76 Rules of Command, Rule 1: Take the Initiative Before You Feel Ready

The army was dying.

Not metaphorically. Not in the way public speakers invoke collapse to sharpen their points. George Washington’s Continental Army was dying in fact, in the cold, on the west bank of the Delaware River, on Christmas night, 1776. The enlistments of most of his men would expire on December 31. After that date, he would command no one. Congress had fled Philadelphia. The British had swept through New York, chased him across New Jersey, and the pamphleteer Thomas Paine was writing by firelight about the summer soldiers and sunshine patriots who had abandoned the cause.

Washington had roughly 2,400 men fit for duty. Many had no shoes. Sleet was falling. His boats were insufficient. His artillery train was too heavy for the road conditions he was about to encounter. He had not slept. His generals doubted the plan. And every rational assessment of the situation pointed toward one conclusion: this was not the moment.

He crossed anyway.

This is Rule 1, and it is first for a reason. Everything else in this arc is downstream from this decision. The formations, the tactics, the coalition management, the endurance through Valley Forge, the final movement to Yorktown. None of it happens if Washington does not cross the Delaware on the night of December 25, 1776, and attack the Hessian garrison at Trenton on the morning of December 26 before a single enlistment has expired. He took the initiative. He was not ready. He went anyway.

That decision was not made at the river. It was made years before it.

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THE SITUATION

By December 1776, the American Revolution was losing.

This needs to be said plainly because we have domesticated the story. We see the famous painting. Washington standing in the bow of the boat, wind in his coat, posture of confidence, river parting before him. We know the ending. He wins. He wins at Trenton and then Princeton and the army survives the winter and eventually wins the war. We know it works out. The men in those boats on Christmas night did not know that.

What they knew was this.

Fort Washington had fallen on November 16, taking 2,800 prisoners. Fort Lee fell four days later. Washington had retreated across New Jersey with Cornwallis in pursuit, a march his aide Joseph Reed privately described as disgraceful. The militia that had turned out in summer had largely gone home. Of the roughly 20,000 men he had commanded in August, Washington now had fewer than 3,000 fit for duty. Three militia units refused to march at all. He wrote to his brother Samuel on December 18: “I think the game is pretty near up.” He wrote to his cousin Lund on the same date that he did not know how to account for the spirit of the men who remained with him.

The political situation matched the military one. The Continental Congress had evacuated Philadelphia on December 12 and retreated to Baltimore. The papers loyal to the Crown were printing stories about the collapse. Loyalist sentiment in New Jersey was rising. Men who had pledged their lives and fortunes to the Declaration in July were now taking British parole.

Washington’s command options were not many.

He could continue retreating into Pennsylvania and wait for spring. His army would dissolve by December 31 and he would begin spring with essentially nothing. He could go into winter quarters and attempt to recruit through the cold months, which is what his generals largely advised. He could attempt to hold the Delaware River line as a defensive position. Or he could do the thing that no military professional looking at his situation would recommend.

He could attack.

The Hessian garrison at Trenton, commanded by Colonel Johann Rall, was approximately 1,500 men. They were professional soldiers, experienced, armed with artillery, protected by prepared positions, rested, and warm. They had reason to believe no one would attack them on Christmas night. Rall had reportedly received a note the day before warning him of a possible American attack. He did not read it.

Washington chose to attack.

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THE DECISION

The plan called for three crossings. Washington himself would lead the main force of approximately 2,400 men across the Delaware at McKonkey’s Ferry, nine miles north of Trenton, aiming for a pre-dawn arrival to hit the garrison before they were prepared. General James Ewing would cross at Trenton Ferry with 700 militia to block the bridge over Assunpink Creek and cut off retreat to the south. Colonel John Cadwalader would cross at Bristol with 1,900 men to pin the Hessian forces at Bordentown.

Neither of the other two crossings succeeded. Ewing could not make it across. Cadwalader got his infantry over but could not move the artillery and withdrew. Washington, already committed on the far bank with 2,400 men and no possibility of the flanking support he had planned on, continued toward Trenton.

The storm had forced a delay. The plan called for arriving at Trenton by midnight and attacking at 3 AM in two columns, well before dawn. Instead the crossing was not complete until 3 AM. Washington, informed of the delay and its implications for the timetable, ordered the men to press on. Daylight or not. He adjusted the plan. He continued.

The two-column attack reached Trenton at approximately 8 AM on December 26. Colonel Henry Knox positioned the artillery to sweep the main streets. General John Sullivan led the river column. General Nathanael Greene led the Princeton Road column. In roughly 45 minutes of fighting, the Hessian garrison was broken. Rall was mortally wounded. Approximately 900 Hessians were captured. Washington’s losses were two men who died of exposure during the crossing and four men wounded in the fight. He took every prisoner back across the Delaware.

The alternatives to attacking are worth dwelling on. Winter quarters was the professional choice. No competent British or Hessian commander would have crossed a storm-lashed river in the dark on Christmas night with a starving, unshod army. The risks were not theoretical. If the crossing had gone wrong, if the boats had failed, if Knox’s artillery had not reached the far bank, if the columns had arrived in daylight and found an alert garrison, the remnant of the Continental Army would have been destroyed. The revolution would have ended.

Washington knew this. His letter to Reed before the crossing acknowledges it: “Christmas-day at night, one hour before day is the time fixed upon for our attempt on Trenton.” And then: “necessity, dire necessity, will, nay must, justify my attack.”

Necessity, dire necessity.

This is not a commander who felt ready. This is a commander who felt the alternative to acting was worse than the risk of acting. And that distinction is the first rule of command.

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THE FORMATION BEHIND THE DECISION

Washington was 44 years old on the night he crossed the Delaware. He had been tested before. The formation that made him capable of the Trenton decision was built over two decades of hard experience, and it runs through three specific moments.

