Henry Knox (14 page)

The redcoats arrived on Sunday, December 8, just as the American soldiers who had been stationed in Princeton retreated and crossed the river into Morrisville. Knox watched with cannons ready as the British searched in vain for boats. Troops were dispatched along the river to guard the fords. Knox, on constant duty, was a whirlwind of activity, sending artillery and men to every regiment stationed for a distance of twenty-five miles along the river since no one knew where the enemy might attempt to cross.

He heard that Philadelphia was in a state of panic as residents fled to the country. On Thursday, December 12, the Continental Congress headed for Baltimore, leaving Washington with almost dictatorial authority by resolving that "until the Congress shall otherwise order, General Washington be possessed of full power to order and direct all things relative to the department, and to the operations of war.“
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General William Howe, who had joined Cornwallis, decided to wait for more favorable weather, and turned his army around and marched the men back to New York to build winter quarters. Knox knew they would return shortly and scanned the flowing waters of the river each day for signs that ice was forming. Once the river froze over, it would be an avenue for the British to cross and surround Washington's army. He thought about his beloved Lucy and the daughter whom he hardly knew, and he wondered if he would ever see them again. He had not written home very often lately because the news was invariably dispiriting. Henry had risked everything for the war, and the outcome seemed as inevitable as the coming winter. The river would freeze, the British would cross the ice, with perhaps 13,000 troops, and destroy the American ranks of 5,000 men.

Foremost among Knox's frustrations was Congress's plodding efforts to supply the army's needs. His advice to delegates in October to beef up the Continental artillery by recruiting fresh battalions and procuring mobile field guns was still being debated and yet to be implemented in December of 1776. Knox was convinced that Congress had little understanding of military matters and was ignorant of the critical tools for victory or even survival, choosing instead to risk all to satisfy budget concerns. Knox pressed Washington to use the dictatorial powers granted to him to order battalions recruited immediately, a step the commander in chief took.

With Congress now in Baltimore, Knox believed that it was up to the army to organize the war effort. On Wednesday, December 18, he drew up "A plan for the Establishment of a Corps of Continental Artillery, Magazines, Laboratories" to submit to Washington and Congress.

In the report, he explained the dire need for an effective artillery corps, which the British fully realized:

In the modern mode of carrying on a war, there is nothing which contributes more to make an army victorious than a well regulated and well disciplined artillery provided with a sufficiency of cannon and stores. The battles which have lately been fought in Europe have generally been with cannon, and that army which has had the most numerous and best appointed artillery has commonly been victorious. The experience of this campaign [demonstrates that] the enemy depends on a superiority of their artillery. They scarcely or ever detach a single regiment without two or three field pieces. The regulations of their artillery are founded upon the most convincing experience of their utility and we shall have no reason to blush by imitating them in this particular.
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He explained that an artillery corps relied on educated, skilled veterans, especially to run the laboratories that produced everything from powder to explosives. He believed his men, who were spread throughout the army, should be paid 25 percent more than regular troops because their costs were greater than those of men in a unified regiment, and the army did not pay for much of their supplies. Pay among artillerists "in the British and French services is double" to that of infantrymen, he pointed out. His plan proposed that five battalions be recruited and laid out a command structure from regimental colonels down to gunners and bombardiers and skilled craftsmen to build cannon carriages, platforms, and wagons, among other needs. He asked that someone be appointed to obtain 150 brass cannons and that "[t]he persons appointed for this purpose are to spare neither pains or expense in getting the cannon cast and mounted as soon as possible." He also requested the power to form magazines, laboratories, and construction crews immediately.
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In submitting his plan to Washington, Knox offered himself as a candidate to head the artillery corps and said he would resign if not promoted. Two days later, on Friday, December 20, the commander in chief wrote a sternly worded letter to Congress in forwarding Knox's plan with his full support: "I have waited with much impatience to know the determinations of Congress on the propositions made some time in October last for augmenting our Corps of Artillery." Under the powers recently granted to him by Congress, he reported that he had ordered three battalions of artillery immediately raised "at the repeated [insistence] of Colo. Knox."

