The Battle of Brooklyn
August 27, 2026
“The Battle of Brooklyn” is Chapter Thirty in Eric Metaxas’s new book REVOLUTION: The Birth of the Greatest Nation in the History of the World, available now.
“They will never again stand before us in the field. Everything seems to be over with them and I flatter myself now that this campaign will put a total end to the war.”
—General Hugh Percy
Because Washington believed Howe would attack the city of New York directly, most of his army was in Manhattan. But he knew they might also land on Long Island and fight in Brooklyn, across the East River. But since he could ferry his troops across the water if needed, he did what all military leaders agreed one must never do in the face of a superior force—and divided his army, with some in Brooklyn and some in Manhattan, all the while waiting for the British to make their move. Day after day more ships arrived. How many would come before they finally attacked? General Clinton arrived August 1st with the three thousand men who had fought at the Battle of Charleston. But Howe was more than anything waiting for the eight thousand Hessians. They finally arrived August 15th, though many were quite ill from the trans-Atlantic journey. Howe gave them a week to recuperate, planning to make his first move on August 22nd. But Washington could only wonder.
In mid-August, Nathanael Greene fell deathly ill, with a “raging fever.” Without question the best general in Washington’s command, Greene was so sick that they feared for his life, and on August 20th, Washington was compelled to replace him with General John Sullivan, who was a far cry from Greene. Washington wrote John Hancock, apprising Congress of the change, describing Sullivan—who had performed quite poorly in the Canadian campaign—as “spirited and zealously attached to the Cause” but “with a tincture of vanity,” and guilty of wishing to be “popular.” But what else could be done?
It was in the midst of this dramatic change in command that the British finally made their move. On the night of August 21st, Cornwallis under cover of darkness with a number of elite units sailed across lower New York bay to the beaches of Gravesend Bay. At six the next morning, the warships fired their cannons to clear the way for these troops to come ashore. American resistance was quickly neutralized, after which an additional fifteen thousand men landed, with textbook efficiency. They marched six miles to the Dutch village of Flatbush, within three miles of the American forces in Brooklyn, and stopped. But Washington was convinced this was all merely a feint. He underestimated the British troops that had landed, believing the larger part of the thirty-five thousand troops were still off Staten Island and would be attacking Manhattan directly. But Howe only had about twenty-five thousand able-bodied troops in total. In any case, three days later the recuperated eight thousand Hessians came across to Long Island, at which point there were twenty-two thousand British troops landed, which was 90 percent of the troops Howe actually had. Washington had only about ten thousand troops on Long Island at this point, many of whom were of course quite green and undisciplined. The other half of his army remained in Manhattan, hedging his bet.
On August 23rd, Washington came over from Manhattan and agreed with Sullivan’s suggestion to move half the men from their defenses in Brooklyn further inland, up to the six-mile ridgeline called the Heights of Guan. It was steeply sloped and thickly wooded. The idea was that in attacking there the British could be forced to pay a price similar to Bunker Hill. And whenever the Americans were overwhelmed, they could fall back to their eight well-fortified entrenchments on Brooklyn Heights, causing the British to pay an even dearer price. But then second-guessing himself—perhaps convinced Israel Putnam could reprise the role he had played at Bunker Hill, or simply finding that his reservations about Sullivan had grown—Washington once more changed commanders, putting Putnam in charge of the overall command and giving Sullivan a subordinate position. Because of this, as well as some further changes Washington made, many units became confused. There were reports that some of them were drifting about, under no particular commander. Hearing of this, Washington—again back in Manhattan on August 25th—fired off a stern letter to Putnam, scolding the old veteran about the “distinction between a well-regulated army, & a mob.” On August 26th, Washington again came over to Brooklyn and approved the arrangement of the troops. But by now the time for fussing had come to an end. The British would finally make their move.
