About 10,000 at Washington's Crossing 2016 Reenactment

If you are a night owl and see this story at midnight or in the early morning hours, it will be right around the time that General George Washington had just completed his daring crossing of the Delaware on Christmas Day in 1776. Unlike the pleasant weather we had, the Delaware was beginning to ice over, and a nor'easter made things worse with rain, sleet and blowing snow. Most of the crossing would be done in darkness. He went on anyway. He had no choice. "Victory or Death!" was his password.

On Christmas Day 2016, a huge crowd of about 10,000, helped by mild weather, left their homes to watch or participate in a re-enactment of this historic event, a daring raid on a Hessian encampment at Trenton. This event took place at Washington Crossing park, which is located on both sides of the river,

Militarily, it meant nothing. Politically, it meant everything. Washington gave the American people the one thing it has always relished most - hope.

Things were looking bleak for the American Revolution. Just a few months earlier, the largest sea-borne invading force ever assembled by any nation had landed on Long Island with 32,000 veteran troops, including the Hessians. In short order, they destroyed the American army. Hessians answered surrender attempts with a bayonet. Washington was stuck with the British and Hessians in front of him and the East River at his back.

That night, a strange fog rolled in, making it impossible to see more than a few feet ahead. Colonel John Glover and his Marblehead Regiment were all sailors. They managed to use this Providential fog to ferry what was left of a 20,000 man army across the East River. From there, Washington and his army limped across New Jersey and into Pennsylvania.

Washington made sure that every boat between Easton and Philly was scuttled or put to his use. Those included the Durham boat, a sturdy flat-bottomed boat that could be as much as 65' long, used to transport pig iron and other resources to Philly from points north.

This is the boat that Glover used to ferry Washington, 2400 troops, 18 cannons and 50-75 horses back across the Delaware on Christmas day 1776. Reproductions of the Durham boat were used in yesterday's re-enactment.

Washington had to strike. If he waited, the river would freeze, and the Hessians would simply cross and destroy him.

After crossing the river, Washington's army marched ten miles to Trenton. Some of them really were barefoot and leaving bloody imprints in the snow. They were starving. They had no sleep. Yet they defeated the world's most feared mercenary force in an hour.

Contrary to popular belief, the Hessians were in no drunken stupor. They were on high alert, and had been for days. They were constantly being harried by much smaller raids and were likely exhausted. The nor'easter gave Washington a strategic surprise.

This was just the first of three battles that Washington would fight, and win, in a series of ten days. The troops whose enlistments were set to expire stayed on, despite having no pay, no food, and in many cases, no weapons. They stayed because he asked, and let them make the decision. They had a leader not known for flowery speeches, but who would sleep under a tree just like his men. A General who led from the front, even with Hessians heading at him with their bayonets in an effort to take the bridge at Assunpink Creek. A taciturn man who initially despised his troops, but would break down in tears and hug his men on the day he said good-bye.

No less a person than Frederick the Great would say, "The achievements of Washington and his little band of compatriots between the 25th of December and the 4th of January, a space of 10 days, were the most brilliant of any recorded in the annals of military achievements."

It was an integrated army, too. At least ten per cent of the soldiers who fought under Washington were black. Though Washington never spoke publicly on the subject, he set all of his slaves free in his will, and set aside monetary provisions for each family. It was a gesture that other so-called founding fathers failed to grasp or, more likely, chose to ignore.

Yesterday's reenactors included the very young and the very old. It included people of all colors. But just as the Continental Congress had fled Philadelphia as the British advanced, there was a shortage of politicians.
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Washington's Crossing

When Julius Caesar marched his legions across the Rubicon, he reportedly said, "Let the dice fly high." But he was not gambling. There could only be one outcome. Another military leader who marched his tattered troops across the Delaware in the middle of a Nor'easter on Christmas Day in 1776 really was gambling. Of course, I'm speaking of George Washington, our first and perhaps our greatest President.

He commanded what was left of the US Armed Forces after their humiliation by the British in New York. Using Durham boats made at the southern tip of the county, he took 2,400 men across the icy river, along with 18 cannons and about 50 horses. "Victory or death" was his password to this covert operation against a Hessian stronghold in Trenton. Though they were tipped off, they never dreamed of an attack in the middle of a snowstorm.

It was a daring raid, followed by another at Princeton in relief of a stranded American unit.

It's easy to let the dice fly high when you know no one can beat you. But only a real badass attacks right after his army has been decimated.

Washington lost nearly every battle in which he commanded, but he won the war. He was able to keep that army together at a time when some soldiers were nearly naked and had no food. An aristocratic planter who originally disdained his troops, he grew to love them, and suffered every hardship they endured.

When he ultimately surrendered his commission after eight and a half years, he told his troops he could not go to each of them, but they could come to him and "take my hand." The supposedly aloof general broke down in tears as soldier after soldier came up to hug and even kiss him.

The slave owner who allowed more integration in his army than anyone else until the Vietnam war would go on to set his slaves free in his will, and set aside monetary provisions so each family could have a start.

Only a few other slave owners followed this example.

On Friday, I visited Washington Crossing, about an hour from Easton. On December 11and again on December 25, there will be re-enactments of the crossing.

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.