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George Washington’s warning to his brother Jack to expect a ‘very bloody Summer of it at New York’ was to prove prophetic. When the British commander Major General William Howe evacuated Boston for Halifax, Nova Scotia (see Part 1), it was only to prepare for his next operation, as he received reinforcements from Great Britain. The force he assembled consisted of more than 32,000 soldiers, 10,000 sailors, and 1,200 pieces of artillery, along with 400 ships to transport them south. His target was indeed the city of New York.
In command of the armada bringing these resources to North America was Admiral Lord Richard Howe, William Howe’s older brother and reportedly one of the finest, most successful commanders in the Royal Navy. In retrospect, the Howe brothers seem to have been an odd choice for their positions in the conflict, both having especial sympathy for Americans having lived among them and associated with them for years. Both were of the belief that a war with the Americans was a terrible mistake.
The Americans proved no match for well-trained British regulars.
Although this seemed an odd decision, it was perhaps in the back of Lord Germain’s mind when giving them their mission – for Britain’s Secretary of State for the Colonies had also appointed them as peace commissioners and charged them with the task of ‘restoring peace to our colonies and plantations in North America’ and ‘granting pardons to such of our subjects now in rebellion as shall deserve our royal mercy’. It was a tall order, and perhaps Germain’s instructions were based on his awareness of William’s promises to his parliamentary constituents that he would never wage war against the Americans, and of Lord Richard having hosted Benjamin Franklin at his home in 1775 for a series of frank discussions hoping to come up with a compromise.
So it was that in July 1776 Richard and William Howe arrived in Long Island Sound a few days after the Declaration of Independence had been signed in Philadelphia. Washington, having himself arrived in April with a mere 10,000 veterans of the struggles near Boston, set about constructing defensive positions on Long Island, extending from Brooklyn Heights to Gowanus Heights, and supervised by Brigadier General Nathanael Greene. Originally a Quaker, Greene was intelligent and an avid reader of military history and tactics who, following the British imposition of the ‘Intolerable Acts’ (as the tax-raising Stamp Act and Townshend Acts of 1765-1766 were known), had drifted away from Quakerism and become an active supporter of the move to independence. His energetic efforts were such that, in their after-action reports, Hessian officers (German mercenaries hired by the British) would insist that his defences would have frustrated a frontal attack by 50,000 men.
But neither Greene nor Washington was sanguine about their ability to resist a British attack. Not only were they outnumbered by a very experienced and professional army but the surrounding area was populated almost exclusively by fervent loyalists. Washington was also concerned about New York’s curious geography, consisting of Long Island, Staten Island, and Manhattan, all separated by water, which included the Hudson River. He attempted to block the East River to navigation by sinking several ships in the channel – an effort that proved fruitless, as Admiral Howe sent several warships 30 miles up the Hudson, bombarding structures on Manhattan as they passed.
Battle for New York
By 21 August, General Howe had landed 15,000 troops and 40 pieces of artillery on Long Island, where they were opposed by a mere 6,000 Americans. After a pause of five days, Howe launched an attack – but this was merely a feint, as he had brought the bulk of his forces to attack the Americans’ flank and rear. For the rebels, largely a disorganised if valiant rabble at this point, it was nothing short of a disaster. Despite their stubborn resistance, they were no match for the disciplined and well-trained British regulars. The Americans had more than 2,000 killed, wounded or captured against a British loss of 63 killed and 293 wounded. Observing the fight from Brooklyn Heights, George Washington lamented, ‘Good God, what brave fellows I must this day lose.’
Stunned, the remaining rebel forces dropped back to fortified positions on Brooklyn Heights, where they awaited a further assault by the gathering British and Hessian troops. General Howe, recognising the strong position held by the Americans, had his forces dig in for a siege operation. He was perhaps of two minds, not wishing to expose his troops to the galling fire they had received the previous year at Bunker Hill, and hoping to assume his other role as a peace commissioner. It was a decision that did not appeal to many of his subordinate officers. At the same time, Washington was distressed and distracted. His initial instinct was to attack the massed enemy forces in a victory-or-death manner, but was deterred by his subordinate officers, who urged him to preserve what was left of the army to fight another day.