THE JAMAICA PASS
With intelligence provided to them by Loyalists—of whom there were plenty on Long Island—General Clinton formulated a plan, which he proposed to Howe. There were three main passes through the Guan Heights, all of which the Americans were defending. From west to east they were: Flatbush Road, Gowanus Road, and Bedford Pass. But there was a fourth pass much farther east, oddly not much defended. It was so far east that Washington, Putnam, Greene, and Sullivan had somehow overlooked it. This was the Jamaica Pass, which was only guarded by five militiamen on horseback. It was fully three miles further east than the other passes through the Heights of Guan. So Clinton’s plan was for two diversionary forces to attack the Americans head on, as Washington expected, but for the third and largest force of ten thousand men to march through the darkness eastward to the Jamaica Pass. If they could march the nine miles there undetected—and then make it through the pass—they would be able to outflank and surprise the American forces, striking them from behind.
The plan was a daring gamble, but Howe agreed to it. This largest of all the British forces would stretch in a column for over two miles, with Howe and General Percy in the rear, commanding six battalions; Cornwallis in the middle commanding eight; and at the front of it all Clinton himself, with an elite brigade of light infantry. But Clinton would be led by three local farmers, the Loyalists who had made it all possible, and who were only too happy to be of assistance to the armies of His Royal Highness King George III. And so it went, the ten thousand proceeding through the night, and keeping as quiet as ten thousand men hauling artillery and baggage wagons could keep. The light infantry at the front scouted ahead for anyone who might sound the alarm, which would kill the whole mission. Anyone who looked like trouble was quickly captured. When the column approached Schoonmaker’s Bridge, near a salt marsh, the Loyalists warned Clinton that this was one place where they might encounter rebel resistance. Surely someone had been stationed there. But, in fact, no one was there at all, and the long column of British troops continued, undetected.
At two o’clock in the morning, they neared Jamaica Pass itself. A few hundred yards before it, they came to Howard’s Tavern, rousing the tavern keeper, William Howard. His fourteen-year-old son, William Jr., recalled: “I was awakened by seeing a soldier at the side of my bed. I got up and dressed and went down to the barroom, where I saw my father standing in one corner with three British soldiers before him with muskets and bayonets.” It seems a curious detail that at this hour General Howe asked for a drink—which he was given—and then came to the point: he needed the father and son to guide him and his troops through the Jamaica pass. The son recalled the conversation:
My father replied, “We belong to the other side, General, and can’t serve you against our duty.” General Howe replied, “That is alright; stick to your country, or stick to your principles, but Howard, you are my prisoner and must guide my men over the hill.” My father made some further objection, but was silenced by the general, who said, “You have no alternative. If you refuse I shall shoot you through the head.”
This being resolved, the British column continued to the pass. Only ten minutes later, they saw the five Americans on horseback who had been charged with guarding it. But these militiamen failed to comprehend the situation and engaged the British in a friendly manner, thinking them Americans. So they were easily taken as prisoners. When Howe demanded that his captives tell him the number of troops in Brooklyn, one of them, a twenty-two-year-old lieutenant named Edward Dunscomb, expressed indignation. Did the British really think Americans would so easily offer such intelligence? Howe called the young patriot an “impudent rebel,” who should be hanged. But Dunscomb bravely declared that General Washington could be counted on to respond in kind, hanging a British prisoner for every American so treated.
In any case, while Howe and his forces continued on their surreptitious way to the east, the first of the diversionary forces struck. Israel Putnam in Brooklyn was awakened at three o’clock in the morning to learn that the enemy were attacking at the Gowanus Road pass. He quickly alerted General Alexander—also called Lord Stirling—and Brigadier General Samuel Holden Parsons, who led their men to the battlefield. Everyone assumed this was the main thrust, that the British were attacking precisely as expected. Sometime thereafter the second diversion—under the Hessians—commenced. They began firing their artillery from the Flatbush Road pass, but did not yet attack, since they were awaiting the cannon signal from Howe. The plan was that after Howe and his ten thousand troops came through the Jamaica Pass and outflanked the Americans, he would fire his cannons. But he would get there early and then lie in wait. It took Howe—with his endless column of troops, artillery, and baggage wagons—roughly two hours to get through the Jamaica Pass and westward to their agreed-upon position. Wherever it was necessary to remove fallen trees in the road, they used saws instead of axes, to do so more quietly. But by daylight they had arrived at the Bedford Road pass, where they now lay themselves down to rest, waiting until the appointed hour, nine o’clock in the morning, to make themselves known.
