Washington's Crossing

By David Hackett Fischer
Published by Oxford University Press
February 2004; $35.00US; 0-19-517034-2

Six months after the Declaration of Independence, the American Revolution was all but lost. A powerful British force had routed the Americans at New York, occupied three colonies, and advanced within sight of Philadelphia. George Washington lost 90 percent of his army and was driven across the Delaware River. Panic and despair spread through the states.

Yet, as David Hackett Fischer recounts in this riveting history, Washington -- and many other Americans -- refused to let the Revolution die. Even as the British and Germans spread their troops across New Jersey, the people of the colony began to rise against them. George Washington saw his opportunity and seized it. On Christmas night, as a howling nor'easter struck the Delaware Valley, he led his men across the river and attacked the exhausted Hessian garrison at Trenton, killing or capturing nearly a thousand men. A second battle of Trenton followed within days. The Americans held off a counterattack by Lord Cornwallis's best troops, then were almost trapped by the British force. Under cover of night, Washington's men stole behind the enemy and struck them again, defeating a brigade at Princeton. The British were badly shaken. In twelve weeks of winter fighting, their army suffered severe damage, their hold on New Jersey was broken, and their strategy was ruined.

Fischer's richly textured narrative reveals the crucial role of contingency in these events. We see how the campaign unfolded in a sequence of difficult choices by many actors, from generals to civilians, on both sides. While British and German forces remained rigid and hierarchical, Americans evolved an open and flexible system that was fundamental to their success. At the same time, they developed an American ethic of warfare that John Adams called 'the policy of humanity,' and showed that moral victories could have powerful material effects. The startling success of Washington and his compatriots not only saved the faltering American Revolution, but helped to give it new meaning, in a pivotal moment for American history.

Author

David Hackett Fischer is renowned as one of America's most gifted and creative historians. He is University Professor at Brandeis University, and the author of such acclaimed volumes as Albion's Seed, The Great Wave, and Paul Revere's Ride.

Excerpt

The following is an excerpt from the book Washington's Crossingby David Hackett Fischer

Published by Oxford University Press; February 2004; $35.00US; 0-19-517034-2

Copyright © 2004 David Hackett Fischer The River

Henry Knox and the Delaware Crossings

The force of the current, the sharpness of the frost, the darkness of the night, the ice which made during the operation, and a high wind, rendered the passage of the river extremely difficult, but for the stentorian lungs and extraordinary exertions of Colonel Knox.

--Major James Wilkinson, 1816

Early on Christmas morning, the American camps along the Delaware River began to stir. Clouds of white smoke rose from kitchen fires where the women of the army were hard at work, with orders to prepare "three days rations ready cooked." Company officers and sergeants were instructed to see that every man had "arms, accoutrements and ammunition in the best order." Fresh flints were issued for each musket, with plenty of black powder and ball. A few lucky soldiers got the new blankets that had just arrived from Robert Morris and were much wanted on that winter day.

The ground was white with frozen snow. For much of the morning the sun warmed the air a little, but temperatures stayed below freezing. In the shade one felt a damp cutting cold that chilled a man to his bones. At midday, the westerly wind shifted to the northeast, and this army of farmers and fishermen could read the signs of a change in the weather. During the afternoon they could feel it in the wind that was rising in the trees, and they could see it in the high thin clouds that raced across the sky.

At the army's headquarters, there were clouds of another sort. On Christmas morning aide-de-camp Tench Tilghman copied a letter from George Washington to Robert Morris in Philadelphia. Its tone was different from most of the general's correspondence, and expressive of his state of mind. The letter began with thanks for the blankets, but mainly Washington was writing to inform his friend of troubling new intelligence. A message had been intercepted from a "person in the Secrets of the Enemy." It seemed to indicate that British commanders were planning "to cross the Delaware as soon as the Ice is sufficiently strong." Washington warned, "I mention this that you may take the necessary Steps for the Security of such public and private property as ought not to fall into their hands, should they make themselves Masters of Philadelphia."

The mood of the letter was dark but grimly determined. Washington continued as if he were musing to himself, "It is in vain to ruminate upon, or even reflect upon the Authors or Causes of our present Misfortunes. We should rather exert ourselves to look forward with Hopes, that some lucky chance may yet turn up in our Favour." At the end of the page, he dropped his accustomed mask of confidence and added sadly, "I hope the next Christmas will prove happier than the present to you and to Dear Sir Your sincere Friend and humble servant."

