On the morning of the 11th, a warm, still, late summer day, a dense fog shrouded the bucolic landscape of rustic Chester County. That cover burned off as the day went along, but its slow dissipation, together with the thick smoke coughed out by cannon and musket fire, would impede visibility throughout this long day. At 8:00 A.M. the British unloosed a terrific artillery barrage, the usual prelude to an assault. It was “the grandest scene I ever saw,” exclaimed a New Jersey captain, but most of the Continentals were less impressed; they simply dug in and tried to remain hidden behind tall earthworks, all the while anxiously awaiting word that the redcoats were coming, and hoping they would survive until then. In the meantime, they listened as Knox’s gunners answered the shelling. For most of the morning the two sides implacably—and purposelessly—thumped and thundered at one another. Then these blasts died away. The attack must be imminent. But minutes passed, then an hour, then still another, with no sign of Howe.
About 11:00 A.M. information arrived that a five-thousand-man redcoat detachment was moving north, presumably intent on turning the American right under Sullivan. Washington’s first impulse was to discount the report, and at least two witnesses later reported that he laughed at the tidings. There was no place in that sector where Howe could cross! As the minutes passed Washington was seized with a second impulse: to strike, to launch an assault of his own on what was left of the redcoat center across from Chad’s Ford. He ordered Greene out, and he sent word to Sullivan to wheel about and lash at the left flank of the British west of Chad’s Ford. Greene started forward, but as his men were splashing across the creek word arrived from Sullivan that discounted the earlier communication about a British move to the north. Sullivan must be correct, Washington reasoned. Why would the redcoats be engaged in a feckless march to the north, away from the American army? Washington abandoned his plan to strike, and he waited.
Another hour passed. Then at 2:00 P.M. a neighborhood farmer, followed shortly by an official dispatch rider, brought the word he had awaited. The British were on the move! But there was more—ominously more. Cornwallis, accompanied by Howe, had been moving north and he had gone undetected; or, at least, when he evidently had been spotted Washington had been induced to ignore the reports after he received Sullivan’s contradictory communication. Washington now learned that the British had slipped around Sullivan. The man who had been outflanked on the Jamaica Road once again had been surprised. A very large British force (an entire division of seven thousand men, in fact) had gotten well to Sullivan’s right. At about 3:30, from atop Osborne’s Hill, Cornwallis commenced an artillery pounding, followed by a charge against the far right of Sullivan’s lines, a point under the command of Lord Stirling. If the British broke through, Washington’s army would be enveloped. For the moment, the very survival of the American army hinged on the performance of the two generals who had been captured at Brooklyn a year earlier.
Washington, meanwhile, remained three miles away, and very much in the dark. He could hear the strident boom of a great many cannon. But how many? Enough to destroy Sullivan? Was this merely a gambit to lure him away from Chad’s Ford so the bulk of the British army could swarm across and strike at a weakened American center?
The thunderous sound of Cornwallis’s artillery that roared past Chad’s Ford was the signal for the British center to open up. Greene again was under fire, but from whom? Washington was confused. Contradictory reports in battle were expected, but this was worse. What was happening? Washington waited, sought more information, waited some more. At first he was certain that the attack on Sullivan was a feint, and, indeed, for two hours after the attacks on the two fronts commenced, he still refused to believe that his center was not the real British target. Only about 5:30 P.M. did Washington think differently. Leaving a few Continentals and Pennsylvania militiamen at Chad’s Ford, he detached the bulk of Greene’s army from the center and started for the furious battle raging near Birmingham Meeting House to the northwest. While Greene’s men double-timed through the thick woods and across the verdant corn fields, Washington and his staff galloped ahead.
