Amid a fierce nor'easter of sleet and snow, George Washington ferried roughly 2,400 soldiers across the Delaware River from Pennsylvania into New Jersey, using Durham boats to navigate ice floes in darkness. The daring maneuver set up a surprise dawn assault on Hessian forces at Trenton the following morning, a victory that revived a flagging Continental Army after a string of defeats.
By December 1776, Washington's army was disintegrating. Enlistments were expiring at year's end, morale had collapsed after losses in New York, and Thomas Paine had just published 'The American Crisis,' with its famous line 'these are the times that try men's souls,' read aloud to the troops to steady their nerve.
The crossing itself, at McConkey's Ferry, was far more perilous than Emanuel Leutze's famous 1851 painting suggests — the boats were sturdier cargo-carrying Durham boats, not the low rowboat depicted, but the river was genuinely choked with ice, the night bitterly cold, and the operation ran hours behind schedule. Henry Knox's artillery had to be floated across as well, an immense logistical feat in the dark.
Washington gambled everything on secrecy and surprise. His password for the night was reportedly 'Victory or Death.' The attack on Trenton the next morning caught the Hessian garrison largely unprepared, resulting in a lopsided American victory that captured nearly 900 prisoners and gave the Revolution's cause new life at its lowest ebb.