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University Daily Kansan Thursday, Dec. 10, 1964
Christmas, 1776
It was Christmas Eve, 1776. The ragged and cold soldiers of the American Army huddled on the bank of the Delaware River, breathing on their numbed fingers and wrapping their thin blankets more tightly against the biting winter wind. They were a mixed lot. The fresh, boyish faces of the youthful volunteers, newly arrived from Philadelphia, contrasted with those of the bearded and haggard-looking veterans, most of whom were shoeless.
BELOW THE SOLDIERS the restless river snarled darkly. Sudden gusts of chill wind whipped the water and raised white-capped waves; broken cakes of ice were tossed about in grinding, tearing crashes. The far banks of the river were hidden by a curtain of snow, whipped and harried by the wind.
The terse order to embark and begin the crossing came from General Washington. The wet and numbed men clambered into the longboats. The attack on the Hessian garrison at Trenton, N.J., was underway. Oars dipped, and the heavily loaded boats began the dangerous crossing. Using long poles the men fended away the chunks of ice that threatened to smash the boats. The crossing was rough and only a small number of Washington's 6,000-man army managed to reach the opposite shore of the Delaware. By 3 a.m. the last of the artillery was rowed across.
FOR AN HOUR the soldiers awaited the order to march. Finally it came, and the tired troops began the rapid march toward Trenton, eight miles away. The snow turned into driving sleet and hail and added further to the discomfort of the men slogging along the muddy road.
At one point in the march a breathless aide hurried to Washington and reported that the soldiers' weapons were wet.
"TELL YOUR GENERAL," Washington said, "to use bayonet and penetrate into the town. The town must be taken. I am resolved to take it."
The aide saluted and hurried away. The fast pace continued.
At 8 a.m. on Christmas morning the Americans reached the first Hessian outposts and subdued them after a brief struggle. Then they quickly began to surround the town.
In the town the 1550 Hessian mercenaries hired by the British had been celebrating the arrival of Christmas, one of their favorite holidays. There were signs that they had observed the usual morning parade-routine, but they had gone back to their barracks either to sleep or to continue their merry-making.
THE GARRISON'S FIRST WARNING of the attack came from sentries who had fled from their posts in the face of the advancing colonists. Alerted, the Hessians straggled out into the street. Their commander, Colonel Rahl, tried to restore order but could not. The Americans quickly had placed a battery of six guns on a height at the edge of the town that gave the gunners full command of the two main streets. A group of men, led by Capt. Washington and Lt. James Monroe, captured the enemy's gun emplacerants before their infantry could aid them, and the combined guns raked the open streets and common in a withering cross-fire that completely demoralized the Hessians.
Col. Rahl managed to restore enough discipline to lead an attack on the position from which Gen. Washington was directing the action, but he was killed in the charge. The loss of their leader and the bullets ferreting out their hiding-places panicked the Hessians, who turned and fled into the fields and orchards. But all avenues of escape were blocked and, except for about 500 Hessians who slipped through the American lines, the garrison surrendered.
THE BATTLE OF TRENTON had lasted one hour. The Americans lost two men; the Hessians suffered losses of 40 dead or wounded, and a little over 1,000 men, 30 of which were officers, were captured.
To understand the significance of this battle in the Revolutionary War and in American history, one must understand the context in which the battle was fought.
Prior to the Battle of Trenton, the American forces under Gen. George Washington were on the run. The British had won New York and
controlled much of New Jersey. The American Army numbered less than 6,000 effective fighting men. Washington was plagued by a lack of supplies and money for his troops. Further, the enlistment periods of most of his men were up at the beginning of the new year.
THE BRITISH STRATEGY was to winter in New York City with the expectation that the colonial army would dissolve with the coming of the winter or else disband because of a lack of supplies and support from the colonists.
In the spring they planned to split the colonies in half and begin a southward push into Pennsylvania and Virginia. Gen. Howe, the British commander, had issued a proclamation forbidding the colonists to arm or to support the rebel forces.
Many Americans were fearful of openly supporting the colonial troops. Indeed many colonists and some members of the Continental Congress were anxious still to reach some sort of compromise with the English Crown.
Though Washington's forces were about to collapse, the British chose to sit tight until winter was over instead of pushing their advantage. They were anticipating an easy march to Philadelphia in the spring.
THE EXPOSED POSITION of the British was apparent to Washington. On the 14th of December he had written to Governor Trumbull:
"The troops that came down from Ticonderoga with Arnold and Gates, may in conjunction with my present forces, and that under General Lee, enable us to attempt a stroke upon the forces of the enemy, who lay a good deal scattered, and to all appearance, in a state of security. A lucky blow in this quarter would be fatal to them, and would most certainly raise the spirits of the people which are quite sunk by our late misfortunes."
The effects of the American victory at Trenton surpassed the fondest hopes of Washington and his supporters. More importantly, the victory silenced the still existing anxiety on the part of some for a compromise with the British. The battle started the colonies on course which left them no alternative but war and complete victory or defeat.
