It was winter now, the short gray days had come, and with them piercing cold and storms of sleet and ice.  It seemed as if the elements alone would finally disperse the feeble body of men still gathered about the commander-in-chief.  Congress had sent him blank commissions and orders to recruit, which were well meant, but were not practically of much value.  As Glendower could call spirits from the vasty deep, so they, with like success, sought to call soldiers from the earth in the midst of defeat, and in the teeth of a North American winter.  Washington, baffling pursuit and flying from town to town, left nothing undone.  North and south went letters and appeals for men, money, and supplies.  Vain, very vain, it all was, for the most part, but still it was done in a tenacious spirit.  Lee would not come, the Jersey militia would not turn out, thousands began to accept Howe’s amnesty, and signs of wavering were apparent in some of the Middle States.  Philadelphia was threatened, Newport was in the hands of the enemy, and for ninety miles Washington had retreated, evading ruin again and again only by the width of a river.  Congress voted not to leave Philadelphia,—­a fact which their General declined to publish,—­and then fled.

No one remained to face the grim realities of the time but Washington, and he met them unmoved.  Not a moment passed that he did not seek in some way to effect something.  Not an hour went by that he did not turn calmly from fresh and ever renewed disappointment to work and action.

By the middle of December Howe felt satisfied that the American army would soon dissolve, and leaving strong detachments in various posts he withdrew to New York.  His premises were sound, and his conclusions logical, but he made his usual mistake of overlooking and underestimating the American general.  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.  On the 18th he wrote to his