Colonel Griffin, unacquainted both with the plan and the time for attacking Trenton, crossed over from Philadelphia into the Jerseys, unknown to general Washington, and being joined with a few of the Jersey militia, proceeded to Mount-Holly, which induced colonel Donop to quit Bordentown; he returned however to his station before the attack upon colonel Rall. The commander in chief would have comprehended in his plan, a diversion for count Donop by general Putnam; but the latter gave such a representation of the militia, of the confusion that prevailed, and of his apprehensions of an insurrection in Philadelphia, in case of his absence, that it was laid aside. The question for independency had been carried in Pennsylvania by a great majority; but that did not lessen the bitterness of those who opposed it, among whom were most of the quakers. These coalesced with the royalists of other denominations, and composed so formidable a party in the city, that it was dangerous, in the present crisis, to withdraw the militia serving in it on the side of the American cause. The plan was, to have crossed the Delaware in three divisions, one from the neighborhood of Bristol, which miscarried by a strange inattention to the tide and state of the river, so that it was impossible for the horses and cannon to land on the Jersey shore, through the heaps of ice cast upon it with the change of the tide—a second at Trenton ferry, under gen. Erwing; but the quantity of ice was so great, that though he did every thing in his power to effect it, he could not get over; and finding it impossible to embark his artillery, he was obliged to desist—the third and principal, was commanded by gen. Washington, assisted by generals Sullivan and Greene, and col. Knox of the artillery. It was meant to attack early on the morning of the 26th, from the supposition that the festivity of the preceding day would make surprise more easy, and conquest more certain.