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Facing Howe’s Regulars

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White Plains

Mid-October of 1776 found a badly beaten American army in full retreat from Manhattan Island into the forests and farmlands of Westchester County. It was by no means a rout; units of Washington’s army fought skillful and rugged rearguard actions every step of the way.

William Howe, in command of the king’s forces, followed the Americans in a pursuit sluggish enough to allow Washington ample time to settle his troops in the hills surrounding the village of White Plains. The Americans dug in well, established a long, curving line, and waited for the inevitable attack. It came on the morning of October 28.

Brigadier General Joseph Spencer had posted himself and fifteen hundred men behind a low stone wall a mile and a half below the main body of the American army. As the forward units of the British army advanced up along the Bronx River, Spencer’s men let loose a volley that stopped them in their tracks.

Private James Sullivan Martin, Continental Army: We marched… for the White Plains, in the night. We had our cooking utensils, at that time the most useless things in the army, to carry in our hands.… We arrived at the White Plains just at dawn of day, tired and faint—encamped on the plain for a few days and then removed to the hills in the rear. One day… we found that the British were advancing upon us. An unknown American participant in the battle: The army were immediately alarmed, and part of General Wadsworth’s brigade, with some other regiments under the command of General Spencer… were sent out as an advance party, to skirmish with the enemy, and harass them in their march. We… placed ourselves behind walls and fences, in the best manner we could, to give the enemy trouble. About half after nine o’clock, our advance parties all came in, retreating before the enemy; and the light parties of the enemy, with their advanced guard, consisting of two or three thousand, came in sight, and marched on briskly towards us… and we fi ring upon them from the walls and fences, broke and scattered them at once; but they would run from our front and get round upon our wings to flank us.… We kept the walls until the enemy were just ready to surround us. Once the Hessian grenadiers came up in front of Colonel Douglass’s regiment, and we fired a general volley upon them, at about twenty rods distance, and scattered them like leaves in a whirlwind ; and they ran off so far that some of the regiment ran out to the ground where they were when we fired upon them, and brought off their arms and accoutrements, and rum, that the men who fell had with them, which we had time to drink round with before they came on again. Brigadier General William Heath, Continental Army: From the American camp to the west-southwest, there appeared to be a very commanding height [Chatterton’s Hill], worthy of attention.… “Yonder,” says Major-Gen. Lee, pointing to the grounds just mentioned, “is the ground we ought to occupy.” “Let us then go and view it,” replied the Commander in Chief. When on the way, a light-horseman came up in full gallop, his horse almost out of breath, and addressed Gen. Washington—“The British are on the camp, Sir.” The General observed—“Gentlemen, we have now other business than reconnoitring, “putting his horse in full gallop for the camp, and followed by the other officers. When arrived at HeadQuarters, the Adjutant-General who had remained at camp, informed the Commander in Chief, that the guards had been all beat in, and the whole American army were now at their respective posts, in order of battle. The Commander in Chief turned round to the officers, and only said, “Gentlemen, you will repair to your respective posts, and-do the best you can.” Colonel Stephen Kemble, British Army: A Cannonade ensued, but about 2 o’Clock the Enemy appearing to intend throwing a strong Body on the Height to our left and in the Wood, a Body of Hessians and 2d. Brigade British were ordered to attack and drive them from them, which was done with great spirit; the Ground was warmly disputed.… The anonymous American participant: The scene was grand and solemn; all the adjacent hills smoked as though on fire, and bellowed and trembled with perpetual cannonade and fire of field-pieces, hobits, and mortars. The air groaned with streams of cannon and musket shot; the hills smoked and echoed terribly with the bursting of shells; the fences and walls were knocked down and torn to pieces, and men’s legs, arms, and bodies, mangled with cannon and grape-shot all around us. Colonel John Haslet, Continental Army: At this time the Maryland battalion was warmly engaged, and the enemy ascending the hill. The cannonade from twelve or fifteen pieces, well served, kept up a continual peal of reiterated thunder. The Militia regiment behind the fence fled in confusion, without more than a random, scattering fire.… The left of the [Delaware] regiment took post behind a fence on the top of the hill with most of the officers, and twice repulsed the Light Troops and Horse of the enemy; but seeing ourselves deserted on all hands, and the continued column of the enemy advancing, we also retired. Covering the retreat of our party, and forming at the foot of the hill, we marched into camp in the rear of the body sent to reinforce us. Major Benjamin Tallmadge, Continental Army: The British ascended the hill very slowly, and when arrived at its summit, formed and dressed their line without the least attempt to pursue the Americans. Fort Washington General George Washington: The preservation of the passage of the North River was an object of so much consequence, that I thought no pains or expense too great for that purpose, and therefore … I determined … to risk something to defend the post on the east side, called Mount Washington. … Afterwards, reflecting upon the smallness of the garrison, and the difficulty of their holding it, if General Howe should fall down upon it with his whole force, I wrote to General Greene, who had the command on the Jersey