The British Are Coming: The War for America, Lexington to Princeton, 1775-1777 (The Revolution Trilogy Book 1)

by Rick Atkinson

Clouds thickened on Christmas Day, and the wind shifted from west to northeast. Temperatures remained below freezing. “It is fearfully cold and raw,” an officer told his diary. “It will be a terrible night for the soldiers who have no shoes.” The sun, mostly unseen during the day, set at 4:42 p.m. The moon, a night past full, rose just over an hour later, orange and monstrous behind a shroud of high clouds. Some men would not see another sunrise, including Captain James Moore, a New Yorker who died of camp fever on Christmas in the millhouse where General Stirling also was quartered. The captain was buried in hard ground at the edge of a timber stand above Pidcock’s Creek. He was twenty-four. Others rallied from their sickbeds: young Captain Hamilton dragged himself into the ranks from a Pennsylvania farm where he had convalesced after what he called a “long and severe” illness.