About four o'clock in the afternoon an American drum began to beat; then another and another. Up and down the Delaware River, regiments turned out for evening parade. They had done it often before, but this muster was different. John Greenwood remembered that every man in his regiment was ordered to carry a musket, even officers and musicians such as himself. Greenwood was a fifer. He recalled, "I then had a gun, as indeed every officer had." All were given as much ammunition as they could carry. "Every man had sixty rounds of cartridges served out to him," Greenwood wrote. "I put . . . some in my pockets and some in my little cartridge box."

Greenwood wrote that "none but the first officers knew where we were going or what we were going about, for it was a secret expedition." His regiment knew even less than the others, for they had arrived two days ago from the northern frontier. In October, they had been fighting near Montreal. By November they were living in misery at Ticonderoga. Of five hundred men who entered Canada, only one hundred remained. Most had come down with the "flux or camp distemper," and many had died "like rotten sheep." When the regiment marched south to Pennsylvania, Greenwood himself fell ill with the "fever and ague" of malaria. "What I suffered on the march cannot be described," he wrote. "They who were with us know best about these things, others cannot believe the tenth part, so I shall say nothing further."

Now these men were on the road again in Pennsylvania and "knew not the disposition of the army we were then in, nor anything about the country." They did not know where they were going, and some were too miserable to care. Greenwood wrote of his shattered regiment, "I never heard soldiers say anything, nor ever saw them trouble themselves as to where they were or where they were led. It was enough for them to know that wherever the officers commanded they must go, be it through fire and water."

Some of these men were on their last legs, but when they heard the order to march on Christmas day, Greenwood remembered that their spirits rose a little. He observed that "owing to the impossibility of being in a worse condition than their present one, the men always liked to be kept moving in the expectation of bettering themselves." Even after everything that had happened to them, they continued to be optimistic fatalists who believed that any change was for the best.

Late in the afternoon, they began to move out of their camps in an operation that had been planned in meticulous detail. The infantry were ordered to march in compact columns "eight men abreast," so they would stay together on the road. General Washington ordered "a profound silence to be enjoined, and no man to quit his Ranks on pain of Death." Officers who had to carry out those orders softened them a little. Mercer repeated them as "no man is to quit his Ranks on pain of instant punishment."

The officers were under orders to remain "fixed in their divisions" and to "have a white paper in their hats to be distinguished by," a custom that endured in the United States Army from the banks of the Delaware to the coast of Normandy, where officers and noncoms had white stripes painted on the backs of their helmets. It was a sign for the men to follow their leaders, and a signal to the officers that they were to lead from the front.

Washington and his staff had planned the operation in great detail. He meant to cross the Delaware River on Christmas night and attack Trenton a little before dawn, with all the strength his command. Field commanders were ordered to lead their men across the river in four separate movements, all at the same time.

Washington himself and his veteran Continental regiments (about 2,400 men) were to cross at McConkey's and Johnson's ferries, about ten miles upstream from Trenton, and would attack the town from the north and west. A smaller force, James Ewing's brigade of eight hundred militia from rural Pennsylvania, were to cross the river at Trenton Ferry, just south of Trenton Falls very near the town. Their mission was to seize and hold the bridge across Assunpink Creek and block the only exit from the town to the southeast.

A third force down the river had another assignment. Colonel John Cadwalader's 1,200 Philadelphia Associators and about six hundred New England Continentals under Colonel Daniel Hitchcock were ordered to embark near Bristol in Pennsylvania and to land at Burlington in New Jersey, about twelve miles below Trenton. Their mission was to draw the attention of Colonel von Donop's brigade of Hessian grenadiers and Colonel Stirling's Highlanders and keep them occupied. Washington wrote to Cadwalader, "If you can do nothing real, at least create as great a diversion as possible."

There was also some hope that Israel Putnam could lead another crossing from Philadelphia and join the South Jersey militia south of Mount Holly. About three hundred men had already gone over the river, but Putnam's crossing was always very doubtful, and remained on the margin of the operation.

No sooner had these forces mustered on Christmas afternoon than Washington's schedule began to come apart. The old army saying that "no battle plan survives contact with the enemy" is only half correct. Most plans do not survive contact with one's friends. Washington's plan miscarried that way during the first hour of the operation. He had wanted the army to march from their separate camps toward three crossing points on the Delaware River and assemble away from the water's edge, out of sight from New Jersey. It was urgently important to his plan that the troops should reach their assembly areas before sunset (about 4:41 P.M. that day), so that they could move to the river at nightfall and cross as soon as the sky was dark enough to hide their movements.

