by Alexis Coe
1775
George Washington
Thomas Gage
1776–1777
George Washington
Sir William Howe
1778–1781
George Washington
Sir Henry Clinton
1781
George Washington
Lord Charles Cornwallis
1782–1783
George Washington
Sir Guy Carleton
WASHINGTON’S Revolutionary Battles AT A GLANCE
First in war doesn’t mean best in war. After Washington died, hundreds of eulogies praised his brilliance as a battleground tactician and strategist. But from the outset, Washington was well aware of his own limitations and anxious about those of his officers; even the Thigh Men acknowledge that Washington “lost more battles than any victorious general in modern history.”2 And yet, his performance as a military leader has been the subject of hundreds of biographies and thousands of books. This section will instead focus on his feats off the battlefield, with a brief review of his major battles in the table on the next page.
YEAR
BATTLE
OUTCOME
AMERICAN TROOPS & CASUALTIES
BRITISH TROOPS & CASUALTIES
SUMMARY
April 19, 1775–
March 17, 1775
Siege of Boston
Won
Troops: 11,000
Killed or Wounded: 469
Captured: 30
Troops: 9,400
Killed or Wounded: 1,160
Captured: 35
“My God, these fellows have done more work in one night than I could make my army do in three months,” British Commander General William Howe declared when daylight revealed that 49 patriot cannons were pointed at his men from Dorchester Heights. Howe, along with 11,000 redcoats and Loyalists, would leave on what would be known as “Evacuation Day.”
August 27, 1776
Battle of Long Island
Lost
Troops: 10,000
Killed: 300
Wounded: 650
Captured: 1,100
Troops: 20,000
Killed: 63
Wounded: 314
Captured: 0
Despite Washington’s attempt to fortify Brooklyn Heights and Lower Manhattan, Howe took advantage of the unguarded Jamaica Pass to the east and attacked Americans from the rear and sides. Washington, humiliated, was supposedly the last man evacuated from Brooklyn.
September 15, 1776
Battle of Kip’s Bay
Lost
Troops: 450
Killed or Wounded: 60
Captured: 367
Troops: 4,000
Killed or Wounded: 12
Captured: 0
Burn or abandon New York? Washington’s council of war urged him to evacuate, but as British-allied Hessians approached, he was seen hitting panicked militiamen with the flat of his sword to stop them from fleeing. When the enemy got too close, he finally listened to his aides and headed up to Harlem—with the British bugling “Gone Away,” a fox-hunting tune celebrating an animal’s imminent capture.
September 16, 1776
Battle of Harlem Heights
Won
Troops: 1,800
Killed: 30
Wounded: 100
Captured: 0
Troops: 5,000
Killed: 90
Wounded: 300
Captured: 0
During the first open battlefield victory for the Americans, Washington sent for reinforcements and successfully executed a flank attack.
October 28, 1776
Battle of White Plains
Lost
Troops: 13,000
Killed: 50
Wounded: 150
Captured: 17
Troops: 5,000
Killed: 47
Wounded: 182
Captured: 4
A flank attack by the British on Washington’s encampment meant another withdrawal.
November 16, 1776
Battle of Fort Washington
Lost
Troops: 2,900
Killed or Wounded: 53
Captured: 2,818
Troops: 8,000
Killed or Wounded: 458
Captured: 0
Washington, stationed across the river, insisted on inspecting its defense, and left no more than thirty minutes before British and Hessian forces overwhelmed the fort’s garrison.
November 20, 1776
Evacuation of Fort Lee
Lost
Troops: 2,000
Killed or Wounded: 0
Captured: 160
Troops: 4,000
Killed or Wounded: 0
Captured: 0
“Fort Lee was always considered as only necessary in connection with [Fort Washington],” the general wrote to John Hancock a day before ordering the fort’s evacuation. That may have been true, but it also meant forfeiting dozens of cannons, hundreds of tents, and a thousand barrels of flour.