The commander had almost waited too long, but finally, after hours had dragged by, he had become convinced that the attack on Sullivan had to be his adversary’s principal move. Had he waited much longer it is likely he would have faced a real disaster. Fortunately for Washington, Sullivan had performed well. He wisely had placed his forces atop Meeting House Hill, and when the action began he called in the reserves commanded by Stirling and Colonel Adam Stephen. Stirling, in particular, had made effective use of his artillery in countering Cornwallis’s thrusts. Moreover, the men had fought very well. Early in the battle Sullivan’s left wing had buckled in the face of a Hessian bayonet charge. “We broke and Rallied and Rallied & broke,” one of the participants put it. But other men had stood firm, even though some veterans of European wars later said they had never witnessed such “Close & Severe” fighting. The conduct of the Americans was even more noteworthy considering that their foe outnumbered them two to one. Nevertheless, that British superiority had carried the day, and the American front was collapsing when Washington arrived. Exposed to enemy gunners for thirty minutes or more, Washington rode here and there exhorting the men to fight (he emerged untouched, though another officer riding beside him was shot through the leg), but the best he could do was plug Greene’s force into the weakest holes. That did not stop the retreat, though it did keep it orderly, and the presence of these reinforcements—as well as the enveloping darkness at the end of this long, hot day—forestalled British pursuit. Washington, in fact, may never have seen such a welcome sight as the setting sun which closed that day, for it ended a battle that had gone badly on both fronts for the Americans. Shortly after Greene had been pulled out from Chad’s Ford, British and Germans had attacked with considerable success, taking the field and a large prize of Continental artillery; but it had grown too dark by then for those men to link up with Howe. Another hour of daylight, Sir William later remarked, might have resulted in the “total overthrow” of Washington’s army—an exaggeration, although in this instance Howe may not have been too far from the truth.34
In his report to Congress that night Washington labeled the encounter a “misfortune.” That was an understatement. The British lost 583 killed, wounded, and captured, but the Americans lost at least twice that number. Washington could be thankful that Howe had not been in a position to attack until barely two hours of daylight remained, but there was little else over which to rejoice, save that the much-maligned soldiers—Continentals and trainbandsmen—had performed reasonably well. But things had not gone well. Washington later endeavored to pass off the defeat as the result of a series of “unlucky incidents.” In fact, he bore more responsibility for the events than he ever acknowledged. Despite the luxury of ample time before the battle commenced, he had done an unsatisfactory job of reconnoitering the area. Two days before the battle Washington assured Sullivan that the British could not cross the Brandywine anywhere near his position, when, in fact, several fords existed just north of his army; moreover, when the commander rode from his headquarters—a farmhouse a mile behind Chad’s Ford—to join Sullivan during the battle, he did not even know the way, and a frightened local farmer had to be commandeered and compelled at knife point to lead him. In addition, for members of an army that was two years old, Washington’s intelligence network performed in an inexcusably lackluster manner. At one point misinformation nearly led him to launch what could have been a disastrous attack, while later “uncertain and contradictory” intelligence almost caused him to ignore Sullivan’s plight until it was too late to be of assistance. In between these blunders, Washington was led to believe that the British were nowhere near Sullivan’s position when, in fact, they were on the verge of fording the Brandywine and falling on the rear of one-half of the Continental army.
Even so, had Washington done everything correctly he probably could not have defeated Howe or stopped his advance. The
British outnumbered the Americans, an advantage that was even greater when it is remembered that most of Washington’s force consisted of untested regulars and short-term militiamen. Moreover, Washington’s greatest successes hitherto had come from surprise raids and from his adherence to Fabian tactics, whereas his strategy at the Brandywine featured neither of these ploys. Undoubtedly his shortcomings lost him the opportunity of making Howe pay even more dearly in his campaign to take Philadelphia, but more than anything else what the events of that day—not to mention the late occurrences at Fort Ticonderoga—seemed to demonstrate was that a tenacious British pursuit of this war against America’s inexperienced commanders might well have produced a British victory long before the autumn of 1777.35
By the next sunrise Washington had moved his army back to Chester, and soon thereafter he crossed to the east side of the Schuylkill in order to regroup. Howe had chosen not to pursue; his army had marched seventeen miles, then fought for three hours during that long day on the Brandywine. Still they were professionals, and Washington’s army, if not on the ropes, also was tired and somewhat disarrayed. But Howe remained Howe, unenterprising and cautious, and Washington once again slipped away. The British remained at Chad’s Ford for five days, stirring themselves only to send a regiment to seize Wilmington. While Howe took his time, Washington prepared for another clash. He still stood between Howe and Philadelphia. If the abandoned capital fell, he intended to see that the British earned it.
Washington did not recross the Schuylkill until Howe at last resumed his march, then he hurried toward the Lancaster Pike, ready again for another confrontation. Nature intruded on his plans, however. Two days after Brandywine an early season cold front banished the September heat that had gripped eastern Pennsylvania, and on the 16th, with the two armies facing one another near the White Horse Tavern, the autumn crispness gave way to a genuine williwaw. It rained for more than twenty-four hours, causing many in Washington’s army who had cursed the searing heat a few days earlier to pray for its speedy return, for these were campaigners without tents or blankets, without a change of clothes or socks. They also were without dry cartridges, Washington discovered to his horror on the second day of the deluge. The blowing rain, together with flimsy, unlined cartouche boxes, had resulted in the destruction of more than four hundred thousand cartridges. Not only could the Americans not attack, they could not defend themselves if the British struck. Washington pulled out precipitately, beginning a long circuitous march (fifty miles in three days, twenty-nine of it during the final day) in search of supplies, until finally almost all the army again was east of the Schulykill; only General William Smallwood and Anthony Wayne, the latter with fifteen hundred men and four cannon, had been left to the west, stationed near Paoli Tavern, from whence they could fall on the rear of Howe’s advancing legion.36
Suddenly the British acted with resolution. On the 18th Cornwallis discovered a rebel supply depot at Valley Forge and seized a congeries of much-needed foodstuffs and tools. More importantly Howe was tipped off to Wayne’s outpost by local Tories, and after midnight on the 21st this American division was surprised and overrun, with the loss of more than 10 percent of its men.
