Battle of Quinton's Bridge

On March 18, 1778, while British forces held Philadelphia, a small clash unfolded that became known as the Battle of Quinton's Bridge. Militia units from New Jersey, stationed to guard a crossing over Alloway Creek in Salem County, found themselves drawn into a snare set by Lieutenant Colonel Charles Mawhood of the British army. The trap cost the militia dearly, leaving them with heavy losses.

Background

By the close of 1777, General William Howe's British troops had taken control of Philadelphia, home to the Second Continental Congress and regarded by Howe as the heart of the rebelling colonies. Holding the city proved difficult, since Continental Army units and Patriot militias filled the surrounding region, part of George Washington's effort to disrupt British supply routes. That winter proved brutal for the Americans, though both armies routinely dispatched sizable parties to gather food and to disrupt the opposing side's efforts to do the same.

Desperate for supplies, the Continental Army sent Brigadier General Anthony Wayne across the Delaware River on February 19, heading south of Philadelphia to scour southern New Jersey for provisions. In answer, Howe dispatched roughly 4,000 troops to track down and harass Wayne's men. Wayne, however, pushed northward at a brisk pace, collecting supplies along the way, compelling local residents to relocate goods beyond easy British reach, and clashing intermittently with his pursuers. The following month, Howe ordered Lieutenant Colonel Charles Mawhood on a similar mission, both to forage and to draw Wayne into open combat. On March 17, Mawhood crossed the Delaware into Salem County, New Jersey, commanding 1,200 men made up of British regulars alongside Loyalist units, namely the New Jersey Volunteers and John Graves Simcoe's Queen's Rangers. By then, Wayne, aware of enemy movements, had largely finished his task and was stationed in Burlington readying his return to Valley Forge.

Salem County's Alloway Creek offered a natural barrier, and once word of the British advance reached local militia, they fortified the two nearest crossings to the Delaware, Quinton's Bridge and Hancock's Bridge, aiming to block any British passage. When Mawhood arrived in Salem, local Loyalists informed him that Colonel Benjamin Holme, commanding 300 militiamen, held Quinton's Bridge just three miles (4.8 km) away to the southeast. Holme had positioned his men on the bridge's northern side and removed its planking so the British could not easily cross.

Battle

Under cover of darkness on March 18, ahead of sunrise, Mawhood positioned a number of detachments across the creek from where the American troops stood. He then pulled part of his men back from the bridge in a maneuver designed to look like a withdrawal. The trick worked: Captain William Smith, seeing what appeared to be a British retreat, restored the planks that had been removed and pursued with 200 of the 300 men assigned to guard the crossing. His men tracked the retreating column further down the road until they ran into a separate body of troops stationed behind a rail fence. Close by, additional British soldiers waited inside a house near that same fence.

Once Smith's detachment engaged the fence line, the men hidden in the house emerged and swung around behind the Americans, sealing off their path back to the bridge. Trapped, Smith's force had no choice but to attempt a second crossing of the creek. Meanwhile, the bulk of Mawhood's command reached the bridge itself and pushed to force their way across toward the American lines. Colonel Elijah Hand's militia arrived just in time, bringing two guns to bear and halting the British advance before the American detachment could be wiped out entirely. By the fighting's end, American losses stood at thirty to forty men, with drowning claiming most of them.

Aftermath

Despite suffering heavy losses at Quinton's Bridge, Hand's troops remained in place to bolster their defenses there. The following day, Mawhood tried to push the militia into retreat, but their strong position proved impossible to break. He then sent Major Simcoe with his rangers on a separate mission to strike at Hancock's Bridge. Simcoe's force backtracked to the Delaware and worked its way downstream before crossing to the creek's southern bank. From that point, they pushed onward, crossing rough ground by Simcoe's own description, until reaching the southern approach to Hancock's Bridge. The rangers caught between twenty and thirty men entirely off guard inside the home of local magistrate William Hancock, killing every one of them with bayonets. Simcoe had not set out to kill Hancock himself; his information indicated the judge had left the house once the militia took it over. That intelligence proved wrong, however, for Hancock had come back the previous night and died along with the others.

Following this, Mawhood wrote to Hand, cautioning that unless the militia laid down their weapons, he would move against armed militia members, torch their homes, and leave their wives and children destitute. Hand would not yield, answering that such threats of burning and ruin made him feel as though he faced the commands of a savage Attila rather than those of a polished and honorable gentleman.

Wayne's movement through the southern part of New Jersey strained relations between Washington and the state's leadership, given that New Jersey had largely been left to defend itself throughout the winter months. Once British forces reacted to Wayne's advance, New Jersey's officials pressed for a permanent Continental Army presence in that region. A week after Wayne moved on, Washington dispatched a modest detachment of Continentals to the southern part of the state, though this proved entirely insufficient to halt the collapse of the local militia structure there.