Free Republic

Christmas morning dawned gloomy and cold over the rebel camp. The low, overcast sky promised drizzle, or worse, by afternoon. The temperature, hovering just above freezing the past few days, was now dropping rapidly. The weather conditions did not improve the mood of the soldiers who, having skewered chunks of meat with the ramrods from their flint-lock firearms, were squatting around low campfires preparing the morning's repast.  The general of this rag-tag army was cold too, but for the good of his men he tried not to let it show. Standing six feet, two inches tall and weighing nearly 220...

PHILADELPHIA (AP) — In a small survey boat, maritime archaeologist J. Lee Cox Jr. was checking the bottom of the Delaware River at the Sunoco Logistics pier in South Philadelphia when he got a hit on the side-scan sonar. A pipe? A log? A hazard to the oil tankers docking nearby? No one was sure until a diver was sent down weeks later and found a strange pointed object buried in the muck about 40 feet down. Earlier this month, Cox identified it as the business end of a cheval-de-frise, an iron-tipped log once embedded in the river, along with...

NATIONAL PARK -- Continental Army Col. Christopher Green withstood a Hessian force that outnumbered his troops five to one in the fall of 1777, but the monument to his memory has fallen prey to time, weather and skateboarders. Atop the seven-story-tall monument at Red Bank Battlefield, a Revolutionary soldier -- musket at the ready -- stands forever watching the Delaware River. Like his flesh-and-blood counterparts, the soldier looks in the wrong direction. As winter approached in 1777, the British had Philadelphia. Continental troops had put cheavaux de frise, pointed log devices that worked like giant riverborne punji spikes, into the...

The First Christmas Present to America - 1776 - The Revolution is saved at Trenton Ernest R. Bower | December 25, 2003 | Ernest R. Bower In the gloom of this holy Christmas night, a cold sleet fell. It was not a night for man nor beast but yet here they were. Huddled upon the banks of this frigid river, 2000 men contemplated their bleak fate. The past few months had gone very, very badly. Their hopes had been crushed time and again. The noble experiment in Liberty which had begun with such promise, had by this time deteriorated to...

In the gloom of this holy Christmas night, a cold sleet fell. It was not a night for man nor beast but yet here they were. Huddled upon the banks of this frigid river, 2000 men contemplated their bleak fate. The past few months had gone very, very badly. Their hopes had been crushed time and again. The noble experiment in Liberty which had begun with such promise, had by this time deteriorated to the point where every day was a battle just to survive. Defeat after defeat, at places like Long Island, Harlem Heights, Fort Washington and White Plains...

<p>The U.S. Coast Guard removed two Iraqi-national crew members from an oil tanker it boarded in the Delaware Bay and are holding them in an undisclosed location.</p> <p>The Qatar-flagged, 880-foot tanker is anchored at the Coastal Eagle Point Facility, a refinery across the Delaware River from Philadelphia, and remains under armed control of the Coast Guard, which boarded the ship last week.</p>