Can Barack Obama Make a Difference?

In the wake of Obama's election as President, people on Wednesday were asking, "Does it really matter?" "What can one man do?"

Autumn, 1776.

A disorganized but proud American Army, facing the largest British invasion force ever assembled, is ripped apart in battle after battle. The Battle of Long Island is a disaster. New York City falls in the Battle of Harlem Heights. Fort Washington is seized. American soldiers are chased across New Jersey, and a remnant only about a tenth its original size makes it across the Delaware.

Surrendering American soldiers are routinely slaughtered by the British Army's fearless mercenaries - Hessians. Those allowed to surrender are abused by both Hessians and English. New Jersey citizens quickly discover that an occupying army of English and German soldiers will steal, murder and rape. Bodies are mutilated.

In the face of these atrocities, how did General George Washington react? Did he seek vengeance? This brief excerpt from David Fischer's Washington's Crossing answers that question. It explains what sets America apart. It explains how one leader can make a difference.

Washington ordered that Hessian captives would be treated as human beings with the same rights of humanity for which Americans were striving. The Hessians expected a different fate, with good reason after Long Island and Fort Washington. They were amazed to be treated with decency and even kindness. At first they could not understand it. One of them, Johannes Reuber, thought his good treatment by the rebels must have been the work of Colonel Rall [a Hessian colonel killed in the Battle of Trenton]. "With his last breath," Reuber wrote, "he thought about the Grenadiers and asked General Washington to leave his men unharmed."

He learned otherwise when the Hessians were marched to Philadelphia and paraded through the city, where "the old women who were present screamed at us in a terrible manner and wanted to strangle us because we had come to America to steal their freedom." The American army protected the Hessians, and Reuber learned to his surprise that General Washington had issued a broadside declaring that Hessian soldiers "were innocent people in this war, and were not volunteers, but forced into this war." The general asked that the Hessians should be treated not as enemies but friends. Reuber wrote that "conditions improved for us. Old, young and poor, and all treated us in a friendly manner."

Some of the Hessian prisoners from Trenton were sent from Philadelphia to Lancaster, in Pennsylvania, and on to western Vir­ginia in 1777. They were escorted by a company of Pennsylvania militia. When they reached the Pennsylvania state line, all of the militia went home except the captain, who told the Hessians, "whose affections he had won by his humanity," that "they must march on without an escort, as he himself should hurry on to Winchester." When he met them three days later, every Hessian answered the roll call. Afterward, it was said that "the Hessians received many indul­gences." Of 13,988 Hessian soldiers who survived the war, 3,194 (23 percent) chose to remain in America. Others later emigrated to the New World with their families.

The same policy was extended to British prisoners after the battle of Princeton. Washington ordered one of his most trusted officers, Lieutenant Colonel Samuel Blachley Webb, to look after them: "You are to take charge of [211] privates of the British Army. . . . Treat them with humanity, and Let them have no reason to Complain of our Copying the brutal example of the British army in their Treatment of our unfortunate brethren. . . . Provide every­thing necessary for them on the road." There were exceptions on the American side. Loyalists and slaves who joined the British were sometimes treated cruelly by local officials. But Congress and the Continental army generally adopted Adams's "policy of humanity." Their moral choices in the War of Independence enlarged the mean­ing of the American Revolution.

The most remarkable fact about American soldiers and civilians in the New Jersey campaign is that they did all of these things at the same time. In a desperate struggle they found a way to defeat a formidable enemy, not merely once at Trenton but many times in twelve weeks of continued combat. They reversed the momentum of the war. They improvised a new way of war that grew into an American tradition. And they chose a policy of humanity that aligned the conduct of the war with the values of the Revolution.

They set a high example, and we have much to learn from them. Much recent historical writing has served us ill in that respect. In the late twentieth century, too many scholars tried to make the American past into a record of crime and folly. Too many writers have told us that we are captives of our darker selves and helpless victims of our history. It isn't so, and never was. The story of Wash­ington's Crossing tells us that Americans in an earlier generation were capable of acting in a higher spirit — and so are we.

Washington made a difference, setting an ideal for American military behavior that remained until we had a President who set a different example. I prefer the example set by Washington, and hope that is one that Obama sets himself.