So destitute of shoes that the blood left on the frozen ground, in many places, marked the route they had taken.

From 1776 by David McCulough. Page 269.

Concerned about “the apparent designs” of the enemy—the “wilderness of uncertainties”—Washington moved his headquarters ten miles upstream to Buckingham Township, closer to the main body of the army, where Greene, Stirling, and Knox had their headquarters.

In two weeks, on New Year’s Day, all enlistments would expire. And what then? “Our only dependence now is upon the speedy enlistment of a new army,” he wrote to Lund Washington. “If this fails, I think the game is pretty near up.”

On December 20, in the midst of a snowstorm, General Sullivan rode into Buckingham at the head of Lee’s troops, having marched at a pace four times what Lee had set in order to join Washington as soon as possible. But instead of the 4,000 that Washington had been expecting, there were only half that number, and the men were in more wretched condition even than Washington’s own ranks. When Lee had complained of his troops having no shoes, it had been no exaggeration for effect. General Heath would later write of seeing Lee’s troops pass through Peekskill, many “so destitute of shoes that the blood left on the frozen ground, in many places, marked the route they had taken.”

One of those who had made the trek from Peekskill was Lieutenant Joseph Hodgkins. In a letter headed “Buckingham in Pennsylvania, December 20, 1776,” Hodgkins reported to his wife Sarah:

We have been on the march since the 29th of last month and we are now within 10 or 12 miles of General Washington’s army. We expect to be there tonight. But how long we shall stay there I can’t tell. Neither can I tell you much about the enemy, only that they are on one side of the Delaware River and our army on the other.

They had marched about two hundred miles, Hodgkins thought, and the greatest part of the way was dangerous—“the enemy being near,” but also because so much of the country was “full of them cursed creatures called Tories.