Historical inaccuracies in Washington Crossing the Delaware (1851)

The flag depicted is an early version of the flag of the United States (the "Stars and Stripes"), the design of which did not exist at the time of Washington's crossing. The flag's design was first specified in the June 14, 1777, Flag Resolution of the Second Continental Congress, and flew for the first time on September 3, 1777—well after Washington's crossing in 1776. A more historically accurate flag would have been the Grand Union Flag, hoisted by Washington on January 1, 1776, at Somerville, Massachusetts, as the standard of the Continental Army and the first national flag. Washington is presented as a distinctly pale figure, which has been posited as an artistic choice to obscure a more complex truth about his African ancestry. Washington's stance, intended to depict him in a heroic fashion, would have been very hard to maintain in the choppy conditions of the crossing. Considering that he is standing in a rowboat, such a stance would have risked capsizing the boat. However, historian David Hackett Fischer has argued that everyone would have been standing up to avoid the icy water in the bottom of the boat, as the actual Durham boats used were much larger, had a flat bottom, higher sides, a broad beam (width) of some eight feet and a draft of 24–30 inches. Washington's boats were actually substantially larger than the boat in the painting. Washington and his men sailed on a cargo ship that ranged anywhere between 40 and 60 feet long (12 to 18 m). Also on the ships were heavy artillery and horses, which would not have fit in the boat Leutze painted.