To Try Men's Souls - George Washington 1 Read Online Free PDF

report this day declared barely half fit for duty, and a night of hard marching would most likely mean hundreds of them collapsing before dawn. And that report had been given before this storm rolled in.
    Dr. Benjamin Rush, an old friend, had come up from Philadelphia several days ago to visit and inspect the army. Congress as usual was looking over his shoulder even though in a proclamation of two weeks back, after fleeing Philadelphia for Baltimore, they had all butgiven him dictatorial powers to recruit a new army and command it. He trusted Rush, though, and welcomed him. Rush was a man of optimism and encouragement who swore that in spite of the unrelenting defeats a new spirit was beginning to rise up in defiance.
    “Perhaps we Americans need a good thrashing now and again to wake us up,” Rush had said.
    He could not reply to that, for he was the commander who had been thrashed, and soundly. From Long Island all the way across New York and New Jersey to the Pennsylvania side of the Delaware, he had been beaten in every stand-up fight, and now, as his army lost morale and men, he was reduced to a final desperate act.
    He had shared with Rush his plan to somehow strike back before the end of the year, to achieve some victory that would boost morale and in turn encourage at least some of the men to stay with the colors and renew their enlistments. The comment had been made that it would be “victory or death,” and those three words, at that moment, had not in the least sounded like a line delivered by an actor upon the stage.
    Of course, he loved plays.
    Like all soldiers, he could not help but smile when the play was about war, and great heroics were enacted. When the first volley struck into Braddock’s column in 1755, dropping scores of men instantly, there had been no pause in which Braddock could deliver a speech. That was no thimbleful of stage blood when a musket ball smashed into the face of the man next to him. It was easy enough for an actor to cry out, “Victory or death,” but now, at this moment?
    He had told Rush there would be no alternative on this night. If he flinched from the weather and the risks, from the difficulties and the enemy, the collapse in morale would lead his army to disintegrate. Within a week there would no longer be an American army. Then death would be his fate and the fate of every leader of the Revolution.
    Victory or death. If the Hessians were forewarned, aroused, and awaiting them in full battle array, he would lose. Of that he had no doubt. His men hated, loathed the Hessians after the reports oftheir bayoneting of prisoners and wounded at Long Island and Manhattan. They feared them as well for their clocklike precision, discipline, and frightful ability to pour out four volleys a minute to the two ragged volleys of his “Continental line,” and as for the militia, they barely knew how to load their weapons, let alone fire them in a disciplined manner. If the Hessians were waiting and deployed, what was left of his army would be pinned to the east bank of the Delaware and then overwhelmed by the British garrison, warm and well fed, pouring down from Princeton.
    He looked up at the dark sky and found himself wondering if he would ever see home again.
    Martha and Mount Vernon? What of them?
    She would survive, he prayed. The English were not savages; in fact, it was tragic in a way that they faced each other now like this. For they were of the same blood. The Howe brothers were gentlemen and would not take vengeance on the widow of a slain enemy. But Mount Vernon? It would be confiscated as a prize of war, and Martha would be turned out to live off the charity of friends, at least those friends who had stayed Loyalist and thus still held their property.
    He had written her that afternoon, confided in her how much he missed her and how he longed to be home in their wonderful place looking out over the Potomac. He had not confided that his men were cold and hungry, his army