To Try Men's Souls - George Washington 1 Read Free Page B

themselves as Englishmen defending their historic rights against a dictatorial government. Had the British elites listened to the complaints and analyzed the logic behind them they might have found a constitutional compromise in 1774. However when they decided to disarm the Americans by marching to Lexington and Concord to seize the militia’s arms, they began a process of alienation, which seemed to inexorably lead to a crisis of identity.
    In 1775 the Americans were frightened and threatened by the British military response, but they still responded as loyal subjectspetitioning the king to intervene and create a new framework for peacefully living together.
    However at each stage, as the British increased their military presence, the Americans increased their preparations for resistance.
    The British occupation of Boston led to an outcry in all thirteen colonies. If the British could militarily occupy Boston and suspend the rights of Englishmen they could occupy any part of the Americas.
    The threat to one had become a threat to all.
    In response to the British challenge in New England, the Continental Congress in Philadelphia sought a unifying symbol. They found that symbol, and the instrument that would lead to victory, in the only man in the Congress who was wearing a military uniform.
    Colonel Washington of the Virginia militia was one of the tallest men in the Continental Congress. He did not offer to be the military leader, but he did wear his uniform every day. He exuded calm and confidence. He had quite a remarkable number of experiences in the West (meaning western Virginia and western Pennsylvania) during the French and Indian Wars (as the Seven Years’ War was known in America).
    Colonel Washington had read quite a number of books on military matters. A leader as a young man he was now at the peak of his physical strength. Widely known as the best horseman in the colonies, Washington was so strong he could break a walnut between his thumb and first finger.
    Washington represented stability, discipline, calm, determination, and martial knowledge. He also represented Virginia, which was the most important colony. If he went to New England he would single-handedly symbolize the resolve of all the colonies to come to the aid of New England.
    In the months after the British occupation of Boston, the patriots went from exhilarating victory as the British sailed away, to exhausting administrative detail, to a brilliant forced march to Long Island (where he had correctly deduced the British would come next).
    And then defeat after defeat and calamity after calamity.
    It is at the nadir of the Revolution, the depth of defeat and despair, on a cold winter night during a bleak Christmas that we join General Washington and his diminished and demoralized but determined army on the banks of the Delaware.

 
     

CHAPTER ONE

     
     
    Christmas Night
McConkey’s Ferry, Pennsylvania
Nine Miles North of Trenton, New Jersey
December 25, 1776
4:30 P.M.
     
    Cold.
    It is so cold, so damnably cold, he thought, pulling his hat lower in an attempt to shield his face from the wind and the driving rain.
    His woolen cape was soaked through, water coursing down his neck, his uniform already clammy. Though his knee-high boots were of the finest calfskin, they were soaked as well and his pants sopping wet halfway up the thigh as a result of his having slipped several times walking along the banks of the flood-swollen Delaware River.
    Another gust of wind out of the east kicked up spray that stung his face, and he turned his back as it swept by, roaring through the treetops and up the ridge on the Pennsylvania side of the river.
    “This damn storm will play hell with moving the artillery across.”
    General George Washington, commander of what had once been so valiantly called the Continental Army of the United States of America, turned toward the speaker, his artillery chief, Colonel Henry Knox. Rotund at what had to be three hundred