The Crossing by Howard Fast Read Free Book Online

land of spies, most of them double agents, hundreds of them moving freely in and out of the American and British encampments. Often enough, this movement was known by and earned the toleration of both sides. There had to be movement, buying and selling, purchase and delivery of supplies; allegiance was a fluid thing, and frequently the morning patriot became the evening Tory. Yet sometimes men totally identified with one cause or another attempted to move into an encampment, and sometimes they were caught and hanged, as Nathan Hale had been captured and executed by the British in New York City a few months before.
    Still, they were paid. In those days particularly, Washington believed that their very existence depended to some extent upon knowing what the British were up to, and he and his general officers paid spies out of their own pockets—as indeed they paid for so many other things. Sometimes the information was true, and more often it was false, but they always bought it.
    Since the general had been awakened, William Alexander—the one so frequently called General Lord Stirling—thought that he might talk to the men of the neighborhood. They had come to wait upon him, and they were offering their house. Truly, Washington wondered. He was very moved at this. They were Quakers, most of them, by nature for the rebel cause, men who were honored to take his hand. He was now in their land, in Pennsylvania, which he must accept as his own place. One by one, they introduced themselves, Samuel Merrick, John Hayhurst, Robert Thompson, Dr. Chapman, plain men plainly attired who lived in the beautiful stone houses that stood on the gentle knolls of Bucks County. Some of them he had met in Philadelphia, and they reminded him of that meeting with such sincere affection that tears came to his pale blue eyes.

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    MONDAY, ON THE NINTH OF DECEMBER, he wrote letters with no address. When he wrote to General Gates, begging him to come, he told the messenger that Gates was somewhere between the Delaware River and White Plains in New York. And to General Charles Lee, he wrote:
    â€œPhiladelphia, beyond all question, is the object of the enemy’s movements, and nothing less than our utmost exertions will prevent General Howe from possessing it. The force I have is weak, and utterly incompetent to that end. I must, therefor entreat you to push on with every possible succor you can bring.”
    The three thousand men with Lee and Gates had suddenly become the most desirable and wonderful fact on the face of the earth. He could play a game with what he had—as indeed he did—but above all he needed new men who were not sick and starved and broken.
    He had already instructed his general officers to divide the men who remained on their feet into three categories: observers or sentries who would watch the bank; guards who would build little forts out of rocks and dirt and man these forts; and patrols, who had horses of one sort or another, or at least one horse to three men, and who would move along the river’s edge. In a day’s ride up and down the Delaware from where he was at Trenton Falls there were eight functioning ferries, Sherwood’s, Coryell’s, McKonkey’s, Yardley’s, Howell’s, Kirk-bright’s, Beatty’s and the Trenton ferry. Earthworks at the ferries. He called to him the general officers whose brigades were in the best condition, Stirling, Stephen, Mercer and Fermoy, and told them about the ferries, the bank and Philadelphia, that they must hold the bank if the British tried to cross. Or die here.
    To him, at least, everything had become simple, clear. The four men who faced him were as different from each other as four men could be. Lord Stirling claimed a Scottish title, more to irritate the British than for any other reason, although he appears to have had some legal right to noble rank. As William Alexander, he had been born in New York in 1726. When he was nine