shore, directing him to govern himself by circumstances, and to retain or evacuate the post as he should think best. … General Greene, struck with the importance of the post, and the discouragement which our evacuation of posts must necessarily have given, reinforced Colonel Magaw with detachments from several regiments of the Flying Camp, but chiefly of Pennsylvania, so as to make up the number about two thousand. Captain Alexander Graydon, Continental Army: But supposing Fort Washington tenable, “what single purpose,” as it has been observed by General [Charles] Lee, “did it answer to keep it? Did it cover, did it protect a valuable country? Did it prevent the enemy’s ships from passing and repassing with impunity?” No; but we had been too much in the habit of evacuating posts, and it was high time to correct the procedure. This garrison must stand, because it had been hitherto too fashionable to run away; and Pennsylvania and Maryland must pay for the retreating alacrity of New England. If any thing better can be made of General Greene’s motives for retaining the post… I am willing to take to myself the discredit of perversion. If what I say should be thought to implicate the Commander-inchief, and to impugn his decision, I cannot help it. A good man he undoubtedly was, nor will party malignity be ever able to deprive him of the fame of a truly great one. But my veneration for truth, is even greater than that for his character; nor will my admiration of his virtues induce me to say, that his military career was without a blemish. On the sixteenth of November, before day-break, we were at our post in the lower lines of Haerlem heights. … I think it was between seven and eight o’clock, when they gave us the first shot from one of their batteries on the other side of the Haerlem river. … Soon after, they approached the lines in great force under cover of a wood, in the verge of which they halted, and slowly began to form, giving us an occasional discharge from their artillery. … Soon after … it being observed that the enemy was extending himself towards the Hudson on our right, Colonel [Lambert] Cadwalader detached me thither with my company, with orders to post myself to the best advantage for the protection of that flank. I accordingly marched, and took my station at the extremity of the trench, just where the high grounds begin to decline towards the river. This situation … concealed from my view the other parts of the field. … But that the action had begun in earnest, I was some time after informed by my sense of hearing. It was assailed by a most tremendous roar of artillery, quickly succeeded by incessant vollies of small arms, which seemed to proceed from the east and north; and it was to these points, that General Howe chiefly directed his efforts. The direct and cross fire from his batteries on the east side of the Haerlem, effectually covered the landing of his troops, and protected them also in gaining the steep ascents on our side. It was no disgrace to the militia, that they shrunk from this fire. … I question whether the bravest veterans could have stood it. … Colonel [Moses] Rawlings was some time late in the morning attacked by the Hessians, whom he fought with great gallantry and effect, as they were climbing the heights; until the arms of the riflemen became useless from the foulness they contracted from the frequent repetition of their fire. John Reuber, Hessian forces: At last … we got about on the top of the hill where there were trees and great stones. We had a hard time of it there together. Because they now had no idea of yielding, Col. Rail gave the word of command, thus: “All that are my grenadiers, march forwards!” All the drummers struck up the march, the hautboy-players blew. At once all that were yet alive shouted, “Hurrah!” Immediately all were mingled together, Americans and Hessians. There was no more firing, but all ran forward pell-mell upon the fortress. Brigadier General William Heath, Continental Army: The Americans, now generally driven from their outworks, retired to the fort, which was crowded full. A single shell, now dropping among them, must have made dreadful havock. … The British had summoned Col. Magaw to surrender, and were preparing their batteries to play on the fort, when Col. Magaw thought it best to surrender the post, which he did accordingly, between two and three thousand men becoming prisoners. The loss in killed and wounded, on the American side was inconsiderable; but the loss in prisoners was a serious blow indeed. The prisoners were marched to New-York; where, being crowded in prisons and sugar-houses … they fell sick, and daily died, in a most shocking manner. It was common, on a morning, for the car-men to come and take away the bodies for burial, by loads! Major General Nathanael Greene: I feel mad, vexed, sick, and sorry. Never did I need the consoling voice of a friend more than now. … This is a most terrible event; its consequences are justly to be dreaded.

When a Hessian unit moved around to outflank the Americans, Spencer pulled his troops back uphill to another stone wall, where once again they gave their attackers a mauling. Spencer fought a slow, dogged retreat, selling his ground dearly, until finally his units joined some militiamen who were fortifying Chatterton’s Hill on the extreme right of the American line.

The hill was now held by green militia and Connecticut and New York troops still shaken by the beating they had recently taken on Long Island. Behind these units, however, were tough, battle-wise Maryland and Delaware regiments. While the main body of the British army was assembling on the plain below the Americans, gunners of the Royal Artillery opened up on Chatterton’s Hill, and the troops there replied to the heavy fire as best they could with two small fieldpieces. When the cannonading eventually lifted, long lines of Hessian and British troops splashed across the Bronx River and moved up the hill with fixed bayonets. They met unexpectedly strong resistance from the militia, and the battle seesawed back and forth, the Americans giving as good as they got.

