The First American Christmas

By early winter of 1776 the new American nation had been through a brutal test.  None more than the ragged troops of the Continental Army.  As Christmas approached, the army, and with it the revolution, was on the verge of collapse.

After the early success of driving the British out of Boston, George Washington’s army had suffered through one defeat after another.  In July the Continental Congress had approved The Declaration of Independence.  This had given the army something to fight for but not the means to fight with.  They had escaped Manhattan island only by a brilliantly staged retreat, Divine Providence in the form of weather, and the skill of a regiment of fishermen from Marblehead, Massachusetts.  It was their skill in handling boats that enabled the Continental Army to evacuate Manhattan across the river and escape the British.

By late December the army was in sorry shape.  They had retreated continually before the British until they had come to winter encampment a few miles from Trenton, New Jersey on the Pennsylvania side of the Delaware river.  On paper, Washington’s army numbered about 7,500 but less than 6,000 were fit for duty.  Hundreds of these men were sick and suffering from the cold.  The army lacked food, medicine, uniforms, shot, and powder all the basic supplies that keep an army fit and effective in the field.  So severe was the situation that men wrapped rags around their feet for want of shoes.  General Heath would write in his diary after observing General Lee’s men arrive “so destitute of shoes that the blood left on the frozen ground, in many places, marked the route they had taken.”  To add to the army’s discomfort, the winter was miserably hard.  It was of this time Thomas Paine would write in The Crisis:

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 it now, deserves the love and thanks of man and woman.  Tyranny, like hell, is not easily conquered; yet we have this consolation with us, that the harder the conflict, the more glorious the triumph. What we obtain too cheap, we esteem too lightly: it is dearness only that gives every thing its value.

On New Year’s Day the enlistments would be up and unless a new group of enlistments arrived or these cold, sick, suffering men could be enticed to reenlist, the army would simply evaporate as would America’s dream of independence.  America would be a dream stillborn.  Washington needed a miracle but he was not ready to give up yet.  As long as the army survived, was actually in the field, the revolution lived.  The British had to destroy the army to stop the revolution.  Washington was not alone in his determination.  Many of his officers had turned into fine soldiers.  They were intensely loyal to Washington and learning every day.  His junior officers and ordinary soldiers were ragged, starving, and freezing.  They looked like beggars but they were not beaten either.  And Washington had a plan for a desperate gamble; attack.

In Trenton 1,500 Hessian soldiers under the command of Colonel Johann Rall had set up winter encampment.  European armies, as a rule, did not campaign in the winter.  These Hessian soldiers were mercenaries hired by King George III to fight Americans.  These were solid, well trained, professional troops and Rall was a skilled professional soldier.

Washington’s plan was to attack across the Delaware river in three places.  A force of 1,500 under the command of General John Cadwalader was to cross at Bristol and advance toward Burlington.  A second force of 700 Pennsylvania militia commanded by General James Ewing was to attack across the river at Trenton and sieze and hold the wooden bridge over Assunpink Creek to prevent an enemy escape.  Washington himself would command the third force.

The third and largest force of 2,400 troops would cross the Delaware nine miles upstream from Trenton at McKonkey’s Ferry.  This force would divide into two columns halfway to Trenton and make a two-pronged attack.  The crossing of the Delaware was to be completed by midnight, December 25th, Christmas night.  The forces were to march through the night and attack Trenton at six o’clock, an hour before daylight.

Christmas day dawned with a northeast storm gathering.  The river was high and broken sheets of ice filled its banks.  The army began to move out for the river about two in the afternoon.  Each man carried three days worth of food and sixty rounds of ammunition.  By the time the first soldiers reached McKonkey’s Ferry it was raining and nearly dark.  John Glover’s Marblehead fishermen had the boats waiting.  The horses and cannon were ferried across first.  This proved to be a monumental undertaking.  The ice in the river only made the work harder.

General Washington crossed early and watched the events proceed slowly from the far shore.  The storm hit with its full fury about eleven o’clock at night.  It was a full-blown northeaster.  John Greenwood, a sixteen-year old  fifer carrying a musket, fifes not being needed, crossed in one of the early boats.  He described the conditions.

Over the river we then went in a flat-bottomed scow…and we had to wait for the rest and so began to pull down fences and make fires to warm ourselves, for the storm was increasing rapidly.  After a while it rained, hailed, snowed, and froze, and at the same time blew a perfect hurricane, so much so that I perfectly recollect, after putting the rails on to burn, the wind and fire would cut them in two in a moment, and when I turned my face to the fire, my back would be freezing.  However… by turning myself round and round I kept myself from perishing.

It was three o’clock in the morning before the entire army was across.  They were already three hours behind schedule.  There was now no way they would reach Trenton and launch the attack before the sun was well up.  The delay was not the only thing going wrong with the plan.  Both of the other two assault forces had turned back because of the weather.  General Washington had no way of knowing his three columns had now turned into one.  Despite the delay, Washington was determined to press forward.

As they marched south toward Trenton the storm continued to get worse.  Cold driving rain, sleet, snow and truly violent hail was thrown at the ragged army.  John Greenwood, the young fifer turned rifleman, remembered suffering so severely from the cold that he could move no faster than a child.

I recollect very well that at one time, when we halted on the road, I sat down on the stump of a tree and was so be-numbed with cold that I wanted to go to sleep.  Had I been passed unnoticed, I should have frozen to death without knowing it.

Two men did freeze to death during the march but the army reached their positions outside Trenton a few minutes before eight o’clock in the morning.  Despite the severe storm and the miserable cold, they had made up an hour of the three hours they lost on the river crossing.

Over the years there have circulated stories about Washington crossing the Delaware and surprising the Hessians who were drunk from partying all Christmas day.  This was not the case.  Colonel Rall had his men in order.  Sentries had been posted as usual and one company each night slept with their muskets ready to be called out at a moment’s notice.  To the extent Washington surprised him, it was by the size of the attack and in such bad weather.

Once the attack began, the Hessians posted on picket duty were fired on.  They returned fire and began an orderly withdrawal into the town.  Alerted, the Hessian soldiers poured out of their barracks and into the fight.  Their officers shouted orders and they fell into fighting formations only to be fired on by the American cannons.  The fight was intense and in some cases hand to hand but the Hessians were rolled up in about forty-five minutes.  Colonel Rall, the Hessian commander, and twenty of his men were killed, 90 wounded, and about 900 taken prisoner, the rest escaped.  Miraculously only four Americans were wounded and none killed.  The only Americans to die were the two that froze to death during the march.

The Americans secured the captured Hessian cannons and, more importantly, their stores.  The food, gunpowder, and shot were all things the Continental Army was in short supply of.  The Americans then marched back to the point where they had crossed the river.  After marching through the night a second time, with no sleep, the army crossed the Delaware once again back to the Pennsylvania side and their winter encampment.  The Continental Army was saved and with it the hopes and dreams of the revolution.

The army still had a long, trying winter ahead of them.  They didn’t know it at the time, but it would not be their last.  Valley Forge would follow the following year and the worst winter the year after that.  But The United States of America lived and liberty would someday have a place to call home because of the courage, endurance and determination of these men on the first American Christmas.

 EDITOR’S NOTE:  Special thanks to David McCullough for his very fine book, 1776.  I highly recommend his vivid recounting of this very trying but critically important year in our history.