December 1776: Washington and the Continental Army in Crisis

By Harry Schenawolf, author of the Shades of Liberty Series about African American soldiers in the American Revolution.

“A thick cloud of darkness and gloom covered the land and despair was seen in almost every countenance…” an officer in the Continental Army, December, 1776. Another wrote, “…strong apprehensions are entertained that the British will soon have it in their power to vanquish the whole remains of the Continental Army.” By December, 1776, the American army was in tatters. In eight short months the British had gone from cornered prey, trapped within the confines of Boston by a superior enemy, to a roaring predator, combing the land at will and dogging the rebellious hoard in relentless pursuit. In the past four months, General Washington’s army had been beaten at every contest. By late November, he gathered the remnants of his command and in a desperate gasp for survival, kept one step ahead of the British army until on December 8^th, he was chased across the Delaware River where his army faded into the bushes and wilds of Pennsylvania.

Thomas Paine, corsetmaker/journalist and recent immigrant from England, had answered the call to arms and joined General Nathanael Greene’s staff at Fort Lee. He had made the slog across New Jersey with his musket shouldered along with fellow citizen soldiers, all fearful of the British army hot on their heels. He crossed over into Pennsylvania and sat among the troops without proper clothing, tents, blankets, food, shivering through the night under cold, relentless sleet and rain. By then, in early December, 1776, he had penned the opening immortal words of what he would call The American Crisis. He wrote: “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 his country; but he that stands it now, deserves the love and thanks of all men 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. ‘Tis dearness only that gives everything its value. Heaven knows how to set a proper price upon its goods; and it would be strange, indeed, if so celestial an article as Freedom should not be highly rated.”[1] John Adams said that without Paine’s words, “the sword of Washington would have been raised in vain.” His second pamphlet, the first being Common Sense, injected a sliver of hope for the rebellion at a time in which by all rights, there was none left.

American weaponry had proven no match for British steel; a rebel army of farmers and merchants carried family muskets into battle with no bayonets. General George Washington was never given the resources necessary to keep an army in the field. Everything was lacking – money, ammunition, entrenching tools, blankets, tents, food, cooking utensils, shoes and clothing, most particular as the season advanced into winter. However, it was the leadership of this new experiment in democracy that had proven fatally deficient; both those commanding men in the field and politicians behind the scene. They had based their hopes on American’s raw determination to stand up to the trained ranks of hard men conditioned both physically and mentally to walk boldly into an enemy’s deadly fire. Men in redcoats who would stand openly before their enemy like statues, waiting for the order to fire while all around them their comrades were cut down. And as such, their gamble was a bust. America was losing the war and soon it was about to end in total failure.

Washington had come to grips with his dire position and lamented in a letter on December 20, 1776, to John Hancock, President of Congress. In it he laid the blame where he rightfully thought it belonged. He wrote, “a mistaken dependence upon Militia, have been the origin of all our misfortunes, and the great accumulation of our debt…. the Militia, who come in, you cannot tell how, go, you cannot tell when, and act, you cannot tell where, consume your provisions, exhaust your stores, and leave you at last at a critical moment? These, sir, are the men I am to depend upon…this is the basis, on which your cause will and must forever depend, till you get a large standing army sufficient of itself to oppose the enemy.”[2]

The provincial leadership claiming independence from England in a new United States, fearful of a standing army, had always based their confidence on the capabilities of the militia. And why not? From the very beginning of America’s settlement, the British government had not the money nor soldiers to police and protect a vast new land. Those colonists and pioneers who braved the hazards of a new wilderness were given the weapons to fend for themselves. They were told to organize para-military groups from among their own communities and did so. Over the decades, particularly in the most recent French and Indian War, militiamen had risen to the task and protected their families and loved ones during crisis. Therefore, American patriots and Whigs, about a third of the populace, were confident that in any war with England, their citizen soldier’s determination to protect what was theirs would overcome any inadequacies in training and tactics, including subservient weapons and equipment. The citizen soldier could and would fight toe to toe with a professional army and as such, victory was assured. By late December, it became obvious that they were wrong.

