asked Greene where his men were, and Greene replied that they were sleeping. Washington told Greene to wake them up and get them ready to march.

[32]

HE HIMSELF REFUSED to lie down and rest. He mounted his horse again and rode back and forth through the town, giving orders whenever he met one of his general officers or one of the colonels, this division to be responsible for these stores, that division to be responsible for those stores. He met Sullivan and told him that he wanted the army in marching order by noontime. They were to return to the landing place and recross the river to the Pennsylvania shore. His officers listened to this order, as Sullivan did, with astonishment and disbelief. Yet, when they began to protest, the look on his face stopped them. They remained silent and did as he had commanded.

Wherever he went, he asked for Glover. Men directed him, and finally he found Glover together with Colonel Stark. Stark and Glover were on foot now. The New Englanders walked over to the commander in chief, and the three men stood together and talked.

All around them private soldiers, noncommissioned officers and regular officers stopped to watch the three men and listen. Colonel Johnny Stark of the Bennington Rifles was grinning with pleasure and triumph. His clothes were torn. He had lost his fancy white wig, which he affected at that time, and his hair, face and clothes were caked with mud and blood. He carried no weapon except a big Hessian cutlass that he clutched in his right hand. He shifted it to his left so that he could offer his right hand to the commander in chief.

He said words to the effect that they had done it.

There was no one, including George Washington, who could be angry or distant with Johnny Stark of Vermont. Only Glover was beyond smiles now as he told the tall skinny Virginian that he had heard that they were crossing the river again.

“Before nightfall,” Washington replied.

Glover said that he, his commander, was mad; but then, in a manner of speaking, they were all mad.

An hour later the army began to march out of Trenton. They took with them over nine hundred prisoners, six brass cannon, gun carriages, at least two hundred Hessian horses, wagons of ammunition, food, clothing, blankets, wagons of medicine, indeed, life, victory and the ability to continue the war.

For how long? As it seemed to them then, forever.

AN
AFTERWORD

B
ETWEEN THE TWO CROSSINGS of the Delaware River by the army under the leadership of General Washington, only twenty days elapsed, a very small part of a war that lasted eight years.

In making this study, I am proposing that these twenty days were critical to the final success of the war and to the coming into being of the United States of America. Others might argue with this supposition, and no absolute proof can be offered for or against the contention. In any case, if the twenty days were not the ultimate crisis, they were certainly one of the most critical periods of the American Revolution and perhaps one of the few moments that tested to the limits the endurance of the people involved in the central military effort of the rebellion.

At the time of the American Revolution, the thirteen colonies had been settled by a varied and diverse group of people whose interests were far from homogeneous. However, these varying interests coincided in a unity of desire and necessity at a moment in history that enabled them to join themselves together into a single national force that was able to oppose the British Crown, first in a series of actions of civil disorders and finally with armed force.

Roughly, the colonies can be divided into three areas, New England, the central region, and the South. Farming was universal among the three areas, and in each case the non-agricultural forces had their base in agriculture. The New England region was in its commercial complexion mercantile and fishing. In the central or middle area, which included New York, New Jersey and Pennsylvania, there was a grouping of mercantile interests similar to those of New England. But also there was a good deal of industry: iron works, lumber, leather tanning, papermaking, printing and oven works whose kilns were devoted to the production of pottery and bricks. The southern area, from Virginia to Georgia, was for the most part agricultural; and the main cash crop of this area was tobacco, not yet cotton, for this was still prior to the invention of the cotton gin.

The civil dispute between these thirteen colonies and the mother country of England had been going on for a good many years. It is difficult to place one's finger on the precise moment when civil disturbance changed from random acts of annoyance on the part of the colonies to a maturing movement of civil defiance. The colonies had just contributed a very large and efficient force of soldiers, and arms as well, to the war that we remember as the French and Indian War, that part of the conflict between England and France that took place on the American continent.

The local militia of the various colonies had been tried by fire. They had seen regular British and French troops in action, and they were by no means overawed by the performance of the professionals or doubtful of their own capabilities in this field.

In 1764, a year after the war was over, King George and certain members of the British Parliament put forward a demand that the Americans pay for their share of the large English debt that had been incurred. This demand for contributions was sent to the colonial assemblies, where it was rejected with more or less common indignation.

This was the first real crisis in the British assumption that they had the absolute right to tax the Americans, and this was the first large American defiance of an attempt to exercise that right. Both sides of the dispute found their sensibilities exacerbated, and in 1765 the Quartering Act was passed by Parliament out of pique rather than out of any true necessity. The Quartering Act demanded of the colonies that they make their houses available as living quarters for the standing army of British soldiers that were still an occupation force in America.

Indignation over the Quartering Act ran high. When it was followed by the Stamp Act, which put a stamp tax on all newspapers, pamphlets and on a variety of legal documents, the anger of the people in the colonies reached a point that caused rioting and active resistance. Younger people in the colonies, mostly between fourteen and twenty years of age, began the first organization of quasimilitary resistance, called “The Sons of Liberty.”

Everywhere in the colonies the Stamp Act brought into being a sort of official colonial indignation. Patrick Henry introduced a resolution into the Virginia Assembly that condemned and denied the right of Parliament to legislate on any internal affairs of the Commonwealth of Virginia. Massachusetts, a hotbed of anger generated by both the Stamp and the Quartering Acts, called for a Stamp Act Congress, which met in 1765, and this special group issued a Declaration of Rights. The Stamp Act Congress was in actuality the first mechanism for unity that the colonies put forth and also the first sign of a desire for separate government. The resistance against the Stamp Act was sufficient to cause the British prime minister to repeal it. But in the act of repealing it the British felt that they had to make some new assertion of their right in America and their hold over the colonies.

A man called Charles Townshend, who was then the British chancellor of the exchequer, framed a bill that contained a considerable list of new taxes, taxes on lead and painters' colors, paper, oil, wine, glass and tea—indeed taxes that touched almost every area in which the colonists were attempting to establish their own independent manufacturing and importing facilities. The British rationale for these levies was that the duties collected would be used to pay wages of governors and judges functioning in the colonies.