To Try Men's Souls: A Novel of George Washington and the Fight for American Freedom

By Newt Gingrich and William R. Forstchen

After two bestselling series examining the Civil War and WWII, Newt Gingrich and William R. Forstchen have turned their sharp eye for detail on the Revolutionary War with To Try Men's Souls.

The story follows three men with three very different roles to play in history: General George Washington, Thomas Paine, and Jonathan Van Dorn, a private in Washington's army.

The action focuses on one of the most iconic events in American history: Washington crossing the Delaware. Unlike the bold, courageous General in Emanuel Leutze's painting, Washington is full of doubt on the night of December 25, 1776. After five months of defeat, morale is dangerously low. Each morning muster shows that hundreds have deserted in the night.

While Washington prepares his weary troops for the attack on Trenton, Thomas Paine is in Philadelphia, overseeing the printing of his newest pamphlet, The Crisis.

And Jonathan Van Dorn is about to bring the war to his own doorstep. In the heat of battle, he must decide between staying loyal to the cause and sparing his brother who has joined up with the British. Through the thoughts and private fears of these three men, Gingrich and Forstchen illuminate the darkest days of the Revolution. With detailed research and an incredible depth of military insight, To Try Men's Souls is a novel that provides a rare and personal perspective of the men who fought for, and founded the United States of America.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Macmillan Publishers
• Release date: Oct 20, 2009
• ISBN: 9781429968812

Newt Gingrich

Newt Gingrich is a former Speaker of the House, a Fox News contributor, and a New York Times bestselling author. He is the author of thirty-seven books, including the recent New York Times bestseller Trump vs. China. Listen to Newt's podcast Newt's World at www.newtsworld.com or anywhere you get your podcasts.

Book preview

INTRODUCTION

THE MIRACLE THAT MADE AMERICA POSSIBLE:

WHY WE THINK THIS BOOK MATTERS FOR ALL AMERICANS

We first began discussing a Revolutionary War book about George Washington and the miracle of the American success about fifteen years ago.

Steve Hanser, Bill Forstchen, and I were all fascinated by the extraordinary leadership of Washington and the equally extraordinary success of his generation in creating the United States of America.

After years of reflection (and writing six history-based novels) we decided the Christmas Day campaign of 1776 would be the best place to introduce General George Washington to a modern audience. This was a campaign of extraordinary heroism, improbable good fortune, and involving a series of events that led Washington and others to conclude that the outcome was a miracle indicating Divine Providence was on their side.

The events that transpired on the Christmas Day campaign——crossing the Delaware at night, marching miles through snow and ice in a severe storm with an army (one third of whom had no boots and had wrapped their feet in burlap bags) leaving a trail of blood as they marched, and then surprising a professional Hessian unit that should have been ready and waiting for them——came together to suggest a miracle in Washington’s mind and in the minds of many contemporary supporters of the American Revolution.

We decided this time not to write our normal active history in which we change one critical decision in order to show how other things might have been changed because history is not automatic or inevitable or predetermined.

After studying and thinking through the Christmas Day Trenton campaign, we concluded that it was so improbable and indeed so miraculous that any change would only diminish it. We decided that given the current threats to American civilization from both without and within, the time was ripe for a novel that told the story of that miracle to help bring Americans back into contact with their Founding Fathers and with the faith and courage that made that founding possible.

Indeed, the real events of those twenty-four hours were so difficult——and the successful outcome so improbable——that it is almost impossible to improve on a simple retelling of that great courage in the face of overwhelming adversity.

There is much to learn from great historic nonfiction works, and as professional historians all three of us deeply enjoy reading well-researched and well-written history. However there are also human moments, personal encounters, insights, and relationships, which can best be conveyed in a fictional setting. We felt that a fictional account would help Americans today get some sense of the exhaustion, the desperation, and the determination of their ancestors.

America is a country of miraculous opportunity for all.

America is a country where for four hundred years events occurred which can only still be termed miraculous.

The poorest American has an opportunity to rise. The newest immigrant has an opportunity to rise. The son of a first-generation immigrant can and has become president.