Time was vital to the success of the operation. Washington reckoned that his Continental troops at the upstream crossing had to march about ten miles in New Jersey from McConkey's Ferry to Trenton. To achieve surprise, he wanted to attack the town before dawn, at five o'clock in the morning. The plan would work only if the army began to cross the Delaware just after dark and assembled in New Jersey ready to march no later than midnight, a very tight schedule. To that end, he ordered the army to parade in Pennsylvania "precisely at four in the afternoon."

The schedule failed even before the march began. John Greenwood recalled that his regiment did not leave camp until after four o'clock, about half an hour before sunset. They were in Newtown, Pennsylvania, five miles from McConkey's Ferry. Many were ill, and more than a few were without shoes. Major James Wilkinson followed their trail from Newtown to the river and remembered that the "route was easily traced, as there was a little snow on the ground, which was tinged here and there with blood from the feet of the men who wore broken shoes." The men were burdened with packs, blankets, weapons, three days' provisions, and sixty rounds of ammunition. They also had artillery with them and did not reach the assembly area until well after dark, about six o'clock or later. Even so, Greenwood's regiment were among "the first who crossed."

The same delays happened up and down the river. Chaplain David Avery's regiment got to the northern assembly area two hours after dark. Ewing's and Cadwalader's troops downstream were late as well. The men put down their equipment and rested their weary feet, while officers grew frantic with worry. Even before they reached the west bank of the river, they were more than two hours late. Washington was deeply concerned. Two hours' delay meant an attack in daylight, which made tactical surprise very doubtful and put the entire mission at risk.

As if that were not trouble enough, a travel-stained officer rode up to George Washington just as he was leaving his quarters for the river and handed him a dispatch. The courier was Major James Wilkinson, who had ridden all day on treacherous roads from Philadelphia. Wilkinson remembered the moment when he reached the commander-in-chief. "I found him alone with his whip in his hand, prepared to mount his horse," he recalled. The major delivered a sealed letter, and the general was not happy to receive it. "What a time is this to hand me letters!" he said. Wilkinson apologized and explained that he was acting on orders from General Gates.

"General Gates!" Washington said. "Where is he?"

"I left him this morning in Philadelphia," Wilkinson replied.

"What was he doing there?"

"I understood him that he was on his way to Congress."

"On his way to Congress," the general said, as he opened the letter. The messenger departed hastily. "I made my bow," Wilkinson remembered, and he went quickly toward the river to join the crossing as a volunteer. The young major knew what was in the dispatch, and he preferred the wrath of the enemy to the fury of his commander-in-chief.

The letter he brought from Horatio Gates has not survived, but Wilkinson remembered that Gates had "appeared much depressed in mind, and frequently expressed an opinion that while General Washington was watching the enemy above Trenton, they would privately construct batteaux, pass the Delaware in his rear and take possession of Philadelphia." Wilkinson also heard Gates say that "General Washington ought to retire to the South of the Susquehanna, and there form an army; he said it was his intention to propose the measure to Congress at Baltimore." He asked Wilkinson to come with him, but the major wisely refused and made his way to George Washington.

In the past several days, Horatio Gates had grown distant from Washington, even to the edge of insubordination. Just before Christmas, Washington had asked him to take a command in the Trenton operation. Gates begged off, pleading illness, and asked permission to go to Philadelphia on account of his health. Washington agreed but urged him to stop at Bristol on his way and help sort out some "uneasiness of command" between Hitchcock's Continentals and Cadwalader's militia there. Gates refused again, openly defying his commander-in-chief. He claimed he was too ill to stop at Bristol, but he was well enough to ride another hundred miles to Baltimore and seek out the president of Congress. Horatio Gates was going over the head of his commander-in-chief, seeking to persuade Congress to overrule Washington's plan of operations, and perhaps hoping to replace him. All this came to a head just at the moment when the army was crossing the Delaware. Washington was thunderstruck, and Wilkinson witnessed a flash of his formidable temper. But the general did not permit himself the luxury of rage against a wayward subordinate. With his iron self-discipline, Washington returned to the task at hand, which was to get his army across the Delaware.