But while the king’s troops were wavering, trumpets sounded a charge, and the 17th Dragoons galloped into view, terrible with plumed brass helmets and cavalry sabres. It was more than most of the Americans could stand, and their line dissolved. They fled the field, covered by the steadfast Delaware regiment, which brought up the rear and held off the British attack until their fellow soldiers had reached safety.

The British consolidated their position on the hill they had taken but did little else. Howe had won the field but allowed Washington’s army to escape destruction. Spirits in the American camp were high, the men feeling, quite justly, that they had fought well.

Fort Washington

At its northern end Manhattan Island shrinks to a spur of ground three quarters of a mile wide, bounded by the Harlem River on one side and the Hudson on the other. Mount Washington rises more than two hundred feet above the water on the Hudson River side, and it was here in July of 1776 that the Americans built a crude pentagonal earthwork that they dignified with the name Fort Washington. The tragic and ill-considered attempt to hold this position would result in the single greatest blow to American arms during the entire Revolution.

Shortly after the Battle of White Plains, American troops facing Howe’s regulars on the high ground around North Castle heard the rumble of heavy wagons that indicated the British were breaking camp. Howe had decided to move back to Manhattan and crush the last American pocket of resistance there, the garrison at Fort Washington. The sole important function of the fort was to help control traffic on the Hudson. To further this a line of ships had been sunk across the river; yet British ships were passing over this obstacle, and it seemed doubtful that Fort Washington would be able to carry out its purpose. Nevertheless Colonel Robert Magaw, commanding the fort, and his superior, Nathanael Creene, were exuberantly optimistic, and Washington reluctantly agreed to stand and fight. Greene, across the Hudson in Fort Lee, sent over reinforcements until Magaw finally had some twenty-nine hundred men under his command. These men, though few to stand against Howe’s army of twenty thousand, were nonetheless far too many to fit in the fort. Greene therefore decided to try to hold virtually the whole northern tip of the island, and Magaw deployed his troops in a thin, shaky line almost five miles long in a huge circle outside the fort.

Howe decided to storm the works from three directions: Cornwallis would attack from the east, Lieutenant General Wilhelm von Knyphausen, newly arrived in America, would take his Hessians over the rough ground from the north, and the gifted General Hugh, Lord Percy would come on from the south. On the afternoon of November 15, 1776, a British officer approached the works and demanded that Magaw surrender. Magaw refused, and that night thirty British flatboats laden with troops slipped past the guns of the fort into the Harlem River. At a little past seven o’clock on the morning of the sixteenth British batteries on the eastern side of the Harlem River opened up, supported by heavy fire from the frigate Pearl in the Hudson. Percy and Cornwallis had little trouble reaching their objectives, but a column of Knyphausen’s troops, under Colonel Johann Rail, came up against Pennsylvania and Virginia riflemen, some of the best troops in the American army. They coolly held their ground, and the morning wore away in stubborn fighting. But finally their overheated weapons began to jam, the Hessians forced their position, and the defenders fled back to the fort. Here, crowded and despondent, the Americans waited while Magaw negotiated with Rail. Finally, realizing the frightful’ slaughter that would ensue if the British shelled the works, Magaw surrendered.

The British and Hessians between them lost 136 men killed and 646 wounded, against 59 Americans dead and 96 wounded. But American losses in prisoners and materiel were staggering—230 officers and 2,607 soldiers marched out of the fort into British hands, and with them went nearly 150 cannon, 12,000 rounds of shot and shell, 2,800 muskets, and 400,000 cartridges, as well as tents and entrenching tools.

Washington, stripped of the best part of his army, began his bitter retreat through New Jersey. That retreat, however, would end with Trenton and the surrender of the same Rall who had triumphed over Magaw and his luckless garrison.

Crossing The Delaware

American spirits were at a low ebb as the year 1776 drew to a close. The Hudson River forts were gone, Long Island and New York were taken, and now Washington’s wretched army of three thousand men was in full retreat through New Jersey with Cornwallis’ veteran troops close behind. Moreover, the enlistments of many of the Continental soldiers were due to expire with the old year; after December 31 the army would virtually cease to exist. Morale demanded a victory, and if Washington was ever going to strike, it would have to be soon.

A bleak Christmas Day dawned on the American army camped on the Pennsylvania side of the Delaware River. By evening it was blowing a full gale, and the seething river was packed with huge sheets of ice. Nevertheless, twenty-four hundred of Washington’s soldiers were clambering into long, shallow boats manned by Colonel John Glover’s Marblehead fishermen and setting out for the Jersey shore. Washington was going to attack Trenton, where Colonel Johann Rail and fourteen hundred of his Hessians had gone into winter quarters.

