As the enemy were in the vicinity in greatly superior numbers and appointments, Washington thought it prudent to recross the Delaware, with his prisoners and spoils, into Pennsylvania. At evening they all marched to M'Conkey's Ferry, and reached the place of the American encampment on the other side before midnight of the day of victory. *** Just before leaving Trenton, Washington and Greene visited the dying Hessian commander at his quarters, and, with a heart overflowing with generous emotions in that hour of splendid triumph, the American chief offered the brave Rall those consolations which a soldier and a Christian can bestow. This kindness and attention from his conqueror soothed the agonies of the expiring hero. The remembrance of the deed seems to play like an electric spark around the pen of the historian while recording it.
Well-attested tradition says that Colonel Rall and his troops were, as Washington supposed they would be, yet under the influence of a night's carousal after the Christmas holiday. On the morning of the battle, Rall was at the house of Abraham Hunt, who _traded_ with friend and foe. Hunt was sometimes suspected of being a Tory, but never of being a
* The name of this officer is variously given. Washington in his dispatch to the President of Congress, wrote it Ewing; Marshall, in his Life of Washington, spells it Irvine; Wilkinson, In his Memoirs, has it Irvin; Botta, Irvin; and Gordon, Erwing. Ewing is the correct name. He was born in Lancaster county, Pennsylvania, in 1736. He commenced his military career under Braddock in 1755, and was with that general when he was slain. He was a brigadier general of the Pennsylvania militia at the commencement of the Revolution, but did not enter the regular army. He was vice-president of the commonwealth, under President Dickinson, in 1782, and was several times member of the State Legislature. He died at his country-seat, in Hellam township in March, 1806, aged seventy years.
** The regiments which surrendered were those of Anspach, Knyphausen, and Rall. The flag here alluded to is in the possession of George Washington Parke Custis, Esq., of Arlington House, Virginia, who has deposited it, with the flag surrendered at Yorktown, and other relics, in the museum at Alexandria, Virginia. Drawings, with descriptions of these flags, will be found in another part of this work.