The first is Fort Necessity, July 3, 1754.

Washington was 22, a lieutenant colonel in the Virginia Regiment, and he had made a series of decisions in the wilderness of western Pennsylvania that led to a tactical disaster. He had chosen a poor defensive position. He had underestimated the French and their Indian allies. He had not secured adequate water. His force was caught in a rainstorm, fired on from high ground, and he was forced to surrender. It was the only formal military surrender of his life.

He chose not to let that defeat teach him paralysis.

The lesson Washington drew from Fort Necessity was not that bold action in uncertain terrain leads to disaster. The lesson he drew was that poor preparation and poor position-selection lead to disaster, and that the answer to poor preparation is better preparation, not less action. The defeat taught him to study terrain, to secure his flanks, to know his enemy’s numbers before he moved. It did not teach him to stop moving.

The second is the Monongahela, July 9, 1755.

Washington was riding with General Edward Braddock’s force, the finest British regular army column assembled in North America, when French regulars and their Indian allies ambushed them on a road cut through dense forest. The British regulars, trained for open-field European warfare, attempted to form firing lines in terrain designed to negate that training. They were slaughtered. Braddock was mortally wounded. Roughly 900 of 1,300 men were killed or wounded in three hours.

Washington was in the middle of it. He had two horses shot out from under him. He had four bullet holes through his coat. He was not touched. He helped organize the retreat. He helped recover Braddock.

The lesson Washington drew from the Monongahela was not that the wilderness was death. The lesson was that a commander must fight in the terrain that exists, not the terrain his training assumed. The men who survived the Monongahela that day were the ones who adapted. The ones who stood in the road and formed lines died on the road in their lines.

The third formation trace is interior.

Washington was Anglican, formed in a tradition that took seriously the governance of the self as prior to the governance of anything else. The Book of Common Prayer, which he used in his devotional life, is a formation document. It runs the reader through repentance, petition, intercession, and thanksgiving every day. It forms a man who knows he is not sufficient of himself to face the day. The collect for Sunday mornings in the Prayer Book Washington would have known includes the petition that God would defend us from all adversities which may happen to the body, and from all evil thoughts which may assault and hurt the soul.

This is not the prayer of a man who believes he is ready. It is the prayer of a man who knows he is not ready and acts anyway because he believes the work is required of him by a Providence larger than his own assessment.

Washington’s letters during December 1776 carry the word necessity twice in the critical correspondence around the crossing. But they also carry something else. He writes to Lund Washington on December 17: “I have no doubt but that General Howe will still make an attempt upon Philadelphia this Winter. I see nothing to oppose him a fortnight hence, as the time of all the Troops, except those of Virginia (reduced almost to nothing,) and of Smallwood’s Regiment of Maryland, which with us will not exceed 1200 Men fit for duty, will expire in less than that time.” And then he continues. He does not stop writing orders. He does not retreat into analysis. He sees the situation clearly and he acts into it.

The Virginia planter honor culture Washington was formed in also carried weight on Christmas night. A Virginia planter’s honor was tied to his word, his capacity to perform, his willingness to face danger. The culture did not permit visible collapse. Washington’s honor would not allow him to let the army dissolve at the river without trying the one thing that might save it.

Fort Necessity taught him to study failure. The Monongahela taught him to fight the war that existed. The Anglican formation taught him that Providence was operating in history and that his role was to act faithfully in it. The Virginia honor culture taught him that the man who leads does not dissolve under pressure. All four of those streams ran together on the Delaware on Christmas night, 1776.

None of them made him ready. All of them made him capable of acting without being ready.

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THE CHARGE

Name the initiative.

Not a category. Not a general direction. The specific thing you have been not-doing while you waited to feel ready.

Washington crossed in the dark, in the storm, with half the support he had planned on, because the cause required it. He did not have all his boats. He did not have his flanking columns. He did not have his timetable. He had the situation that existed and the formation that had prepared him to act into it.

You have the situation that exists. You have been formed for longer than you know. The father or mentor who gave you what you have. The failures that taught you what you needed to know. The Word you have read in the morning, if you have been reading it, that has been building something in you that you cannot fully see yet.

The man in your household who needs you to stop waiting and lead. The conversation with your son that has been delayed six months. The ministry you said you would start when the timing was better. The business plan sitting in a drawer because you do not have every piece in place. The hard conversation with your father, or your brother, or the man in your church who is heading toward a cliff.

Washington wrote to Joseph Reed on December 23, 1776, three days before the crossing: “The time is now near at hand which must probably determine whether Americans are to be freemen or slaves.” He was not writing about the fate of an army. He was writing about the moment that required a decision.

Your moment is here. The initiative will not become easier to take. The conditions will not become more favorable. The feeling of readiness will not arrive before you begin.

Washington crossed the Delaware on Christmas night with men who had no shoes.

Take the initiative.

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Value for Value

You have been waiting to feel ready. Stop.

Send this essay to one man you know who is standing at the river. He knows the initiative he has been delaying. He needs someone to hand it to him.

If this arc is doing work in your life, sustain it. Subscribe to AmRev Resurrected on Substack. Every essay in this arc is a chapter draft for the book that releases April 20, 2027. You are reading the manuscript in real time.

Choose better.

~ Brett Hahn, AmRev Resurrected 🇺🇸

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Brett Hahn is the founder of AmRev Resurrected and the creator of Freed. He is a member of the Sons of the American Revolution, Anthony Halberstadt Chapter, descended from Thomas Murphy of the 2nd Regiment, Salem County New Jersey Militia. His books Forge the Son and Made for the Mountains*, Volumes One and Two of The First Republic Series, are available on Amazon. His app* Freed is live at freedbyjesus.com.

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