The Night Crossing, 1776

On Christmas night 1776 the Continental Army was a week from disbanding. Enlistments ran out on December 31. Washington had lost New York, been chased across New Jersey, and had perhaps 2,400 men fit to fight on the Pennsylvania bank of the Delaware. He decided to take all of them across.

The river was full of ice, and a northeaster brought sleet after dark. The crossing at McConkey's Ferry was meant to be finished by midnight; it was three in the morning before the last gun was over. Two supporting columns downstream never got through the ice. The password was "Victory or Death."

The army marched nine miles through the storm and struck the Hessian garrison at Trenton at eight in the morning. Inside an hour it had taken nearly nine hundred prisoners. The cause had a pulse again.

The boat sits low under the weight of the men in it, and the ice comes right up to the gunwale. Washington is the only figure upright, cloak thrown back, looking hard at the far bank. Around him the soldiers hunch over oars and muskets.

The light is the quiet part. A weak sun breaks through on the left, catches the floes in the foreground, and leaves the rest of the river the color of pewter. Farther out, other boats follow — small, dark and full.