OUTFLANKED
In the meantime—for roughly three hours—the Americans fighting under Lord Stirling and under General Sullivan had no idea that the troops they were fighting were not the whole British army. So under the fictional circumstances in which they believed themselves to be fighting, they were doing rather well. None of them knew that there were yet ten thousand men whom they had to face, who had marched undetected all night through the darkness, and were lying in the grass behind them that minute, waiting for the signal to attack. At the sound of the initial fighting, Washington had crossed over to Brooklyn and was quite pleased with what he saw through his spyglass. But at nine o’clock, when the trap was sprung, everything changed. General Howe gave the signal—the British cannons were fired—and his ten thousand troops revealed themselves. The Americans had been audaciously outflanked and were horribly trapped. What followed was a perfect rout.
Many Americans fought bravely. Many did not. In the unfolding chaos and horror, many ignominiously fled for their lives, some of them desperately charging through a vast swamp and pond in which a number of them drowned. Because the infamous cruelty and ruthlessness of the mercenary Hessians was known to the Americans, many actually sought out British troops to whom they could surrender and begged for their lives, believing the Hessians would not spare them, but would bayonet any who surrendered, which was true enough. But here and in the years ahead, many British troops were equally unprincipled and themselves did the same.
Sullivan stationed his advance guard on the ridge to hold off the advancing Hessians. But he wheeled about and led his main forces in fighting the British, who were suddenly arrayed behind him. Many of Sullivan’s men were killed or captured, but more than expected somehow made it back to the Brooklyn lines. Sullivan, however, was captured. For the British to have captured a general was of course a great coup. One soldier recalled seeing Sullivan “in a cornfield close by our lines, with a pistol in each hand, and the enemy had formed a line each side of him, and he was going directly between them.” A second general, Lord Stirling, was also captured, but seemed to prefer death to surrendering to the British themselves, and braved fire as he made his way to a Hessian regiment, before he surrendered. Stirling and his troops had acquitted themselves heroically, fighting Grant’s forces for four hours. Stirling was said to have fought “like a wolf.” The Marylanders under him fought especially bravely, so much so that Washington—observing them dying through his telescope—groaned, “Good God! What brave fellows I must this day lose!”
GENERAL HOWE CALLS A HALT
By noon, the whole thing was essentially over. But many British officers were zealous to push on and finish the job. General Clinton wrote in his memoir: “I had at the moment but little inclination to check the ardor of our troops when I saw the enemy flying in such a panic.” But somehow General Howe was of another mind and did something that will occupy the minds of historians as long as history itself, calling a sharp halt to the proceedings. While nearly everyone agrees that he could in a few hours have rolled up the whole American rebellion like a rug, Howe chose not to. The question will always be why. Surely, the reasons for his decision involve his nightmare memory of Bunker Hill, where he had personally led brave troops into that gaping maw of death, and had overseen a “victory” that—like Ben Franklin’s whistle—afterward seemed to have cost far too much. So if ever there was a good reason not to finish the job that afternoon in Brooklyn, it was the gory memory of Bunker Hill.
But did Howe really believe fighting on now would be like Bunker Hill? Evidently the awful chance of it was enough to give him pause. He also believed finishing the job that day was unnecessary. As far as he saw, the Americans were perfectly trapped, such that their utter and imminent defeat was guaranteed. His Majesty’s Army had them surrounded on land, and behind them was the roiling East River, inescapably under the control of that most fearsome military force on the globe, His Majesty’s Royal Navy. If Howe thought victory assured, and the rebellion effectively over, why should he recklessly march his troops into what could only be more death? The next day—or the next or the next—he could send someone under a white flag to Washington to hash out the terms of surrender. Peace was at hand. He and his brother longed for this more than anything, to end the unpleasant war and to bring the rebellious Americans back to the British fold, back to the Edenic state from which they had so tragically fallen, led astray by a few hot-headed malefactors.
