New Year's Day in New Jersey

Via NJ.Com:

On Saturday, The Battle of Trenton went as planned. The Continental Army defeated the Hessians, starting at the base of Trenton's Battle Monument, forcing the enemy down Warren Street and finishing the fight by the Assunpink Creek in Mill Hill Park. Spectators lined the streets along the path of the battle referred to by many as the turning point of the American Revolution, because before this dramatic victory for George Washington and his troops, the revolution seemed to be floundering.

The Stroock family has seen these reenactors one town over in Bound Brook and they do a presentation every 4th of July with our minor league baseball team, the Somerset Patriots. It's great fun. Click over, there's lots of great picks.

Of course the largest battle of the war was fought at Monmouth, about half an hour from here. We've walked that battlefield, which just happens to be a working farm.

Below is a pic we took from the reenactment of the Battle of Bound Brook.

George Washington's Christmas

So at this time 241 years ago George Washington was gathering the remains of the Continental Army and marching them back across the Delaware.

As is well known, Washington crossed the Delaware on Christmas night and caught the Hessian in a drunken stupor after a dat of Christmas Revelry.

Over the course of the war Washington won few battles. Trenton was his most important victory.

Christmas came after six months of bloody defeat at Brooklyn Heights, Manhattan, Fort Washington, White Plains...The Redcoats had chased Washington up the Hudson River Valley and into Pennsylvania. The Continental Army was on the verge of disintegration.

Washington's masterstroke at Trenton was a desperate gamble to reverse the tide of the war, and it worked.

This clip from the 1984 miniseries captures the scene and the stakes: