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WASHINGTON'S CROSSING

By David Hackett Fischer

Oxford University Press, $30, 576 pages, illus.

REVIEWED BY WOODY WEST

December 1776 was a bitter month, cold and stormy, and bitter as well for the prospects of the new nation's War of Independence. After the fierce opening by the raggle-taggle American army at Bunker Hill that led the British to withdraw from Boston, the curve had been steeply down: In just 12 weeks, George Washington had lost parts of three states and 90 percent of the army under his command, the British victory at New York a signal defeat. "The Americans were baffled, indecisive, disorganized, undisciplined and soundly defeated" there, writes David Hackett Fischer, University Professor at Brandeis University, in "Washington's Crossing."

Thousands of colonists were rethinking their support of the rebellion and returning to allegiance to the crown, including a signer of the Declaration of Independence. Washington's two top subordinates, Gens. Charles Lee and Horatio Gates, were lobbying to undermine him, and members of the Continental Congress were unhelpfully and constantly intrusive.

At this time of despond, Thomas Paine accompanying Washington's army during the retreat was moved to write his pamphlet "The American Crisis." It begins, writes Mr. Fischer, with the "cadence of a drumbeat" -- "These are the times that try men's souls." The brilliant rhetorical indictment of the "summer soldier and the sunshine patriot" was read in every army camp and widely elsewhere. It was Paine's genius to express a popular feeling that was already stirring in other hearts, the author writes.