Unforgettable words that saved a revolution

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Victory or death. On the freezing-cold night of Dec. 25, 1776, George Washington crossed the ice-choked Delaware River with those code words assigned to each soldier. Death was a likely outcome. Death from dangerous weather, currents or other challenges that prevented almost 2,200 soldiers from making it across that night. Or perhaps death the next morning, when Washington planned to confront the Hessian mercenaries at Trenton in a pre-dawn surprise attack.

Or death when those 2,200 soldiers turned back. Washington’s remaining 2,400 troops were late getting across, and now had to choose between an after-sunrise attack or retreating across the river in daylight, when they could be picked off like sitting ducks. Or death that could come soon after, as it had to tens of thousands already, at the hands of the British or from the ravages of exposure and disease.

Up to that point, Washington had lost almost every battle since his command had started earlier that year, and on Dec. 31, most of his soldiers were scheduled to end their tour of duty. Victory looked unlikely for the ill-equipped, malnourished, discouraged band of patriots freezing on that Christmas night.

We have all heard about Washington crossing the Delaware, but most of us never learned that the course of human history changed because of what Washington, in his gamble for a “brilliant stroke,” did that night. I’m not a historian, but as we prepare to celebrate Washington’s Birthday on Feb. 16 — his actual birthday is Feb. 22 — it’s worth recounting the events of that night, which I learned from David McCullough’s bestseller “1776” and other books, such as David Hackett Fisher’s Pulitzer Prize-winning “Washington’s Crossing.”

Washington was appointed to lead the Continental Army in the summer of 1776. While he enjoyed a brief successful tenure as he oversaw the British evacuation of Boston, everything went downhill from there. First he lost in Manhattan. Then he lost the Battle of Long Island. Then he oversaw his troops’ desperate retreat from Brooklyn, across the East River, in one of the largest amphibious evacuations in military history. He lost in Harlem, and retreated across the Hudson River to New Jersey, where he lost in Fort Lee.

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