Christmas Crossing, 1776

Christmas Day marks an anniversary in our great American experiment, one that was a true turning point in our national fight for independence and self government, launched nearly 6 months after the Continental Congress had cast the final die for liberty in Philadelphia, with the signing of the Declaration of Independence.

A mere 235 years ago today, on Christmas Day night, December 25, 1776, in the face of a howling nor'easter snowstorm, the Virginia commander of a largely defeated and demoralized New England-based army, General George Washington, and his able officers led the consolidated remnants of the Continental Army -- 2,400 troops, 18 cannons, a number of horses, and other supplies -- in an audacious and surprise fording of the ice-swollen Delaware River at McKonkey's Ferry in Pennsylvania, a little over 8 miles north of the British cantonment at Trenton, a fortified encampment occupied at the time by widely-hated Hessian mercenaries.

The British occupiers had settled into several in a loose chain of strategic defensive locations across New Jersey for the winter, including at New Brunswick, Princeton, Trenton, as well as down in Bordentown and Mount Holly. The eventual target of the British forces, of course, was the American Continental Congress in Philadelphia.

Having succeeded in making that improbable Christmas crossing (the only successful one of three that were planned for that night), the cold and exhausted Americans, many of them without adequate footwear, marched south over night, and surprised the Hessian troops right in their Trenton encampment, decisively won the day, and then retreated back to the Pennsylvania side with critical captured stores, and as many as 1,000 prisoners.

At Trenton, following that quick and decisive action, General Washington reputedly remarked to one of his top aides:

"Major Wilkinson, this is a glorious day for our country."

It was the first field victory for the Continental Army after a string of stinging defeats in and around New York City, following the massive British troop occupation of New York in the summer of 1776. That string of setbacks had eventually precipitated a full-fledged retreat of the dwindling remainder of the American army across New Jersey on the heels of their defeat at Fort Lee.

They escaped into Pennsylvania via the Delaware River at Trenton in very early December. The British meanwhile had secured full control of New York City and the immediate environs, which they would hold throughout the remainder of the Revolutionary War.

Less than one week following his surprise victory at Trenton, and mindful that he was about to lose the lions' share of his American enlistments -- they were running out as of the beginning of January -- Washington and the Americans repeated their audacious crossing, this time at a few points along the freezing river on December 29th and 30th, after which they eventually set up defensive positions behind a stone bridge that crossed the Assunpink Creek, including heavy earthworks, all of which they knew would inevitably draw in a heavy British response from the New Brunswick and Princeton garrisons.

On the 31st of December, it was there in Trenton that first Gen'l Thomas Mifflin, and then Gen'l Washington himself, made strong personal appeals to the various regiments of enlistees who were about to head home, pleading with them to reenlist in the cause, and giving out generous bonuses. At first hesitating, most eventually responded positively.

Alerted to the renewed presence of the of American troops and artillary back in Trenton, Lord Charles Cornwallis had marched a massive force from New Brunswick down to Princeton, arriving there on New Year's Day. And then he moved onto to Trenton, where eventually a large force of 5,000 men under his command was to attempt to engage Washington's army in their defensive positions in the "Battle of the Assunpink Creek," or, "The Second Battle of Trenton.

That Christmas victory in Trenton had changed the mood, not only in the confidence of the American troops, but also of the various militia units, and even of the people in the countryside. The British force under Cornwallis was constantly attacked and harassed during their march to Trenton, by both Continental Army forces under Col. Edward Hand, and others near what is today Lawrenceville.

The British force eventually arrived in Trenton, above the bridge across the Assunpink on the afternoon of January 2nd. And after undertaking a series of unsuccessful attempts to cross, during which they took considerable casualties, they disengaged from that late afternoon attack for the remainder of the night. The determination was made to attack and cross the contested bridge at first light, mistakenly thinking that they would thereupon finally force the surrender of the trapped rebel army.

