[Washington Crossing, PA]

“I think the game is pretty near up,” George Washington wrote to his brother Samuel on December 18, 1776.

With the Continental Army having been forced to flee all the way across New Jersey with Redcoats at their heels, the cause of American independence seemed at a very low ebb indeed. Soldiers were starving and half naked in the cold.

But the very next day, the commander-in-chief of the American rebel forces was to first write a certain name in his warrant book—a name he could not realize he was destined to be linked to for decades. Here in Bucks County, Pennsylvania, Washington recorded: “To Capn Alexr Hamilton his pay for his Coy. Arty from 1st Sepr to 1 Decr—1562 [dollars].”

Attached to the beleaguered Continental Army under Washington’s command, Hamilton’s New York artillery company had still managed to acquit itself with distinction during the “Long Retreat” after the fall of New York City to the British.

Washington needed to put some kind of barrier between himself and the pursuing Redcoats. The best available to him was the Delaware River, just a handful of miles northeast of the present state capital at Trenton.

Hamilton must have crossed from New Jersey into Pennsylvania with the rest of the army on December 7, 1776. They famously used flat-bottomed “Durham boats” popular in the area for transporting bits of mined iron ore.

New Jersey had not generally proved itself a welcome country to the American rebels. Many country farmers thought they saw the writing on the wall and, concerned for the future of their families and their land, had pledged loyalty to the king and refused to give men like Hamilton any aid.