In the Bleak Midwinter

Of the two epically scaled paintings of George Washington’s Delaware crossing, by far the most recognizable is Washington Crossing the Delaware by German-born, Philadelphia-raised Emanuel Leutze. This theatrical 1851 painting (measuring roughly 21 x 12 ft.) hangs today at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Its charismatic Washington commands the prow of the boat as around him the diverse peoples drawn into his orbit and the cause he represents struggle together in that cause. The lesser known 1819 painting (measuring 17 x 12 ft.) by Thomas Sully depicts an illuminated Washington astride a white mount with the night sky brooding above him and snow and mud churning below. A lone twisted and blighted tree encapsulates the desolation of the revolutionary movement in December 1776. In both paintings, the centerpiece is Washington himself, already the object of a triumphal American mythology, but on that Christmas night in the year of independence, the contest was far from won, and the outlook was desperate.

Join us this month as we reflect on that bleak midwinter 248 years ago when the tide turned.

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Transcript

SM 2:8 In the Bleak Midwinter

(Intro) This month on Stratford Mail, recollections from a bleak midwinter 248 ago, when a river was crossed and a tide turned.

In the bleak midwinter, Ensign Peter Jaquett (pronounced Jah’kett) of the 1st Delaware Regiment voiced the mood of many in the Continental Army: A thick cloud of darkness and gloom covered the land and despair was seen in almost every countenance. December 1776 was a gloomy hour for our new country.    

Only 5 months prior, 12 colonial delegations (with New York in abstention) voted in favor of Richard Henry Lee’s resolution to declare independence from Great Britain. A plan for forming foreign alliances (mostly commercial in nature) had been adopted in September, and a plan for Confederation was in the works but wouldn’t be finalized until the next year (November 1777). As British troops rolled up a string of victories from White Plains down to Fort Lee, General Washington and the Continental Army were driven out of New York, hounded through New Jersey, and on December 8, 1776 retreated across the Delaware river into the wilds of Pennsylvania. Decades later American painter and Continental Army veteran Charles Willson Peale would describe the retreat to Thomas Jefferson as the most hellish scene I have ever beheld (to Thomas Jefferson, 21 August 1819) and he despaired of his ability to do more than offer hints for reflection. Casualties, captives, and desertions had significantly reduced patriot numbers, and troop enlistments were set to expire with the new year. Patriot morale was low and the prospects for American success were never grimmer. This was no time for what Thomas Paine on December 19th called summer soldiers and sunshine patriots. On December 3rd, Stratford-reared Richard Henry Lee wrote his old friend and ally, now Governor of the independent Commonwealth of Virginia, Patrick Henry:

Dear Sir,

The present moment is critical in the American war. The enemy have taken vigorous advantage of the space between the old and the new enlistments, and have rushed like a Torrent thru the Jersies, our little army of no more than 5000 men under the command of Genl. Washington, being compelled to retreat rapidly before them. The object is this City, and they were sunday last at Brunswick, about 60 miles off in the Jersies …  if the people here have any title to the freedom they claim, Mr. Howe will not be gratified with the possession of this City. And if he gained 20 such Cities, still he would be short of gaining the point meditated over America. You remember Sir, we told them from the beginning, that we looked on our Cities [and Sea Coasts] as devoted to destruction but that ample resources were still left for a numerous brave and free people [to contend, possibly to be content] with.

Congress shared Richard Henry’s concern about the vulnerability of Philadelphia to a British advance, and on December 12th the new government resolved to reconvene 8 days later at the Henry Fite House in Baltimore. On the 18th, Richard Henry updated Patrick Henry from Baltimore:  

At this place the publick business can be conducted with more deliberation and undisturbed attention , than could be the case in a city subject to perpetual alarm, and that had necessarily been made a place of arms … The British army is at present stationed along the Delaware from above Trenton …, to Burlington, about 20 miles above Philadelphia …General Washington …  is on the river side, opposite to Trenton.

