Crossing the Delaware," though it is as false in every detail as might be expected from the fact that it was made in Germany by Herr Emanuel Leutze, who first exhibited it in Munich, where they did not know that the boat in which Washington rode was not at all the sort of skiff depicted. The premature Star Spangled Banner that twitches away from its staff had not yet been designed by Francis Hopkinson, and Washington knew too much to pose for his picture standing upright in a flatboat bunted by chunks of ice and floundering through the rushing swirl of a swift river. If he had attempted it he would have sat violently upon that part of the anatomy to which he referred in his remark to Colonel Knox, who was extremely broad of beam and sat in the stern of Washington's boat. There is an unusually credible tradition among the many often-spoken but never-printed anecdotes of Washington, that he provoked a big much-needed laugh in his dreary audience by turning to Knox, whose weight was tilting the barge lopsided, and saying: "Shift your weight, Knox, and trim the boat." 35 Only, "weight" was not the exact term he used; for the real Washington was man among men enough to prefer a venerable Anglo-Saxon word when it said what he meant.3 Ferrying any army across any stream at noon is task enough, and always prolific in delays, but that dark embarkment was harrowing. When Washington reached the other side and while he waited for his horse to be brought over he sat on an empty bee-hive with his brain undoubtedly buzzing. 36 He never had a strong voice and Colonel Knox played Stentor for him, his "deep bass heard above the crash of ice." But it was not loud enough to be heard in Trenton or to interrupt the reiterated "Noch einmal!" of Colonel Rall calling for more liquor. Rall did not even hear the knock on the door or the parley with the negro servant of the loyalist Wall, or Mahl, who stole across from Pennsylvania to warn the soldiers of his King that the rebels were coming. The slave was afraid to disturb the roisterers with any more false alarms and he refused to let the Tory in. So Wall wrote on a paper a note telling of what grim freight was crossing the river, and persuaded the negro to hand it to the Colonel. Rall glanced at it with bleary eyes. He saw that it was in English and was in no mood to call for a translation. He stuffed it unread into his waistcoat pocket while the negro dismissed the Tory with the word that the Colonel had received his message. Perhaps officers should not be permitted to have pockets in their uniforms. Though the Delaware is less than a fifth of a mile wide at the crossing place, the difficulties and obstacles caused such delays that the last man over did not reach the shore until after three o'clock. It took another hour to form the march according to the orders which Washington had drawn up with great care and issued Christmas morning, providing for guides, scouts dressed as farmers, and "spikes and hammers to spike up the enemies' cannon in case of necessity, or to bring them off if it can be effected, the party to be provided with drag-ropes for the purpose." 37 To his old comrade, Adam Stephen, he gave the advance party, to be supported by Mercer and Stirling under Greene. These were to march by the Pennington road, the farther highway from the river, and Washington chose to accompany "this, the 2d division or left wing." The right wing he gave to Sullivan, with Glover and Sargent, and St. Clair as the reserve. This was to march by the nearly parallel road along the river. "A profound silence to be enjoined, and no man to quit his ranks on the pain of death." The password was to be "Victory or Death." The two highways into Trenton parted at the Bear Tavern, about a mile from the ferry, and ran at a widening interval for about four miles when the upper road united with the highway to Pennington and closed in on the river road, meeting it at the outskirts of Trenton, thus forming a tall letter O. About daybreak Colonel Rall came to feel that sleep was even sweeter than more liquor. He rose and meandered to his headquarters, twisted out of his clothes, flung off the waistcoat with the mute note in its pocket, and passed into a profound slumber, dreaming perhaps of future Christmases in better palaces than Trenton could afford. Among the confused shreds of good and bad luck that complicated that day's work was the activity of the patrol sent out at about five o'clock. If it had been lazier and had waited for an hour and a half, or less lazy and had gone a mile or two further, it would have discovered the rebels and given the alarm. Washington would then have had to fight the clever Rall in the open. Rall was a genius in attack with a poor talent for defence and Washington might have been killed. He might have seen his men driven back to the river and in among the ice cakes. And history might have been changed in quite another way. Even if his two thousand and more had defeated Rall, the Hessians could have retreated in good order, and Washington would have had only a heavy list of killed and wounded and a village to hold for a few days. Among the dead might have been Alexander Hamilton and James Monroe, which would have made another difference in history as we know it. And it all depended on the work of a patrol. If Bancroft's theory is true and the game was all conducted by Providence, there must be a great interest in patrols up above. XXXIX THE DAY AFTER CHRISTMAS T four o'clock in the tardy winter morning of December 26, 1776, Washington was ready to leave the Delaware shore. He had seven miles to go on slippery roads. His troops numbered, he said, "about Three or four & twenty hundred." 1 1 He was in a most cheerless mood. The delays, he wrote, "made me despair of surprising the town, as I well knew we could not reach it before the day was fairly broke. But as I was certain there was no making a retreat without being discovered and harassed on repassing the river, I determined to push on at all events." 2 If he had known what was happening to his other two divisions, he would have been even more hopeless. General Ewing had been able to make no headway at all across the ice. He could not even get a boat started. Colonel Cadwalader, after failing at Bristol Ferry, marched to Dunk's with his exceedingly naked troops, lacking shoes, stockings, and coats. He succeeded in landing six hundred men on the other side when the tide turned and piled up a three-hundred-foot glacier in the river. Just before dawn he called back the six hundred and gave up, assuming that Washington must have failed also. Such a wilderness of happy mishaps was surely never known. If Ewing had landed any men at all, he would have alarmed the whole garrison and foiled Washington's last chance. |