While the Continentals marched to McConkey's Ferry, the weather was changing very rapidly. John Greenwood recalled that when his regiment left their camp in Newtown a little after four o'clock, the sun was low on the horizon but still "shining brightly." As they marched along snowy roads in the gathering darkness, the sky clouded over. A little after sunset, Greenwood wrote, "it began to drizzle or grow wet." By the time they reached the river, the drizzle had become a driving rain. About eleven o'clock, a howling nor'easter hit them with terrific force. Greenwood remembered that "it rained, hailed, snowed and froze." He forgot to mention sleet. The wind rose so high "it blew a perfect hurricane," in his words. All this happened as the army gathered at the river.

While Washington's Continentals were waiting to make the northern crossing at McConkey's and Johnson's ferries, other American forces were trying to get over the river downstream. General James Ewing's troops were set in motion late on Christmas day. Ewing's eight hundred Pennsylvania militia were on the road toward Trenton ferry, where they were to make the central crossing. They too were delayed and ran into the same storm. On the river they met another obstacle: a massive ice jam exactly at their crossing point. The Delaware River was tidal below the falls at Trenton. The floating ice that came downstream was caught by the incoming tide and driven upstream against the falls. Great cakes of ice were trapped between the rocks and the tide and compressed into a jumbled mass of frozen chaos. An expert on the river, New Jersey state geologist Kemble Widmer, writes from long experience that "it takes only four hours to pile ice five feet deep for nearly half a mile down the river [from Trenton falls], and across its entire width except for three or four narrow channels of rushing water twenty or thirty feet wide. There is no conceivable way for anyone to cross such an ice jam." On Christmas night in 1776, Ewing's men could not move through the ice below Trenton Falls in their boats or walk over it on foot. They were unable to get across the river. Nobody could have done it that night, until the river cleared with a change in the weather or a shift in the tides.

Farther downstream, Cadwalader's Pennsylvania Associators and Hitchcock's New England Continentals met another problem. At their crossing point by Neshaminy Ferry, the great river was nearly a quarter mile wide, and the water was turbulent. The northeast wind kicked up a nasty chop directly in their faces. The river was swollen with rain, snow, and ice, and the currents were swift and strong. Captain Thomas Rodney and his company of Delaware light infantry had a rough time. He recalled, "The River was also very full of floating ice, and the wind was blowing very hard, and the night was very dark and cold, and we had great difficulty in crossing." Conditions were so bad that Colonel Cadwalader called off the crossing at Neshaminy Ferry and ordered his men to march six miles downstream to Dunk's Ferry.

At eleven o'clock they began to move across the river with more success, but as the boats approached the Jersey shore they ran into yet another obstacle. The river made a ninety-degree turn to the west below Bordentown, then turned south and west again. The current and the tides drove the drift ice hard against the east bank of the river and created another jam. It was not as dense as that below the Trenton Falls, but the ice was so thick along the Jersey side of the river that boats could not reach land. Thomas Rodney remembered that "when we reached the Jersey shore we were obliged to land on the ice, 150 yards from the shore." His light infantry struggled across the ice on foot. Rodney reckoned that "about 600 of the light troops got over, but the boats with the artillery were carried away in the ice and could not be got over."

The men made many attempts to break through the ice. Some succeeded in the First and Third battalions of the Philadelphia Associators. But as Charles Willson Peale's infantry in the Second Battalion tried to follow, they were defeated by the ice and the rising storm. Peale wrote, "When the 1st and 3rd were nearly landed on the other side the wind began to blow, and the ice gathering so thick at a considerable distance from the shore there was no possibility of landing, and they were ordered back."

The men who had got ashore in New Jersey watched as things fell apart. Rodney remembered, "After waiting about three hours we were informed that Generals Cadwalader and Hitchcock had given up the expedition, and that the troops that were over were ordered back. This greatly irritated the troops that had crossed the River, and they proposed making the attack without both the Generals and the Artillery but it was urged, that if General Washington should be unsuccessful and we also, the cause would be lost, but if our force remained intact it would still keep up the spirit of America; therefore this course was abandoned."

The rank and file of the Associators made their own decision to return, but as the storm increased they found it as difficult to go back as it was to move forward. "We had to wait about three hours more to cover the retreat," Rodney wrote, "by which time the wind blew very hard and there was much rain and sleet, and there was so much floating ice in the River that we had the greatest difficulty to get over again, and some of our men did not get over that night. As soon as I reached the Pennsylvania shore I received orders to march to our quarters, where I arrived a little before daylight very cold and wet."