December 26, 1776
Battle of Trenton
Won
Troops: 2,400
Killed or Wounded: 0
Captured: 0
Troops: 1,500
Killed or Wounded: 22
Captured: 918
Following a series of defeats, Washington led a daring crossing of the Delaware River in the middle of the night—and a winter storm. His determined force attacked the Hessians at 8 a.m. The enemy, still recovering from Christmas celebrations, offered but a brief defense that left their commander mortally wounded.
January 2, 1777
Second Battle of Trenton
Won
Troops: 1,000
Killed or Wounded: 50
Captured: 5
Troops: 2,000
Killed or Wounded: 40
Captured: 5
The British returned to reclaim Trenton but, with only one bridge to attack from, were repelled three times. By the next morning, Washington had slipped away with the main body of his force for an attack on Princeton.
January 3, 1777
Battle of Princeton
Won
Troops: 4,500
Killed: 25
Wounded: 60
Captured: 0
Troops: 1,200
Killed: 20
Wounded: 60
Captured: 230
Washington’s arrival reinvigorated fatigued patriot troops, who followed him into battle and successfully pushed the British back, threatening their supply lines and claiming much of New Jersey.
September 11, 1777
Battle of Brandywine
Lost
Troops: 14,600
Killed: 200
Wounded: 300–600
Captured: 400
Troops: 15,500
Killed: 583
Wounded: 93
Missing: 6
A devastating loss that allowed the British to conquer Philadelphia, then the capital of the United States.
September 16, 1777
Battle of the Clouds
Draw
Troops: 9,500
Killed or Wounded: 0
Captured: 0
Troops: 12,000
Killed or Wounded: 0
Captured: 0
Washington hoped to rebuff General Howe’s advances, but was thwarted by a torrential downpour that dampened ammunition and washed out roads.
October 4, 1777
Battle of Germantown
Lost
Troops: 11,000
Killed: 152
Wounded: 521
Captured: 438
Troops: 9,000
Killed: 71
Wounded: 448
Missing: 14
When Howe divided his army and encamped outside of Philadelphia, Washington took a chance. The battle lasted five hours and shook the victors, but the Continental Army ultimately failed; their flanking columns were late to arrive and the British-occupied Cliveden mansion turned out to be as strong as a fortress.
December 6–8, 1777
Battle of White Marsh
Draw
Troops: 6,000
Killed or Wounded: 40
Captured: 0
Troops: 8,000
Killed or Wounded: 56
Captured: 0
Hoping for one decisive victory before winter, Howe marched his army sixteen miles from the capital to Washington’s encampment. After skirmishes and failed flanking, Howe decided that his counterpart was stronger than he realized, and withdrew.
June 28, 1778
Battle of Monmouth
Draw
Troops: 12,000
Killed: 72
Wounded: 161
Missing: 130
Died of Heatstroke: 37
Troops: 10,000
Killed: 147
Wounded: 170
Died of Heatstroke: 60
When Sir Henry Clinton (who succeeded Howe) moved his troops from Philadelphia to New York, Washington instructed General Charles Lee (his principal subordinate) to harass them from the rear. But after just a few hours, Lee retreated. Washington, usually so self-controlled, loudly cursed him upon arrival. After night fell, the redcoats left for New York, but Washington was none the wiser, duped by burning fires masking their departure. Despite that, Washington claimed it was a victory.
September 15–October 19, 1781
Siege of Yorktown
Won
Troops: 20,000
Killed or Wounded: 400
Captured: 400
Troops: 9,725
Killed: 156 Wounded: 326
Captured: 7,980
Missing: 70
When the British withdrew a significant force from New York to reinforce troops in Yorktown, Virginia, Washington headed south. French allies helped Americans capture key points, and by sea, their ships, which controlled access to the Chesapeake Bay, prevented British naval assistance and reinforcements. Lord Cornwallis surrendered in less than thirty days.
CHAPTER 9
Hardball with the Howe Brothers
The British didn’t see themselves as invaders in 1776, but they showed up, just the same, with the largest invasion force they had ever mustered—400 ships carrying 32,000 troops, enough to block off America’s key waterways and starve it of military supplies.
