Fort Washington

On November 16, 1776, British and American troops clashed in New York in what became known as the Battle of Fort Washington, part of the larger struggle between Great Britain and the United States. The engagement ended in a British triumph, forcing what remained of the fort's defenders to surrender near the northern tip of Manhattan. Few losses suffered by the Patriots during the entire conflict proved as severe as this one.

Following their success against Washington's Continental Army at White Plains, British troops under Lieutenant General William Howe turned their attention toward seizing Fort Washington, which stood as the final American position on Manhattan. Washington gave General Nathanael Greene discretion to evacuate the fort and withdraw its garrison, then 1,200 strong but eventually swelling to 3,000, across to New Jersey. However, Colonel Robert Magaw, who held temporary command there, declined to pull out, convinced his men could hold the position against British assault. Before Washington himself could reach the scene to evaluate matters, Howe's men launched their attack on November 16.

Howe organized a three-pronged assault, striking from the north, east, and south simultaneously. Harlem River tides hindered some troops from getting ashore, slowing the offensive somewhat. Once the British pressed forward against the fortifications, both the eastern and southern American lines gave way rapidly, and the barriers meant to slow the attackers proved easy to circumvent. On the northern flank, Patriot defenders put up fierce opposition against the advancing Hessians, yet ultimately they too succumbed to superior numbers. Facing encirclement from both land and water, Magaw made the decision to surrender the position. The toll included 59 Americans killed in the fighting, with another 2,837 captured and held as prisoners.

In the aftermath of this setback, British forces chased a substantial portion of Washington's army through New Jersey and on into Pennsylvania. Meanwhile, Britain tightened its grip over New York Harbor along with the eastern half of New Jersey.

Background

During the Revolutionary War, Fort Washington sat atop Manhattan's highest ground, perched on a great slab of Manhattan schist near the island's northern tip. Together with Fort Lee, positioned across the Hudson on the New Jersey Palisades, the pair of strongholds was meant to guard the lower river against British naval vessels.

In June 1776, a group of Patriot officers, Henry Knox, Nathanael Greene, William Heath, and Israel Putnam, walked the ground where the fort would rise, concluding that a properly built fortification there would be nearly impossible to capture. Washington himself, as Commander-in-Chief of the Continental Army, toured the site later that month and judged it essential to defending the lower Hudson. Soon after his visit, Pennsylvania troops broke ground on the fort under Rufus Putnam's direction.

Their first task was building a cheval de frise meant to keep British vessels from sailing up the river and getting around the American position. For over a month, soldiers hauled stones from Manhattan's heights down to the riverbank, packing them into timber hulks and cribs strung across the water. Once that barrier was complete, construction on the fort itself began. Since the rocky ground held almost no soil, laborers had to carry earth up from lower elevations, and digging the usual surrounding ditches or trenches proved impossible. The finished structure took the form of a five-sided pentagon, its earthen walls fitted with ravelins that allowed gunfire in every direction, enclosing between three and four acres. An abatis surrounded the whole works. Once the barracks were completed in September, command of all forces in the area passed to Major General William Heath, and Washington set up his own headquarters nearby.

A network of additional defenses supported the main fort. Gun batteries stood at Jeffrey's Hook, jutting into the Hudson, and at Cox's Hill overlooking Spuyten Duyvil Creek. More batteries commanded the King's Bridge and Dyckman's Bridge over the Harlem River at Manhattan's northern edge, and still others lined Laurel Hill to the fort's east along the Harlem (the area now includes Fort Tryon Park). South of the fort, three successive lines of trenches and foxholes were laid out for defense: a second line backed the first about 0.33 mi (0.5 km) north, and a third was planned another 0.25 mi (0.4 km) beyond that, though it remained only a plan.

British General William Howe, having secured western Long Island at the close of August 1776 in the Battle of Long Island, pushed into Manhattan on September 15. A day later his advance stalled at the Battle of Harlem Heights, prompting him to seek a way around the formidable American lines to the north. After a failed landing on October 11, he put troops ashore in southern Westchester County (in what is now the Bronx) on October 18, aiming to sever the Continental Army's escape route. Recognizing the peril, Washington pulled the bulk of his forces north toward White Plains, leaving only 1,200 men under Colonel Robert Magaw to hold Fort Washington, a force that history would judge too small for the sprawling defenses. Howe, meanwhile, stationed Hugh Percy with a modest force below Harlem Heights to keep watch on the garrison.

On the morning of October 27, lookouts warned Magaw that Percy's men were advancing, backed by two frigates working up the Hudson. Magaw responded by turning his guns on the ships, and fire from both Fort Lee and Fort Washington left the frigates badly damaged, their own cannon unable to reach the elevation of the American positions. The British eventually towed the vessels away, though artillery exchanges between the two sides dragged on afterward.

On November 8, roughly two dozen American soldiers pushed a somewhat larger Hessian company out of a forward redoubt. Despite holding the high ground with better cover and artillery backing throughout the brief clash, the Hessians could not hold their position. Only one Continental soldier was hurt, while at least two Hessians died and an unknown number were wounded. The Americans burned and plundered the temporary works there before withdrawing after dark. The following day, Hessians retook the position but were again forced out, this time by a larger American contingent, leaving ten of their dead behind while, once more, only a single American was wounded.

