76 Rules of Command, Rule 10: The Man Who Handles the Crossing Makes Everything Possible

There is a painting you have seen.

Emanuel Leutze painted it in 1851, seventy-five years after the event. Washington stands in the bow of the boat, coat open, posture commanding, one foot on the gunwale, eyes fixed on the far bank. The flag is behind him. The ice is in the river. The men around him are straining at the oars.

The man who made that crossing possible is not standing. He is rowing.

John Glover commanded the Marblehead Regiment, the 14th Continental, the men at the oars on Christmas night. He was a fisherman and merchant from a small Massachusetts harbor town who had spent twenty years working the Grand Banks with men of every race and background, bound together by the simple fact that a storm at sea does not care about your origin and neither did he. His regiment was roughly twenty percent non-white, Black sailors, Native Americans, and at least one Jewish soldier, all treated as equals in a Continental Army that did not know what to do with that arrangement.

Glover did not wait to be recognized for what his men did on Christmas night. He went home to care for his sick wife and tend to his business when it was over. Washington had to personally appeal to him to come back.

He came back. He rowed. He made everything possible. He asked for nothing.

This is Rule 10. The man who handles the crossing does not stand in the bow. He is at the oars. Do the work that makes the mission possible. Do not wait for the painting to include you.

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THE SITUATION

By December 1776, John Glover had already saved the American Revolution twice without being given credit for either time.

The first was Long Island, August 29, 1776. Washington had been outflanked and his army of 9,500 men was trapped on Brooklyn Heights with the British in front and the East River behind them. If the army was captured, the war ended. Washington ordered Glover’s regiment to manage a nighttime evacuation. The Marbleheaders rowed and sailed for six hours in the dark across the East River, landing 9,500 men on Manhattan along with their artillery, horses, baggage, and stores. By the time the British realized what had happened, the Continental Army had vanished. It was one of the great military evacuations in history, accomplished by fishermen with rowboats, and it does not have a famous painting.

The second was Pell’s Point, October 18, 1776. The British landed 4,000 troops on the shore of Long Island Sound in an attempt to cut off Washington’s retreat northward. Glover had 750 men. He positioned them behind stone walls in successive lines, firing and falling back, buying Washington’s main force the time it needed to escape. He fought four times his number to a standstill for most of a day with militia, then withdrew in good order. Washington’s army survived. Glover lost 8 men killed and 13 wounded.

By December, Glover and the Marbleheaders had retreated with Washington across New Jersey and into Pennsylvania. They were on the wrong side of the Delaware River, the army was dissolving, and Washington needed to cross back.

Washington asked Glover if his men would manage the crossing on Christmas night.

Glover accepted.

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THE DECISION

On December 24, the Marbleheaders began collecting Durham boats and ferries from up and down the Pennsylvania bank, vessels the army had impounded to prevent the British from crossing. They assessed the river conditions. They prepared the boats. They organized the crossing plan.

At 6 PM on Christmas night the operation began. A nor’easter had moved in, sleet and freezing rain driving into the faces of the men at the oars. The river was running fast, carrying chunks of debris. The Durham boats were large and heavy, designed for cargo on a working river, not for a military crossing in a storm.

Colonel John Fitzgerald, who kept a detailed diary of the crossing, recorded that by 3 AM on December 26 Glover’s men had rowed the troops across and were then setting out for the artillery. They moved 2,400 men, horses, and 18 artillery pieces across the Delaware River in a storm in approximately nine hours, in the dark, on Christmas night.

Knox’s artillery was what won the fight at Trenton. Knox’s artillery could not have reached Trenton without Glover’s regiment at the oars. Washington’s army could not have survived Long Island without the Marbleheaders at the oars. The war could not have continued past August 1776 without the men who rowed all night and asked for none of the credit.

The painting shows Washington standing. Glover’s men are bent to the work.

After Trenton, Glover went home. His wife Hannah was ill. His business needed attention. He turned down a promotion to Brigadier General in February 1777. He was done with the war. He had given what he had to give.

Washington wrote to him personally. He asked him to come back. Glover came back, accepted the promotion, and served through Saratoga and beyond.

He did not need the recognition to do the work. He needed the work to be necessary. When Washington told him it was still necessary, he returned to it.

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THE FORMATION BEHIND THE DECISION

John Glover was born in Salem, Massachusetts in 1732. His father died when he was four years old. His mother moved the family to Marblehead, a small rocky harbor town that ran its economy entirely on the sea, primarily cod fishing on the Grand Banks off Newfoundland and trade with the Caribbean.

Glover went to work young. He learned the cordwainer’s trade, making shoes, then moved into the fishing and merchant business, eventually owning several vessels and becoming a substantial man of Marblehead. He knew his community and his crew the way a man knows people he has worked alongside in difficult conditions for years, which is to say completely.

The formation that matters for Rule 10 is what fishing the Grand Banks produces in a man. The Grand Banks are dangerous water, cold and foggy, subject to sudden storms, far from help, demanding of every man on the boat regardless of his origin or standing ashore. On a fishing schooner in the North Atlantic a man is measured by what he can do in a storm, not by his race or his background or his religion. Glover’s regiment reflected that formation directly. He welcomed Black sailors, Native Americans, men of every background because he had worked alongside them and knew their worth. When a Pennsylvania general was shocked by the number of negroes treated as equals in Glover’s regiment, Glover did not adjust his regiment. He kept it as it was.

The Grand Banks also formed a man’s understanding of what it means to do necessary work without recognition. A fisherman does not fish for the glory of fishing. He fishes because the community needs the fish, the boat needs the crew, and the crew needs the income. The work is the point. Whether someone ashore knows your name is beside the point.

Glover carried that formation into every crossing he managed. Long Island, Pell’s Point, the Delaware. Three times he put his men at the oars and made something possible that would otherwise have been impossible. Three times the recognition went to the men who crossed, not the men who rowed. Glover went home each time and got back to work.

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THE CHARGE

You know what work you have been avoiding because it does not appear in the painting.

The logistics that make the ministry possible and that no one sees. The administrative work that holds the organization together while the visible leaders do the visible things. The early morning preparation that makes the meeting successful. The years of formation in your children that will not produce visible fruit for a decade. The financial discipline that makes the mission possible without ever appearing on the stage.

Glover’s men rowed 2,400 soldiers, 18 artillery pieces, and enough horses and stores to fight a battle across the Delaware River in a storm on Christmas night. The famous painting shows the men they rowed. The oarsmen are bent to the work in the background.

The work that makes everything possible is usually the work that no one photographs.

Washington knew who had made the crossing possible. He wrote to Glover personally when he needed him again. The men who do the necessary work without demanding recognition are the men the mission cannot survive without, and the commanders worth serving always know it even when the paintings do not show it.

Do the work that makes the mission possible. Do it without waiting for the painting to include you. The crossing needs men at the oars, not more men standing in the bow.

The chain is in your hands.

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Value for Value

Send this to one man you know who is doing the necessary work in the background and beginning to wonder if it matters. Tell him Glover rowed Washington across the Delaware and went home when it was over. The work mattered. It always did.

If this arc is doing work in your life, consider becoming a paid subscriber. It keeps the mission moving and the essays coming.

~ 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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