02:23 PM EDT on Tuesday, June 13, 2006

BY GERALD M. CARBONE
Journal Staff Writer

Christmas Day 1776 dawned clear and cold, one of those blue winter days that look nice but aren't. The temperature peaked at 30 degrees, cold enough to sting ungloved hands.

Around noon, the main part of the army, about 2,400 men, gathered in camp to begin the march to McKonkey's Ferry on the Pennsylvania side of the Delaware River. As they stood in the cold, George Washington ordered a man posted at the head of each unit to read aloud Thomas Paine's latest pamphlet, "The Crisis." In air cold enough to see their breath, the officers read:

"These are the times that try men's souls. The summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will, in this crisis, shrink from the service of his country; but he that stands it now, deserves the love and thanks of man and woman. Tyranny, like hell, is not easily conquered; yet we have this consolation with us, that the harder the conflict, the more glorious the triumph. What we obtain too cheap, we esteem too lightly: it is dearness only that gives everything its value. Heaven knows how to put a proper price on its goods; and it would be strange indeed if so celestial an article as FREEDOM should not be highly rated."

One by one, each unit marched off toward McKonkey's Ferry, so that by 3 p.m. the entire army was in motion. They crunched across week-old snow that had thawed and refrozen to a sharp glaze. Maj. John Wilkinson saw the snow "tinged here and there," he wrote, "with blood from the feet of the men who wore broken shoes."

The sun sets early on Christmas; by 4:30 p.m. the sky was dark enough to conceal the river crossing, and at McConkey's Ferry the embarkations began.

The wind blew from the northeast. Most Americans were farmers then, and Col. John Glover's regiment from Massachusetts was composed of fishermen. These farmers and fishermen depended on weather for their livelihoods; they well knew what a northeast wind meant. The Pennsylvanians laid odds that snow would fall within 24 hours.

The wind funneled down the Delaware Valley, driving before it large ice floes that had broken from the river's edge. As the wind increased, so did its sound, making communication difficult. Through the roar of the wind in the gathering dark one voice rang clear: the deep bass of 280-pound Henry Knox, the chief artillery officer now in charge of loading the boats. The artillery went first as each column -- Maj. Gen. Nathanael Greene's and Maj. Gen. John Sullivan's -- would have nine guns apiece at their heads.

It was tough work loading the cannon, and the horses that would draw them, and then the men, in the wind and the dark of a slippery river bank. A full moon rose at sunset, but already the storm clouds veiled it, soon to smother it.

Greene's three regiments went first, stepping gingerly into the Durham boats -- big, black boats used in peacetime for hauling iron and pig ore from the Durham Iron Works. They were 40 to 60 feet long, 8 feet wide, and even fully loaded with cannon, cattle, soldiers and crew, they sank only 30 inches. Greene had ordered the boats sent down the river the previous week, in preperation for the Christmas-night crossing.

Washington had planned to have all his men across the river by midnight, but conditions made the crossing painfully slow. Col. John Glover's regiment of Marblehead fishermen poled and steered the freighted boats across the current, battling their way through big ice floes that clunked heavily against the sides.

Washington, wrapped in a cloak, crossed about 7 p.m. to view the landing parties. Knox recalled Washington stepping over men in the boat till he at last reached the bench where Knox sat. He said, "Shift that fat ass, Harry. But slowly, or you'll swamp the damned boat!"

Once ashore, Washington sat on a box that had contained a beehive and watched for hours while his plans slowly went awry.

About 11 p.m., heavy snow began to fall. The northeast wind whipped snow and sleet into the faces of Glover's men as they battled the current and the ice floes; their poles and gunnels wore a glaze of ice.

By the time everyone was across and ready to march the nine miles to Trenton, it was 4 a.m., four hours behind schedule. The troops would not be able to spring a surprise, predawn attack on the Hessians quartered at Trenton. But there was no turning back; they'd have to fight by daylight.

The troops stepped off -- thankfully putting the windblown sleet at their backs -- and marched as quietly as they could; after two hours they reached the dark village of Birmingham, where they gobbled cold rations before splitting into two groups: Greene and Washington led men down Scotch Road, while Sullivan took his troops toward Trenton along the River Road.

Sullivan sent word to Washington that his men were complaining their gunpowder was wet. Washington sent a messenger back with an answer: use the bayonet. "The town must be taken, and I am resolved to take it."

If Nathanael Greene wrote much about the Battle of Trenton, it has been lost. All that remains is one paragraph to his wife, Caty, and one paragraph to Rhode Island's governor, Nicholas Cooke.

From Trenton, Greene wrote to Caty:

We crost the River Delaware at McKonkees Ferry Eight miles above this place on the 25 of this instant and attackt the Town by Storm in the morning. It raind, haild and snowd and was a violent Storm. The Storm of nature and the Storm of the Town exhibited a Scene that fild the mind during the action with passions easier conceivd than described. The Action lasted about three quarters of an hour. We kild, wounded and took Prisoners of the Enimy between Eleven and twelve hundred. Our troops behavd with great Spirit. General Sullivan commanded the right Wing of the Army and I the left.

