50 Fun Facts About Battle of Trenton

On which holiday night in 1776 did George Washington's army cross the icy Delaware to attack Trenton?

Christmas night, December 25, was when the crossing began. Sleet and a choked river put the landing three hours behind schedule, so the planned pre-dawn attack came after sunrise.

Which grim password did Washington set for the attack on Trenton, as a visiting doctor saw written on a note?

Victory or Death was the challenge given to sentries around the New Jersey landing. The doctor, a signer of the Declaration of Independence, had come to cheer the general up.

Which future US president was badly wounded by a musket ball in the shoulder at the Battle of Trenton?

James Monroe, an 18-year-old lieutenant, was hit while charging the Hessian cannon on King Street. A doctor clamped the severed artery in time to save his life.

Which popular belief about the Hessians at Trenton do historians such as Edward Lengel dismiss as legend?

They were drunk, the story goes, but an American who guarded the prisoners swore not a drop was touched that night. Weeks of skirmishes and false alarms had simply worn the garrison out.

What peacetime trade suited John Glover's Massachusetts regiment to getting Washington's army over the Delaware?

Sailors and fishermen from Marblehead filled Glover's ranks. Four months earlier the same men had carried the beaten army off Long Island overnight.

Which future statesman, then a young artillery captain, fired cannon down King Street at Trenton?

Alexander Hamilton's New York battery stood on the high ground where Trenton's two main streets met. A bronze relief on the city's battle monument shows his guns about to fire.

What stained the snow dark red behind Washington's ragged soldiers on the night march to Trenton?

Their bleeding feet marked the route: many soldiers had no boots and marched with rags tied around their feet. Two men died on the way to Trenton.

With gunpowder soaked on the march to Trenton, which weapon did Washington tell General Sullivan to use?

The bayonet would have to do, Washington replied, adding that he was resolved to take Trenton. The Hessian commander had vowed to meet any attack with the very same weapon.

Which European river was the model for the icy water in the famous painting of Washington crossing the Delaware?

The Rhine stood in for the Delaware because the artist worked in Düsseldorf. American tourists and student painters there posed as Washington's soldiers.

Henry Knox, whose booming voice steered the crossing before Trenton, once ran what kind of Boston shop?

A bookshop was his living, and its volumes on military science helped turn the largely self-educated Bostonian into Washington's chief of artillery.

Whose pamphlet The American Crisis is said to have been read to Washington's troops days before Trenton?

Thomas Paine wrote it that December after retreating across New Jersey with the army. No order from Washington to read it out survives; the story comes from an early biographer.

From which state's riverbank did Washington's army push off on the night crossing that led to Trenton?

Pennsylvania was the launch point: the army had sheltered in Bucks County since retreating over the river weeks earlier. The landing in New Jersey lay nine miles above Trenton.

Which Hessian colonel, a veteran of 36 years' service, commanded the Trenton garrison and died of his wounds?

Johann Rall had brushed off his engineers' advice to fortify the town. Shot twice in the side while rallying his men, he was carried back to his headquarters to die.

Where was an unread warning of the attack reportedly found after the Hessian commander at Trenton fell?

In his coat pocket, the story goes: a Loyalist had tried to warn him the night before, but he was busy at cards and put the message away unread.

Which flag in the famous painting of Washington crossing the Delaware did not yet exist on that night in 1776?

The Stars and Stripes was not specified by Congress until June 1777, six months after the crossing. A truer choice would have been the Continental Union flag that Washington raised in January 1776.

Which New York institution displays the giant canvas of Washington crossing the Delaware in its American Wing?

The Metropolitan Museum of Art has owned the canvas since 1897, a gift from John Stewart Kennedy. More than 50,000 people came to see it when it first went on show in New York.

Which British general, sent to retake Trenton, boasted he would bag the 'old fox' Washington by morning?

Lord Cornwallis woke to find the American camp empty. Washington had slipped away overnight, leaving 500 men to keep the fires burning and make noise with picks and shovels.

Eight days after Trenton, at which New Jersey college town did Washington score his next surprise win?

Princeton fell on January 3, 1777. The last British holdouts took refuge in Nassau Hall, home of the college, before they were talked into surrendering.

Which actor played George Washington in The Crossing, the 2000 TV film about the attack on Trenton?

Jeff Daniels led the cast of the A&E film, which won a Peabody Award. Its snowy New Jersey was actually Toronto, where filming took place in the spring of 1999.

Who made Abraham Hunt, host of the Hessian commander's late party before Trenton, the town's postmaster?

Benjamin Franklin, then postmaster general of the colonies, gave Hunt the job in 1764. Hunt kept the colonel and his officers at his table late into the night before the attack.

Which painter created the famous image of Washington crossing the Delaware, hoping to inspire Europe's reformers?

Emanuel Leutze grew up in America and conceived the picture abroad during the revolutions of 1848. He went on to paint three versions of it.

What destroyed the original version of the painting Washington Crossing the Delaware in Bremen in 1942?

A British bombing raid on September 5, 1942, wiped out the canvas that hung in the Kunsthalle Bremen. Two later versions by the same hand survive.

Where did the smaller version of the painting Washington Crossing the Delaware hang from 1979 to 2014?

The White House displayed it in the West Wing reception area for 35 years. In 2022 it sold at Christie's for $45 million, more than double the top estimate.

For which Russian ruler had the Hessian commander at Trenton fought the Ottoman Turks a few years earlier?

Catherine the Great had him in her service in 1771 and 1772, under Count Orlov. By then he had already fought in Scotland against the Jacobites and through the Seven Years' War.

What stands today on the Trenton site where the Hessian commander had his headquarters and died of his wounds?

A Catholic cathedral, St. Mary of the Assumption, occupies the ground, and a marker on its rectory records where the colonel died. The present building dates from 1959, after a fire destroyed the first.

