The Philadelphia Campaign

by Thomas J McGuire

  Joel Baily's alleged loyalism did not prevent his farm from being plundered. As Cornwallis's troops headed down the hill to Trimble's Ford, some of them helped themselves to the bounty of the Baily farm. Though he did manage to receive £45 from two British officers for horses, Baily lost household items and clothing to the amount of nearly £140, including four horses with their harnesses, five “fat sheep,” and 300 pounds of cheese.52

  At this point, sometime between 9 and 11 a.m., the Crown Forces began crossing the western branch of the Brandywine into West Bradford Township, where their guide Curtis Lewis lived. The fog having burned off by this time, the king's troops would have seen a beautiful landscape under bright, sunny skies as they descended the hill from Baily's house, where the Brandywine meanders from the west and loops northward around the hill to the east and south. Rolling terrain, dotted with farm buildings and mills of stone and brick and log, some bright with whitewash, and rich with emerald meadows framed by rail fences, stretched into the distance. Buxom orchards and ripening cornfields carved out of the native woodlands lay spread before them.

  About 200 yards west of the ford was the Great Valley Road, which headed north to Martin's Tavern, located at an important crossroads just over a mile away up a long, lazy ridge. The tavern keeper was Joseph Martin, a sixty-year-old former Quaker, whose eighteen-year-old son, Joseph Jr., was a casualty of war. Young Joseph had joined a Pennsylvania Associator Battalion of the Flying Camp the previous year, marched off to New York, and had not been seen since. Word reached the family that he had been taken prisoner at Fort Lee in November 1776 but died on his way home, as had many others from Chester County who were taken at Forts Washington and Lee.53

  The tavern, also called the Center House because of its location in the then-geographic center of the county, was a substantial stone building, a gathering place in this crisis for militia and county officials. Col. John Hannum, commander of the 1st Battalion of Chester County Militia, took quarters there a day or two earlier as the invasion approached. Hannum's farm lay a few miles away, along the eastern branch of the Brandywine in East Bradford Township.

  With Hannum was an important county official, his very close friend and relative by marriage, forty-six-year-old Thomas Cheyney, Esq. A large landowner in Thornbury Township, nearly ten miles away to the east, Squire Cheyney was a neighbor and close friend of Lt. Col. Persifor Frazer of the 5th Pennsylvania. He served for years in a variety of county government offices. In 1777, Cheyney was a Chester County sublieutenant, whose job it was to oversee the arrangement of the newly created militia. Together with Gen. Anthony Wayne, these individuals were among Chester County's leading patriots.

  Also present at the Center House during the night was Maj. Joseph Spear of the 8th Battalion of Chester County Militia, who had been commissioned earlier that week, on September 6.54 According to General Sullivan, “Genl. Washington had sent him out for the purpose of discovering whether the enemy were in that Quarter.”55 Spear evidently left Martin's Tavern in the predawn hours and rode south on the Great Valley Road, heading toward Welch's Tavern on the Great Nottingham Road, five or so miles away from Martin's.

  Several hours after Spear left the Center House, Colonel Hannum and Squire Cheyney saddled up and headed south on the Great Valley Road. Passing down the long ridge through woods, the sight that met their eyes as they approached Trimble's Mill would have brought them up short. There across the Brandywine, on the hill above Trimble's Ford, was an amber cloud of dust, kicked up by thousands of moving feet. Under the cloud were Cornwallis's troops, a steady stream of British red and Hessian blue uniforms, touched with sparkles of silver and gold glinting from musket barrels and brass plates and buckles, pouring like a slow, smoking lava flow down the hill into the creek. Closer, in the flat fields of James Trimble on the west side of the ford, were the green and red coats of Ewald's Jägers and British light troops fanning out, followed by battalion after battalion of infantry, officers on horseback, squadrons of light dragoons, ammunition wagons, and gleaming brass fieldpieces pulled by scrawny horses dripping with sweat and creek water.