As for the Americans, they never expected Howe to give them any breathing room, and all through the rest of that terrible day they waited tensely, fully expecting the British to press their advantage and finish the job. They were prepared to keep fighting as their own troops—many wounded—straggled in, many with horror stories of what they had seen and endured. But the British stopped about a mile and a half from the Americans. Many of Howe’s generals were stunned at his order, or at least bitterly disappointed, since they felt that total victory had been so close. Nonetheless, few doubted that it would be theirs soon enough.
BRITISH BARBARITY
General James Grant despised the Americans, and had for years been among their nastiest critics, viciously mocking them in Parliament as cowards “unable to fight,” and loudly boasting that with a force of five thousand he could wipe them out. That day he had fought them himself and was on the verge of seeing their final and well-deserved come-uppance. “You will be glad,” he wrote another general, “that we have had the field day I talked of in my last letter. If a good bleeding can bring those Bible-faced Yankees to their senses, the fever of independency should soon abate.” In 1760, while fighting in the French and Indian War, Grant was renowned for his cruelty toward the Cherokees, deliberately starving them into submission, and to many Americans he typified the inhuman barbarism of the British, much of which had been in evidence in the Battle of Brooklyn, or the Battle of Long Island, as it is sometimes called.
For example, besides generals Stirling and Sullivan, a third American general had been captured. This was Nathaniel Woodhull, captured by Captain Sir James Baird of Fraser’s Highlanders regiment. Upon Woodhull’s capture, a British officer had with his sword again and again slashed him about the head and body, because he refused to declare “God save the King,” instead saying, “God save us all.” His head and arm injuries were severe, but despite his rank he was dumped in a prison, where his wounds became infected, and after three weeks, he died. But the reports of British cruelty and brutality toward surrendering men and prisoners soon became commonplace. Captain Jabez Fitch reported that after his capture he was imprisoned under horribly crowded conditions in a barn, along with his friend, Captain John Jewett. Fitch said Jewett had been taken prisoner, and in this helpless condition was sadistically bayoneted in the stomach and chest. Fitch comforted Jewett in his agonies, remembering that the captain “was sensible of his being near his end, often repeating that it was hard work to die.”
Though it was a common expectation in the wars of the eighteenth century to “give quarter” to anyone who surrendered, and to treat prisoners reasonably well, the British during the Revolution cast such civilities aside, giving the excuse that the Americans were not the soldiers of any officially recognized army, but were simply despised rebels, no better than base criminals deserving death. In hiring Native Americans and Hessians to fight the Americans, Great Britain well knew it was inviting the typical cruelty and barbarity of these allies. The Hessians were particularly known to delight in bayoneting those who surrendered, often pinning them to trees with their bayonets. One British officer recalled how in the Battle of Long Island the “Hessians and our Highlanders gave no quarters and it was a fine thing to see with what alacrity they dispatched the rebels with their bayonets after we had surrendered them so that they could not resist… We took care to tell the Hessians that the Rebels had resolved to give no quarters to them in particular, which made them fight desperately and put to death all who fell into their hands.” Another said some of his fellow officers “shed their ideas of being heroes. The prisoners who knelt and sought to surrender were beaten.” The Battle of Brooklyn was just the beginning of the British retreat from the civil norms of eighteenth-century warfare. Much more would come.
As the sun set over Manhattan on August 27th, the Americans trapped in Brooklyn had no idea how many men had been lost. We now know that at least 300 were killed, and about 1,100 taken prisoner. We also know that most who were taken prisoner by the British over the next few years would never live to see freedom, because the inhumane and horrific conditions of the prison ships in which they were kept revealed another aspect of the shocking contempt the British had for their despised enemies. By the time the war was over, fewer than 7,000 Americans would have died in combat, while roughly 10,000 would die in the hellish British prisons.