But stoking their fires and encampment late into the night as a diversion, Washington's Army held a council of war, and instead quietly mustered in the very early morning hours, and they took a back road out of the supposed "trap," a route that was unknown to the British forces. Aided by ground that had frozen hard, the American forces crept right around those massed British forces, including those Cornwallis had left as a rear guard along the main road north. Gen'l Washington's army marched north, even building a quick bridge over a stream for their artillery along the way through Quakerbridge, and on they marched the several miles to eventually engage and achieve victory in a surprise attack on the skeletal British forces remaining in the Princeton area the next morning.

At one point, Gen'l Washington had to take personal command of the battle action in the fields south of Princeton, during an engagement in which Gen'l Hugh Mercer, a close friend of Washington, was mortally wounded. At great personal risk, Washington rallied the faltering American troops, who finally succeeded in routing the British. Gen'l Sullivan, meanwhile, entered Princeton and forced the surrender of a small British force at Nassau Hall. The Americans had achieved a face to face field victory over British troops. The American forces gathered up more stores and supplies in Princeton, and then they all headed north, up through Rocky Hill, and out toward Morristown, while Cornwallis withdrew toward New Brunswick.

In a matter of a little more than a week, Gen'l Washington and his troops had defeated the British in three engagements, along or near the Delaware.

The big picture was that the Howe brothers' military strategy of patiently ending the "rebellion," by defeating the American force through attrition, and thereby reestablishing colonial control - essentially by default, had been exposed and defeated by Washington's Army. The British withdrew back toward New York, where they would subsequently mount an offensive by sea against Philadelphia the following year.

Eventually, of course, it would be the British forces who would be defeated by attrition, though it took several years.

Seven years later, in 1781, just following the Battle of Yorktown down on the Chesapeake, Lord Cornwallis was reputed to have honored the victorious General Washington at an officers event, held a few days following his surrender, with a toast in the following words:

"[T]he brightest garlands for your excellency will be gathered not from the shores of the Chesapeake but from the banks of the Delaware."

These Unknown Twenty-Two and Moore

05/31/2010 -- Set all in a straight row, they rest afield, up over the banks of the Delaware, where the river flows south toward Trenton.

They are neatly framed by a small rock wall. Behind the plain white marble slabs, each bearing a small original American flag* and a service medallion, scattered brush and a line of straight deciduous trees grow as natural backdrop.

UPDATE: Post-ceremony photo.

Just a few feet back from there, the earthen slope then sharply drops down sharply to the water's edge. In spring and summer, berry bushes first flower, then bear red and black fruits that ripen just behind their grave markers, almost as a symbolic offering of sweet remembrance for these twenty-two unknown, and Moore -- Captain James Moore that is.

They were all soldiers true in our then-beleaguered Continental Army. But these few died and were buried there in that beautiful memorial park in rural Pennsylvania, back in December of 1776 -- on Christmas day to be precise. The memorial park itself was constructed and formally dedicated back in 1929. It has a beautiful ground level tableau around the main flagpole, with each wedge bearing the name of one of the original 13 States, and the date on which it joined the Union.

The soldiers' burial in 1776 took place just as their fellow troops were beginning to muster. Washington's Army, having been reinforced during the month of December by General Sullivan leading in the troops of the fortuitously captured Charles Fox, and Horatio Gates having added another several hundred, before heading himself for Philadelphia, the force was now able to move, twenty four hundred strong, along with 18 canons and stores, and were heading for the river crossing at McKonkeys, six miles south that night, and thence on the march to Trenton, and victory.

Barely yards away, the collected Durham boats and rafts all floated past the site that Christmas day, also on their way to McKonkey's. Fresh out of hiding just upstream behind Malta Island, they were set afloat and run through the "horserace" that bypassed Wells Falls. Between the 9th & 14th of December, General Cornwallis had been reconnoitering up and down the area, on the New Jersey side, looking for boats. Obviously, one of his chief objects was to find boats that the Continental Army had used to cross over on December 7th, or any boats, for that matter. He never found any to speak of, and information sent back to England at the time reported that somewhere around what is today New Hope, PA, was where the boats were destroyed.

