The Crossing (10 page)

The above communication is fascinating both because of the valid intelligence and misinformation the Hessian commander had obtained. Putnam commanded no force of four thousand men, nor was he at Cooper's Creek. The news that he received from a farmer that General Washington had crossed the river to join the force of General Lee was utterly without foundation. Either the farmer was peddling manufactured information, or he had enough wit to mislead the enemy. Even the mention of General Stirling's quarters is incorrect, for on that day General Stirling was quartered in the Thompson-Neely house. As for the eighteen pounders that the Continentals purportedly had across the river near Trenton, this was the most interesting of the fictions. Not only did the Continental army have no such guns on either the east or the west bank of the Delaware River, but they would hardly waste their small and precious store of ammunition throwing cannonballs aimlessly across the river.

On the same day, General Grant replied to Von Donop, dating his letter Brunswick, seventeenth December, 1776:

I have just received your report of this day's date … I could hardly believe that Washington would venture at this season of the year to pass the Delaware at Vessels Ferry, as the repassing it may on account of the ice become difficult. I should rather think that Lee's corp has proceeded to Philadelphia, for we have heard nothing of them, since Lee was made Prisoner, and prior to that the intention was to march to East-town in order to cross the river.

Putnam's handbills and Lee's account differ exceedingly about the intentions of the Rebels with regard to Philadelphia. For Lee declared that they are determined to burn the Town, if they cannot prevent its falling into our hands. General Matthew marched this morning to Plackhemin where he fell in with a small body of rebels; they fledon his approach-he had taken a few prisoners-Some Arms and stores, his guide was wounded in the foot, that was all the loss we sustained. General Leslie marched this morning to Springfield and is to proceed from thence by Bound-brook to Prince Town. I have had no report from him, and cannot expect any until tomorrow.

It can be seen from the above that General Lee talked freely after his capture and that he had been privy at least to the plans of whatever party in Philadelphia was promoting the notion of burning the city. One should not confuse the suggestion of burning Philadelphia to the ground with the modern strategy of the scorched earth. There was no question of scorched earth or of putting the British into a position where they faced a severe winter with no shelter. Already they were in occupation of New York City, and housing there was ample for all of their needs. Apart from this, there were a hundred hamlets such as Trenton that they could occupy. The burning of Philadelphia was the sort of grotesque plan that grows out of desperation, short-sightedness and the kind of hysterical necessity that must effect something of a dramatic nature regardless of what the incident might accomplish.

It is also interesting to note the overestimation of the Continental forces by the British. The British were never able to forget their first taste of American warfare during their bloody retreat from Concord and afterward at the Battle of Bunker Hill outside of Boston. The horror of the awful toll taken of them there lingered, and even though they were able to inflict defeat after defeat upon the Continental army, they were not willing to give up completely their initial picture of American power and determination.

*
Vessels' Ferry, as the British called it, is the same as McKonkey's Ferry.

[27]

SITTING IN THE KEITH HOUSE, his new headquarters, on the eighteenth of December, 1776, General Washington watched a light snow fall from a dark sky and penned one of the saddest notes of his career. Addressing himself to the Pennsylvania Council of Safety, he wrote:

“Your collection of old clothes for the use of the army deserves the warmest thanks.”

The snow drifted down, and the Americans shivered and waited. They were on the west bank of the river, and they were alive. Being there meant that they must try to keep warm and to stay fit; and since it was a cold day, they huddled in their shelters and counted the hours to the end of their enlistments. The officers quartered in the various houses along the river huddled around their own fires, and in these homes there was little joy, no celebration, no yuletide cheer and very little willingness to contemplate a future that offered nothing.

Across the river at Bordentown, on the same day, Colonel von Donop wrote another letter to his superior, the British General Grant, apologized for his overestimate of Putnam's strength in his letter of the day before, and went on to say:

“Sir: I have this moment received your letter of the seventeenth instant. Since I had the honor to advise you that there was four thousand of the enemy at Cooper's Creek the best report I can obtain reduces the number to Five hundred. I do not care to take the trouble to march with all my force for these gentlemen will not wait for me.”

Indeed, if there actually were five hundred Continental soldiers on the east bank of the Delaware—something that cannot be verified now and which appears quite impossible—they certainly would not have waited for Colonel von Donop and his Hessians.

On this day, a Mr. Smith arrived from Philadelphia. Mr. Smith moves through history facelessly, only known by his family name, which is recorded in the Hessian notes. He brought information from Philadelphia to sell to the Hessians, and since the information would have to contain enough drama to earn its price, he told Colonel von Donop that the people in Philadelphia were “hard at work fortifying the city.”

However, another informant told Colonel von Donop: “From the way they are doing it, the work will not be finished in two years,” which was less dramatic but more truthful.

By the eighteenth of December the Hessian commanders were beginning to satisfy themselves that no enemy worth their apprehension or their effort still existed on the west bank of the Delaware River. During the next three days they would reinforce that observation, and by Christmastime they would be willing to write off the Continental army entirely.

[28]

FOR TWO WEEKS, the mood of the people of Philadelphia had been one of total despair concerning the cause for independence and the security of their city. On December 19, however, the Pennsylvania
Evening Post
cheerfully published the following:

“There is no doubt that the enemy will be repulsed with great slaughter, if they should attempt to cross the river.”

This kind of boastful confidence was not actually founded in reality, but it was helped by the publication on the same day, December 19, 1776, of Thomas Paine's first
Crisis
paper.

