Washington did not give up. On Christmas night, 1776, he crossed the Delaware with a division of his army. A violent snowstorm was raging, the river was full of ice. But Washington was there in person, and the soldiers crossed. Then the storm changed to sleet and rain. But on the soldiers marched. When the Hessian garrison at Trenton looked about them next morning they saw that Washington and Greene held the roads leading inland from the town. Stark and a few soldiers-among them James Monroe-held the bridge leading over the Assanpink to the next British post. A few horsemen escaped before Stark could prevent them. But all the foot soldiers were killed or captured. A few days later nearly one thousand prisoners marched through Philadelphia. They were Germans, who had been sold by their rulers to Britain's king to fight his battles. They were called Hessians by the Americans because most of them came from the little German state of Hesse Cassel.

Trenton saved the Revolution by giving the Americans renewed courage. General Howe sent Lord Cornwallis with a strong force to destroy the Americans. Washington with the main part of his army was now encamped on the southern side of the Assanpink. Cornwallis was on the other bank at Trenton. Leaving a few men to keep up the campfires, and to throw up a slight fort by the bridge over the stream, Washington led his army away by night toward Princeton. There he found several regiments hastening to Cornwallis. He drove them away and led his army to the highlands of New Jersey where he would be free from attack. The British abandoned nearly all their posts in New Jersey and retired to New York.