THE GREAT CAESURA
But now that the Americans were trapped, what exactly was Howe planning? Several things. Because he wanted the fewest British casualties, rather than risking any attack against the well-fortified American lines, he ordered his men to dig trenches in the Americans’ direction and build embankments: it was to be a siege. And of course, he would soon summon the ships from the Narrows to sail north and cut off any ideas the rebels might harbor of escaping across the East River. Once the ships sailed north, that escape hatch—and the Americans’ fate—would be sealed. Captain George Collier, of the HMS Rainbow, was “in constant expectation of the order” to sail north. Once his ship and the four other frigates with him were summoned, it would be over. But for some reason, Howe hesitated in doing this, too. We may fathom Howe’s reasons in holding his troops back, but his failure to order Collier to seal off the watery path to Manhattan is inexplicable. Was it simple overconfidence? Or laziness? In retrospect, we may wonder whether an act of procrastination in warfare was ever as consequential.
Washington knew escape from his position was essentially impossible, but neither was he persuaded the time to surrender had come. While he could, he would keep fighting. His fortifications were such that at least the British could be required to pay a heavy price. But if he did plan to keep fighting, perhaps he could use a few more men, so the next morning—August 28th—he ordered another 1,200 men over from Manhattan. The arrival across the East River of these brigades—which consisted of Captain John Glover and his Massachusetts regiment and Thomas Mifflin and his Pennsylvanians—brought some hope to the exhausted Americans. Little could Washington know how important Glover’s brigades would become.
Meanwhile, the besieging British inched ever closer with their trenches, and both sides kept up an exchange of musket and cannon fire. Then the weather changed dramatically. The temperature began to drop. And a torrential northeaster rolled in. Soon enough, an unremitting and chilling rain was deluging the area, along with thunder and lightning. The winds had shifted too, so that now—even if Howe had ordered him to do so—Captain Collier and his four ships could not sail north. They were temporarily stuck, obliged to remain where they were. The storm continued throughout the night of the twenty-eighth and into the twenty-ninth. Many of Washington’s men in their trenches—more miserable and exhausted than can be imagined—were up to their waists in water. Others were sitting in mud, unprotected from the weather. It was impossible to make fires, and much of the gunpowder was now ruined. Many of the troops had no food and had not eaten for two days.
ESCAPE ACROSS THE EAST RIVER
The previous night, Washington had given Israel Putnam’s command to Mifflin, so that “Old Put” could get a couple hours of shut-eye. During this time, Mifflin made a survey of the situation, walking to the outer lines of the American camp. He realized the British were digging forward with startling efficiency, so that their plan was a siege, and it was now only a matter of time before they could finish the job they had paused. Mifflin also spoke with many of the besoaked, exhausted troops and saw that their morale was bleeding steadily toward surrender.
So at four thirty on the morning of the twenty-ninth—as the rains continued—Mifflin apprised Washington of what he had learned. The spades and pickaxes of Howe’s troops had not stopped, and every hour their trenches and embankments crept closer. They were already only six hundred yards away. Howe would soon be able to choke Washington’s forces to death. Mifflin also told Washington of his conversations with the demoralized troops. Suddenly, fighting their way out of this trap was not as possible as Washington assumed. He also knew that the moment the storm moved away the winds would shift, the sails of the British ships would fill, and they would move north, until their frightening firepower was aimed directly at the American fortifications, sealing any door to escape. When this happened, the glorious and sacred cause of liberty would be dead. The closing British entrenchments, the demoralized American troops, and the British warships at their back would mean checkmate. The war—and the great Revolution for which the war was being fought—would be over.
Of course, if Howe had finished things on the twenty-seventh, the Revolution would already have been over. Or if Howe had ordered Collier to sail up the East River before the storm on the twenty-eighth. But as we know, Howe had done neither. So if the storm continued to keep the British ships at bay, there appeared the slimmest possibility of keeping the hope of liberty alive. But how? There were nine thousand Americans in Washington’s army in Brooklyn. Once they were surrounded and captured, the guttering flame of liberty would be snuffed out. So Mifflin perceived that there was only one possible option: retreat. And he offered this bitter advice. How Washington’s deep-rooted sense of honor must have bristled at it. Even attempting it would require the almost miraculous favor of the wind and the weather. But there seemed no alternative. Given Washington’s penchant for heroics, it’s conceivable that the near impossibility of a successful retreat appealed to him enough to overcome his innate repulsion at the idea.