UPDATE: Looking upriver. Malta Island was near the buildings seen upstream.

Around New Brunswick during the retreat, General Washington had ordered a few troops ahead, to take all the boats to the Pennsylvania side, from all the way up into the Lehigh River, and even down into Delaware Bay. The boats kept and used for the Christmas Crossing where secreted behind Malta Island.

These men, these twenty three men, neither experienced nor heard of that turning victory at Trenton. Nor did they know of Trenton "II," or Princeton a few days later. Just months before, though, they had felt defeat, harsh defeat indeed. First in Brooklyn, and then escaping by boat in the night to New York, they were there when Washington's army was beaten again in the heights of upper Manhattan, what we now call Fort Washington. And again they crossed to escape, this time across the Hudson into New Jersey, where they endured the ensuing and failed struggle for Fort Lee.

And they were also there for the long flight and humiliating retreat across New Jersey, with the British army hard at their heels. The nascent American revolutionary struggle was in the balance.

But they stayed, these men. They did not desert, or head home their enlistments up, as many had. Nor were they enticed by the Loyalist views. They were Patriots. They had fully embraced the cause of liberty, memorialized in the Declaration of Independence, a document they maybe had had read to them but once, and on which the ink seemed barely dry. By the time they crossed in retreat at Trenton on December 7th, scarcely 10 percent of that Continental army marching with Washington remained. But these men were there, perhaps some of them having been wounded, or who were otherwise nursing the first deadly signs of camp fever and sickness that would tragically claim them by Christmas Day.

These men had not just heard of, but had actually lived the words of Thomas Paine, who wrote "The American Crisis," as he travelled along that sad but determined route with them.

Perhaps, just perhaps the stirring pamphleteer had looked into some of their very faces as they trudged along, none of them really knowing if they would ever succeed in throwing off the tyranny of King George and British colonial rule . . . when he began:

"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 by it now, deserves the love and thanks of man and woman."

And they stood by it then, those twenty three men. They died within a month in camp, overcome but unbowed. Patriots all. Perhaps one or more of them had served as sentries in the rain, or signalers from the cold hilltop of Bowman's hill, or were guardians of the boats and caught their death of cold on some damp and sleety December night. We'll never know. A plaque mounted on the nearby Thompson-Neely House, the headquarters for Continental Army Brigadier General Lord Sterling (William Alexander) says that also quartered in that house were Captain William Washington, Lieutenant James Monroe, who would later become our fifth President, and Captain James Moore of the New York Artillery, who died there on Christmas Day, 1776.


Today, Memorial Day, May 31, 2010, we can look back assuredly, with 234 years of history to take into account. We know the great successes and the sometimes shortcomings of our nation. And when we do, we surely have to marvel at the faith of these twenty two unknown soldiers, and Captain Moore. Some of us even want to be able to cry out to them, and thank them for their faith in our future, a faith that caused them to put their lives on the line when times were dark and uncertain. "It's okay. It's okay!" we want to shout out to them.

The papers say that on this day all the men and women in uniform, soldiers who have given their lives for America will be honored, along with these patriots. Really, I sometimes wonder how "honor" got to be a verb. The honor was theirs. It was something in their character. We do not really honor them. They had great honor. And they gave their lives in the service of our nation. So, if anything, they honor us.

All we can really do today is acknowledge it in awe. And remind others.


* * * * *

Dozens of volunteers gave of both their time and money, and helped to restore this wonderful park to at least a decent and presentable condition over the past months. Budget problems in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania have left some areas badly overgrown, trees fallen within the manicured areas, and even facilities uncared for, with fences and shutters needing fresh coats of paint, and a few windows broken. This park and that portion downstream where the actual Christmas crossing took place, still need your help.

I'll post the names of contacts.

* The top photo shows the line, just after the grass had been trimmed and before the individual flags were reset with each stone. The morning sun coming off the river can be seen.