Convinced that their advice was sound, Washington and his staff proceeded to execute one of the most difficult operations in the military lexicon – a withdrawal under pressure. Conducted in nearly complete silence, with campfires left burning to deceive the British picquets, all of the American units were pulled back to the Hudson River, where they were met by crews of seamen and fishermen from Marblehead, Massachusetts, under the command of Colonel John Glover. A gentle rain was falling as thousands of men moved quietly, wagon wheels muffled, orders given in whispers, carrying all of their supplies and ammunition to the river, where Glover’s men were waiting to escort them into the scores of small boats that had been gathered.
As the sun came up, a heavy fog had fallen across the river so that, as one man recalled, ‘I could scarcely discern a man at six yards’ distance’. Washington, supervising the operation, was the last man to step into a boat heading for Manhattan. Both William Howe, behind the British troops on Long Island, and his brother Richard, on his flagship HMS Eagle anchored on the East River, remained blissfully unaware that the rebels had slipped from their grasp.
The rebels turned the tables, pouring fire into the British ranks.
Having eluded British forces on Long Island, Washington and his men were not yet out of danger. Manhattan, too, was an island with only one feasible escape route, that being across King’s Bridge at its northern tip. Still smarting from having had to flee Long Island, Washington was determined to fight to the finish on Manhattan. Amid desperation to disrupt the pace of British investiture of New York, Washington was approached by none other than Benjamin Franklin. The inveterate polymath urged him to employ a new invention of which he had heard. A young inventor named David Bushnell had manufactured a new weapon, which might prove useful – a one-man submersible, which he had dubbed the ‘Turtle’.
Essentially a large whiskey cask moved by hand-cranked and pedal-powered propellers, the Turtle was designed to travel underwater and to attach a large explosive device to the hull of a warship. On the evening of 7 September 1776, Sergeant Ezra Lee piloted the ungainly craft to submerge under the hull of HMS Eagle, Admiral Howe’s flagship. His efforts to attach the explosives to the hull were frustrated by the inability of the screw-like auger to penetrate an iron plate connected to the ship’s rudder hinge. Following several unsuccessful attempts the now-exhausted Lee decided to give up and return, only for the craft to be observed by British soldiers and fired on. Sergeant Lee released his explosive charge and slipped away as it exploded behind him. While the British left no written reports of the incident, it would go down in history as the first attempt at submarine warfare.
Despite the failure of the Turtle’s mission, Washington was determined to fight on and hoped to deny the British the opportunity to take Manhattan. To this end, he divided his small army into three parts – 5,000 troops to defend the southernmost part of the island; 4,000 of the least-experienced soldiers to dig in at Harlem Heights in the central section of the island; and the remaining 9,000 to take up positions around King’s Bridge at the very northern tip. Fortunately for Washington, Nathanael Greene convinced him on 14 September to consolidate his forces, an operation which began the day before General Howe began landing at Kip’s Bay, about a third of the way between the rebels’ southernmost positions and the novice soldiers in the centre of the island.
It was a serendipitous move, as British troops closed in behind the fleeing rebels but not soon enough to prevent them from getting reorganised in the prepared positions on Harlem Heights. It was at this point that the rebels were able to turn the tables on their British pursuers, pouring heavy fusillades into the ranks of the advancing Highlanders and then charging into their midst, breaking up the attack and inflicting more than 270 casualties while taking only 60 of their own. Despite, or perhaps because of this minor success, Washington continued to hope that his forces would be able to hold New York. Fortunately for him, his staff and supporters were able to convince him that preserving the Continental forces should be paramount in his mind. Thus, later in September 1776, the rebel forces crossed the King’s Bridge north, and proceeded to spend the remainder of the autumn season trying to stay one step ahead of Howe’s army.