  Cheyney and Hannum shifted direction and rode east around some of the nearby hills, where they spotted the front of the column temporarily halted but headed toward Jefferis's Ford, a little over two miles away. At this point, so local tradition maintains, Cheyney rode off in a hell-for-leather dash to warn Washington of the flank march.

  In the same vicinity was another American patrol, which later that morning got into a firefight with some light troops at the rear of the column. This patrol of about seventy skirmishers was made up mostly of riflemen armed with Pennsylvania long rifles, possibly a detachment from Dunlap's Partizan Regiment. Their commander, Lt. Col. James Ross of Lancaster, dashed off a note to Washington:

  Sept. 11 ’77 Great Valley Road

  Eleven oclock AM—

  Dear General,

  A large body of the enemy from every account 5000, with 16 or 18 field pieces, marched along this road just now. This road leads to Taylor's and Jeffries ferries on the Brandywine and to the Great Valley at the Sign of the Ship on the Lancaster Road to Philadelphia. There is also a road from Brandywine to Chester by Dilworth's Tavern. We are close on their rear with about 70 men. Captain Simpson lay in ambush with 20 men, and gave them three rounds within a small distance, in which two of his men were wounded, one mortally. I believe Gen. Howe is with this party as Joseph Galloway is here known by the inhabitants with many of whom he spoke, and told them that General Howe is with him.

  Yours, James Ross Lieut. Col. D. P. Regt.56

  This message made its way to Washington by noon. All morning, the commander in chief had been out along the front lines to reconnoiter and to see and be seen by the troops. “In the beginning of the action he rode from one end to the other of the line, cheering and encouraging the men,” wrote Congressman Thomas Burke of North Carolina, who was present as an observer. “The men seemed animated by his presence; they could give no other vent to their feelings but by shouts of applause, which seemed to rend the air.”57 Lafayette, who was with Washington that morning, commented, “General Washington walked the length of his two lines, and was received with acclamations that should have promised victory.”58

  But the scattered reports of enemy activity near the Forks of the Brandywine had not been confirmed. At one point, sometime in the middle of the day, having received specific information of the flank movement from someone credible, possibly Squire Cheyney, Washington sent a terse and impatient note to Col. Theodorick Bland of the 1st Continental Light Dragoons, who was on patrol above the right wing:

  Chads ford 11th Septr. 1777 20 Mints. after [ ] O'Clock

  Sir,

  I earnestly entreat a continuance of your vigilant attention to the movements of the Enemy and the earliest report not only of their movements, but of their numbers & the course they are pursuing. In a particular manner I wish you to gain satisfactory information of a body confidently reported to have gone up to a Ford Seven or Eight miles above this; It is said this Fact is certain. You will send up an intelligent, sensible Officer immediately with a Party to find out the truth—What number It consists of and the Road they are now on. be particular in these matters.59

  By noon, Washington was back in the center near the Chads House, where Lord Stirling had taken quarters. Aunt Betty Chads's nephew, Amos House, “who then lived with her, and superintended the business of her farm,” remembered that on that morning:

  Gen. Washington, with a few attendants, rode up into the field above Mrs. Chads's dwelling, and was engaged, with the aid of glasses, in reconnoitering and endeavouring to ascertain the character and position of the hostile forces on the hills west of the stream. While they were thus engaged, Amos House and two or three others were led by curiosity to approach and observe what was going on. Pretty soon, said Mr. House, some cannonballs from the enemy's artillery began to drop in the field quite near to the company thus collected, when Gen. Washington remarke
d to the visitors, “Gentlemen, you perceive that we are attracting the notice of the enemy. I think you had better retire.” The hint was respectfully and promptly attended to.60

  Washington, indeed, had been spotted by an enemy: James Parker. “The hill on which our artillery was commanded a Very fine prospect of the Rebels ground, to this place the Genls. Kniphausen & Grant came,” Parker wrote. “About 12 I saw Washington Come out of A farm house. I pointed him out to the Generals; he had Some of his Officers about him with two White flags.” Ross's message, written at 11 that morning, had just arrived; Parker commented, “I was afterwards told by a Rebel, it was just at that time he got intelligence that Genl. Howe was crossing the B. Wine above him.”