Thomas Paine had been with the American troops all through the month of November, during their retreat through New Jersey and most likely up to the point of their first crossing of the Delaware River from east to west. It is difficult to ascertain what position he held during that period. Some of the men on that march suggest in their memoirs that he was brevetted an officer of sorts, and this is just possible, so loosely were officers made and unmade then. Washington took a great liking to Paine; and the two of them, Washington and Paine, spent many hours discussing the meaning and the direction of the war. Paine informed Washington that he would attempt to write something that might help the army, and Washington was enthusiastic about his project. They both shared a sort of mystical faith in the power of the printed word, and the astonishing success of Tom Paine's book,
Common Sense,
had left every literate person in America with the feeling that somehow Paine's pen could perform miracles.

This was hardly the case, and it is doubtful whether, after the November retreat of the American forces, even a miracle would have changed the depressed mood of the defeated soldiers.

However, when Paine left the troops at the Delaware, he had already written some pages of manuscript. Legend has him sitting among the shivering troops in the light of a campfire, writing down the words of the first
Crisis
paper. But the greater likelihood is that he only jotted down notes of the retreat—as so many others did—and actually wrote the
Crisis
in Philadelphia.

There, he had it printed in a Philadelphia weekly, the
Pennsylvania Journal,
and the first bundle of newspapers came off the press either late on the eighteenth of December or perhaps very early in the morning of the nineteenth. In any case, on the morning of the nineteenth, Paine had a rider load his saddlebags with copies of the newspaper and gallop off post haste to the encampment. The rider must have left sometime before dawn, because Washington had the first
Crisis
paper in the morning and read it through at luncheon on the same day. There is evidence that Washington was thrilled with what Paine had written, for he immediately ordered copies of the
Pennsylvania Journal
distributed up and down the river to every brigade, with instructions that it be read aloud at each corporal's guard.

“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.”

It echoed and reechoed up and down the frozen bank of the Delaware, until there hardly was a man in the Continental army who did not know the words; and all things considered, there certainly must have been some who detested them. Paine's first
Crisis
paper, of course, has increased in stature with the passing years, but one can hardly imagine that the reiteration of platitudes to the bitter, defeated army of shivering and hungry men on that winter day gave them any great purpose or passion.

Washington's old, good friend, General Hugh Mercer, had been doubling as a physician, and since the crossing of the Delaware on the seventh of December, sickness had increased. Rash, dysentery, jaundice—apparently there was no end to it. On the same day, December 19, while Tom Paine's words were being read aloud at the corporal's guard, General Mercer wrote to Joseph Blewer, the secretary of the Philadelphia Council of Safety: “With regard to my people's sleeping, we have only three rugs and three blankets …”

So to all effect and purpose, it had come to an end. The fine and grand volunteer Continental army had run headlong into the brutal animal game of war, and it had been defeated and shattered. The braggarts, the vainglorious, the loudmouths, the thieves, the cutthroats—all those who come together out of the heady variety of a nation when some great common project is under way—all had deserted; others were in the British prisons or had died, and still others packed the hospitals with their wounds and scurvy and disease.

The officers began to turn surly and to take it out on the men, and the Connecticut dowsers predicted the worst winter in years and the days grew shorter and bleaker, until the solstice was only two days away.

So the first part of the crossing was finished.

THE SECOND
CROSSING

West to East

[1]

A
LEX SCAMMEL WAS a Harvard graduate, then a schoolteacher and then a surveyor. He was over six feet tall and very good-looking and possibly vain of his hair, which he wore long and ribboned at the back. He had been in love with Abigail Bishop of Medford, Massachusetts, and when she wouldn't have him, he lost all interest in the law he was reading in John Sullivan's office; and when Sullivan said to him, “I'm closing up the office because other more important things have come up,” Alexander Scammel replied that he was with him all the way. Sullivan became a brigadier, and Scammel was given a colonel's rank over the 3rd Massachusetts Continentals. It did not matter that Sullivan was a lawyer and Alex Scammel a teacher, because the soldiers they led were no more soldiers than they were officers.

However, time had its way with the lot of them, and when Sullivan took command of the army–after Lee had been captured–Alex Scammel became his immediate aide and second in command. Scammel had turned into a good leader, and the 3rd Massachusetts was one of the most effective regiments in the army.

Sullivan had marched his men almost on the double since Lee's capture; they were exhausted after crossing the river, and Sullivan rested them while he sent Scammel riding down to McKonkey's Ferry to see what the Virginian desired.

Washington's headquarters were at the Keith house, but as often as not he centered his affairs and his command post at McKonkey's. For one thing, McKonkey ran a public house; and if a hundred men in wet boots and dragging spurs clumped in and out in the course of a day, well, that was what the house was for, and Old Man McKonkey liked the trade, not only for the money it brought but because he was heart and soul a rebel. He was flattered with the big Virginian and all the other fine gentlemen giving him their patronage, and since he had never catered to so genteel a trade before, he could never quite get over their courtesy. He took to bowing to ladies and changing his shirt twice a week.

Washington liked Scammel and asked him how the men were. He wanted the truth.

Well enough, Scammel replied.

Washington said that they were all well enough, since they were still alive. But how well? How many sick?

There were less than a hundred in carts, Scammel replied. The rest were walking.

Clothes?

Charlie Lee, Scammel began.

Charlie Lee—no, the commander in chief frowned. General Lee. He was still a general officer.

He had made them wash their clothes every fortnight. General Lee had commandeered eleven hundred jackets with scrip. Most of the men had shoes. There were four hundred Rhode Island soldiers, and some of them were so seedy they walked barefoot out of preference, even in winter time, with no more sense about things than a red Indian.