After a treacherous crossing of the Delaware on the night of December 25, 1776, General Washington’s army of 2,400 men and 18 cannons marched nine miles south to Trenton in a sleet storm, arrived at 8 AM on December 26, and won the 1st Battle of Trenton within three hours, killing or capturing more than 900 Hessians, taking 6 cannons and all enemy supplies, and suffering only a few wounded. The army returned across the river to Pennsylvania, then came back four days later to occupy Trenton. When General Cornwallis and British forces arrived on January 2, 1777, to retake the town, the 2nd Battle of Trenton lasted until after sunset, after which the Continental Army slipped away by night and surprised the British rear guard to win at Princeton the next morning. These Ten Crucial Days strengthened Continental morale and resolve and marked the turning point of the American Revolution. Built in 1758 as one of five barracks erected by New Jersey to house British troops during the French and Indian War, the Trenton Barracks was occupied on the morning of December 1776 by Loyalist refugees and civilians attached to the Hessian brigade controlling the town, then briefly housed American troops and British prisoners after Washington’s victory. For most of the Revolutionary War it served as a Continental Army smallpox hospital and was integral to the first successful mass inoculation in the western hemisphere. After the war it was put to various uses, part of it was demolished for a street extension, and a campaign begun in 1902 by the Daughters of the American Revolution and the Colonial Dames saved and restored it over the following decades.