One of the greatest weaknesses of modern America has been the collapse of the teaching of American history in our schools, and the loss of this sense of what a miraculous country America is and how fortunate we are to be Americans. The modern education establishment has deliberately ignored American-history and minimized the importance of learning about America. Yet America is essentially a cultural concept. Americans can come from anywhere but they learn to be American. A key part of being American is the memories we have of Thanksgiving, of Washington crossing the Delaware, of Lincoln at Gettysburg, and of the millions of Americans who have risked their lives for this country to be free and safe. We believe that this kind of accurate history about who we are and how we got here should be reinstated in our schools and taught to every student and to every first-generation immigrant.

We have to begin by acknowledging the extraordinary work of David Hackett Fischer. His Paul Revere’s Ride and Washington’s Crossing are two of the great modern studies of the American Revolution. No student of this period can read these two books without a sense of awe at his research, his understanding, and his writing ability. We write in his shadow.

The shock of American political and military effectiveness in Paul Revere’s Ride explains much of the British failure to understand their opponents. It also explains a lot of the reasoning behind the Second Amendment’s commitment to the right to bear arms. The Founding Fathers knew full well that without local militia they would have been subjected to British tyranny and would have been powerless to oppose it.

The meticulous intelligence, planning, and execution of the Christmas Day campaign is captured flawlessly in Washington’s Crossing. As a work of nonfiction, it is without peer for those who would understand this great achievement.

We have been informed by Fischer’s great works, but we were inspired by an entirely different source.

We were inspired to write To Try Men’s Souls by a wonderful film we saw at the Mount Vernon education center. This magnificent new museum uses film in very pioneering ways to reintroduce George and Martha Washington to modern audiences.

It is a sad commentary on the anti-American-history bias of our modern school systems that students today have far less knowledge of Washington than their parents and grandparents. The Mount Vernon education center is beginning to fill that void.

The film about the decision to cross the Delaware makes clear what was at stake, how deep the odds were against American success, and how desperate Washington’s decision to gamble was.

He commanded an army that had been defeated steadily from September 1776 on. It had been driven from Brooklyn across Manhattan to White Plains and then south past the Palisades and across New Jersey. It had shrunk from 30,000 to fewer than 2,500 effectives. There were another 2,500 in camp, but they were so sick they could not fight.

Morale was collapsing, and as enlistments expired, virtually everyone was choosing to go home. Without victory the army would disintegrate. As Washington warned his officers: If we do not win soon there will be no army left. When there is no army left the rebellion will be over. When the rebellion ends we will all be hung. Therefore we have little to lose.

Crossing the ice-choked Delaware at night in three different places, and then marching in the dark to Trenton to surprise a professional Hessian military unit (among the finest in Europe) was an act of absolute desperation.

Some of the desperation was captured in the password for that night: Victory or death. Washington understood this was potentially the last gamble of the Revolution.

Washington also understood the importance of morale and the power of a small number of determined people. Therefore he had Thomas Paine’s new pamphlet, The American Crisis, read to his men as they boarded the boats that night.

One of the most interesting characteristics of the American Revolution is the wide range of personalities engaged. From the permanently optimistic Ben Franklin, to the disciplined John Adams, to his fiery cousin Sam Adams, to the intellectual Virginia planter Thomas Jefferson, there was an extraordinary diversity of personalities and backgrounds brought together in response to the perceived threat of British tyranny.

There may have been no greater contrast than that between General George Washington and the gifted propagandist Thomas Paine. Paine was from the poor neighborhoods of London. He was a natural revolutionary, deeply resentful of the wealthy and secure. Washington was probably the largest landowner in the colonies; a man of impeccable rectitude, considerable formality, and an intense, disciplined work ethic.

The two could hardly have been more different in their background and temperament, and yet they came together in a moment of need to inspire a movement of determined men with the energy, the conviction, and the courage needed to win despite all the odds.

No one should underestimate how great the odds were against Washington, the Founding Fathers, and the American Revolution succeeding.

There was no reason to believe the American Revolution would survive.

There was no reason to believe it would find a leader so patient, so determined, so disciplined, and so noble that his men would stick with him through defeat after defeat and that a Republic could be built on the shoulders of his moral force.