Washington told the delegates that "the casting of cannon is a matter that ought not to be one moment delayed" and that he would soon send Knox to Connecticut and New York to accomplish this and set up laboratories and magazines. Washington also urged Henry's appointment to the rank of general: "Colo. Knox (at present at the head of that department, but [who] without promotion will resign) ought to be appointed to the command of it with the rank and pay of brigadier.“
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Washington apologized for the tone of the letter as well as his decision to raise artillery battalions and take other measures usually reserved for Congress, but that absolute necessity and the possible destruction of his army and American hopes were his greater concerns. He wrote, "A character to lose, an estate to forfeit, the inestimable blessing of liberty at stake, and a life devoted, must be my excuse.“
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These acts would not, however, relieve the Continental Army of its immediate danger. Chunks of ice were forming in the Delaware and Howe's
troops would soon be able to march across the river. The enlistments for many of the men in camp at Morrisville would expire by January 1, and Washington could do little to convince them to stay without offering them hope for success. A letter intercepted from the enemy revealed that Howe planned to launch his attack as soon as the American army enlistments expired and the Delaware had frozen. Even though he felt his force insufficient to launch an offensive strike, he decided he had no choice. "Necessity, dire necessity, will, nay must, justify my attack," Howe wrote to his adjutant general, Joseph Reed, in confidence on Monday, December 23.
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Early on Christmas morning, as the sun rose over the glistening snow, Washington issued orders for an assault of the 1,900-man Hessian regiment and British cavalry stationed across the Delaware in Trenton, New Jersey. The watchword for the mission was "Victory or Death." Knox was to supervise the crossing of the main body of the army over the river and was to send several gunners to march without their cannons with the lead divisions to either spike the enemy's six field guns or turn them to their use in the battle. These men were given spikes and hammers along with ropes for dragging off the cannons. The remaining part of Knox's artillery crew readied eighteen field pieces for the river crossing.

Christmas Day was clear and bright at 3
P.M.
when Knox and the vanguard of troops began the nine-mile march north to McKonkey's Ferry, where they hoped to cross the 800-foot-wide Delaware undetected. Each man carried three days' rations, forty rounds of ammunition, and a blanket. Knox arrived at sunset and waited with Washington for the 2,400-man force to reach McKonkey's Inn, a two-story brick house that looked especially inviting to the men shivering in the cold. Some of the troops were guided to the site by the trail of blood left in the snow by men who marched without shoes. At 6
P.M.
, a messenger arrived from General John Cadwalader, who had been sent downstream of Trenton to Dunk's Ferry to cross the river and cut off the enemy's retreat route. Cadwalader reported that the rising tide was throwing up chunks of ice in the swift current and neither horses nor artillery could be rowed to the Jersey shore. He and the men around him were certain that Washington would also be unable to cross and that the mission would be canceled. Brigadier General James Ewing, who was ordered to cross the Delaware directly below Trenton with 700 men, also gave up the attempt.

Knox, however, was not dissuaded and told Washington that he believed he could get the force at McKonkey's Ferry across. As Washington sat on a frozen beehive along the bank, Knox's booming baritone was soon shouting
out orders. Horses were led onto flat-bottom barges and the eighteen field guns, fifty horses, and ammunition weighing more than 350 tons were loaded on board. Knox had planned the crossing carefully. He had obtained a number of renowned Durham boats, long barges with running boards on the outside for men to stand and propel the craft forward by pushing poles against the ice. The boats were forty feet long but just two feet deep with narrowed, canoelike ends that had adjustable oars, front and back, to use as rudders and two masts for sails. The larger boats could carry fifteen tons while only drawing twenty inches in the river. Knox also knew where to look for pilots. He recruited Marblehead, Massachusetts seafaring fishermen and sailors from Colonel John Glover's regiment to lead the way. These were the same men who had ferried them across the East River after the evacuation of Brooklyn Heights.

