Christmas Past

After living in New Jersey for almost as long as I lived in Philadelphia, the stars finally aligned this year to allow me to partake of some of the fabulous historical re-enactments of the events surrounding the battles of Trenton and Princeton.

I shouldn't have been surprised to discover that there are thousands of people who turn out to watch the annual re-enactments of Washington's famous crossing of the Delaware.

It's a great story (and I'm borrowing liberally from David Hackett Fischer's great account for my details), and watching the Durham boats make their way across in the same spot that Washington's forces did is spine-tingling theater.

There were supposed to be three groups of colonials crossing the river on the cold and stormy night of December 25th, 1776. Generals Cadwalader and Ewing were forced to call off their planned crossings; the river ice and rising storm made the task impossible. Only Washington was able to get across with both men and cannons, aided by local ferrymen who knew the river and men of a Marblehead regiment who knew how to handle boats in adverse conditions. The great majority of the army, like most populations in eighteenth century America and Europe, were unable to swim a stroke.

The secret pass phrase that night was "Victory or Death," and though I am a good Quaker, I am also grateful now for the work of those men then, without whose determination and passion our fledgling republic might well have foundered.

(Apparently someone told one of these re-enactors
that the soldier he was representing hadn't owned shoes after all...)

We're already talking about next time.