Two causes may be said to have operated to secure the defeat of Colonel Rall. One was the ill-feeling undoubtedly existing between the Hessians and the English, and the conse quent lack of discipline. Rall, who had early been warned of Washington's preparations, was drunk upon the night previous to the bat tle and neglected all customary preparations to meet a foe for whom he had contempt. Wash ington immediately took advantage of the electri cal effect that the battle produced. He re crossed the river from Pennsylvania and upon 2 Jan. 1777 occupied Trenton, with strong out posts established nearby at the villages of Bor dentown and Crosswicks. The British generals, Cornwallis and Grant, with 8,000 Anglo-Hes sian troops, advanced toward Trenton from New Brunswick 30 miles distant, fighting their way inch by inch. Through the centre of Tren ton passes the Assanpink Creek, then well wooded and surrounded by marshy soil. Wash ington crossed to the south side of the stream, occupied rising ground, leaving the main part of Trenton to the king's troops. Determining to capture the British stores at New Brunswick, strike a blow at Colonel Charles Mawhood's regiments at Princeton, and in a month regain partial control of °the Jerseys," over which he had been pursued, Washington escaped from Trenton at midnight 3 January. Leaving his camp fires brightly burning, he marched to the eastward of Trenton and early in the morning fell upon Mawhood at Princeton, defeated him, and made away for winter quarters at Morris town. At the battle of Princeton, Gen. Hugh Mercer, for whom Mercer County is named, was brutally stabbed and soon died. During the remainder of the Revolution Trenton was an important centre. To the village were brought spoils captured by the Whigs. and dur in the British retreat from Philadelphia to nmouth an attempt was made to divert a body of Anglo-Hessian troops for the purpose of raiding the town. Here met the Com mittee of Congress that attempted to dispose of the question of the Pennsylvania-Connecticut land grants, which at the close of the Revolu tion so seriously affected the rights of the set tlers in the Wyoming Valley. In 153 inhabitants of 'Trenton formed an association to prevent the importation of British goods, and all sellers and purchasers to a realization of the dominant Whig spirit. This action was taken to meet a trade-policy begun by British merchants, when it was found that for the pur pose of conquering the United States the war was a failure. In June 1783 the Congress of the Confederation, torn by internal dissensions and State prejudices, a wandering body, abused, threatened and insulted, undertook the estab lishment of a Federal capital, requesting vari ous States to yield to the United States juris diction over any district to the extent of 20 miles square and to grant 130,000 in specie for purchase of lands and erection of Federal build ings. Trenton being suggested as a suitable location, a contest between the South and New England was precipitated. A compromise was effected to the end that Congress should meet alternately in Trenton and Annapolis, a plan described by Francis Hopkinson as a new mechanism in government, of a pendulum-like character. Congress met in Annapolis, and a patriotic Trentonian who died in December 1783, made a bequest of 1100 to Congress if that body would settle itself at Lamberton, now the'southern part of the city. On 1 Nov.
1784 Congress met in Trenton, and an ordinance was passed to lay out a Federal, city upon either bank of the river and to provide suitable buildings at a cost of not over $100,000. Congress adjourned to New York, where it met 11 Jan. 1785. Ultimately in the autumn of 1785 the South defeated the appropriation measure, and thus died the plan to make Tren ton the capital of the United States.
Before the dose of the 18th century, Tren ton accorded a reception to President Wash ington upon 21 April 1789, while he was on his way to New York to attend his, the first, inauguration. A triumphal arch was erected over the Assanpink bridge, while maids and matrons strewed his way with flowers. The Federal government was conducted at Tren ton during a smallpox epidemic in Philadel phia immediately before the removal of the public offices to Washington. Upon 25 Nov. 1790, Trenton, after a long contest between East and West Jersey, was chosen, as a com promise, to be the capital of the State. and two years later received a charter as a city, with only minor officers authorized to be selected by a limited electorate. This class legislation, characteristic of the conservative spirit of early State legislation, lasted until the adoption of a State constitution in 1844.
The year 1804 was notable in the history of Trenton for the opening of a bridge across the Delaware River, making an all land stage route from Jersey City to Philadelphia, and the chartering of the Trenton Banking Com pany, which, with a bank at Newark, organ ized the same year, were the first in the State. By 1830 Trenton contained about 5,000 in habitants. With agitation concerning the de velopment of water power, the improvement of highways, the construction of the Delaware and Raritan Canal, and the building of lines of rail way to unite New York and Philadelphia, the city entered upon an industrial life. Within 10 years, Trenton had direct communication by land and water with all of the growing cities of the Atlantic seaboard, and her manufactures com manded national attention. Before 1860, her potteries and her metal industries had become well established, although both traced their origin, by sporadic development, to Revolu tionary times. Later came the third of Tren ton's great industries, that of the rubber goods manufacture. The later history of Trenton is largely the record of commercial develop ment and of steady growth.
Prospective Owing to advan tageous location upon the lines of great rail way systems, its position at the head of tidal navigation, and the slight resistance offered by geological conditions, Trenton is destined to advance rapidly as an industrial centre. The growth of the city is 'purely normal, the city itself meeting all reasonable demands made by the congesting tendencies of population. An extensive system of trolley lines, one of which unites Philadelphia and New York, has given Trenton a distinctive impulse. Pop. (1900) 73,307; (1910) 96,815; (1918, est.) 110,000.
Lathrop, J. M. 'Atlas of the City of Trenton and Borough of Princeton' (Philadelphia 1905); Lee, 'History of Trenton' (Trenton 1895); Raum, J. 0., 'History of the City of Trenton' (ib. 1871) ; Volk, Ernest, 'Archaeology of the Delaware Valley' (Cam bridge, Mass., 1911).