Philadelphia would be taken and retaken, but not yet. Meantime, Congress delegated command of war efforts entirely to General Washington. Lacking sufficient boats to pursue Washington and the tattered remainder of the Continental army across the river, and with temperatures dipping, General William Howe suspended military operations and returned to New York to wait out the winter. On the New Jersey side of the Delaware, Trenton was garrisoned by a force of around 1400 Hessian auxiliaries, professional soldiers contracted from German states to fight for the British Crown. In an effort to shore up the failing war effort, boost morale, and encourage reenlistments, Washington and his war council resolved to hit the Hessian garrison at Trenton on Christmas night, 1776. It was a desperate risk, and two days prior to the attack Washington wrote to his aide-de-camp Colonel Joseph Reed: dire necessity, will, nay must, justify my attack. In the dark of night, with the temperature dancing around the freezing point and in driving sleet, Washington and around 2400 Continentals crossed the icy Delaware in ferries and cargo boats. From the landing site at Johnson’s Ferry, Continentals marched nine miles amid the howling nor’easter to the outskirts of Trenton, arriving around 8 am. The able Hessians were routed in under 2 hours of fierce combat, and the Continentals recrossed the Delaware with 900 odd Hessian prisoners in tow. News of the victory at Trenton swept like wildfire across the colonies, dispiriting the British and rekindling the flames of possibility, confidence, and hope in Americans. As Richard Henry rightly observed, the moment was critical, and it lifted the thick cloud of darkness and gloom that vexed the Army and many Americans. The subsequent victory at Princeton on January 3rd served further to dissolve the bleak midwinter.

On December 30th, and on behalf of the Committee of Secret Correspondence, Richard Henry Lee drafted a letter to the American commissioners in France (one of whom was his brother Dr. Arthur Lee), informing them of Washington’s success at Trenton, and offering up this wish: 

We hope this blow will be followed by others, that may leave the enemy not so much to boast of as they some days ago expected.

A follow-up drafted on January 9th shared with the commissioners the happy news of Washington’s success at Princeton. Trenton and Princeton were risky endeavors that paid high dividends in confidence and recommitment to the patriot cause. Richard Henry’s relief and rising optimism was apparent in his letter to Brigadier General Adam Stephen on January 5th–the critical moment in the American War had gone the patriot way:

Nothing could have happened more opportunely than the drubbing you have given the Hessians at Trenton … The genius of America seems now to be awakening from profound sleep.

On the eve of the year 1777, Washington appeared before his troops and conjured that genius in an address that placed them at the center of a singular historical moment. This might be their only chance to raise their heads above the encompassing mists of history in the service of an honorable, precious, and deeply personal cause: 

You have done all I asked you to do, and more than could be reasonably expected, but your country is at stake, your wives, your houses, and all that you hold dear. You have worn yourselves out with fatigues and hardships, but we know not how to spare you. If you will consent to stay one month longer, you will render that service to the cause of liberty, and to your country, which you can probably never do under any other circumstance.   

Major General Nathanael Greene attributed the reenlistments that followed to a higher power: God Almighty inclined their hearts to listen to the proposal and they engaged anew. The war was just beginning, but as 1777 dawned cold and uncertain, winter settling onto the colonies from New Hampshire to Georgia, there was now a light on the distant horizon. In March of the new year the patriot government reconvened in Philadelphia after its brief exile in Baltimore. In six months time they will again flee Philadelphia on the heels of Washington’s defeat at Brandywine and only days in front of an 8-month occupation of the rebel capital by General William Howe, but that is a story for another day. 

I’m Dr. Gordon Blaine Steffey wishing you all a Merry Christmas, happy holidays, and brave new year from Stratford Hall in Westmoreland County, Virginia.

Sound effects courtesy of Pixabay
Music is William Ross Chernoff's "In Shadows"
AI voices courtesy of Play.ht (except Dr. Steffey)

© Dr. Gordon Blaine Steffey, 2024