In these extreme conditions the operation fell more than two hours behind schedule. Once across, however, Washington’s force divided into two columns and marched south, the right column hugging the riverbank while, two miles inland, the left advanced directly into Trenton. General St. Clair’s brigade was closest to the river, and as Brigade Major Wilkinson marched with them, they circled round the town to block the exit on the far side. By now the operation was so late that what had been planned as a night attack became a daylight assault, but it was still unexpected because the defenders of Trenton never imagined that the Delaware could be crossed in such a storm.
On the north side of town, cannon were placed to fire down the two main streets, preventing the highly trained Hessians from forming up to deliver the concerted volleys of shot that made them so effective. With superior numbers and firepower, the attackers quickly took control of the street battle that developed. Those who attempted to escape were shot or captured by the river column as it encircled the town. In midmorning on December 26, Wilkinson delivered a second message to Washington. This one, from St. Clair, reported that on the south side his brigade not only had Trenton surrounded, but had driven one of the three Hessian regiments in the garrison into the open where the survivors were forced to surrender. The trap had closed. From his vantage point at the north end of town, Washington had seen the other two regiments bombarded into capitulation. Wilkinson’s report confirmed that the surprise attack had won a complete victory.
As he delivered St. Clair’s news to Washington, Wilkinson remembered “his countenance beaming with complacency,” the frustrations of the previous evening wiped away. “Major Wilkinson,” Washington exclaimed, shaking the young officer’s hand, “this is a glorious day for our country.”
More than one thousand Germans had been captured, together with cannon, shot, and gunpowder, and another hundred had been killed. Of wider significance, the victory restored morale in the army, and as news of it rippled out through the country, it transformed the mood of despair that had begun to be felt ever more widely. “The minds of the people are much altered,” Nicholas Cresswell, a Tory Virginian, admitted less than a week after the battle. “A few days ago they had given up the cause as lost. Their late successes have turned the scale and now they are all liberty- mad again.”
To reinforce the impact of his victory, Washington launched a second surprise attack on the British garrison in Princeton a week later. This was a bloodier battle, with casualties of almost four hundred on the enemy side, but it ended in the rout of three battalions of regular infantry who had occupied the town. In the space of seven days, Washington’s two victories had won back control of New Jersey and, as Wilkinson declared, “the American community began to feel and act like a nation determined to be free.”
TRENTON ALSO OPENED UP a road that promised military glory for James Wilkinson personally. He had already risen fast in the army thanks to the patronage of his generals, but by leaving Gates to take part in the battle, he had taken a first step toward establishing his own independent career. Recognition of his qualities came in January 1777 when he was promoted to lieutenant colonel, this time on the recommendation of Washington himself, and given a commission in a new regiment. This was the ultimate proving ground for an ambitious officer, and Wilkinson had been given the opportunity when Congress had at last decided what the shape of the army should be after eighteen months of vacillation between militia and regulars.
Through the dreadful fall of 1776 when military disaster threatened to wipe out the ideals asserted in the Declaration of Independence, the case against the militia had been stated with growing force by Washington’s generals. “No operation can be safely planned in which they are to take a part,” Nathanael Greene declared after the retreat from New York. “I must repeat the Militia are not be depended upon,” Schuyler wrote following the defeat in Canada. On the very day that he began planning the attack on Trenton, Washington found time to complain to Congress that militia troops “come in, you cannot tell how; go you cannot tell when; and act you cannot tell where; consume your provisions, exhaust your stores and leave you at last at a critical moment.” The irritation of working with such undisciplined soldiers was revealed in a furious outburst from Wayne. “To say anything severe to them has just as much effect as if you were to cut up a Butcher’s Chopping block with a razor,” he fulminated. “By G-d, they feel nothing but down Right blows which, with the dread of being whipt thro’ the Small Guts, keeps them in some Awe.”
Under this weight of criticism, and with the evidence before them of Trenton, where four fifths of the troops had been Continental regulars, Congress finally accepted the need for a completely modern army. In January 1777, it recommended establishing a force of 110 infantry regiments, and with them three other components essential to fighting a late-eighteenth-century war: five regiments of artillery, a corps of engineers, and three thousand cavalry. As a sign of Congress’s “perfect reliance on the wisdom, vigour, and uprightness of General Washington,” their recruitment, training, and pay were to be placed under his direct control. The soldiers would serve for up to three years, or for the duration of the war.
Politically as well as militarily, Washington had won, and the newly promoted Lieutenant Colonel Wilkinson, still not twenty years old, seemed likely to be one of the brightest stars in the new Continental Army. His regiment was one of Washington’s extras, and its colonel, Thomas Hartley, an efficient officer Wilkinson had known in Canada. Taking a personal interest in Wilkinson’s career, the commander in chief told him he would benefit from the experience of direct command, as opposed to staff work, because it would help “to remedy his polite manners.” For a young officer aspiring to behave like an aristocrat, this was useful advice, but it went unheeded. In January 1777, instead of roughing it in camp at Morristown where the new troops were beginning their training, he persuaded Hartley to send him on a recruiting drive to Pennsylvania and Maryland. It turned out to be less enjoyable than he had anticipated.
In Wilkinson’s hierarchical world, it was natural for him to charm those above him, and to discipline those below him, but to persuade his fellow citizens as equals that they should join the army was impossible. After a few weeks he reacted much as he had in Canada when Arnold had sent him out to forage for supplies and simply gave up.
Instead of returning to Morristown, he stayed in Philadelphia, where many of the friends he had made as a medical student, especially among “the most accomplished and respectable of the fair sex,” still lived. One girl in particular, Ann Biddle, always known as Nancy, attracted him. Her portrait, painted by Charles Willson Peale, suggests why she caught his eye. Everything about her is fashionable: her hair is piled in ringlets on her head, her eyebrows are plucked, her eyes are darkened, her lips are painted, and, compared to the settled expressions adopted by the other Philadelphia ladies who sat for Peale, her look is lively and seductive. That she was also a Quaker and should thus have been demurely dressed and modestly behaved can only have added to the excitement she aroused.