THE EVENTS AT TRENTON also had an important impact on Congress. At last the condition of the army was recognized, and so was the need for a unity of spirit and command in the conduct of the war. To this end the Congress granted increased powers to Washington to recruit and to equip 16 new battalions and requisition supplies from the colonists for his men.
Those large grants of power were made when "Affairs were in such a condition that the very existence of civil liberty depended," as Congress stated, "on the right execution of military powers," and when "the vigorous decisive conduct of these being impossible to distant, numerous and deliberative bodies," it was "confident of the wisdom, vigor, and uprightness of General Washington."
The immediate impact of the victory was to restore the spirit and hopes of the army. Most of the volunteers agreed to remain, new volunteers came forward and colonial support and supplies were increased significantly.
THE IMPORTANCE OF THE BATTLE in the course of the Revolutionary War is attested to by a comment from Lord Germaine: "All our hopes were blasted by the unhappy affairs at Trenton."
Another commented at the height of the winter campaign that "thus by an army almost reduced to extremity, Philadelphia was saved, Pennsylvania protected, New Jersey nearly recovered, and a victorious and powerful enemy laid under the necessity of quitting all thoughts of acting offensively in order to defend itself."
"It has excited not less astonishment in the British and auxiliary quarters that it has done joy in those of the Americans. The Hessians will be no longer terrible, and the spirits of the Americans will rise amazingly," added another British observer.
THUS THE BATTLE OF TRENTON commands a significant position in American history, for it marked a violent severing of ties with England, a turning of the colonists toward a sense of pride, victory and commitment in their destiny which was to become the birth of a new nation.
—Rick Mabbutt
The People Say.
We applaud your editorial "a slice of cam-pi." Watch the Kansas Engineer; you may get a chance to see more toes stepped on If you step hard enough and accurately enough, you'll scare someone. Less possible, but more desirable, is that you might inspire someone.
Mr. Jim Langford:
Thank you
Tim McGinty
Ira Winarski
Staff of the
Kansas Engineer
To the editors:
All right, already! The election is
over and your man won. (Or are you fellows at the Kansan so far behind with the news that you hadn't heart yet?)
The Herblock cartoons get the message across, and the article about the Birch Society couldn't have been more clear if you had possessed the originality to write it yourself. So why don't you let the losers rest in peace and savor the victory somewhere besides on the editorial page?
With wounds thoroughly salted,
Roger W. Myers
1515 Engel Road
Lawrence
BOOK REVIEWS
SPARK OF LIFE, by Erich Maria Remarque (Dell, 75 cents).
"Spark of Life" is about a concentration camp. But like Remarque's other novels it makes an effort to say more than just tell how ghastly it all was. In all his books he presents the idea of man being able to survive—if not endure, in the Faulkner term—even the worst of circumstances.
He writes about a man named Koller, 10 years in the camp, and on the edge of despair. But it seems to Koller that Germany perhaps may lose the war, and he tries to spread that message through the camp. Through his hope, and through giving hope to others, he manages to come through to a feeling of greatness, even though he dies in fighting off the S.S. at about the time the Americans are arriving to liberate the camp.
***
BLUES FOR MISTER CHARLIE, by James Baldwin (Dell, 60 cents).
James Baldwin is on the way to becoming a polemicist. If he can become one of the stamp of Tom Paine it might be all right, but so much of what he writes is loaded to such an extreme position that he may lose both his audience and the claim to greatness he staked out with "Go Tell It on the Mountain."
"Blues for Mister Charlie" is a play, a contemporary one, of recent Broadway success, or at least limited success. Baldwin cries out against the condition in which the American Negro continues to find himself, the frustration, the misery, the degradation. In a sense the play is based on the Emmett Till case in Mississippi, one that goes back to 1955. Baldwin has tried to draw a portrait of the Till murderer, to understand such an animal. He has done it in a play that has considerable shock value.
But even though there is more passion and more social concern the play somehow doesn't say as much for the Negro as did Lorraine Hansberry's "A Raisin in the Sun." Perhaps its heavy content of propaganda tends, in the end, to make it much less art than it might have been had Baldwin kept to the humanistic approach—rather than that of the propagandist—that marked the first novel and some of the essays.
* * *
THE CIVIL WAR IN SPAIN, edited by Robert Payne (Premier, 75 cents).
Here is an excellent collection that tells the story of the still controversial Spanish Civil War. Robert Payne has turned to the writings of several famous persons, including John Dos Passos, Arthur Koestler, Andre Malraux, George Orwell, and Elliott Paul, to tell the story.
The book is part of the Premier History-in-the-Making series, and it is drawn from letters, official reports, proceedings in courts, journalistic dispatches, battlefield stories, diaries and archives.
University students of today did not live through this stormy era in our history. They know little about it, and this book will help to fill them in on the battles, the politics, the rise of Franco, the various parties, the insurgent movements that characterized the war.
Dailiji Hänsan
F
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EDITORIAL DEPARTMENT
Founded 1889, became biweekly 1904, triweekly 1908
Founded 1889, became biweekly 1904, triweekly 1908, daily Jan. 16, 1912.
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