George Washington faced an almost impossible task, and the odds were overwhelming that he would lose. The British had grown used to winning. They had crushed the last Irish rebellion in 1693. They had crushed the last Scots rebellion in 1745. They were used to peasant uprisings in rural England and routinely used the army to suppress the rabbles who dared break the law.

British arrogance and self-confidence had been vastly strengthened by the triple realities of commercial mercantile wealth, the even greater wealth of the early industrial revolution, and by having the most powerful navy in history.

The commercial mercantile revolution itself was a byproduct of the dominance of the Royal Navy. From sugar plantations in the West Indies, to the African slave trade, to the spices of Asia, the British merchant fleet was the largest and most profitable in the world. It existed in the protective shadow of the Royal Navy’s dominance over all other navies combined.

The wealth, which had been coming from trade, was in the eighteenth century rapidly being augmented (and then overshadowed) by the enormous opportunities of the industrial revolution. From the early eighteenth-century invention of the steam engine (applied initially to pump water out of coal mines) to the rise of railroads, which were initially horse drawn, as efficient methods of moving coal, to a huge canal system (which still exists and on which Steve Hanser has navigated on vacation with great enjoyment) there was an explosion of practical invention and production, which was rapidly making Great Britain the wealthiest and most productive country in the world.

Finally there was military power.

The British Empire was at its peak. Just a decade earlier (in 1763) its French rival had conceded defeat in a seven-year world war. From North America (where Washington had played a role) to India to Europe and across the world’s oceans the British and French Empires had collided in an all-out struggle for supremacy.

After a period of defeat the British switched leaders and elevated William Pitt, the Great Commoner, to be wartime prime minister. In a brief intense period of extraordinary leadership and decisive risk-taking (comparable to Churchill in World War II, but stunningly more successful), Pitt gambled again and again on brave leaders who forged victory. In 1759 Britain won a series of miraculous victories in India, Canada, and in the West Indies; terming it the Annus Mirabilus.

After the extraordinary worldwide exertion of the Seven Years’ War, the British Parliament and taxpayers felt entitled to have a little help from the Americans. The London elites reasoned that they had spent all that money building an army and navy to protect North America. Now that the French had been defeated and had surrendered Canada to Great Britain, the Americans were safe.

It was now time for the American colonists to pay for their own safety.

There have been few moments of misunderstanding more decisive and more radical than that between the British elites and their American colonists in 1770.

The elites in London felt they were, well, elite.

The colonists in America felt they were free and equal Englishmen under the law.

The British elites sought to impose their will on the colonists in what they thought was a reasonable action by a naturally governing empire.

The American colonists resisted what they saw as a mortal threat to their very freedom and identity.

Modern cynics find it hard to understand the moral power of the American Revolution.

This was not just a fight over economics.

This was a fight over fundamental rights.

This was a battle of life and death over the nature and meaning of the American personality.

Live free or die was not just the slogan of New Hampshire. It was the way many——not all, probably only a third, but a deeply committed one third——Americans felt about what was happening.

It was this sense of fighting for their lives and their very freedom that impelled the colonists to more and more extreme measures.

The British elites believed this was a conflict about money and about minor irritations. They simply could not believe the colonists were serious about their rights as free men and women.

Thus when they sought to impose a tax on tea the British elites thought they could cleverly reduce the burden by granting the East India Company a monopoly so the price of tea would actually drop.

It was an enormous shock in London when Samuel Adams and his friends launched the original Tea Party in December 1773 and threw the tea into Boston Harbor.

Principle, not price, was the American objection to the tea tax.

No taxation without representation was a serious, life or death belief of those colonists who were finding themselves increasingly at odds with London.

The second great threat to American liberty was the power of the British judges and the dictatorial way in which they wielded that power.

Anger over the judges and a demand for trial by jury (so local citizens as jurors could set aside the judge’s power) was the second greatest demand of the colonists.

This objection to the arbitrary power of the British elites grew gradually.

It was said that Benjamin Franklin went to London as an Englishman and after years of living there came back to Pennsylvania as an American. He had concluded that the British aristocracy would never admit him to their ranks and never treat him as an equal. He would spend the rest of his life teaching them how wrong they had been and how expensive arrogance and haughtiness could be.