In any case, there was no time to lose. With the greatest urgency, he dispatched an express messenger all the way to the northern end of Manhattan, to King’s Bridge, with an order for General Heath. Another was sent to Assistant Quartermaster Hugh Hughes. They were severely enjoined to scour the shorelines in every direction for any flat-bottomed boat or sloop, anything “that could be kept afloat and had either sail or oars.” The search was to range as far afield as possible—“from Hellgate on the Sound to Spuyten Duyvil Creek [on the Hudson].” Anything from anywhere. Washington said in his message that it was for the purposes of ferrying troops from New Jersey who were coming to aid them, which was perfectly untrue, a ruse. Washington didn’t want a soul to know what he was actually up to. But the fact was that he hoped to use this hastily gathered flotilla of small craft to do something nearly unthinkable: to evacuate as much of the entire Continental army of roughly nine thousand remaining men as time allowed, to ferry them in the pitch black across the churning half-mile-wide expanse of the East River to Manhattan, while there was time, which with every hour was running out. The urgency of the order was unmistakable. It even specified that there was to be no “ceremony” in acquiring these boats, meaning that boat owners were not to be asked nicely. Anything that could possibly serve in the movement of troops must be snatched with the utmost alacrity.
So all that day of the twenty-ninth, the boats began arriving at the Brooklyn Ferry Landing, roughly where a century in the future the base of the Brooklyn Bridge would rise. And Captain John Glover’s Marblehead Regiment of professional fishermen and sailors—who had happened to come over with Mifflin and his troops the day before—would be doing the ferrying. Without them it would have been unthinkable.
But Washington’s deep sense of honor would not permit him to order the retreat himself, so he convened a council of war at four that day in the Livingstone mansion at the top of Brooklyn Heights, and sounded out his generals on the decision. The indefatigably doughty Israel Putnam was predictably for staying and fighting. “Give an American a wall to fight behind,” he said, “and they will fight forever.” He well knew their fortifications were sufficient to bleed the British along the white lines of Bunker Hill. But most of the others saw the situation as Mifflin had. Eventually Putnam did too. If they stayed and fought and somehow lost the battle, the war itself would be lost. That—which is to say everything—was now seen to be at stake, and nothing less. If Washington’s mandate was at least to keep the cause of liberty alive, there was no other choice. The nine thousand men remaining in the Continental Army in Brooklyn were inescapably necessary to that cause, so their fate at this moment had become the fate of the new nation forever. All the generals agreed. But because General Mifflin had been the one to first suggest the unavoidably ignoble idea of a retreat, he asked the honor for himself and his troops of being the last to leave Manhattan, should the retreat be successful, accepting what was manifestly the greatest chance of discovery and capture.
The moment the council ended—at seven in the evening—orders went out to the various officers, that all troops must be ready with packs and arms. It was to be a night attack on the enemy. Of course this was untrue, and many officers were shocked to hear this; an attack under the present conditions seemed suicidal. Many of the men had not slept for three days. But no one could know what was really happening, not even the officers. If by the bizarrest of flukes the truth of the retreat somehow made its way to the British, everything would be over. One of the Pennsylvania officers, Alexander Graydon, was so mortified at the idea of a night attack that he eventually realized what must actually be happening. But when he shared his theory with other officers, they refused to believe it. As mad as a night attack seemed, a retreat to Manhattan seemed madder still.
The weakest and least experienced regiments were to report to the ferry at nine o’clock and told they were being ferried to Manhattan to be replaced with fresher troops, in order to maintain the ruse that a night attack was happening. By now the rain had stopped, but the same northeast wind and ebb tide that prevented the British ships from moving north continued, also making it impossible to ferry many troops across. So General Alexander McDougall, the man in charge of the embarkation, informed Washington that the retreat was impossible.
Then, two hours later, everything changed. At eleven o’clock, the northeastern wind blowing steadily for two days ceased, soon replaced by a wind from the southeast, perfect for getting boats across to Manhattan. The door to retreat was temporarily opened. So John Glover’s expert oarsmen began the brutal process of ferrying the troops across the churning expanse, boat by boat by boat, back and forth and back and forth in the perfect silence and blackness.