  The bitterness of the civil war aspect of the War of Independence raged in full fury on a personal level at that moment. As a Virginian who had lost everything—his beautiful and valuable home in Norfolk destroyed, his business ruined, his wife and children left destitute and forced into charity—and having suffered months of harsh imprisonment, James Parker had no qualms about trying to kill George Washington. “I had in short enough to get a Canon fired at the Group,” Parker told his friend Steuart, venomously adding, “my prayers went with the ball that it might finish Washington & the Rebelion together.”61

  Having received Ross's message, Washington decided on a bold strategy. He would send Sullivan across at Brinton's Ford to hit von Knyphausen's left, while Greene took his division and Maxwell's Light Corps across at Chads's Ferry and Ford to hit the Hessian general's center and right. With luck, he would crush one major part of Howe's army while the forces were separated and, for once, turn the tables on Howe.

  “The Genl. sent me word to cross the Brandewine with my Division & attack the enemy's left while the army crossed below me to attack their Right,” Sullivan stated.62 The opportunity was too much to pass up. “It was satisfactorily concluded that only a part of the enemy's army was on the other side at Chads’ Ford; and in consequence, preparations were made for attacking it,” Colonel Pickering recalled. “Sullivan as well as Greene, was to cross over & attack, with the whole Army in two columns.”63

  The critical moment had arrived: “I think it was about eleven or twelve o'clock when General Greene was prepared with a division to cross over and attack the enemy at the ford,” Timothy Pickering noted.64 Washington was about to launch the main Continental Army's first major offensive of the war against the main British Army in the field.

  Sullivan's advance guard went across at Brinton's Ford. “Colonel Ramsay, of the Maryland line, crossed the river, and skirmished with and drove the Yagers,” wrote Lt. Col. Samuel Smith of the 4th Maryland Regiment in DeBorre's Brigade, mistaking Ferguson's green-clad English riflemen for Germans. “General Washington had determined to cross the river, and destroy that Division of the enemy; and every Regiment had been prepared to pass over.”65 A Hessian report confirmed, “Meanwhile the enemy caused a number of their troops belonging to the right wing to cross the river at Edwardsmill [Edward Brinton's Mill, at the ford] and advance.” Greene's Division formed up “and showed signs of occupying the hills on this side of the river behind the morass with more troops,” while Maxwell's Light Infantry “reinforced their outposts, who were standing in the woods that extended to the foot of these heights, so as to dispute the passage of the morass.” To stop the American advance, “General Knyphausen ordered the Queen's Rangers to cross same, and attack the enemy in the wood on the other side of it.”

  A sharp light infantry skirmish erupted as Greene prepared to cross the creek. According to the Hessian report, Maxwell's force, “who consisted of nothing but sharpshooters, killed and wounded many of our men, but withdrew to the woods in the direction of Chatsesfort on this side of the Brandewyn when these advanced with levelled gun [charged bayonets] and the English Jägers [Ferguson's Riflemen] approached their left flank. In the meantime all the regiments had to cross the morass, the 4th and 5th Regiments had to march towards the passage across the Brandewyn river, so as to dislodge the enemy who were posted on this side of same and chase them across the water.” Artillery fire from both sides erupted in support, “so as to cannonade the batteries on the other side of the river and keep the enemy away from the banks.”66

  About this same time, as Sullivan's troops were beginning to cross Brinton's Ford and skirmishing had begun, Maj. Joseph Spear arrived and reported to Sullivan that he had gone from Martin's Tavern all the way to Welch's Tavern, and through the intervening countryside, but did not encounter any British forces on the roads in or near the Forks of the Brandywine. “The account was confirmed by a Serjeant Tucker of the L. Horse,” Sullivan revealed, “sent by me on purpose to make discoveries & had passed on as he said to Lancaster road [probably the Strasburg Road].” Still convinced that Howe was going to swing around the right, Sullivan continued: “This intelligence did by no means alter my opinion which was founded not upon any knowledge I had of the facts but upon an apprehension that Genl. Howe would take that advantage which any good officer in his situation would have done.”67 The general felt it was his duty to report all information received, regardless of his personal interpretation. “I therefore set down & wrote Major Spear's account, from his own mouth & forwarded it to His Excellency by a Light Horseman & order'd the major to follow himself.”68 Sullivan sent this fateful message to the commander in chief:

  Brintons Ford Sepr 11th 1777

  Dr. General

  Since I sent you the message by Major Morris I Saw Major Joseph Spear of the Militia who Came last night from This morning from a Tavern Called Martins on the Forks of the Brandywine—he came from thence to Welches Tavern & heard nothing of the Enemy about the Forks of the Brandywine & is Confident they are not in that Quarter So that Colo Hazens Information must be wrong. I have sent to that Quarter to know whether there is any foundation for the Report & shall give yr. Excy. the Earliest Information.69

  How Spear managed this can be partly explained by timing: He must have passed down these roads before Cornwallis and von Knyphausen began their marches at 5 A.M. The words “last night from,” crossed out and changed “to this morning,” imply that the major left Martin's Center House before dawn. Where he was and what he was doing between the time he arrived at Welch's Tavern, which had to have been before 6 a.m., when von Knyphausen began his advance, and the time he made his report to Sullivan at Brinton's Ford, which would have been between noon and 1 p.m., are unknown.

  Suggestions of treachery on the major's part, made many years later, were speculative and unfounded. At the same time, with all of the troop movements, patrols, and firing that morning, it is difficult to reconcile Spear's whereabouts during the intervening six hours or more. He must have been very slow, dallying somewhere, or thorough to a fault, investigating byways and side paths. The area he passed through has numerous lanes, woods, parallel roads, and abrupt hills; this was the terrain that Cornwallis used to screen his march, and it was well chosen. Concerning Spear's reliability, Washington commented afterward that “the Major's rank, reputation and knowledge of the Country, gave him a full claim to credit and attention.”70

  On receiving Spear's information, Washington hesitated, fearing that the reported maneuver was a feint to draw him across the Brandywine. It was possible that Howe was setting up a trap similar to the one a few months earlier at Short Hills: lure him out of his position in the high ground, then turn and catch him in a pincer movement. The commander in chief sent orders to Sullivan to pull back, confirm the reports, and wait for intelligence from Col. Theodorick Bland.

  Sullivan's advance guard broke off the engagement and fell back across the creek, as did Maxwell; Greene never did cross the Brandywine. All Continental forces were now on the eastern side. “The enemy were driven from a very difficult neighbourhood with much trouble and a loss of brave men, but only into the road leading to the fort [ford] beyond Edwardsmill,” a Hessian report confirmed. “As they had thus been entirely dislodged from this side of the Brandew
yn, General von Knyphausen ordered his column to halt according to previous arrangement, until he could get news of the attack made by General Howe.”71

  Howe and the main body of the Crown Forces continued to move slowly and steadily through the Forks of the Brandywine. About noon, Ewald and the advance guard approached Jefferis's Ford. Surprised to find it unguarded, he crossed and then paused at the bottom of a long notch or defile between two high hills. A narrow road twisted its way to the top through the woods between the hills. Lord Cornwallis came to the head of the column, and Ewald expressed concern that it would be the perfect spot for an ambush.

  A dozen Jägers fanned out and moved slowly up the road in pairs, carefully spacing themselves, fully prepared to react in case of attack. Ewald himself passed through “this terrible defile, which was over a thousand paces long,” and could not believe that it was left unguarded. Cornwallis himself followed and was astonished that the patrol they had skirmished with earlier was not posted here. Ewald felt that “a hundred men could have held up either army the whole day.”72

  At the top of this high hill, a little over half a mile by foot from the ford, was a small hamlet called Sconneltown, consisting of nothing more than a wheelwright shop and a few houses. The road from the ford headed south to Birmingham Meeting House, three miles away. Another road turned left toward the Turk's Head Tavern, a few miles east.