On the Pennsylvania shore, Joseph Reed observed that the troops returned "with great reluctance . . . By this time the ice began to drive with such force and in such quantities as threatened many boats with absolute destruction. To add to the difficulty, about daybreak there came the most violent storm of rain, hail, and snow intermixed in which the troops marched back to Bristol except a part of the Light Infantry which remained till next day."

By midnight, the entire operation was on the verge of disaster. Of Washington's three forces, two were defeated by ice on the river. Only the northern force remained at McConkey's Ferry. But there, at the water's edge, one important part of the plan went right. "The boats were in readiness," Major Wilkinson remembered. A large flotilla of small river craft was waiting when the men arrived. The Jersey militia of Hunterdon County had done their work well. Parties led by Continental General William Maxwell and Captains Daniel Bray, Jacob Gearhart, and Thomas Jones had collected many boats from the upper Delaware and Lehigh rivers. Bray's men alone had rounded up twenty-five vessels of various shapes and sizes.

Specially prized were the big Durham boats, sturdy freight boats built to carry heavy cargoes for the Durham Iron Works, after which they were named. They were used along the upper Delaware River for iron, grain, wood, and whiskey. William Stryker remembered them from his youth, big double-ended boats painted black with bright yellow trim. From a distance he thought that they looked "like large canoes." Some were thirty or forty feet long, and others as large as sixty feet. They were sharp-built fore and aft, flat bottomed and high sided, with a broad beam of eight feet and a shallow draft of only twenty-four or thirty inches. A crew of four or five steered them downstream with oars and long eighteen-foot sweeps, and pushed them upstream with long "setting poles." Some boats carried one or two collapsible masts and sails, which were useless in the storm that night. In all conditions the Durham boats were very stable on the river, and their shallow draft was well suited to the army's amphibious needs. After dark they were brought out of their hiding places behind Malta Island and were steered south through the ice to the landings at McConkey's Ferry and Johnson's Ferry, side by side on the river.

Other boats were also pressed into service, probably any vessel that could float. One New England soldier who grew up near the water remembered crossing in a "flat bottomed scow," which does not sound like a Durham boat. It might have been one of the ferry boats, which were in some ways more useful to the army than the Durham boats. The big Delaware ferries were built to carry horses, wagons, and even the fabulous "Flying Machine," a coach that before the Revolution was traveling between Philadelphia and New York in a single day at the amazing speed of eight or even nine miles an hour, with a change of horses in Princeton. The ferries were best for the army's horses, artillery, and ammunition wagons. The Durham boats with their high sides and sharp ends were excellent for infantry.

Most of the men crossed the Delaware standing up. Big river ferries and freight boats had few seats or none at all. On a wet winter night, anyone who sat in the bottom of a Durham boat or ferry would have been sitting in ice water. There are accounts of other Delaware crossings in 1776 in which the men were ordered to jump up and down in several inches of watery slush to clear the ice from the boats and to keep from freezing. The legions of American debunkers who have made a mockery of George Washington for "standing up in the boat" might try sitting down in such conditions.

To manage the boats, the army recruited three groups of watermen. Most prominent were the men of Colonel John Glover's Marblehead regiment, salty seamen and fishermen from the North Shore of New England. They were highly visible in their short blue seamen's jackets, woolen caps, tarred trousers, and worsted stockings, now ragged and worn from heavy service. These were the same men who helped to rescue the American army from Long Island and fought in the campaigns around New York. Once again they were doing double duty as boatmen and infantry.

Other mariners came to the army from the Philadelphia waterfront: seamen, longshoremen, block-makers, riggers, and ships' carpenters. Among them were eighty-two young men and boys, recruited by Captain Joseph Moulder for his battery of artillery. A third group were ferrymen and boatmen from New Jersey and Pennsylvania, who knew the river and could navigate it in the dark.

The crossing was a challenge to all their skill that night. The river near Trenton was described in late December 1776 as "extremely rapid here and in general about two ells [90 inches] deep." At McConkey's Ferry, the width of the stream was about eight hundred feet, and the water was high and swift. Ice had formed on the river and had broken apart into floating cakes and floes. The current had jammed large pieces along the banks in thick jagged rows. The main stream was full of flat cakes of flow-ice, which came down the Delaware at surprising speed, spinning and turning in the whirls and eddies of the river. The temperature was falling; and more ice was forming in the river and even on the boats. Much use was probably made of setting poles that night.