The flotilla was led by Admiral Richard Howe, who’d earned the nickname “Black Dick” because he was said to smile only when a lot of people were about to die. With help from Loyalists on the ground, Black Dick would teach a violent lesson to the “rascally banditti” and “firebrands of sedition” who had taken up arms against the sovereign.1 He announced his arrival on the Hudson with a two-hour cannonade.
George Washington, meanwhile, had little artillery, no cavalry, and no naval support; a total of perhaps 19,000 troops served under his command.
King George III had told his ministers that “blows must decide” whether the Americans “submit or triumph,” but Parliament decided to make one last attempt at diplomacy—or the appearance of it, anyway.2 It instructed William Howe, general of the Royal Army and brother to Black Dick, to offer the commander in chief of the Continental Army (which one imagines he said while miming scare quotes) a final chance to avoid leading the thirteen colonies into certain death, destruction, and degradation. He entrusted a letter to Lieutenant Philip Brown, who set out to deliver it on a small boat bearing a white flag.3
IDEALISM DOESN’T PAY THE BILLS
Massachusetts firebrand Samuel Adams argued the cause of liberty would sustain an army, but Washington worried that volunteer soldiers would lead to frequent turnover. Unlike Adams, whose politically active father prospered in real estate and the brewery business, Washington knew that idealism couldn’t feed a soldier’s family or pay his debts. “After the first emotions are over,” he warned John Hancock, untrained civilian recruits could not be expected to forfeit “private interest to the common good.” (After all, that’s how the British Army had lost him.) “To expect then the same Service from Raw, and undisciplined Recruits as from Veteran Soldiers is to expect what never did, and perhaps never will happen.”4 And he was right; by mid-1776, half of the Continental Army had deserted. It would take years before Congress—wary of the cash and land grants it would take to secure a trained, professional army—gave Washington what he wanted.
The British were eager to reach a resolution. War was always expensive, but in this case there was a small chance it could be ruinous; the enemy’s power was unknowable. What if the patriots had made soldiers of the two million male colonists in America? Even if the Continental Army had managed to enlist just 5 percent of the population, those 100,000 men would outnumber the Royal Army by a factor of four to one. And although the patriots’ lack of a navy put them at a distinct disadvantage, their great advantage was supplying locally,
whereas those of the British were 3,000 miles away.5 There would be travel delays, to be sure, exacerbated by however long it took Parliament to approve every replenishment. The conflict would drag on, and the longer it did, the weaker Britain would become, perhaps tempting the French or Spanish to get involved. And if that happened, the British would be fighting a war against both their own colonies and their old enemies.
Washington was expecting Howe’s overture. He dispatched Colonels Henry Knox, Joseph Reed, and Samuel Webb, who approached to rendezvous with Brown’s boat between Staten Island and Governors Island. Brown, the British lieutenant, said that he had a letter for “Mr. Washington,” to which Reed replied, “Sir, we have no person in our army with that address.” Brown asked him to look at the letter, addressed to “George Washington, Esqr.,” and again Reed rejected it. “You are sensible, sir, of the rank of General Washington in our army?” he asked. “Yes, sir, we are,” Brown admitted.
Acknowledging Washington’s rank would mean recognizing America as a sovereign nation, and that was a nonstarter. The Howe brothers, for all their guns and ships, and ships with guns, didn’t have much bargaining power. The Royal Army was open to reconciliation or battle, and nothing else. They could offer Washington pardon, but only in exchange for a total and complete “dissolution of all rebel political and military bodies, surrender of all the forts and posts, and restoration of the King’s officials.”6 It was a bad offer for Washington as an individual and for America as a country. He refused.
“So high is the vanity and the insolence of these men!” Ambrose Serle, General Howe’s personal secretary, declared. But Howe didn’t share Serle’s disdain.7 If anything, he was curious about this previously loyal colonist, who was already proving fearless in the face of a global superpower. He sent another letter, this time generously adding two “etceteras” to the address. “George Washington, Esq, etc., etc.” was promptly declined again, but this time Washington agreed to meet British Colonel James Paterson. Colonel Paterson was blindfolded and taken to Knox’s temporary home in New York, at No. 1 Broadway. Washington insisted that his Life Guards, a sort of proto–Secret Service, stand watch.