Presented by Dr. Ron Gibbs.

This is a 1777 British map of the biggest little battle in American history.

The battle took place in the early hours of December 26, 1776, following a whole series of American defeats and retreats from August until late December 1776.

George Washington's back was to the wall, but he boldly and brilliantly decided that the best course of action was to put it all on the line and attack.

He had good intelligence that over a thousand Hessians camped in the unfortified village of Trenton, NJ. Expecting the Hessians to be in a state of post-celebratory fog, Washington decided that he would attack early in the morning after Christmas.

At this site on Christmas night, 1776, Washington’s army of 2,500 American soldiers made their famous crossing of the Delaware River. 

Hours late in crossing the river due to snow and ice, George Washington rested his army before splitting it into two divisions. To get to Trenton, they would need to march eight miles through a snowstorm. 

The Left Division, under Washington and his favorite general, Nathanael Greene, marched down the Pennington Road. 

(The map makes a mistake in placing Greene in the Right Division with General Sullivan.)

Major General John Sullivan's Right Division marched down the River Road.

Another American corps was assigned to cross the river below Trenton to prevent a Hessian retreat, but they failed to cross due to poor river conditions. 

Another Hessian corps was billeted at Bordentown, New Jersey but was too far away to support their colleagues in Trenton. 

At 8 o'clock in the morning, achieving total surprise, the two American divisions attacked Trenton simultaneously and, in less than an hour, won a lopsided victory. They captured or killed nearly all the Hessians, and only two hundred of the enemy escaped to Bordentown.

Ten days later, Washington showed maneuver and surprise and won a second victory at Princeton, NJ.

Part of a British regiment barricaded itself in Nassau Hall, still on the Princeton campus today, until an American artillery company under Alexander Hamilton fired point-blank into the building, and the British forces surrendered.

Pictured: Nassau Hall in 2021. To this day, the building bears scars from the cannonball fire of 1777. Image from Wikimedia Commons. 

The twin victories at Trenton and Princeton saved the cause of American independence. They showed that Washington was a capable field general and that his army could achieve victory over professional European soldiers.  

For more maps of the American Revolution from the Jane and Ronald Gibbs Collection on Pixeum, see:

• George Washington and the American Revolution, 1775-1776;
• 1777: Decisive Year of The American Revolution;
• 250th Anniversary of the American Revolution.

Presented and created by Dr. Ron Gibbs.

Adapted and edited by Andrew Gu, 2024 Pixeum Summer Intern.

Emanuel Leutze, George Washington Crossing the Delaware, 1851. Image from the Met.

This painting is now in the Metropolitan Museum of Art and is loaded with historical errors. 

The painting was made by a German artist named Emanuel Leutze in 1851, seventy-five years after the crossing. The boats are depicted incorrectly; they're shown as rowboats, but they were actually much larger boats used for ferrying goods across the river. 

The boats are so overcrowded with cannons and horses and men that they probably would have capsized in the river. 

The shoreline is not accurate. It depicts Leutze's home of Germany and not the New Jersey shoreline.

It shows George Washington standing up. Washington was too good of a boatman to have stood up in those conditions. 

The famous painting shows the American flag. The American flag was not devised until the following summer by Betsy Ross. 

Nevertheless, this remains one of the most beloved paintings in American history.