A character to lose, an estate to forfeit, the inestimable blessings of liberty at stake, and a life devoted, must be my excuse." Even now across the century these words come with a grave solemnity to our ears, and we can feel as he felt when he alone saw that he stood on the brink of a great crisis.

It is an awful thing to know that the life of a nation is at stake, and this thought throbs in his words, measured and quiet as usual, but deeply fraught with much meaning to him and to the world.
By Christmas all was ready, and when the Christian world was rejoicing and feasting, and the British officers in New York and in the New Jersey towns were reveling and laughing, Washington prepared to strike.

His whole force, broken into various detachments, was less than six thousand men.

To each division was assigned, with provident forethought, its exact part.

Nothing was overlooked, nothing omitted; and then every division commander failed, for good reason or bad, to do his duty.