Fullosia Press Feature: Crossings by Howard Fast

• Did Washington really have to sit in the boat?
• Were the Americans that desperate?
• Did the Hessians get that drunk?

Crossings may provide some answers.

December 1776: Situation Grim
December 17, 1776, the military situation is desperate.. Suffering from relentless attacks by the British Army and their German allies, the Continental Army is exhausted. Racked by death and desertions, General Washington's troops have dwindled to a handful. Only the Delaware River stands between the victorious Red Coats and total victory. The poet of the Revolution calls this moment `the times that tried men's souls.'

Yet hope springs from the depths of despair. The meager handful that remained, maybe a couple hundred faithful to The Cause embark on an unexpected journey. On Christmas Eve, Washington crosses the Delaware River and his troops launch a surprise attack on the Hessians guarding the Western New Jersey capitol at Trenton.

In Crossings, the novelist Howard Fast continues the story begun in his novel The Unvanquished, the saga of the ignominious defeat at Brooklyn and retreat from New York City across New Jersey with only a stand-off in Harlem and a bloody draw at White Plains as a spark of hope.

Crossings presents a more human Washington, one full of doubts. And on the eve of Trenton even a super-hero would have cause to pause. Most of the American Army was dead or captured or missing in action. The legislature to whom Washington more than any other American leader faithfully paid homage and deference scooted from the endangered capitol at Philadelphia. The fighting ability of faithful troops was questionable. Their military laurel that they ran from the British regulars and Hessian auxiliaries faster than their brothers lost in combat was hardly inspirational.

Yet Washington acted with dispatch. His faithful Generals Greene, Sullivan, Mercer and Mifflin threw doubting General `Granny' Gates out of camp and the embarkment began..

While Germans celebrated Christmas in Trenton, Americans under cover of the early sunset began at six PM marching toward McKonkey's Ferry, nine miles north of Trenton to climb aboard boats collected by Colonel John Glover's Fourteenth Regiment of Continental Line, the famed Marblehead fisherman. Col Glover's condition for co-opting in the daring raid: (1) the men of Marblehead have total control of the operation on the river and (2) no battle is drawn until the Marblehead men could join in.

Washington's acceptance meant that he probably sat in the boat as instructed rather than stood as more dramatic portraits of the land sea incursion assert.

Col Glovers is portrayed as a tough guy. He tells General John Sullivan his strength comes from his Bible and Independent faith. He tells General Washington that he turned down a Generalcy because he didn't want to be a politician.

Glover had proven himself worthy of all Fast's fictionalized claims. Glover had organized the retreat by sea from Brooklyn and would in 1781 direct the movement of the Continental Army down the Chesapeake toward Yorktown.

The bold stroke
The boldness of Washington's plan of attack lay in its timing: the Continental troops would approach Trenton in the wee hours of December 26th when Colonel John Fitzgerald, Washington's aides, predicted the Hessians would be vulnerable: "They make a great deal of Christmas in Germany, and no doubt the Hessians will drink a great deal of beer and have a dance tonight."

As the Americans began to board their boats, the Hessian commander Colonel Johann Gottlieb Rall sat down to a sumptuous Christmas dinner at the Green Tree Tavern. A Tory farmer's note of warning went unread and crumpled into his waistcoat pocket.

The passage of American soldiers commenced at twilight, but was impeded by snow, sleet and heavy river ice floes. Washinton, wrapped in his cloak, watched silently from the shore. After the artillery landed on the Jersey bank at 3AM, the march got underway an hour later. Two miles beyond the landing, at Bear's Tavern, Washington separated his army into two columns: one led by General Nathaniel `The Fighting Quaker' Greene took the Pennington Road while General Sullivan marched down the River Road. Washington's instructions: "Tell General Sullivan to use the bayonet. I am resolved to take Trenton."

The grim expression on Sullivan's face tells it all. Sullivan has his doubts about the mission but presses on.

Washington chose the right moment for attack. British posts in New Jersey were far too scattered along the breath of the Jersies from Trenton, Bordentown, and Princeton on the Pennsylvania border to the Amboys across from Staten Island. Like the Americans silently creeping down on them the Hessians at Trenton had been in the field since the battles on Long Island. Hessians could claim victory, in the storming of Ft Washington and a draw at White Plains before they started the relentless chase across the Jersies. Where the American army had avoided direct confrontation, the New Jersey militia's partisan operations harassed the invading Germans to the point that couriers could not move between the outposts. Rall complained to superiors that his brigade was extremely exhausted and that only two officers in his regiment were fit for duty.

Confidently British General Grant dismissed thoughts of an American attack: "I can hardly believe that Washington would venture at this season of the year to pass the Delaware ? The Rebels have neither shoes nor stockings, are in fact almost naked, starving for cold, without Blankets and very ill supplied with provisions." Troops which might have been used in New Jersey were diverted to Rhode Island.

8 AM: The Attack is On
The ink on the communiqu? was hardly dry when at eight o'clock on the morning of December 26, 1776, American troops stood before Trenton on two sides. Washington?s troops surprised a Hessian picket guard, stationed in houses along the Pennington road about a half mile outside Trenton. With perfect timing, General Sullivans' troops approached the town of Trenton, from the river. As the confused Hessian garrison scurried, Washington advanced his troops to the junction of King and Queen Streets, where American cannons drew a line of sweeping fire. The Americans took the Princeton road, cutting off escape. General Sullivan's division drove Hessians troops back. Colonel Rall, plopped on a horse after being roused from a heavy drunken sleep, tried to rally the equally drunken Hess-men. The Hessians fled into an orchard where Rall, shot from his horse, tumbled to the ground.

The Aftermath
Then comes the moment in the film versions of Crossings which raises controversy. In Fast's version, the dying Hessian commander, Colonel Rall, demands to see Washington as a matter of military courtesy. Washington reacts angrily. Why should he be courteous to an officer who had been responsible for the massacre of 500 American soldiers at Brooklyn as they attempted to surrender? Furthermore the Hessians are mercenaries, fighting only for profit. Fast's Greene responds: "Our own cause is, at its heart, a fight against British taxation. In the end, sir, we all kill for profit. The British and the Hessians and us." Washington acquiesces to Greene's assertion of moral (or immoral) equivalence, and rides off to visit Rall.

Conservatives have criticized Fast for these lines:

"To say that this exchange rings false would be an understatement. Only a British Loyalist would have denigrated the cause of the Revolution as Greene does here, and most of the known Loyalists at the time were being driven by public sentiment into Canada or back to England. It is absurd to imagine they were serving under General Washington. And we can be even surer that General Washington was not himself a Loyalist!"

Fiction Parades as Fact in A&E's 'The Crossing' By Douglas A. Jeffrey
Douglas A. Jeffrey is a senior fellow of the Claremont Institute