In another, understated letter to Cooke, Greene repeated the essentials -- crossed the Delaware on the 25th in one of the severest Hails and rain storms I ever saw -- captured six cannon and a large number of arms. I was out 30 hours in all the storm without the least refreshment.

Greene's column made the first contact with a Hessian outpost about 8 a.m.; by 9 a.m. the fighting was over. It had been chaos, with American artillery blasting down the main streets at surprised Hessians pouring from their barracks with drums beating and martial music blowing on their oboes in an attempt to rally troops. Gunpowder mingled with the swirling snow and rain, creating a thick curtain of fog.

When it was over, Col. Johann Rall, the Hessian officer who took the sword of surrender at Fort Washington, lay wounded in a church, two bullet holes in his side. Greene and Washington visited Rall, who asked that his men be kindly treated. Rall died that day.

Greene's estimate of Hessians killed and captured was high: actually 1,024 were taken -- 22 dead, 84 wounded, 918 captured. Only 300 to 500 escaped.

Four Americans were wounded, including future President James Monroe, who took a ball in the shoulder.

As the gunpowder fog dissipated, Sgt. William White walked the streets where battle had raged. His "blood chill'd to see such horror and distress, blood mingling together -- the dying groans, and garments rolled in blood."

Washington called a brief council of war. The two regiments to the south had obviously not crossed the river (one commander had decided the crossing was impossible, and the other had turned his troops back when he could not cross his artillery) so their southern flank was exposed to Hessian reinforcements. Washington asked whether they should still press on for Princeton and Brunswick.

Greene and Knox said they should, but they were outvoted. Not only were enemy reinforcements behind them, but their troops were cold, wet and exhausted. At noon they marched out of Trenton, slogging along slushy roads the eight or nine miles to the river crossing.

Again the crossing was made at night with a cold wind blowing ice floes down the valley. This time, three men who boarded the Durham boats never made it alive to the other side. In crossing the Delaware, they froze to death.

'Your country is at stake'

Moving thousands of troops across a freezing river in a deadly storm was a desperate roll of the dice -- but it worked. The attack at Trenton proved to the British and to the American people that the revolution still breathed life.

Yet, as he surveyed his troops on Dec. 27, 1776, George Washington was still not satisfied. He had not planned to stop at Trenton. His plans called for driving the British out of Princeton, then capturing the main force at Brunswick, where the king's troops kept a war chest of 70,000 pounds. He resolved to finish what he'd begun.

Returns of his own troops that Friday showed that 40 percent were still too sick and tired to fight; Washington knew they needed a day or two to "recruit," or refresh, themselves.

On the 28th, while the main body of troops boiled water to clean what rags they had for clothes, Nathanael Greene again crossed the Delaware with a party of 300 militia. He crossed at Yardley's Ferry, where the ice was now thick enough to bear the weight of a man, though it would not support horses and cannon.

Washington again crossed the Delaware on Dec. 30 after giving his troops just three days of rest. The river crossing was even tougher this time; even though it was daylight, the ice floes were thicker, and Henry Knox was now moving 40 cannon and draught horses, twice as many as they'd landed before.

On the last day of December 1776, Washington brought his horse to a halt before a New England regiment of his veteran troops. These men looked less like soldiers than refugees with ragged clothes stretched across bony frames.

Washington told them that they'd done a good job; they were not the "sunshine patriots" of Thomas Paine's pamphlet; they were the loyal sons of liberty to whom all should be grateful. Washington told them that if they'd extend the terms of their enlistment for just six weeks more, he would top their regular pay with a bounty of $10.

His regimental officers called for volunteers to step forward and a drummer beat a roll.

Not one man moved.

Frustrated, Washington wheeled his horse around in a circle and rode alongside his men. One sergeant recalled that he then said, as quoted from the book, Rebels and Redcoats:

"My brave fellows, you have done all I asked you to do, and more than could be reasonably expected. But your country is at stake, your wives, your houses, all that you hold dear. You have worn yourselves out with fatigues and hardships, but we know not how to spare you. If you will consent to stay but one month longer, you will render that service to the cause of liberty, and to your country, which you probably can never do under any other circumstances. The present is emphatically the crisis that will decide our destiny."

Again the drum rolled. This time there were murmurs ("I will remain if you do"), and gaunt veterans came forward till all but the lame and the nearly naked stood in a line.

The scene was similar in the mixed Massachusetts and Rhode Island regiments, where Thomas Mifflin, swathed in a rose-colored coat and large fur hat, addressed the men from the back of his "noble looking horse." Mifflin (no friend of Nathanael Greene's) spoke for the Rhode Island colonel Daniel Hitchcock, whose lungs were so wracked with consumption that he could not speak.

About half of the 2,400 regulars who had taken Trenton agreed to stay on for six more weeks to help Washington rid the Jerseys of the British. Nearly half of those who remained were the Rhode Islanders.

God Almighty inclnd [inclined] their hearts to listen to the proposal and they engaged anew, happy for America," Greene wrote home to Gov. Nicholas Cooke. This is the greatest evidence of N[ew] E[ngland] virtue that I ever saw. Let it be remembered to their Eternal honor.

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 Co., 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.