Being George Washington (5 page)

A young artillery officer, Alexander Hamilton, as slight and delicate as a fifteen-year-old regimental fifer, but as hardened as any grizzled veteran of Fort Necessity, stood, arms folded, his back stiffening in barely controlled rage. But it was not for twenty-two-year-old captains to publicly upbraid generals. So he, too, kept his silence.

The normally jovial Henry Knox’s puffy eyes narrowed in anger. If Knox could have marshaled his 280-pound frame to crush this defeatist, he would have gladly done so right then and there. But, as even his many friends would have conceded, General Knox’s ample body contained nary an ounce of actual muscle. Nay, if Henry Knox were to dispatch him, it would have to be by sitting upon the old faker and suffocating him.

Knox gave the idea of retreating to Philadelphia some thought. He was about to set off his booming voice when Washington instead began to speak.

“General,” Washington said, his tone measured but firm, his words addressed to his questioner, “our soldiers take their leave because we retreat. Men enlist for victory, not humiliation. We must, even in this hour of peril—no,
particularly
in this hour of gravest peril—provide our men with the taste of victory to feed their hungry souls. And I speak not merely about the men under arms but of an entire continent of patriots.

“The enemy has spread his forces thin. They should be pursuing us—building boats and bridges and moving to crush us in our weakness. But, no, instead they rest.
We
must not rest.
We
must strike. We have the boats to move back victoriously across the Delaware, just as we once ingloriously fled the other way.

“We must strike! Now!”

“Yes, General,” came the response of yet another general, another senior officer skilled in the art of disguising inaction in the more fashionable garments of logic and reason. “But where would we strike? How? When? Against what units of the enemy? And what do we really know of their encampments and habits? Grand strategies must be grounded in hard intelligence—or they are no procession toward triumphal monuments and arches, but rather to our gravestones.”

Washington began to ponder that point, when suddenly a hard rapping noise at the door broke the silence. A guard announced that a visitor was demanding to see General Washington at once. He could not wait, he said—and he had to see the general
alone
.

It was all highly irregular, of course, but something told Washington that he should indeed confer with this mysterious visitor.

He abruptly broke off his council of war, letting his critics, all puffed up with fine excuses for retreat, own the last word. When all had departed, Washington sat alone, awaiting this stranger and whatever it was that he might have to convey.

A man, rough-hewn but stout, gingerly dared to enter.

“You demand my time,” Washington instantly challenged him, catching him off guard. “State your name and purpose.”

“I, sir, am John Honeyman,” the man answered in the burr of his
native Scotland. “I am a farmer from near to Trenton, and I sell my vegetables to the Hessians stationed in the town. They pay good money—”

“We pay in continental scrip, if you are here to peddle us your wares,” Washington cut him off.

“They pay good money,” Honeyman continued, “but they work for our British oppressors, and I hate them. Neither gold guineas nor Spanish dollars can buy my love for them!”

The glint in Washington’s eyes conveyed the pleasure he felt in those words, a secret satisfaction his ever-guarded lips dared not betray.

Honeyman now reached his point.

“I sell my wares. I take my oxcart to Trenton. I see everything—and I remember everything, sir. I can draw you a fine map. I can tell you where each man is stationed. The very position of each cannon. The hour at which their guards are changed—that there are no fortifications. I can even tell you when their Colonel Rall arises. He is quite the late riser, you know—or you may not know that. Such is what I have to sell to you today, General Washington.”

“Mr. Honeyman,” Washington replied, as he extended a chair to this burly gift from the gods of war and fortune, “please, take a seat. We have much to discuss …”

December 1776

Peter Cochrane House

Brunswick, New Jersey

Charles Lee was not alone. Held captive in a room as disheveled as himself, he was in a long, low house where, just months before, patriots had proudly proclaimed the Declaration of Independence. He was continuously guarded by two unsmiling and silent Hessian sentries. They were silent, however, for good reason—neither spoke a word of English.