Washington removed what was left of the army under his direct command safely across the Delaware River by December 9th. He then looked to his enemy. Within a week, he had taken all the precautions he could to hamper British General William Howe from crossing into Pennsylvania where the capture of Philadelphia would be added to British laurels. With less than three thousand men, the remains of his army, Washington had destroyed or commandeered all boats on the Delaware River up to seventy miles north of Philadelphia. He spaced his men along the Delaware and built redoubts with positioned cannon at all possible points where the British might attempt to ferry or ford the river. He had prepared Philadelphia for the worst and sent General Israel Putnam within the city to arrange defenses. By Dec. 18^th, he could only sit and wait while a well-positioned enemy made their next move. That day he wrote to his brother John Augustine, claiming what was in his heart, and once more laying the blame for the lost cause, “I think the game is pretty nearly up, owing, in a great measure, to the insidious arts of the enemy, and disaffection of the Colonies before mentioned [New York and New Jersey who particularly did not send militia when Washington called upon the governor], but principally to the ruinous policy of short enlistments, and placing too great a dependence on the Militia….”

The end of the rebellion was near. New York City and Newport, Rhode Island were in the enemy’s hands. The British held most of New Jersey with their sights set on Philadelphia, the largest and finest American city and seat of government of the infant republic. It lay just across the Delaware River from Cornwallis’ 10,000 manned army flushed with repeated victories and confident of their strength; an army that was eager for rest and refreshment in comfortable winter quarters that Philadelphia offered.[3] The city was unfortified and ungarrisoned, open to attack on all sides, with nothing remaining in General Howe’s way but a rag-tag collection of beaten colonists spaced throughout the Pennsylvania countryside. The Delaware River offered the Americans little hope of lasting protection. Though Washington removed all boats, it was only a delaying tactic. Lumber to construct new vessels was at hand in Trenton’s lumber yards and if needed, homes could be torn down to provide additional wood. So too, the cold winter months promised to thicken the ice, allowing passage of an army. Washington admitted to Congress that he saw no means of preventing the British from crossing the Delaware writing “Happy should I be if I could see the means of preventing them. At present I confess that I do not.”[4]

As to the American army, it numbered less than 5,000 and was “daily decreasing by sickness and other causes.” Half of them were militia or raw recruits. Most were clad like scarecrows in worn and ragged garments, shod like tramps, if shod at all. “Many of ‘em being entirely naked[5], and most so thinly clad as to be unfit for service,” wrote Washington to Hancock on Dec. 16^th. Shivering in their unprotected posts or lying awake during sleepless nights on the cold, frozen ground, the ‘wretches’ had to cover over thirty miles of the western shore of the Delaware against an enemy that might strike any time at any point. Of this total number, Washington had crossed over from New Jersey with less than 3,000 men, but Philadelphia had responded with militia numbering 1,500 and German militia from the countryside had arrived. Also, the capture of General Charles Lee in Basking-Ridge, New Jersey on December 13^th, promised the arrival of Lee’s 2,000 troops Washington was so desperate to have at his command.

At first, Lee’s ‘accidental capture’ was thought to be a substantial setback to the American cause. It proved to be a blessing. The arrogant second in command, who the Mohawks had dubbed ‘boiling water’, had dragged his feet in responding to his commanding officers repeated requests that he join him in Pennsylvania. Finally, after much prodding, he left Peekskill, NY, on December 2nd, at the head of his reduced corps. He had little interest to join Washington directly and since he knew better, was intent to stay in New Jersey indefinitely, remaining behind the British army while offering the state’s population military support. After British light horse disrupted Lee’s ‘social affairs’ with a prostitute at Widow White’s Tavern and whisked him off, General John Sullivan assumed command. One who obeyed his commander’s ‘requests’, he moved quickly and took his troops north and down through Easton, Pennsylvania to join Washington, arriving on December 20^th.