These small victories left Magaw overconfident, and he claimed he could withstand a siege lasting until the end of December. Yet on November 2, his own adjutant, William Demont, had already deserted to the British, handing over detail

Battle

In the darkness before daybreak on November 16, British and Hessian forces set out on their mission. Flatboats carried Knyphausen and his men across the Harlem River to Manhattan, after which the boatmen turned back downriver to collect Mathew's soldiers. The tide, however, prevented the boats from reaching close enough to shore to load the British troops, forcing Knyphausen to halt and wait for Mathew's crossing to become possible.

Roughly at 7:00 a.m., Hessian cannons began bombarding the American battery atop Laurel Hill while the British frigate Pearl trained its guns on the American trenches. South of the fort, Percy directed his own artillery against the stronghold, targeting Magaw's guns, the same pieces that had struck British vessels weeks earlier.

By midday, Knyphausen's Hessians resumed their march. Once the tide rose sufficiently, Mathew's men crossed the Harlem River alongside Howe, landing under a storm of fire from American guns positioned on the Manhattan bank. Pushing up the slope, the British scattered American defenders until reaching a redoubt held by Pennsylvania Volunteer companies. A short clash sent the Americans fleeing back toward the fort.

Meanwhile, north of the fort, Johann Rall led the Hessian right up the steep terrain south of Spuyten Duyvil Creek, meeting scarcely any opposition, and his men began hauling artillery into position. At that point Knyphausen's main force of four thousand Hessians pressed forward along the Post Road, the route separating Laurel Hill from Rall's position. Crossing marshy ground, they came under fire near the wooded slope by the fort from two hundred fifty sharpshooters of the Maryland and Virginia Rifle Regiment, commanded by Lieutenant Colonel Moses Rawlings. Concealed among boulders and trees, Rawlings' riflemen shifted position constantly, picking off Hessians struggling through fallen timber and stone, and beat back the first two assaults.

At Bennett Park, as it is known today, John Corbin manned a small cannon atop the ridge until Hessian attackers killed him, leaving the gun untended. His wife Margaret, who had remained beside him throughout the fight, took his place immediately and kept firing despite wounds to her arm, chest, and jaw, becoming history's first known female combatant of the Revolution.

Around this same period, farther south, Percy pushed forward with roughly three thousand men in two columns, his Hessian brigade on the left while he personally led the right. He stopped his advance about two hundred yards from American positions to await Stirling's diversionary movement. Opposing him stood Alexander Graydon's company, under Lambert Cadwalader, Magaw's second in command, tasked with holding the three defensive lines south of the fort. When word reached Cadwalader of an enemy landing behind his position, he dispatched fifty men to meet it, but they instead encountered the feigned assault of Colonel Stirling's 42nd Foot, seven hundred strong. Stirling had chosen the weakest point in the American defenses to land, and upon learning the size of the force, Cadwalader sent another hundred men as reinforcement. British landing parties fanned out searching for passable ground through the rugged shoreline while Americans on a nearby hilltop fired at troops still crossing the river. Stirling's men, already climbing the heights, charged and broke up the American position.

The sound of gunfire prompted Percy to push his own advance forward. British artillery drove Graydon's men from the first line back to the second, where Washington, Greene, Putnam, and Hugh Mercer stood. Persuaded to abandon Manhattan, all four crossed at once to Fort Lee. Recognizing that Cadwalader risked encirclement, Magaw ordered him to fall back toward the fort. Percy's troops pursued Cadwalader's retreating men just as Stirling's landing force chased back those who had opposed it. Stirling's soldiers, now behind Cadwalader, hesitated, suspecting hidden troops in the entrenchments, and this pause allowed retreating Americans engaging Stirling to buy time for most of their comrades to escape.

Once Magaw's outer defenses collapsed to the south and east, a general retreat began as American forces sought refuge inside the fort itself.

Aftermath

Once Hessian troops moved into the fort, American officers tried to soften relations with Captain von Malmburg, the Hessian officer who oversaw the capitulation. They welcomed him into their quarters and served him wine, punch, and cake, along with polite words. Yet as the garrison departed, Hessian soldiers took the baggage belonging to American soldiers and struck several of them, prompting officers to step in and stop further harm. Among the spoils seized by British forces were thirty-four cannons, two howitzers, and a large supply of tents, blankets, tools, and ammunition.

Casualties on the British and Hessian side numbered 84 dead and 374 wounded. On the American side, 59 men died, 96 were wounded, and 2,837 were taken prisoner. Given how prisoners of war were typically treated during the conflict, only 800 of those captured lived long enough to be freed a year and a half later through an exchange; roughly three out of every four captives perished.

Fort Lee fell into American hands no longer three days after Fort Washington's surrender. Washington led his army in retreat across New Jersey, eventually crossing the Delaware River into Pennsylvania just northwest of Trenton, with British troops chasing them as far as New Brunswick, New Jersey. Roughly a month later, on the night of December 25 into December 26, 1776, Washington recrossed the Delaware and struck the Hessian garrison commanded by Rall at Trenton, defeating them. He followed this victory with another at Princeton against British forces, restoring confidence among his soldiers and the colonies shaken by the earlier loss of Fort Washington.

Seven years passed before, on November 25, 1783, following the signing of the peace treaty, Washington and Governor George Clinton marched into lower Manhattan and reclaimed the fort's site in triumph, after the final British troops had departed New York.

Today the location of Fort Washington lies within Bennett Park, in Manhattan's Washington Heights neighborhood, just to the north of the George Washington Bridge. Stones set within the park mark where its walls once stood, and a plaque commemorates the site.