Celebrating Pride Month

The year 1776 looked as though it would end disastrously for the American Revolutionary cause. After the high point of declaring independence on July 4, the Continental Army under Gen. Washington suffered a series of disastrous defeats around New York. There were celebrations in London and awards for the victorious generals. Washington's army shrank as men despaired of the cause, and the Continental Congress decamped from Philadelphia to Baltimore for safety. The British went into winter quarters in New York City, the largest and most prosperous city in the colonies; and they could expect that 1777 would be a glorious year of conquest as they crushed the amateurish Gen. Washington and his despondent troops.

But the Hessian mercenaries in Trenton, New Jersey, awoke to an unpleasant post-Christmas morning after the Continental Army crossed the ice-filled Delaware River. The Americans defeated the British-paid hirelings, capturing over a thousand men and crucial military stores, while only losing three of their own. In the following days, Washington would defeat Lord Cornwallis twice more at Trenton as he sought to bring reinforcements in. The year of 1776 had a very sour ending for the British. Washington's audacious attack and the pluck of his American troops restored hope to the patriot cause.

Just a week before the surprise Christmas attack, Thomas Paine had published his pamphlet The American Crisis in which he wrote:

These are the times that try men's souls; the summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will, in this crisis, shrink from the service of his country; but he that stands it now, deserves the love and thanks of man and woman. Tyranny, like hell, is not easily conquered; yet we have this consolation with us, that the harder the conflict, the more glorious the triumph.

As we celebrate Pride in America this month, we should be proud of George Washington and the troops he led across the Delaware to deliver a shock blow to the agents of tyranny. They proved themselves not to be summer soldiers and sunshine patriots. Few countries, perhaps no other country, has been blessed with such a selfless, unflagging leader. He deserves the thanks of man and woman. And God deserves our gratitude for sending us such a man at that time.

Today the crisis is great and the conflict hard. Tyranny, like hell, seems to be gaining victories, and June is a month when they attempt to celebrate those victories. But instead let us take pride in Gen. Washington and the 2,400 Continentals who crossed the Delaware on the night of 25 December 1776 and changed American history.