Lee was down, but he was hardly out. He still had cards to play, and as long as the British didn’t first hang him as a deserter and a traitor to the Crown, he intended to play every single one of them.

“Captain!” He bolted from his chair, bellowing to a man who stood just outside the door. “Captain Münchhausen, how many times must
I ask you? I need to speak to General Howe. I demand to speak with General Howe—
I wish to tell him how the rebels can be beaten. I know Washington! I know his tricks.
”

Captain Friedrich von Münchhausen, General Howe’s reserved Hessian adjutant, merely turned away in disgust, bounding over a snowbank and onto Brunswick’s Queen Street.

“Is he at it again?” The voice belonged to Cornet Banastre Tarleton, the dragoon who had captured Lee not long before.

Münchhausen nodded in disgust.

“Lee is as perfect in treachery as if he were American born,” Tarleton marveled. “They swallow their allegiance to both king and Congress alternately with as much ease as you swallow poached eggs!” With that he roared back in high-pitched laughter. Of all spoken and written humor, Tarleton valued his own the most.

Münchhausen, however, valued it less. He was not particularly amused at Tarleton’s current jest. Besides, if he were to expend any energy laughing at an Englishman’s jokes, it would be at General William Howe’s.

“Is it too late,” Münchhausen turned the question on Tarleton, “to send this
schwein
back to the rebels? A man of his character will do much more harm to them when he is on their side than he can on ours.”

Unlike Cornet Tarleton, Captain Münchhausen wasn’t joking.

December 24, 1776

Merrick farmhouse

George Washington had no time for rest, not even on Christmas—particularly not on this Christmas Eve.

He sat at his table. On a small scrap of paper, he scribbled the briefest of notes to a staff member. He repeated the process, again and again.

Dr. Benjamin Rush eyed this scene contemptuously. Rush, now a surgeon with Washington’s army, was a member of the Continental Congress. Only a few months before he had boldly signed the Declaration of Independence, but now he feared that George Washington was squandering any chance that America’s fragile independence had to
survive. One retreat followed another.
If only Horatio Gates were in charge
, the doctor thought,
if only Charles Lee were still a free man and in command—we would have the soldiers of the Crown on the run.

Washington arose. He nodded to Dr. Rush before leaving the room to summon a guard to deliver the brief messages he had just composed. But as Washington departed, he left one document behind. It floated to the wooden plank floor below where he had just sat.

Rush hurried to retrieve it. He might now learn a little more of what ill-conceived plans ran through this wretched Washington’s mind.

To his great disappointment, there were no detailed battle plans or grand outlines of strategy on the piece of paper that Rush now held in his hands. It contained just three words:

Victory or death.

Twilight, December 25, 1776

Western bank of the Delaware River

Near McConkey’s Ferry, Knowles Cove

Bucks County, Pennsylvania

Officers barked terse orders to their drummers. Hard wooden drumsticks beat furiously in every corner of George Washington’s encampment. In the low hills surrounding McConkey’s Ferry, 2,400 infantry shouldered their muskets and crammed their knapsacks full of sixty rounds of ammunition, a blanket, and three days’ worth of rations. Cavalrymen loaded their pistols and tightly cinched their horses’ saddles. Henry Knox’s gunners checked and then checked once more to ensure that they would be transporting sufficient shot and powder and fuses in their cannon’s side boxes and trail boxes for whatever hell awaited them on this grand expedition.

These men’s faces betrayed not fear—but anticipation, even eagerness. Many soldiers had already left the army, but those who remained had grown hard and fiercely loyal, devoted not only to the causes of independence and liberty, but also to their commander: George Washington. To these men, Washington had become more than just a general. He had become a father.

Still, their enlistments would soon expire. They had families and businesses and farms to worry about. They were not Hessians a thousand
miles from home, with no way of returning there. They were ill-paid and ill-equipped and had done their duty. They could go home honorably and most of them probably would. And once they did, the long odds against this revolution would grow only longer.