Which cargo craft, built to haul iron down the Delaware, carried Washington's infantry over before Trenton?

Durham boats, named for an ironworks upriver, had high sides and a shallow draft and could be poled across. The horses and cannon went over on large ferries instead.

Which centuries-long cold spell is blamed for the frozen Delaware that Washington's army faced before Trenton?

The Little Ice Age probably explains the unusually harsh winters of the 1770s. Floes in the river were the gravest danger of the crossing and kept two other American columns from completing theirs.

The architect of the Trenton Battle Monument, John H. Duncan, also designed which New York landmark?

Grant's Tomb is his best-known work. His Trenton column is topped by a 13-foot bronze Washington, pointing down the street where the American guns opened fire.

The Trenton Battle Monument was modeled on a 1670s London column that commemorates which event?

The Great Fire of 1666 is marked by a column known simply as the Monument, near where the blaze began. Trenton's version swaps its gilded urn of flames for a statue of Washington.

Which major award did David Hackett Fischer's book Washington's Crossing, about the Trenton campaign, win in 2005?

The Pulitzer Prize for History went to Fischer's account, which starts from the famous painting and argues that the choices of individuals turned the course of the war.

On which US coin did New Jersey put Washington crossing the Delaware in its 1999 state design?

The quarter for New Jersey carried a version of the famous painting. The scene returned to the coin's reverse in 2021.

Through which American city were the Hessians captured at Trenton paraded to lift morale?

Philadelphia crowds watched the feared soldiers marched through the streets as prisoners. Anger at the sight helped the army sign up new recruits.

From which present-day country did the Hessian regiments that garrisoned Trenton in 1776 come?

Germany was then a patchwork of small states, and Hesse-Kassel hired out so many soldiers to Britain that all such troops came to be called Hessians.

In the famous painting of the Delaware crossing, what is Washington doing that critics say would capsize a rowboat?

Standing up in a small rowboat would have risked tipping it over. Historian David Hackett Fischer argues that everyone stood anyway, to keep out of the freezing water in the bottom of the big, flat craft.

What did Washington's soldiers break open after the win at Trenton, against his orders to destroy it?

Casks of rum from the Hessian stores were opened in spite of the order. On the trip back, more soldiers than before had to be pulled out of the freezing river.

Speculation names which Revolutionary heroine as the widow who kept Colonel von Donop away from Trenton?

Betsy Ross is the popular guess, though nothing proves it. Whoever she was, the colonel lingered at Mount Holly in her company and was too far off to help when Washington struck.

Shortly before Trenton, a despairing Washington wrote to his brother that what was 'pretty near up'?

The game, he feared, was nearly lost: nine in ten of the soldiers who had served at Long Island were gone. Within weeks he staked everything on the river crossing.

What did Washington offer soldiers whose enlistments ran out days after Trenton to keep them six more weeks?

A cash bounty, paid at once from the coffers of Congress, persuaded many to stay. Without it, much of the army that had just won at Trenton was free to walk home at the year's end.

Trenton's Old Barracks, which sheltered Hessians in 1776, was built for British troops during which earlier war?

The French and Indian War prompted the barracks in 1758, after colonists complained about soldiers being billeted in their homes. It is the only colonial barracks left in New Jersey.

Which college owns John Trumbull's painting of Washington aiding the dying Hessian commander at Trenton?

Yale keeps the canvas, which Trumbull worked on for some forty years. He meant Washington's care for the fallen colonel as a lesson in mercy toward a beaten foe.

What does 'Der Feind!', the alarm a Hessian lieutenant shouted as the attack on Trenton began, mean?

The enemy! was Lieutenant Andreas Wiederholdt's cry as he stepped out of a cooper's shop that served as an outpost. An American had just shot at him and missed.

Fearing a British advance on the capital, to which city had Congress moved days before the Battle of Trenton?

Baltimore hosted the delegates from December 20, 1776, in Henry Fite's tavern, then the largest building in town. They stayed for two months.

Which American general was captured at a tavern two weeks before Trenton, leaving his men to John Sullivan?

Charles Lee was seized by British cavalry while writing a letter that complained about Washington. Sullivan then marched the 2,000 leaderless soldiers into camp in time for the attack.

In which New Jersey town did Washington's army settle into its winter camp after the Trenton campaign ended?

Morristown, screened from British-held New York by the Watchung Mountains, sheltered the army from January to May 1777. Washington returned there for the winter of 1779-80.

What do historians call the stretch from the Delaware crossing to Washington's next big win in January 1777?

The Ten Crucial Days closed on January 3, 1777. Three battles in that span revived a cause that had looked finished at the start of December.

Which stream on Trenton's southern edge did about a third of the Hessian garrison escape across?

Assunpink Creek saw a second fight a week later, when Washington's troops held its bridge against three British assaults.

At which landing on the Delaware, nine miles above Trenton, did Washington's main force make its crossing?

McConkey's Ferry had an inn where Washington and his aides ate dinner and made plans before crossing. An inn of that name is preserved in the riverside park there.

Trenton's county is named for which general, who fought there and was mortally wounded eight days later?

Hugh Mercer, a Scottish-born physician, had his men firing from buildings along King Street at Trenton. The county was formed in 1838 and named in his honor.

Which Rhode Island general, raised a Quaker, led the northern column into Trenton with Washington riding alongside?

Nathanael Greene's division came in from the north while Sullivan's took the river road. The best-known painting of the crossing puts Greene in Washington's own craft, leaning over the side.

Which American realist, famous for painting The Gross Clinic, modeled bronze reliefs for the Trenton Battle Monument?

Thomas Eakins modeled two panels, one of the army crossing the river and one of the guns opening the fight. The originals came down in 1969 and copies took their place.