Besides the military option of destroying the Americans under arms, General Howe was given the task of convincing the population to end their support of the rebellion and return to the fold. His brother, Admiral ‘Black Dick’ Howe issued a proclamation from New York, signed by Sir William Howe (given title after his Long Island victory), that offered “a free and general pardon” to all who would return to “their just allegiance’ and take oath accordingly.[6] The affect on New Jersey ‘patriots’ was instantaneous. Already disaffected by Washington’s inability to stem the tide of the British military, many ‘hollowed patriots’, those who offered their support to the American cause as long as it appeared the rebels would be victorious, switched sides in mass. They flocked to take the oath in large numbers and received their protection papers. Washington was so disgusted “by the conduct of the Jerseys” that he wrote in the same letter he penned to his brother on Dec. 18^th, “[The Jerseys have] been most infamous. Instead of turning out to defend the country and affording aid to our Army, they are making their submissions as fast as they can.”[7]

So too, Philadelphians saw the writing on the wall. Those who threw their lot in declaring independence were seeking asylum in the countryside in droves.  On the 11^th, Congress departed for Baltimore. On Dec. 13^th, the Pennsylvania Council of Public Safety informed Washington that “…our Militia, too many of whom remain in a state of supineness and infatuation, which is altogether unaccountable…from them we have but little prospect of drawing much succor…” They even tried to bribe their countrymen writing that “Our Assembly has offered a bounty to draw out the Militia…”, but they didn’t offer much hope adding, “We know not what effects can be promised from it; possibly it may influence some.” They added officially that “the city is amazingly depopulated by the detachments made to Head Quarters, and the fears of the timid and disaffected, who have sought an asylum in the country…”^[8]

Christopher Marshall (1709-1797), Quaker, retired pharmacist, and Philadelphia Provincial Council member, wrote a daily diary of events surrounding the panic felt by residents of the city. On Dec. 2 he recorded that “the shops shut: and all business except preparing to disappoint our enemies laid aside… our people then began to pack up some things…” The next day he observed, “Numbers of families loading wagons with their furniture, &c., taking them out of town” On the 4^th he noted, “great numbers [of] people moving.  December 8^th, the day Washington crossed into Pennsylvania, martial law was declared in Philadelphia and General Putnam became chief ruler of the province. On the 9^th all shops were shut and rumors ran rampant that Howe was on the march to Philadelphia. The 10^th Marshall wrote, “Our people in confusion, of all ranks, sending all their goods out of town into the country.” The next day, “streets full of wagons going out with goods.” Each day more people left the city. The 13^th, “other people sending their goods. The 14^th, “Howe approaching…people heading out of town.” Rumors continued to run wild that included Washington intending to burn Philadelphia, that Howe’s army had tried to cross the Delaware several times, but was repelled, and even the American army was planning to cross back into Jersey at Trenton, this on the 18^th, a week before the highly secret event actually occurred.[9] And on the 21^st, Marshall first makes note of the publication of Thomas Paine’s classic The American Crisis.

Congress was apprehensive of impending doom. As noted in Marshall’s diary, they vacated Philadelphia for Baltimore, Maryland, on the 11^th. Before leaving, they ordered the removal of all the principal military stores from Philadelphia to Christiana Bridge in Delaware. On the 12^th, they abandoned complete control of the operations of the army by conferring on Washington “full power to order and direct all things relative to the [military] department and to the operations of war until otherwise ordered.”  Having washed their hands of the military aspects of a desperate war, laying the outcome squarely on Washington’s shoulder, the last of the delegates departed Philadelphia on Dec. 12^th. By December 22^nd, with Congress safely tucked away at Baltimore, David Rittenhouse, Vice President of the Pennsylvania Council of Safety, wrote to Hancock, president of Congress, on behalf of the army. He reminded the astute body of politicians that “it is the most important matter which can at this time attract the attention of Congress… naked, sicky, and ill-attended troops, must fall a prey to their own distresses, if not to the enemy. The blessing of Heaven can scarcely be expected to attend a cause, however good, while the men who expose their lives in support of it are so ill-rewarded.”[10]

