NEW YORK

--While joyful Philadelphians streamed into the streets to celebrate independence, a wave of fear engulfed George Washington's Continental Army in New York on July 4, 1776. Outnumbered 6 to 1, the Americans watched helplessly as a British armada approached New York with 30,000 of the world's best-equipped, best-trained troops.

Within days, Redcoats overran Brooklyn and lower Manhattan. With his men in full retreat, Washington needed help desperately. Days later, 18-year-old Lt. James Monroe broke camp and marched northward with Virginia's 700-man Culpeper Minutemen, flags on high depicting coiled rattlesnakes hissing, "Don't Tread on Me."

Best-known today as America's fifth president and author of the Monroe Doctrine, James Monroe first won the hearts of his countrymen as a heroic 18-year-old farm boy from Westmoreland County who left college to fight for American independence with Washington's army. By the time Monroe arrived, Washington's men were in full flight. The cocky young Monroe and his Virginians poured into the lines to halt the British vanguard, leaving 20 enemy dead and 36 captured in their first encounter--without a single Virginian lost or injured.

Two days later, however, British troops overwhelmed the Americans, scattering them in three directions. Washington led a contingent of about 5,000, including Monroe and the Virginians, across the Hudson to New Jersey.

With winter approaching and the British in pursuit, Washington's men staggered westward, crossing the Delaware River into Pennsylvania in December. Besides the dead and captured, desertions reduced Washington's army to only 3,000. Sickness left 500 of Monroe's 700 Virginians unfit for duty. Of 17 officers, only Monroe and four others stood ready to fight.

REVIVING MORALE

With Redcoats in sight of Philadelphia, Congress fled to Baltimore and all but conceded defeat. Washington knew he needed a quick, dramatic strike against the British to revive American morale and save the Revolution. His cousin William Washington and young James Monroe volunteered to cross the Delaware with a 50-man squad north of Trenton and approach it from the rear. As a blinding Christmas snowstorm cloaked them from sight of Hessian mercenaries who occupied the town, Monroe and Washington reached the heights of Trenton, where two cannon pointed at the riverside landing area where Washington's main force was disembarking.