The crossing begins at one o’clock in the afternoon; a good 23 hours before Washington ever stepped into a boat, though, perhaps, this is for the best: children have been up for hours now, and to ask them to stay awake in the Titusville cold a shade before the crushing disappointment of December 26th would be too much to expect, especially considering speeches of revolution tend to fall on deaf ears when there are fire trucks to be rolled over tiled floors and things to imagine. They meet across the river in an inn where Washington ate dinner—we would like to think that there is a tradition carried over from the old world: a turkey, some sausage, a plum-coated threepence bitten into by wooden teeth.
The beards they have been growing through Advent scratch the linsey-woolsey—no burlap, no denim, certainly. Their shoes are hidden in rags. We ask you do not go barefoot. The only acknowledged role is of George: all others play the generic role of an officer without rank: no one can be Monroe, Burr, Marshall, or Hamilton. The password is Victory. The response is Or Death. We have a new Washington this year, chosen from six men, all over six feet tall. Washington was chosen as Washington because he delivered Thomas Paine’s American Crisis with the most Washingtonian of vigor. He is no summer soldier. He is no sunshine patriot.
Some years, the water levels of the Delaware are too unpredictable. Some years, the water freezes. The speeches are made on the Pennsylvania-side of the river, at Washington Crossing Historic Park. Washington walks across the Washington Crossing Bridge to Washington Crossing State Park. He does not continue to Trenton; does not outflank the Hessians—the perpetual monsters of my youth. No one will paint this.