However, on December 13^th, nine days before Rittenhouse penned his letter, lambasting Congress, and six days before Washington told the Pennsylvania Council of Safety “to exert yourselves in stirring up the spirits of your people, and making every necessary preparation for the defense of your city…”[11]two events occurred that day which many historians agree had saved the infant republic from certain doom. The first was British General Howe’s decision to suspend all military operations until the spring. There would be no boats built. No army would march across Delaware’s frozen surface nor ford its icy waters. His main army would retire to New York City and leave behind a chain of military outposts to hold New Jersey and keep an eye on their rebellious foe across the river. The pressure on the American army was, for the time being, lifted. It would be some days later that Howe’s decision became apparent and Philadelphia breathed a sigh of relief to the chagrin of Tory Loyalists within the city.

The second action that rescued the rebellion from certain ruin was the capture of General Charles Lee. As mentioned, Lee had little intention of joining Washington. He confided among Washington’s staff and generals that he had little confidence in their commander-in-chief’s abilities. He knew he would do a far better job and set about convincing others of just that. Whereas he wrote to Washington that he was not aware of his dire situation, the next day he penned a letter to Congress informing them that Washington’s position was strong and wouldn’t it be better if he remained in New Jersey, at the rear of the British army, and harass their operations. On December 2^nd, Lee had started for New Jersey with 2,000 men, the remaining of his command after enlistments had expired. He set off at a snail’s pace covering about three miles per day and stopping at Morristown, NJ for two days of rest. He was “in hopes…to reconquer the Jerseys” and in doing so, show to one and all that he, not Washington, was the true savior of the American cause. And upon his capture, what was thought as the last straw in American’s final drama, was in fact, Washington’s salvation.

General John Sullivan, a capable and loyal soldier, immediately grasped the helm of Lee’s command and marched his 2,000-man army with all haste to Washington’s aide. General Horatio Gates at Albany had sent 500 men down from the north who arrived about the same time. With the arrival of Colonel John Cadwalader’s Philadelphia Associators and the German Regiment from the west, by December 20^th, Washington had an army 6,000 strong and fit for duty. But fit for duty was loosely termed and reeking with optimism. Except for the militia from Philadelphia and the Germans, fresh from their homes, the rest of the army, including those who made the grueling march from Albany, were “in a miserable plight; destitute of almost everything, many of them fit only for the hospital.” But far worse off, the army, such as it was, had only ten days left of life. For on December 30^th, with the enlistment terms expiring, of the 6,000 troops, only 1,400 would be left.

With Howe’s army going into winter quarters, it appeared that, for the time being, the Continental army and slipped the noose and given a short reprieve. Even after the Continental army dissolved, new recruits would offer a sliver of hope that Washington could carry on with at least a defensive war. Springtime would once more pass judgement on the survival of the rebellion. However, from the very day the remains of Washington’s army crossed into Pennsylvania, December 8^th, the commander-in-chief, the ‘fox’ as lightly referred to by his enemy, was planning to return. For even when things looked their worst, Washington had no desire to wait until Spring to strike back. When Howe rushed back into the arms of Mrs. Loring[12] in his comfortable New York City apartment, leaving behind a string of outposts, a straggling disposition of troops left to hold the river territory, Washington began to plan an audacious counterattack.

