Time to Step Forward

By Robert Stacy McCain
FrontPageMagazine.com

[The following is a speech delivered to Tufts Republicans, at Tufts University, Medford, Mass.]

The war is going badly. There has been a series of embarrassing defeats. The people are discouraged. The commander-in-chief is widely ridiculed. George is very unpopular.

But the war is not in Iraq. And the unpopular commander-in-chief is not George Bush.

It’s not 2006, it’s 1776, and George Washington’s army is falling apart.

Defeated in New York, Washington’s army had suffered heavy casualties and had been forced to retreat, all the way across New Jersey and into Pennsylvania, hoping to defend the American capital at Philadelphia.

When that war started, some people expected an easy victory, and so most of Washington’s army had only enlisted for a few months. There came a day, Dec. 31, 1776, when these enlistments were set to end.

The British army was on the other side of the Delaware River, and Washington wanted to fight them, but half his army was about to go home.

So, one snowy day in December 1776, a New England regiment was called out into formation. The historian records that some of those men didn’t even have shoes. Uniforms? They were dressed in dirty rags. They were sick and hungry, and they were cold.

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