But while they remained, they were still in the fight. If Washington desired them to brave this ice-choked river and then tramp eight miles in utter darkness cross-country in sleet and snow to strike before the winter sun rose again—to strike at William Howe’s fearsome Hessians, the very cream of Europe’s fighting men—then, by God, they would do it. They would, to a man, die for George Washington.

The men’s faces, stung and reddened by winter’s blasts, shone brightly with their fidelity. Standing as tall and straight as amateur soldiers might, these New Englanders and southerners, Pennsylvanians and New Yorkers, and Jersey men longing to liberate their homes were eager to go. Waiting for action wore upon their nerves. Marching forward filled them with energy—and courage.

They scrambled to board the slapdash armada that Washington—aided by the Marblehead, Massachusetts, fisherman General John Glover—had assembled to ferry them toward the enemy. It was a flotilla of diverse vessels, none of which might be found in any real navy: the sturdy flat-bottomed “Durham boats,” made originally to transport iron ore; a handful of scows; all manner of fishermen’s craft; and the two ferryboats that had regularly plied this Delaware crossing in times of peace. All of them would be needed.

The men would cross the Delaware first, mostly aboard the fairly spacious Durham boats. Then would come skittish horses, and, finally, all eighteen pieces of Henry Knox’s cumbersome and heavy, yet crucial and powerful, artillery: three-pounders, four-pounders, five-and-a-half-pounders, and six-pounders. Despite its name, a six-pounder’s barrel and carriage alone could weigh as much as 1,750 pounds.

A journey of a mere eight hundred feet would take hours. But everything had to proceed on the tightest of schedules. The Continental Army needed to invade Trenton before daylight to maintain any hope of surprise.

Every minute lost could cost a life. Every hour lost could lose the battle. The battle lost could forfeit the revolution.

Yet, despite the obvious pressure, Washington paused to complete one last task. Two days earlier he had read from a pamphlet. Its words rang like a siren. They roared like a cannonade. His men needed to hear those words, and they needed to hear them now.

In the freezing air at Knowles Cove, Washington distributed a dozen bound copies of this little work to his officers. “Read this—or have it read to your men. They are better words than I am capable of. Read them now, before we depart.”

General Knox chose to read the words himself. Famous for his booming voice, Knox calculated that he could best bellow out whatever his commander thought so necessary for his men to hear. Never send out a man to do a job you could better do yourself, thought Knox.

General Henry Knox cleared his throat and began to proclaim the words that Tom Paine had scribbled out upon a drumhead not long ago and then galloped so quickly back to Philadelphia to print:

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 their 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.

When Knox had finished, his final words echoing across the land, only silence remained. The icy breath of the soldiers filled the air.

Finally, Washington broke the silence. “All right, men,” he bellowed, his voice firm with resolve. “It’s time to go.”

December 25, 1776

Mount Holly, New Jersey

Colonel Carl Emilius von Donop savored his Christmas dinner—the finest meats and vegetables, served upon a modest lace tablecloth, eaten not with pewter, but with sterling silver utensils. Across the Delaware River, American recruits had no time for feasting. Drums were beating, and men assembling, for a march toward the unknown.

But there was none of that at Mount Holly, only Colonel von Donop and his very gracious and beautiful—and
so very accommodating
—hostess. Von Donop, a man known for his appreciation of the fairer sex, could not believe his own luck. While every other female in the community had fled the approach of his troops, this incredible beauty, this young widow, had chosen to remain.

Ah! thought von Donop. The fortunes of war!

“
Colonel
von Donop,” asked his adjutant, a large but nervous young man named Captain Johann Ewald, “might we be leaving soon for Bordentown? We have been here since Monday.”

Bordentown, where they’d be close enough to support Colonel Rall’s troops in Trenton should any difficulties arise, was their ultimate destination. But Colonel von Donop wasn’t ready to get going just yet.