Times that try men’s souls
A frantic game of cat and mouse unfolded, as Washington shepherded his rebels first north then west and south to slip past British forces down through New Jersey and across the Delaware River into Pennsylvania. General Howe followed closely, with brief engagements at White Plains, New York, then down into New Jersey, where he managed to capture American General Charles Lee, a former lieutenant colonel in the British Army, and many of the 4,000 soldiers under his command. Members of a worried Continental Congress abandoned their capitol in Philadelphia and fled to Baltimore to avoid Howe. But, by the middle of December 1776, the British commander had decided to delay the campaign, putting his army into comfortable quarters throughout New Jersey, while he returned to New York for the winter.
Meanwhile, just across the Delaware, Washington considered his rather limited options – it was a harsh winter, his men were hungry and ragged, and he feared many would opt to leave the service when their enlistments expired at the end of the year. Something positive had to be achieved soon, if the flame of independence were to be kept alive. On Christmas Eve, a council of war was convened by Washington, and orders given to ensure the soldiers had three days’ rations and were prepared to march that evening.
Despite the frigid temperature and a gale of snow and sleet, 2,400 men moved to landing sites on the Delaware, some 10 miles north of Trenton (now New Jersey’s state capital). There, Washington’s chief of artillery Henry Knox marshalled them, along with horses, equipment, and 18 field guns, into waiting boats and barges, and moved all across the ice-choked Delaware River. By two o’clock the next morning, all were assembled on the New Jersey shore and moving towards Trenton in the teeth of a brutal nor’easter that blew snow, freezing rain and hail in their faces. A supporting column, intending to cross several miles downstream, was still stuck in Pennsylvania due to thick ice clogging the river. But the die was cast and, as the sun rose, the rebels crashed into the unsuspecting Hessian garrison – three veteran regiments under the command of Colonel Johann Rall. A vicious two-hour fight ensued, as the Americans lacerated the Hessians with canister and crashed in with bayonets, driving them out of their barracks and into a nearby orchard, where Colonel Rall was mortally wounded. Battered and chagrined, the Hessian regiments surrendered after suffering 22 killed and 83 wounded, with 900 captured by the jubilant rebels. Only a third of the Hessian force managed to escape across nearby Assunpink Creek. American losses were negligible, with two men having died of exposure during the march, and another five wounded in combat.
Having dealt with the Hessian garrison at Trenton, Washington withdrew across the Delaware, where he implored the colonial troops to extend their service another six weeks, offering a $10 bounty for each man. Flushed with their victory, the men accepted his offer, and then followed him back across the Delaware to take on British regulars at Princeton, New Jersey.
Washington slips away
General Lord Cornwallis – a figure who would play a major role as the conflict developed – had hurried from New York to direct British operations. Believing that Washington was still in Trenton, he took 8,000 men in that direction on 2 January 1777, leaving 1,200 men a few miles away in Princeton. After fighting a fierce action against Cornwallis, forcing him to halt operations for the night, Washington left a small diversionary force in place while he took the rest of his army directly to Princeton, where they fell on the British troops there the next day, killing or wounding nearly 150 soldiers and capturing more than 200.
Cornwallis, believing he had finally ‘trapped the Old Fox’, was stunned to find that Washington and his army had inflicted another defeat on British arms and slipped away into a secure winter hideaway. As Washington himself later mused, ‘a belief prevails that they are afraid of us’. His belief notwithstanding, the British were not in fact afraid of the rebels. A long and desperate struggle lay ahead.
Fred Chiaventone is a military historian, retired cavalry officer, and Professor Emeritus for International Security Affairs at the US Army’s Command and General Staff College.
Further reading:
• Jack Kelly, Band of Giants: the amateur soldiers who won America’s independence (Palgrave Macmillan, 2014)
• Joseph G Ellis, The Cause: the American Revolution and its discontents, 1773-1783 (Liveright, 2021)
• John R Maass, From Trenton to Yorktown: turning points of the Revolutionary War (Bloomsbury, 2025)
In the next issue of MHM: The American Revolution continued: Part 3 – the empire strikes back.
All images: WikiMedia Commons, unless otherwise stated
