No sooner was it known that he was on his way to New York than Washington, at the head of his dissolving army, resolved to take the offensive and strike an outlying post.

In a letter of December 14, the day after Howe began to move, we catch the first glimpse of Trenton.

It was a bold spirit which, in the dead of winter, with a broken army, no prospect of reinforcements, and in the midst of a terror-stricken people, could thus resolve with some four thousand men to attack an army thoroughly appointed, and numbering in all its divisions twenty-five thousand soldiers.
It is well to pause a moment and look at that situation, and at the overwhelming difficulties which hemmed it in, and then try to realize what manner of man he was who rose superior to it, and conquered it.
Be it remembered, too, that he never deceived himself, and never for one instant disguised the truth.

Two years later he wrote that at this supreme moment, in what were called "the dark days of America," he was never despondent; and this was true enough, for despair was not in his nature.

But no delusions lent him courage.