The colonists initially had no thought of independence. They saw themselves as Englishmen defending their historic rights against a dictatorial government. Had the British elites listened to the complaints and analyzed the logic behind them they might have found a constitutional compromise in 1774. However when they decided to disarm the Americans by marching to Lexington and Concord to seize the militia’s arms, they began a process of alienation, which seemed to inexorably lead to a crisis of identity.

In 1775 the Americans were frightened and threatened by the British military response, but they still responded as loyal subjects petitioning the king to intervene and create a new framework for peacefully living together.

However at each stage, as the British increased their military presence, the Americans increased their preparations for resistance.

The British occupation of Boston led to an outcry in all thirteen colonies. If the British could militarily occupy Boston and suspend the rights of Englishmen they could occupy any part of the Americas.

The threat to one had become a threat to all.

In response to the British challenge in New England, the Continental Congress in Philadelphia sought a unifying symbol. They found that symbol, and the instrument that would lead to victory, in the only man in the Congress who was wearing a military uniform.

Colonel Washington of the Virginia militia was one of the tallest men in the Continental Congress. He did not offer to be the military leader, but he did wear his uniform every day. He exuded calm and confidence. He had quite a remarkable number of experiences in the West (meaning western Virginia and western Pennsylvania) during the French and Indian Wars (as the Seven Years’ War was known in America).

Colonel Washington had read quite a number of books on military matters. A leader as a young man he was now at the peak of his physical strength. Widely known as the best horseman in the colonies, Washington was so strong he could break a walnut between his thumb and first finger.

Washington represented stability, discipline, calm, determination, and martial knowledge. He also represented Virginia, which was the most important colony. If he went to New England he would single-handedly symbolize the resolve of all the colonies to come to the aid of New England.

In the months after the British occupation of Boston, the patriots went from exhilarating victory as the British sailed away, to exhausting administrative detail, to a brilliant forced march to Long Island (where he had correctly deduced the British would come next).

And then defeat after defeat and calamity after calamity.

It is at the nadir of the Revolution, the depth of defeat and despair, on a cold winter night during a bleak Christmas that we join General Washington and his diminished and demoralized but determined army on the banks of the Delaware.

CHAPTER ONE

Christmas Night

McConkey’s Ferry, Pennsylvania

Nine Miles North of Trenton, New Jersey

December 25, 1776

4:30 P.M.

Cold.

It is so cold, so damnably cold, he thought, pulling his hat lower in an attempt to shield his face from the wind and the driving rain.

His woolen cape was soaked through, water coursing down his neck, his uniform already clammy. Though his knee-high boots were of the finest calfskin, they were soaked as well and his pants sopping wet halfway up the thigh as a result of his having slipped several times walking along the banks of the flood-swollen Delaware River.

Another gust of wind out of the east kicked up spray that stung his face, and he turned his back as it swept by, roaring through the treetops and up the ridge on the Pennsylvania side of the river.

This damn storm will play hell with moving the artillery across.

General George Washington, commander of what had once been so valiantly called the Continental Army of the United States of America, turned toward the speaker, his artillery chief, Colonel Henry Knox. Rotund at what had to be three hundred pounds and powerful looking, towering several inches over Washington’s six foot, two inches, the artilleryman was shivering, his spectacles misted by the rain. Knox looked pathetic, this bookseller turned warrior who should have been in his store in Boston, resting by a crackling fire rather than out on an evening such as this.

They’ll cross. They have to cross, Washington replied calmly. This wind is just as cold for the Hessians as it is for us. They may not be very good at picketing in this kind of storm.

He wondered if Knox and the others gathered nearby, Generals Stirling and Greene, their orderlies and staff, were waiting for the most obvious of orders on a night like this, just waiting for him to sigh and say, Return the men to their encampments.

He shook his head, shoulders hunched against the spates of rain, which were turning to sleet.

He looked across the river, to the east, to the Jersey shore.

In his haunted memories, memories that did indeed haunt, he could see that other river bordering New Jersey sixty miles to the east . . . the Hudson, and just beyond the Hudson . . . the East River.

