The first Delaware crossing had afforded graphic proof of the advantages of speed and flexibility in improvising military operations. With many enlistments about to expire, General Greene had lobbied Congress to give Washington additional powers while “reserving to yourself the right of confirming or repealing the measures.”³⁷ Greene insisted that Washington would never abuse a wide-ranging new grant of authority. “There never was a man that might be more safely trusted,” he asserted.³⁸ On December 27 a once-carping, meddlesome Congress granted extraordinary powers to Washington for six months, allowing him to muster new troops by paying bounties, to commandeer provisions, and even to arrest vendors who didn’t accept Continental currency. These powers, breathtaking in scope, aroused fears of a despot in the making—fears that Washington quickly laid to rest. He understood that liberties should be affirmed even as they were being temporarily abridged, and he planned to set aside emergency powers the instant they were no longer needed. As he informed Congress, “I shall constantly bear in mind that, as the sword was the last resort for the preservation of our liberties, so it ought to be the first thing laid aside when those liberties are firmly established.”³⁹ In this manner, Washington strengthened civilian authority over the military.

The immediate task at hand was to persuade men to linger whose enlistments expired on New Year’s Day. By bringing his soldiers to Trenton, Washington made it more difficult for them to decamp, and he mustered all his hortatory powers to retain them. On December 30 he had a recalcitrant New England regiment lined up before him. Sitting erect on his horse, he made an impassioned appeal, asking them to extend their service by six weeks and offering them a ten-dollar bounty. As one sergeant recalled, Washington “told us our services were greatly needed and that we could do more for our country than we ever could at any future date and in the most affectionate manner entreated us to stay.”⁴⁰ The word that leaps out here is affectionate. Here was George Washington, patriarch of Mount Vernon, addressing farmers, shoemakers, weavers, and carpenters as intimate comrades-in-arms. A year earlier this hypercritical man had frowned on these soldiers as an unsavory rabble; now he lavished them with praise. When Jacky Custis told him of squawking in Virginia about New England troops, Washington took umbrage: “I do not believe that any of the states produce better men, or persons capable of making better soldiers.”⁴¹ Though he still believed in hierarchical distinctions, especially between officers and their men, the war was molding him into a far more egalitarian figure.

When drums rumbled out a roll call for volunteers, nobody at first stepped forward. One vocal soldier piped up and spoke of their shared sacrifices, how much they had dreamed of heading home. Pulling up his horse, Washington wheeled about and rode along the entire line of men. With his reserved manner and austere code of conduct, he didn’t frequently voice his feelings, only making it more impressive when he did so. “My brave fellows,” he said, “you have done all I asked you to do and more than could be reasonably expected. But your country is at stake, your wives, your houses, and all that you hold dear . . . If you will consent to stay one month longer, you will render that service to the cause of liberty and to your country which you probably can never do under any other circumstances.”⁴²

As the drums resumed beating, the soldiers huddled and conferred among themselves. One was overheard to say, “I will remain if you will,” while another told his fellows that “we cannot go home under such circumstances.”⁴³ A small knot of men stepped forward grudgingly, prompting several more to do so; finally all two hundred joined in. For Washington, the war had become a constant game of high-stakes improvisation, played out under extreme duress. For these two hundred men, the extra six weeks entailed no small commitment: half would perish from combat wounds or illness. The same scene was soon reenacted with other regiments as Washington, showing dramatic flair and plainspoken eloquence, held on to more than three thousand men. In another inspired gesture, he told subordinates that the men who agreed to stay didn’t need to be formally enrolled but would be trusted to make good on their verbal pledges. He was treating them not as commoners, but as tried-and-true gentlemen.

To ferret out enemy intentions, Washington sent a cavalry patrol to reconnoiter around Princeton. Several captured British dragoons revealed that the British had amassed eight thousand men at Princeton and were girding themselves under General Cornwallis to attack Washington at Trenton. As this second Battle of Trenton loomed, the humiliated Hessians were in an especially vengeful mood, and their leader, Colonel von Donop, decreed a bloodthirsty policy of taking no prisoners.

Toward sundown at Trenton on January 2, 1777, Washington spotted the vanguard of Cornwallis, who had brought an army of 5,500 men. Washington arrayed his men on the slope behind Assunpink Creek in three horizontal bands, covering the entire hillside. As Hessian troops hurtled down King and Queen streets, American snipers fired at them. An advance force of Continental soldiers waded back across the rain-swollen creek while others fell back across the stone bridge. When it looked momentarily as if the retreating Americans would be hacked to death by Hessian bayonets, Washington swung into action. Sitting astride his horse at the far end of the bridge, he mobilized his men. Evidently he not only looked but felt like a godlike image of solidity; soldiers who bumped against him couldn’t shake his granite poise. Private John Howland left this evocative portrait:

The noble horse of Gen. Washington stood with his breast pressed close against the end of the west rail of the bridge, and the firm, composed, and majestic countenance of the general inspired confidence and assurance in a moment so important and critical. In this passage across the bridge, it was my fortune to be next [to] the west rail, and arriving at the end of the bridge rail, I was pressed against the shoulder of the general’s horse and in contact with the general’s boot. The horse stood as firm as the rider and seemed to understand that he was not to quit his post and station.⁴⁴

This preternatural composure, coming in the heat of battle, made Washington a living presence to his men.

The British made three courageous attempts to take the bridge, and each time American artillery repulsed them, strewing many cadavers in their wake. “The bridge looked red as blood,” wrote Sergeant Joseph White, “with their killed and wounded and red coats.”⁴⁵ Several hundred British and Hessian soldiers died in vain attempts to storm the American positions. Nevertheless, the patriots were heavily outnumbered by Cornwallis’s army and had no clear escape strategy. In the dying light of a winter day, Cornwallis and his officers conferred about whether to postpone the main attack. “If Washington is the general I take him to be,” Sir William Erskine said, “he will not be found in the morning.” An overly confident Cornwallis disputed this assertion. “We’ve got the old fox safe now,” he supposedly said. “We’ll go over and bag him in the morning.”⁴⁶

Washington worried that his men might be encircled by the superior British force—they were cooped up like a flock of chickens, in Henry Knox’s colorful phrase—and knew that any retreat across a Delaware River chock-full of ice floes could be costly. Convening his generals on this frosty night, he stated that the loss of the corps he commanded “might be fatal to the country,” and, under these circumstances, he asked for advice.⁴⁷ Once again a single misstep could be devastating. The war council decided to have the army slip away during the night, much as it had disappeared across the East River. Still better, it would convert a defensive move into an offensive measure, circling around the left flank of Cornwallis’s army and heading north along unfrequented back roads to confront the British at Princeton. Washington again hid a political strategy behind his military strategy. “One thing I was sure of,” he remarked afterward, was “that it would avoid the appearance of a retreat, which was of consequence.”⁴⁸ This supremely risky strategy meant penetrating deep into enemy territory and possibly being entrapped. Nevertheless, Washington and his generals, who now operated with exceptional cohesion, embraced the course unanimously.