The First American Army - Bruce Chadwick [75]
Greenwood could not be swayed. He had recently turned sixteen. The lieutenant then began to promise him promotions. “I would not stay to be a colonel,” Greenwood said and, with others, began the long march north to Boston the following morning, New Year’s Eve, as the army moved south toward a confrontation with the Redcoats. He and the others did not feel that they had abandoned the army or let down the United States. They had served their time and fought hard for independence and their country. Now it was time for new recruits to fight. Greenwood had, in fact, served two consecutive enlistments. He had done his share and it was time to go home.
But he would be back.
Chapter Fourteen
THE VICTORY THAT SAVED THE REVOLUTION
The Redcoats that the Americans were looking for were not under the command of Howe but rather Lord Cornwallis, considered by some to be a better general than Howe. Cornwallis had split his force into two armies, leaving one with about twelve hundred men in Princeton. He took the other, with some fifty-five hundred men, south toward Trenton to engage the Americans. They did not expect Cornwallis to close in on them. This time, they left their boats at the Delaware and had no escape route over the river this far south. Cornwallis, arriving on January 2, 1777, had maneuvered adroitly, boxing the Americans in against the river with his much larger and better equipped army arrayed in front of them. The weather, which had helped them in their first attack on Trenton, was of no benefit this time. The temperature climbed to a very unseasonable fifty-one degrees on New Year’s Day and the warm weather, plus a low-pressure system that moved into the region, turned the fields and roads throughout the region to muck. The Americans were unable to move their cannon or march with much speed. By the time Cornwallis arrived, the entire American army was immobilized in a sea of mud.
The expected British attack came outside of Maidenhead, a village of just a few buildings, on the afternoon of January 2. The overwhelming British infantry, backed up by an enormous barrage of cannon fire, forced the Americans back across Assunpink Creek, their first defensive line, following a four-hour battle. There was only one bridge over the creek and as he scampered toward it, musket in hand, Sgt. White saw General Washington anchored in front of the bridge, a reassuring figure for the men as they rushed across the bridge to safety on the other side. White and the others were amazed that Washington, unflinching, was not hit by any of the hundreds of musket balls that whizzed through the afternoon air.
After the men had crossed the bridge, with Washington following the last of them, the British reached it. The Continental artillerists then peppered the bridge and the land beyond it, filled with the advancing British troops, with a long, loud, and devastating cannon fire. Joseph White, one of the artillery gunners, said that the Americans remained steady in the face a British column of troops that extended for nearly one mile and filled the horizon. Sgt. White wrote, “We loaded with canister shot and let them come nearer. We fired all together again and such destruction it made you cannot conceive. The bridge looked red as blood, with their killed and wounded and their red coats.”
Inexplicably, Cornwallis did not order his men to cross the creek and chase the Americans, despite superior numbers and more cannon. As he called off an assault late in the afternoon, he told his officers that he had no fear of destroying the Americans, whom he had trapped, the next day. Referring to Washington, Cornwallis said