The miserable crossing was completed by three o’clock on the morning of the twenty-sixth, and the men set out on a nine-mile hike over icy roads to Trenton town. They marched through sleet and freezing rain in two columns: Washington and General Nathanael Greene took one along an inland route, and General John Sullivan led the other along the river highway.

At about half past seven, Hessian pickets gaped in astonishment as Greene’s troops materialized before their eyes. They raised the alarm, but it was too late; already Sullivan’s men were going into action on the other side of town. Sleepy Hessians tumbled out into the streets and tried to form some sort of defense, but the scarecrows in the remnants of Continental uniforms came yelling out of the storm and swept through their ranks. It was a soldier’s battle, fought and won piecemeal from street to street and house to house, and it didn’t last long. Rail tried to rally his men, failed, and fell mortally wounded. Three quarters of an hour after the fighting started, the defenders laid down their arms and surrendered.

This stunning victory had an immediate effect on the dispirited American people. Washington, whose reputation had suffered greatly during the long months of defeat and retreat, was hailed as a genius, and new recruits turned out to join his revitalized forces. Washington had gambled his army on one bold stroke and, winning, had saved his cause.

Battle Of Princeton

In the night, General Washington's army silently slipped away from. Washington left behind several soldiers to tend to large campfires, to disguise the departure of the American soldiers. Throughout the night, the army marched over a back road toward Princeton and reached the Quaker Bridge over Stony Brook, about a mile south of town. The Quaker Bridge was not strong enough to support the army’s cannon and ammunition carts, so another bridge had to be built quickly. While the bridge was being constructed, Washington reformed his army, and then split it into two parts—the smaller left wing under General Nathaniel Greene and the larger right wing under General John Sullivan. Washington had intended to attack Princeton, on January 3, 1777, before dawn, but the sun was rising.

Greene’s assignment was to advance to the Princeton-Trenton highway to stop its traffic and destroy its bridge over Stony Brook. Sullivan’s division, the main attack force, moved toward the rear of the College of New Jersey (now Princeton University). The British were known to have outposts on the roads to the north, east and west, but an abandoned road went into town from the west, which Sullivan took.

Before Greene’s division (with 3,400 men) reached the highway, the leading brigade, 1,200 men under General Hugh Mercer of Virginia, encountered 800 men who were elements of the British 4th Brigade, accompanied by 2 light guns, under the overall command of Lieutenant Colonel Charles Mawhood. The British group was marching from Princeton to Trenton to reinforce General Leslie's 2nd Brigade. The last unit of the 4th Brigade was left to hold Princeton with another 400 men.

Upon seeing the American force, Mawhood formed up his men across the edge of an orchard which Mercer's troops were passing through. A violent firefight developed, and Mawhood launched an assault which largely cleared the orchard of Mercer's troops, who began to retreat in confusion. General Mercer was wounded but refused to surrender. When he tried to attack the enemy with his sword, he was bayoneted until presumed dead; he died nine days later. Colonel John Haslet of Delaware replaced General Mercer and was killed by a shot to the head.

During this confusion, General Washington rode up to rally Mercer's men, while a fresh brigade of 2,100 troops under General John Cadwalader arrived with an artillery battery. With these reinforcements, Mercer's men were rallied, and the now much larger American force was able, by pressure of numbers, to retake most of the orchard, until fire from Mawhood's guns halted the American advance.

A second British assault cleared the orchard, and seemed about to win the day until Sullivan led up another 1,300 troops. Now outnumbered nearly 6 to 1, Mawhood led a final charge to break through American lines. A number of the British soldiers broke through the Americans in a desperate bayonet charge, continuing down the road to Trenton. Washington led some of his force in pursuit of Mawhood, but they abandoned this and turned back when some of Leslie's troops came into sight. The remainder of the British fell back into Princeton, which, along with the men already there, they defended against Sullivan's force for a while, before retreating to New Brunswick. A number of troops were left behind in Princeton. Facing overwhelming numbers and artillery fire, they surrendered. The British official casualty list stated 18 killed, 58 wounded and 200 missing. 194 of the missing men were captured, while the remaining 6 are presumed to have been killed. 46 American soldiers were killed at the Battle of Princeton, mostly by Mawhood's regiment.

In Trenton, Cornwallis and his men awoke to the sounds of cannon fire coming from behind their position. Cornwallis and his army began to race to Princeton. However, Washington's rear guard had managed to damage the bridge over the Stony Brook, and American snipers further delayed Cornwallis' Army. The exhausted American Army slipped away, marching to Somerset County Courthouse (now Millstone), where they spent the night. When the main British force finally reached Princeton late in the day, they did not remain but continued in haste toward New Brunswick, New Jersey.

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