James Wilkinson, who had been with General Sullivan, noted on Dec. 20^th that “I saw him [Washington] in that gloomy period and attentively marked his aspect; always grave and thoughtful, he appeared at that time pensive and solemn in the extreme.”[13] And well he might, for it was no ordinary expedition that Washington was planning, no affair of an American detachment whose defeat would be merely a regrettable incident of the war. The whole Continental army was to be risked, and the stakes could not be higher. If the attempt failed, the remains of the army, America’s hope for survival, would be cut off from retreat by the river behind it. There could be no hope of another unmolested crossing. It was a desperate venture, and Washington knew it to be so; “but necessity, dire necessity, will, nay must, justify my attack,” he wrote to his aide-de-camp, Colonel Reed on December 23^rd. The next evening, he met with his generals. The plan was discussed and adopted. The objective was Trenton. And with that, fate would sit back and watch a firmly committed man launch a desperate venture to shed new life on a cause that just two weeks previously, had all but breathed its last.

If you would like to read more, check out these free previews of great books on Amazon.

New Action Series on African Americans Who Fought in the American Revolution. Check out the free preview on Amazon of Josiah, Book One of Shades of Liberty.

Of similar interest on Revolutionary War Journal

Washington’s Retreat Across New Jersey: A British Fox Chase

Washington’s Crossing and Friday the 13th: Both Helped Save America.

Washington’s Crossing and Flight Across New Jersey in 1776

The Battle of Fort Washington: Final Devastating Chapter in Washington’s New York Campaign

General Washington’s Homespun Army

SOURCES

Chernow, Ron. Washington: A Life. 2011: Penguin Books, New York, NY.

Commager, Henry Steele & Morris, Richard B. The Spirit of Seventy-Six, The Story of the American Revolution as Told by Participant. 1958, 1995 edition: Da Cap Press, New York, NY.

Duane, William. Extracts Diary of Christopher Marshall, Philadelphia and Lancaster, during the American Revolution, 1774 – 1781. 1877: Published by Joel Musell, Albany, NY.

Fitzpatrick, John C. The Writings of George Washington from the Original Manuscript Sources 1745-1799, Volume 6, September 1776 – January 1777.  1932: United States Government Printing Office, Washington, DC.

Force, Peter – Editor. American archives: consisting of a collection of authentic records, state papers, debates, and letters and other notices of public affairs, the whole forming a documentary history of the origin and progress of the North American colonies; of the causes and accomplishment of the American revolution… Series V, Volume III. 1837-1853: Published under the Authority Act of Congress, Washington, DC.

Frantz, John B & Pencak, William. Beyond Philadelphia: The American Revolution in the Pennsylvania Hinterland. 2010: Penn State Press, State College, PA.

Kidder, William L. Crossroads of the Revolution: Trenton 1774-1783. 2019: Pike & Powder, Lawrenceville, NJ.

Knouff, Gregory T. Soldiers’ Revolution: Pennsylvanians in Arms and the Forging of Early American Identity. 2004: The Pennsylvania State University Press, University Park, PA.

McCullough, David. 1776. 2005: Simon & Schuster, New York, NY.

Ward, Christopher. The War of the Revolution. 1952, 2011 edition: Skyhorse Publishing Company, New York, NY.

Weigley, Russell F. Philadelphia A 300 Year History. 1982: W. W. Norton & Company, New York, NY.

FOOTNOTES

[1] Force Archives, Ser. V, Vol. III, pg. 1290.

[2] Force Archives, Ser. V, Vol. III, pg. 1310.

[3] Ward, pg. 285.

[4] Fitzpatrick, VI, pg. 355.

[5] The 18^th century meaning for the word naked does not mean as it does today, without a stitch of clothing. It meant thread-bare, worn or thinly garbed. Therefore, Washington is referring to the men inadequately clad to protect themselves against the elements and rigors of a military campaign.

[6] Ward, pg. 286.

[7] Fitzpatrick VI, pp 397-398.

[8] Archives, Ser. V, Vol III, pg. 1199.

[9] Marshal, pp 105-109.

[10] Archives, V, III, pg. 1354

[11] Ibid, pp 1294-5.

[12] Mrs. Loring was the wife of the army’s commissary general who approved the union of his wife and commander in chief as long as he was compensated handsomely for the ‘sacrifice’ of his wife’s ‘affections’.

[13] Ward, pg. 292.