Another problem was the darkness of the night. A bright moon had risen after sunset but was obscured by the storm. Visibility grew so poor that boatmen could barely see the opposite shore. Wilkinson recalled that "the force of the current, the sharpness of the frost, the darkness of the night, the ice which made during the operation, and a high wind, rendered the passage of the river extremely difficult." Washington thought that the "greatest fatigue" was "in breaking a passage through the ice" along the shore." Henry Knox believed that the worst of it was "floating ice in the river," which "made the labor almost incredible."

Washington had given command of the crossing to Knox. He was a big, heavy man, taller than Washington and weighing in at nearly three hundred pounds. Many men remembered his "deep bass voice," which they could hear above the roar of the nor'easter. Several commanders of the army believed that the crossing would have failed "but for the stentorian lungs of Colonel Knox."

His hardest task was to deal with the frightened horses and eighteen pieces of artillery. The Durham boats would have been useless for that purpose. Only a few big ferries could carry them, which caused further delays in the crossing. In the end it was done "with almost infinite difficulty," in Knox's words. He wrote to his wife that "perseverance accomplished what at first seemed impossible."

Another challenge was to get the infantry safely across the river. The great majority of the army, like other populations in eighteenth-century America and Europe, were unable to swim a stroke. Soldiers joked that they did not fear to drown, for they were born to hang. Even seamen did not learn to swim, much to the disgust of Benjamin Franklin, who was a great swimmer himself and tried in vain to teach his American generation to take to the water. There was a strange fatalism about those attitudes in the eighteenth century.

In the course of the crossing, some of the men tumbled into the icy water. One of them was Delaware's Colonel John Haslet. He was fished out in the nick of time, suffering much from exposure. This unconquerable man marched ten miles on severely swollen legs and fought a battle without complaint. In the end, not a man was lost to the river, but the guardian angels of the army were working overtime. Every artillery piece also arrived in good order on the Jersey shore, much to the relief of Henry Knox.

Not so happy was the commander-in-chief. According to tradition, Washington crossed the river with Glover's Marblehead mariners, in a boat commanded by Captain William Blackler, with Private John Russell at an oar. On the Jersey shore Washington wrapped himself in his cloak, sat down on a wooden box that had once been a beehive, and brooded over the ruin of his plan. The operation was now three hours behind schedule. Later he wrote that the delay "made me despair of surprising the Town, as I well knew we could not reach it before the day was fairly broke." Sitting on his beehive, he watched his men struggling against the storm and ice and wondered if he should call it off. But desperate as the mission had become, he decided that it might be more difficult to abandon it. Washington wrote, "As I was certain there was no making a Retreat without being discovered, and harassed on repassing the River, I determined to push on at all Events."

While Washington watched gloomily, the rest of the army got ashore. The men were shaking with cold and wet to the skin but in remarkably good spirits. Greenwood remembered that "we had to wait for the rest, and so began to pull down the fences and make fires to warm ourselves, for the storm was increasing rapidly." He added many years later, "I perfectly recollect, after putting the rails on to burn, the wind and the fire would cut them in two in a moment, and when I turned my face toward the fire my back would be freezing . . . By turning round and round I kept myself from perishing before the large bonfire." In those miserable circumstances, John Greenwood was struck by a feeling of elation that the men shared. He wrote, "The noise of the soldiers coming over and clearing away the ice, the rattling of the cannon wheels on the frozen ground, and the cheerfulness of my fellow-comrades encouraged me beyond expression, and, big coward as I acknowledge myself to be, I felt great pleasure, more than I now do in writing about it."

The assembly of the army on the Jersey shore went slowly but without a major hitch. Washington's first concern was to protect the secrecy of the operation. He ordered Adam Stephen's Virginia brigade to move quickly inland and "form a chain of sentries round the landing place at a sufficient distance from the river to permit troops to form." They were told "not to suffer any person to go in or come out -- but to detain all persons who attempts either." Washington selected a secret password and wrote it himself on small slips for all the units in the army. Benjamin Rush visited him the night before the crossing and wrote, "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.'"

*endnotes have been omitted

Copyright © 2004 David Hackett Fischer

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