Hard Times? Remember Washington Crossing The Delaware

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These are dark times, to be sure. I was at a party the other day and you’d have thought it was a funeral, there were so many long faces. The conversation was about the economy, and topics included: people we knew who’d lost their jobs, what local business was rumored to be shutting down, and how much money everybody’s retirement plan had lost.

And then I brought up Washington crossing the Delaware.

Think back to December of 1776. If ever there was a time when things looked bleak for George Washington’s ragtag army of rebels, this was it. They had been beaten badly by the British army in one Revolutionary War battle after another for months, and now they were encamped on the freezing shores of the Delaware River in winter. They were a fraction of the size they had been only two months earlier, due to death, disease, and desertion. The string of losses had demoralized the army and the citizens of the new country, and it seemed that one more defeat may have been all it took for the United States to throw in the towel. Washington himself seemed to feel that way. In a letter to a friend, he said, “The game is pretty nearly up.”

Three regiments of Hessian soldiers, mercenaries for the British Army, were camped right across the river near Trenton, New Jersey. Washington had rounded up all the boats for 25 miles in each direction to prevent the enemy from crossing the river, but now rumors circulated that as soon as the river froze the Hessians would just march across and attack. If that happened Washington’s men, who were short of everything from ammunition to blankets to shoes, would surely have been routed.

But George Washington came up with a plan. It was a bold and daring plan, and maybe it was born of desperation, but it was a plan. Early in the morning of Christmas Day, Washington and 2,400 of his men rowed across the Delaware. Snow was falling and it was bitter cold, but Washington knew the job had to be done now or never. He had written “Victory or death,” in a note to himself that was found later.

Against all odds, the plan worked. The Americans took the enemy by surprise, and routed them. By the time the battle was over later that day, there were almost 100 Hessians killed or wounded and 900 captured. Only two Americans were killed.

It was one of those moments that truly turned the tide of history. The news of the victory spread through the country, and the morale of a whole nation was lifted. The bold plan had worked, and the British army had suffered a defeat. American soldiers, who had been on the verge of leaving the army in droves when their enlistment period was finished at the end of December, decided to stay and fight some more. They fought on in the following years and reeled off some more victories, then beat the British in the decisive battle of Yorktown in 1781, and the miracle occurred — the new nation won its independence.

It’s easy to get caught up in gloom and doom when you have some setbacks. Sometimes, when the setbacks are very big ones, you can lose hope. It seems as though your dreams won’t come true and the abyss is yawning in front of you. At times like these, when we are facing problems that seem almost insurmountable, we should remember that little ragtag army camped on the Delaware more than 200 years ago. They rowed across an icy river in the middle of the night, with the prospect of death awaiting them on the other side. They did it because they believed that they were in the right, and that they could succeed if they tried hard enough. And they believed in their leader, who had come up with this bold plan.

There is a time when every American schoolchild was familiar with the picture of George Washington crossing the Delaware, standing in the bow of a boat while his men rowed behind him. It’s a picture worth remembering this December, no matter how bad things may seem.