Merciful God, was it but five months ago we were arrayed there in our proud defiance?

Another gust swept across the Delaware, but this time he did not turn away from it.

How hot it had been during those days of August. How proud we were. How proud and confident I was, he thought. He shook his head at the memory of it. Our victory at Boston and the British withdrawal from that port had misled all of us into an absurd overconfidence. We had marched to New York in anticipation of the next British move with the satisfaction of having driven off the army of the most powerful country in the world and were expecting to do so again with ease.

On the very day that the Declaration was read publicly for the first time, the vanguard of King George’s reply was coasting Long Island, bearing toward New York’s outer harbor.

He had second-guessed the move months before, and so had moved his army, fresh from their triumph at Boston, on the long march south to defend New York.

Filled with confidence, so many had boasted that if the British and their hireling Germans, commonly called Hessians, did attempt to return there, this new army of America would make short work of them.

Arriving in New York the Continentals had set to work with vigor, building bastions, fortifications, and strongpoints, ringing the harbor with hundreds of guns and near to thirty thousand troops.

Most of the troops he had commanded during the long siege of Boston had been New Englanders. It had been a difficult command and one, at first, not easily accepted. The men of Massachusetts felt one of their own should be in command, for, after all, was it not their state that had stood up first, and was it not their state where the battle was being fought?

It had taken the utmost of tact to manage them in a situation that would have caused any regular officer of the British army to howl with rage or derision or both. Yet manage them he did, slowly earning their begrudging respect.

As they set to work building their fortifications around New York Harbor, reinforcements flooded in from the other states, transforming the army. There were tough backwoodsmen from the frontiers of Pennsylvania, western New York, Virginia, and the Carolinas joining spit-and-polish regiments from the tidewater of Chesapeake Bay and unruly militia by the thousands from Jersey, lower New York, and Connecticut.

His army swelled until there were more men than the entire population of Philadelphia, America’s most populous city. The worry then, added to when the invasion would strike, was simply keeping so many men fed, housed, and healthy and not at each other’s throats. As to the feeding and housing, the need had been met, for the countryside was rich; supplies could be floated down the Hudson Valley and drawn in from the fertile Jersey countryside. As to health, that soon broke down as it would in almost any army that stayed in camp. Smallpox struck thousands, and hundreds perished, but such was to be expected even in the best tended of armies. As to stopping the men from going at each other’s throats, that had proven near impossible at times.

Though he would never admit it within the hearing of a single living soul, the New Englanders struck him as a haughty and ill-bred lot, lacking in the refinements a gentleman planter of Virginia expected of them. He was not the only person in the command to carry such feelings, and nearly all others expressed them openly, vocally, and at times violently. He actually started to pray that the British would return, and soon, for, if not, the army might very well rend itself apart.

And they had come, as if in answer to that prayer, and proved reality a curse.

In the first week of July the vanguard appeared; in the next weeks, more and yet more——ships of the line, frigates, fast sloops and brigs, supply ships——and then the transports brought regiment after regiment of England’s finest. How ironic that with each passing day he could ride down to the narrows between Long Island and Staten Island and with telescope watch the ranks disembarking onto Staten Island. Regimental standards he remembered with such admiration from the last war floated on the breeze, and when the wind came from the west he could even hear their bands playing. And alongside men who were once old comrades were the blue uniforms of the regiments from Hesse and Hanover, men who at first were merely scorned, but soon would be feared by every man in his army.

The Howe brothers, Richard in command of the navy, William the army, had made their arrangements in a ponderous, leisurely fashion, the intent obvious, to overawe before the first shot was fired. There had even been diplomatic protocols observed, of offers of reconciliation if only Washington and his rabble would ground arms, renew allegiance to the king, and return peaceably to their homes.