Major Benjamin Tallmadge of Connecticut was there that night. The twenty-two-year-old had grown up in what is today Suffolk County on Long Island, the son of a clergyman. At Yale he had become close friends with Nathan Hale. “To move so large a body of troops,” he later recalled, thinking of what Washington was now doing, “with all their necessary appendages, across a river full a mile wide, with a rapid current, in face of a victorious well-disciplined army nearly three times as numerous as his own, and a fleet capable of stopping the navigation, would that not one boat could have passed over, seemed to present most formidable obstacles.”
As this process continued, more and more troops were ordered to leave their lines and silently march to the ferry landing, but leaving enough men behind to keep their fires roaring, so as to deceive the watching British. Mifflin’s troops were the farthest forward, nearest the ever-approaching British trenches.
Another soldier present that night was a fifteen-year-old private, Joseph Plumb Martin, also of Connecticut. “We were strictly enjoined not to speak, or even cough,” he recalled. “All orders were given from officer to officer and communicated to the men in whispers. What such secrecy could mean we could not divine… forming various conjectures among ourselves as to our destination.”
Of course, horses were being ferried across too, and cannons, but first they had to be moved to the ferry. To prevent noise, their wheels were muffled with rags. Everyone knew that if the British discovered what was occurring—that Americans were abandoning the safety of their fortifications and were out in the open—they would have attacked with everything they had, and under such circumstances, would have surely prevailed. The entirety of the vast operation was as fragile and as tedious as can be imagined. The two days of downpour had turned everything to mud; moving wagons and cannon was especially difficult. Some of the largest were simply immovable, sunk to their hubs, and had to be abandoned. But first they were “spiked,” a metal spike driven into the touchhole, so that when they fell into British hands, they would be useless. At two a.m., a cannon—probably one of these in the process of being spiked—went off, shattering the silence. But mercifully, the British did not investigate or respond.
By now Washington was himself at the ferry landing, overseeing the process himself. Mifflin’s troops were still in the vanguard, nearest the British lines, and in the greatest danger. They could hear the picks and shovels punctuating the silence, as even now the British closed in. Howe’s plan was proceeding, and of course now that the wind had shifted, he would at daybreak finally beckon Captain Collier to sail north, since doing so in the dark was impossible. Howe knew that when this happened, Washington could not fail to appreciate the hopelessness of his situation and would agree to talk.
Throughout the previous day—as Washington’s men in the rain had frantically scoured the New York coast for escape craft—Admiral Howe sat in the comfortable stateroom of his fleet’s flagship, the HMS Eagle, thinking of the imminent peace he would soon be able to offer. Even more wonderful, he had with him generals Sullivan and Alexander, who unlike Woodhull—dying of his wounds in a British prison—were being treated with the dignity expected for men of their rank. The eminently reasonable Howe only wished to bring peace, and as he wined and dined his esteemed captives, he attempted to persuade them to agree to go to the Continental Congress in Philadelphia, as his envoys toward that happy end. Both generals knew how badly Washington’s army had fared, and must have seen the hopelessness of the situation. Nonetheless, Stirling—who had witnessed the tremendous cruelty of the British toward his Scottish countrymen—bitterly refused to be a pawn in Howe’s game. Sullivan, however, would agree. Although just now the American generals and the Howe brothers were sleeping, oblivious to the wild effort being expended in the blackness a few miles north.
But as the minutes toward daylight passed, Washington saw that despite the heroic efforts of the Marblehead regiment, the process of ferrying the nine thousand men across was proceeding too slowly to succeed. The math was inescapable. Not enough troops had been moved. Before five thirty, the sun would break over the horizon; and even long before that the curtain of darkness would begin to lift. When that happened the eyes of the British would start from their sockets—and they would see precisely what had been taking place and would at that moment with everything in them hasten forward to go in for the kill. With the wind finally in their favor, they would have no difficulty in quickly bearing down on the small craft struggling pathetically across the watery expanse. Their guns would obliterate them. It would hardly even seem sporting.
