Militarily it was a hardpressed time [for the Americans]. A crushing defeat in the Battle of Long Island in August, 1776, had left the British in control of access to New York and the New York coast. Washington had, at least, safely brought his forces out of Manhattan, where he could maintain the connection of New England to the South which it was the principal British strategic aim to disrupt. Soon the British had penetrated Pennsylvania and were threatening Philadelphia, the congressional capital. At Christmas time of 1776 the Continental Congress fled to Baltimore. In September, 1777, Sir William Howe with a large army and naval force sailed imposingly up Chesapeake Bay to the Delaware to enter and occupy Philadelphia, the largest city and busiest manufacturing and commercial center of the country. Occupation by the British meant the closing of America’s two major ports by the enemy, cutting off the delivery of cargoes. The Dutch, however, not disposed to abandon a lucrative trade, slipped into smaller ports and estuaries and managed to maintain the supply of guns and powder that kept the patriot fight for independence alive. The cause, however, suffered another blow in the loss of Fort Washington, on Harlem Heights, opposite Fort Lee in New Jersey, thereby losing control of the Hudson and opening New Jersey across the river to invasion by the British. The new defeat called for heavy campaigning to save the territory. The bedraggled army, without proper clothing and short of medicine and hospitals and care for the wounded, and especially of fresh recruits, was further weakened by the constant drain of short enlistments. Washington could muster perhaps 2,500 men at the most against Howe’s 10,000. The imbalance was made up by his gift for miracle in a crisis. On the same Christmas when the Congressmen were running to save their skins, Washington with his worn-out force crossed back over the Delaware to inflict a smashing knockout on the Hessians at Trenton, gaining their surrender and 1,000 prisoners. For his own cause, the gift in energy and morale was incomparable.

Tuchman, Barbara W. 1988. The First Salute: A View of the American Revolution. New York: Random House Publishing Group.

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