Captain Samuel Jordan Cabell’s 6th Virginia Regiment did in fact cross the Delaware with George Washington on Christmas night 1776 as part of General Adam Stephen’s brigade. They marched miles overnight through a winter storm and were in the center of the line at the Battle of Trenton, where the Continentals defeated 1,500 Hessians.
But was Samuel with them?
This was the question that came from a Cabell cousin after reading my article on Samuel on the America 250 page on the Cabell Family Society website. The cousin, like the author, is a descendant of “William, William, William”. She has been a docent at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York and given tours that included Emmanuel Leutze’s, Washington Crossing the Delaware. So her question was personal. She wanted to know for sure. I did too. So I dug deeper into the few surviving records of Samuel’s service.
Of all the Cabells who enlisted in the Revolution, Samuel served the longest, from 1775 to 1781, and in the Continental Army, not the militia. In 1776 his unit marched from Williamsburg to Newark to join Washington’s army as it began the retreat across New Jersey to the Delaware. Later in October 1777, he and his Amherst Rifles, under Colonel Daniel Morgan, helped win the Battle of Saratoga. He rose from Captain to Lieutenant Colonel before turning 23. In 1780, he and more than 5,000 other Americans were captured after the siege of Charleston. He was released in 1781 and returned home to Union Hill in August on parole from a prisoner exchange.
Samuel did not leave a diary. Fortunately, many pages of his pension records survive. They list what unit he was with on what date, his rank, commanding officer, and sometimes his location. His father’s commonplace book, transcribed by Kathy Terlesky, was also a valuable resource. Both sets of documents focus more on financial matters, and not on describing what was happening at the time.
The research “aha moment” came from reading the fine print of Samuel’s pension record of May 1, 1777. Unfortunately, it showed Samuel was not with Washington and the 6th Virginia when they crossed the Delaware. But he was on a mission commanded by Washington himself that the General considered as important as a battlefield victory. On the pension record under “Casualties”, it notes “From 18 Dec 18 Mch on Command recruiting.” His father’s pocket diary confirms Samuel was in Virginia in February and March. He made three payments directly to him, not by courier. One of those payments was for Samuel to reimburse a Thomas Evans of the eastern shore, where he apparently recruited as well. The final entry notes, on 11 March, 1777 “Capt. Cabell set off on his way to Continental Army.”
A week before the surprise attack across the Delaware, why would Captain Cabell be sent away to recruit? A confidential letter sent by George Washington to his brother John explains why. Dated December 18, 1776 the same day Samuel started his command recruiting, Washington writes, “In a word my dear Sir, if every nerve is not strain’d to recruit the New Army with all possible expedition, I think the game is pretty near up.”
The game was American independence. Washington’s army that had gone from 10,000 in August to 2,400, and was effectively about to disappear on December 31, 1776 from enlistments expiring. David Hackett Fischer in his Pulitzer Prize winning Washington’s Crossing writes “So important was the new army thought to be that in December Washington sent some of his best officers and sergeants back to the states on recruiting duty at a moment when he desperately needed every man he could get on the Delaware.”
Captain Samuel Cabell and the other officers sent back to their states were tasked by the Continental Congress with raising 88 new regiments. They returned that spring with 119. Their service was far from the front and not memorialized in an iconic painting. But Washington knew that the “New Army” they provided was essential to the fight for independence.
Bill MacIntosh