Washington sensed the approach of this inevitability, but there was nothing for it. He must keep going. But even before the darkness lifted and the British discovery of their retreat could happen, there was another horror. General Mifflin and his troops were still holding the vanguard at four o’clock. But at this rate—knowing they would be the last troops to make the journey from their lines to the ferry—they were still two or more hours from being summoned. Nonetheless, just then Major Alexander Scammell rode out of the darkness to tell them otherwise. He had come with the news that the boats were now ready for them, that they should leave the lines and hasten to the docks, “without delay.” Mifflin was incredulous. Scammell insisted. So Mifflin and his troops abandoned their post and headed for the river. They were a half mile from the landing when Washington—who seemed to be ranging everywhere on his horse throughout the night—suddenly appeared, horrified to see them. “Good God! General Mifflin,” he exclaimed, “I am afraid you have ruined us!” Scammell was mistaken, just as Mifflin suspected, and the blunder might have alerted the British to everything. Mifflin’s troops—eager to escape to Manhattan—were crushed to realize they must return to their posts but had no choice. When they returned, they were glad at least to discover that their absence hadn’t alerted the British.
A VERY DENSE FOG
As for Washington, he knew what was coming. The much-too-slow movement of the troops to the ferry continued, and as dawn with her rosy fingers stole forward, he stoically steeled himself for the imminent and inevitable calamity. But history records another outcome. For those of a philosophical bent it can sometimes become impossible to avoid ruminating on whether meteorology and history may be more than incidentally related. In this respect, the recollections of such as Benjamin Tallmadge become especially unhelpful. He was among those still at their posts as dawn approached, remembering that “those of us who remained in the trenches became very anxious for our own safety.” But then something extraordinarily curious happened. “At this time,” he recalled, “a very dense fog began to rise, and it seemed to settle in a peculiar manner over both encampments.” Over the Americans and the British both. “I recollect this peculiar providential occurrence perfectly well,” he said, “and so very dense was the atmosphere that I could scarcely discern a man at six yards’ distance.” At this point everyone still trapped in Brooklyn, who with growing dread had known that the unstoppable turning of the earth would soon result in the concomitant appearance of the blazing sun—and their discovery—beheld a hitherto inconceivable new possibility. Because of the startling phenomenon of the fog, they remained as perfectly invisible to the enemy as if it were still midnight. Tallmadge remembered that his regiment had been summoned to the ferry earlier, but at the ferry had been told to return to their lines again. So they were still there when the sun had risen fully. But “the fog remained as dense as ever.” Again, his regiment was finally summoned, so that they all “very joyfully bid those trenches a long adieu,” as the impenetrable fog continued. “When we reached Brooklyn ferry,” he said, “the boats had not returned from their last trip, but they very soon appeared and took the whole regiment over to New York; and I think I saw Gen. Washington on the ferry stairs when I stepped into one of the last boats that received the troops.”
That even the portion of Washington’s army that had escaped before daybreak were able to do so is astonishing. But that even after daybreak several thousand more were able successfully to escape is almost beyond belief. But the fog held. Even after landing on Manhattan, the fog continued to be so thick that Tallmadge “began to think of my favorite horse,” which in his understandable haste to leave Brooklyn he had left behind. So with some volunteers he dared to go back across. He recalled that he “obtained [his] horse and got off some distance into the river before the enemy appeared in Brooklyn.” So at last now, with the whole army retreated to Manhattan, the opaque fog lifted. The British at last could see everything and sped to the empty ferry landing. “[W]e were saluted merrily from their musketry, and finally by their field pieces,” Tallmadge recalled, “but we returned in safety.”
“In the history of warfare, I do not recollect a more fortunate retreat,” Tallmadge said. “After all, the providential appearance of the fog saved a part of our army from being captured, and certainly myself, among others who formed the rear guard. Gen Washington has never received the credit which was due to him for this wise and most fortunate measure.”
It was a retreat that saved Washington’s army, and that in doing so enabled them to fight another day—and another and another. What must General Howe have thought at this juncture? He knew that this early golden opportunity to crush Washington’s forces, or at least to trap them so that they had no choice but to surrender, had vanished. And we know that the years of fighting that followed might have been averted, and the Revolution ended shortly after it had begun.
But, of course, that did not happen.