The offers, of course, had been met with scorn and contempt. Officers around him had boasted that once swords were crossed, it would be the British who begged for mercy; before summer was out the entire lot of them would be sent packing to their humiliated master, George the

Reviews for To Try Men's Souls

[libri_amor · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

I have previously read Gingrich's book, Pearl Harbor and was very disappointed. Pearl Harbor was poorly conceived with stereotype storyline and flat uninteresting characters. Fortunately, To Try Men's Souls is a better book. Perhaps Newt and his partner were running stale with WW II theme and recharged with the revolutionary war. The book focuses on the attack by Washington's troops on the Hessian encampment in Trenton, NJ. Obviously, much of the book deals with the infamous crossing of the Delaware river.It is clear again with this book that character development is not a Gingrich strong point. However, at least the storyline is pretty well developed and reasonably interesting. You will get tired reading about how many times the troops and horses slipped on the icy ground and how biting the nor'easter wind and sleet was. Not withstanding, the book is not high literature but an ok read.

[fmweiler · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Not my favorite book but definitely worth a read, especially if you are a history buff.

[utbw42 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

I was very aware of the gravity of the subject of this book as I dove into it, but that did not damper my amazement and astonishment of just what these brave men did on that Christmas night back in 1776 to literally save this burgeoning and embryonic nation from being a permanent English colony. I have no doubts to the legitimacy of the events in this book, but what made this tale hit so deep is the wonderful characterizations that Gingrich/Forstchen gave historic people like Washington, Knox, Paine, Adams and various soldiers within the context of this event. If anything, I had trouble with the first half of the book or so because it was sooooo depressing, manifesting itself through the moods and actions of George Washington himself. I think that is the real brilliance of this book as the reader is transported from that to the successful actions of the patriot army as they stormed Trenton and literally caught the Hessians asleep in their homes and bunkers, Washington's pride beaming through all the way. The authors also very smartly portray the conflict Washington felt along the way. Paine's contributions to the morale through his publication of The American Crisis is neatly inserted here as well, Gingrich/Forstchen presenting him as a very, very tortured soul.In short, entertaining, inspiring, and just amazing to think of what the founders of this nation had to do just so today we can call ourselves Americans and not bow to a king (well, for a while longer, anyway). I wish more middle/high school kids would read books like this to get an understanding of what it took to create the greatest political experiment in human history and just what is currently at stake.

[jguidry-1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

I did not high expectations for this book when I began it, but it turned out much better than I expected. The story of the crossing of the Delaware was told through three viewpoints: George Washington, an army private, and Thomas Paine (author of Common Sense). The shifting viewpoints were interesting, but I really liked getting Paine's point of view. He's not a character who has been explored in depth in my prior readings. I like how the value of his writings were shown through other characters as important to the American Revolution. I also liked how Gingrich and Forstchen developed his character as a whole. A very pleasant surprise read.

[marthal_5424 · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

Should be required reading for American history classes. Gets a bit bogged down with repeated description of the suffering of the soldiers, but still, very engaging. Presents the importance of Thomas Paine writings to the cause of freedom.

[dmtcer-1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

What an intense book. If I did not know already how it played out, I would have probabaly had to put it down. It gives being an American a new appreciation. I think this book can give us all a great sense of how amazing it is to be American.

[jarratt_1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

I would have rated this book a bit higher than 3.5 had there been fewer spelling and punctuation errors. I also felt like the battle scene could have used some maps to help better understand troop placements and routes both the Americans and Hessians took while fighting in Trenton.Having said that, the authors do a really good job hammering home the grit of those malnourished, ill clothed, exhausted men who, on Christmas day, 1776, embarked upon a near impossible march to attach the Hessians at Trenton. The authors do a good job, too, of setting the stage in the introduction. If nothing else, that should stir the hearts of all Americans as to what these men did that day and why.I've not read many historical novels so take these observations with a grain of salt. Unlike most novels, we really aren't presented one or more characters who change in some way over time. We get to meet all the main players (Washington, Knox, Green, Hamilton, etc.) along with Thomas Paine, whose words are the source of the book's title. We also travel with Jonathan Van Dorn, who I suppose is a fictional character, so we can truly get in the mind of the young soldiers who are fighting for a cause. Van Dorn's source of drive is Paine's latest work, "American Crisis." I would certainly not discourage someone from reading this book. Just overlook some of the editing errors and do your best to visualize the main battle. As to the heart of the book, it is very good.