No longer worried about his rear, Howe pushed off. For the next few hours he looked like a consummate professional, and Washington appeared quite amateurish. Howe, already northwest of Philadelphia, moved out in a northeastward direction, that is away from the capital and toward a major American supply depot at Reading Furnace (Warwick). Washington fell for the ploy. He rushed about half his army in this direction, whereupon Howe deftly reversed himself and streaked for a lightly held ford at Fatland, twelve miles south of Washington’s headquarters. He made it easily. On September 26 the advance units of the British army entered Philadelphia, the difficult and uncertain—and likely quite bloody—crossing of a major river in the face of an entrenched foe overcome by Howe’s unexpected adroitness. Characteristically, Washington refused to credit Howe or to take the blame. “I could not derive the least intelligence,” he explained to Congress, since the countryside about Philadelphia was “to a man” inhabited only by uncooperative Loyalists.37
In the past, failure—or the appearance of having failed—only seemed to stoke Washington’s zeal to act, whether as when he lobbied Forbes to act in the aftermath of the debacle of Virginians killing Virginians near Raystown, or urgently assailed Boston after months of unspectacular inactivity, or yearned to fight on Manhattan Island after the denouements at Brooklyn and Kip’s Bay. After Brandywine and the British crossing of the Schuylkill, his passion to strike burned at a fever pitch, equally fueled by his own lack of success and the American triumph to the north.
Eight days after the battle on the Brandywine, Burgoyne’s and Gates’s forces clashed for the first time. Burgoyne nearly met total disaster in that initial action; as it was he lost six hundred men—twice the American losses—at Freeman’s Farm, as the scene of battle was called. But if Burgoyne’s army was intact at the end of the clash, it was doomed. Gentleman Johnny’s beleagured force was too weak to fight its way out of its predicament, and Sir Henry Clinton, left by Howe in command of New York, was too undermanned to fight through to its rescue; Clinton did send about two thousand troops up the Hudson to create a diversion in the American rear, but to no avail. By late September General Washington knew that “our Northern affairs [are] extremely pleasing” inasmuch as Burgoyne had fallen into “circumstances that threaten his ruin.”38
Anxious to move, Washington called in reinforcements from Virginia and even from General Gates. (“This Army had not been able to oppose Genl. Howe’s with the success that was wished and needs a Reinforcement,” he tersely wrote the northern commander.) He additionally summoned twenty-five hundred men from the Highlands, a move that might have backfired. Learning that Clinton recently had been reinforced by British and Hessian forces, General Putnam at Peekskill pleaded with Washington not to take his men, lest their recall enable the foe to strike up the Hudson and spring Burgoyne from his trap. Washington pooh-poohed Old Put’s alarms. If “Genl. Clinton moves at all, it will be thro’ Jersey to form a junction with Genl. Howe,” he predicted. Two days later Clinton moved north and captured the southernmost American installation in the Highlands. Fortunately for Washington, Clinton resembled Howe in many ways, and never more so than in this instance, for having concluded that he never could reach Burgoyne he made only a desultory attempt to drive through to Saratoga.39
Washington next summoned a council of war to solicit views concerning an immediate attack. What position Washington took cannot be known, but he probably preferred to await the arrival of reinforcements, and that ultimately was the unanimous recommendation of his subordinates. Three days later he called the officers together again. The situation had changed. More than thirteen hundred regulars had arrived, mostly from Peekskill, together with sizable contingents of militiamen from Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and Maryland; in all, he had eleven thousand men, nearly three-fourths of whom were Continentals, and more might arrive from the North shortly. Although Washington’s position cannot precisely be determined, his papers convey the impression that he favored an attack, but when he polled the officers the vote was ten to five against an immediate assault. The commander assented, although with their blessing he moved the army nearer to Germantown. By October 2 Howe’s force was just a dozen miles away.40
A day or two later Washington’s intelligence operatives recaptured a bit of their tarnished credibility by intercepting two priceless letters forwarded by Howe. Through these documents Washington learned that the British force was badly divided. Some redcoats had been dispatched to assist in the eradication of rebel donjons along the Delaware, others were in Philadelphia, and still others were employed in fetching supplies from Head of Elk. That left Howe with eight or nine thousand troops at most at Germantown. There can be no question that Washington now was eager to strike, but having been rebuffed by a council of war once—maybe twice—in the past few d
ays, he shied away from that vehicle as an instrument for making policy. This time he consulted with each general officer privately, individually. And he got what he wanted—authorization for an immediate attack on Germantown.41
The operation that Washington planned was complex. Knowing that Howe occupied emplacements on the southern periphery of the little village, Washington’s plan was to divide his army into four columns, each entering Germantown via a different road. The two approaching from the north were to assail the opposite flanks of the defenders, the other two were to strike from the south at the British rear, and all four were to open the attack with a bayonet charge at precisely 5:00 A.M. Sullivan was placed in command of the American right, although Washington pointedly accompanied him. Greene commanded the left, John Armstrong and Smallwood those units attacking from the rear.
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