An hour before midnight, a blinding snow mixed with rain, sleet, and pelting hail began to fall, and a cold wind blew down the length of the river, funneled by the riverbanks. Thomas Rodney, a soldier on the mission, remembered, "The night was as severe a night as ever I saw.“
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Washington had hoped to be over the river by midnight, which would give the troops four or five hours to make the nine-mile march to Trenton before sunrise. But the weather and ice slowed the loading of men and weapons, and the delays endangered the mission.

With the cargo finally in the boats, Knox rode with Washington. According to legend, James Monroe, the future U.S. president, was aboard the same boat, and Alexander Hamilton was among the troops crossing the river. The Marblehead men chopped at the thin ice to forge a path in the current, then struck their poles against the floating chunks of ice and pushed from shore. Halfway across, ice slowed the convoy and put them in danger of being stranded midstream. Washington considered canceling the mission but realized there was no turning back. The setback would destroy any faith remaining in the army or his command.

The snow and hail rained down on the men in the open boats. They huddled together and wrapped blankets around their shoulders, wondering if they would die of exposure before ever reaching the New Jersey shore.

Knox labored to break up the ice, fighting the cold as well as exhausted muscles. "Perseverance accomplished what first seemed impossible," Knox admitted in a letter to Lucy.
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"The force of the current, the sharpness of the frost, the darkness of the night, the ice which made during the operation, and a high wind, rendered the passage of the river extremely difficult, but for the stentorian lungs and
extraordinary exertions of Colonel Knox," Major James Wilkinson would still vividly remember 40 years later.
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Knox later praised the mariners guiding the boats. When Washington wondered aloud "[w]ho will lead us on," Knox said that "the men of Marble-head and Marblehead alone, [stood] forth to lead the army along the perilous path.“
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By 2
A.M.
on Thursday, December 26, the first of the boats carrying General Adam Stephen's vanguard brigade of Virginians reached the opposite bank, followed by troops from Connecticut, Maryland, and Massachusetts. Knox reached land and spent the next hour directing the embarkation of men and the unloading of cannons and horses. By then, "it hailed with great violence," he wrote. It was not until 4
A.M.
, the time Washington had hoped the force would arrive in a sleepy Trenton, that the troops were ready to leave the river. Now the force could not arrive until after sunrise, when much of the element of surprise would be lost. But recrossing the river in daylight would be suicidal, Washington knew; they would be discovered and be easy targets for the enemy. They had no choice but to move ahead. "I determined to push on at all events," Washington later told Congress.
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Knox had horses hitched to the artillery carriages and munitions wagons, and he assigned men with four field guns to lead each column and three pieces at the head of each supporting division as well as two cannons to accompany the reserves. As the blizzard continued, the troops moved out under orders not to utter a sound and with the warning that any man who deserted the ranks would be put to death.

For the first mile and a half, the road led up a rather steep hill that ran along the shore. The horses struggled to maintain their footing. Ropes had to be tied to trees and attached to the multi-ton cannons, and men grabbed hold of the lines in an effort to hoist the guns up the incline. The challenge must have reminded Knox of the trip from Ticonderoga. Upon reaching the crest at Bear Tavern, the men resumed the march along flat ground the rest of the way to Trenton. Knox was thankful that the snow now fell to their backs and they no longer had to fight the wind. Legs ached as the men trudged through the freshly fallen base of snow, pushing forward along the winding road that cut through a forest of hickory, ash, and black oaks. When they arrived at Birmingham, three miles from Bear Tavern and four and a half miles from Trenton, Washington split his force. Major General John Sullivan was to lead his brigade on the road along the river to arrive below Trenton, while Major General Greene was to lead his men on Pennington's Road, which ran to the
north side of the town. Knox and Washington accompanied General Greene's column. Sullivan, with the shorter route, paused a mile outside of Trenton to wait for signs of Greene's force. Checking their weapons and powder, his men found that the weather had spoiled much of their ammunition. Sullivan immediately sent an aide to Washington, but before the commander in chief's orders to prepare for a bayonet assault arrived, the men had already fastened the blades to their guns.