08:19 AM EDT on Friday, June 9, 2006

BY GERALD M. CARBONE
Journal Staff Writer

Inside the damp chill of an unfinished, fieldstone house, Nathanael Greene scratched out a letter to his wife, Caty. He wrote from the Merrick House near the banks of the Delaware River, which was beginning to freeze now in mid-December 1776.

Greene and what was left of his army, fewer than 3,000 men, had just crossed the Delaware from Trenton, N.J., barely escaping before British troops swept in. His spirits were understandably low; the British had routed him from New York at Fort Washington, hounded him across New Jersey, invaded his home state of Rhode Island and were now in a good position to move on to the capital city of Philadelphia. Congress was so concerned about a British invasion that it quit the capital city and moved the nascent nation's business to Baltimore.

As a major general, Greene earned $150 per month, generous money when he was commissioned in the summer of 1775, but now just enough to cover expenses with nothing left to support a family in Rhode Island. As the American Army lost battle after battle, the paper Continental dollar fell in value against the hard silver of British coin. In Philadelphia, a dollar was worth half of what it had been, and was plunging lower.

Fortune seems to frown upon the cause of freedom; a combination of evils are pressing in upon us on all sides, Greene wrote to his wife. However, I hope this is the dark part of the night, which generally is just before day.

Nathanael Greene had a secret. Something big was about to happen, an attack; from the tone of his letters he wanted to talk about it, but had to keep it confidential. On Dec. 21, 1776, the darkest day of the year, Greene wrote to his governor, Nicholas Cooke of Rhode Island:

We are now on the West side of the Delaware, our force tho small collected together, but small as it is I hope to give the Enimy a stroke in a few days. Should fortune favor the Attack Perhaps it may put a stop to General Hows progress. His ravages in the Jersies exceed all description. Men slaughterd, Women ravisht, and Houses plundered, little Girls not ten years old ravisht, Mothers and Daughters ravisht in presence of the Husbands and Sons who were obligd to be spectators to their brutal conduct.

There was truth to Greene's stories of rape and plunder by General Howe's troops as they crossed New Jersey. The Hessians in Howe's command had no stake in this fight, other than what little pleasure and plunder they could take out of it. Even Loyalists weren't exempt from rape and looting, because the Hessian soldiers sweeping across New Jersey didn't know enough English to distinguish Tory from Whig.

On Christmas Eve 1776, Nathanael Greene again hinted at a secret plan of attack as he dashed off a note to a new friend, Col. Clem Biddle. In peacetime, Biddle had been a prosperous Philadelphia merchant; until recently he good-naturedly badgered Greene to send his wife, Caty, to Philadelphia to spend some time with his own "lady."

If your business at Newtown will permit I should be glad to see you here, Greene wrote to Biddle from his fieldstone headquarters at Coryells Ferry, on the Pennsylvania side of the Delaware River.

This was no Christmas party visit that Greene wanted to have with Biddle: There is some business of importance to communicate to you which I wish to do today. [Bring] No butter, No chees, No Cyder. This is not for the honnor of Pennsylvania.

That night a procession of officers crunched across the crusty snow outside the Merrick House, the chilly, unfinished fieldstone house where Greene was living. They came for a strategy session led by George Washington.

For Washington, the future looked bleak, even desperate. His summertime army of 28,000 had dwindled to about 6,000 nearly naked, poorly fed men.

Charles Willson Peale, as yet a little-known painter, saw one soldier along the banks of the Delaware "who had lost all his clothes, He was in an old, dirty blanket jacket, his beard long, and his face so full of sores he could not clean it." Only when the man greeted him warmly did Peale recognize that he was looking at his own brother.

Washington knew that the enlistment period for most of his regulars would expire on Dec. 31, 1776; if everyone whose enlistment expired opted to trade the misery of camp for the fireside of home, his army would fall to 1,400 men.

Washington wrote to John Hancock, president of the Continental Congress, on Dec. 20: "ten days more will put an end to the existence of our army."

To his brother, John Augustine, Washington was even more blunt. He wrote: "I think the game is pretty near up."

Even before he called his council of war in Greene's headquarters, ashington had steeled himself to make a last, desperate attack before his little army disbanded.

Benjamin Rush, a Philadelphia doctor and signer of the Declaration of Independence, visited Washington at his headquarters on the 23rd, and found him "much depressed."

"While I was talking to him, I observed him to play with his pen and ink upon several small pieces of paper. One of them by accident fell upon the floor near my feet. I was struck with the inscription upon it. It was 'Victory or Death.' "

Over and over Washington wrote that phrase, Victory or Death. He would give the scraps of paper to his officers as the new countersign -- anyone challenged by a sentry was to repeat that shibboleth.

The officers assembled in the Merrick House included two future presidents -- Washington and James Monroe; a secretary of the treasury (Alexander Hamilton), and a secretary of war (Henry Knox). After they ate their Christmas Eve dinner Greene asked his hosts, the Merrick family, to please leave for a while; the officers needed to conduct their council of war.

Greene and a few others were already privy to the plans that Washington then laid out: on Christmas Day the troops would cross the Delaware River, march under cover darkness to Trenton and attack a garrison of 1,400 Hessians. Once they took Trenton they'd move on and storm Brunswick.

On paper, the attack showed three prongs: 2,000 troops, mostly raw militia, would cross the Delaware at Dunk's Ferry; this southernmost prong was important to the mission. These troops would prevent, or at least delay, a bigger force of Hessians on Bordentown from moving north to reinforce the garrison at Trenton.

About 1,000 troops in the middle prong would also cross south of Trenton at Kirkbright's Ferry; they'd bring artillery.

The main attack would come from Washington's 2,400 men who would cross at McKonkey's Ferry, then split in two, with Nathanael Greene leading the left column.

This an important period to America, Greene wrote to Caty at the time of the attack, big with great events.

gcarbone@projo.com / (401) 277-7434

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Sources for today's installment:

Boatner III, Mark M. Encyclopedia of the American Revolution. Stackpole Books: Mechanicsburg, Pa., 1994.

Ketchum, Richard M. The Winter Soliders. Copyright 1973. Henry Holt and Company: New York. Owl Books Edition, 1999.

Parks, Roger N., ed. The Papers of Nathanael Greene, Vol. XIII. The University of North Carolina Press: Chapel Hill, 2005.

Scheer, George F., and Rankin, Hugh F. Rebels & Redcoats. Da Capo Press Inc.: United States of America, 1987. copyright The world Publishing Company, 1957.

Showman, Richard K., ed. The Papers of Nathanael Greene, Vol. I and Vol. II. The University of North Carolina Press: Chapel Hill, 1976 and 1980.

Williams, Catharine R. Biography of Revolutionary Heroes. Published by the author: Providence, 1839.

A continuing series.