Only now were the rank and file told what was ahead of them, and volunteers were called for to form the advance parties. These men in turn were divided into a support group and a smaller lead element that would actually open gaps in the abatis. The latter party, carrying axes as well as guns, was aptly named the forlorn hope. To aid in the difficult task of identifying friend from foe at night, the soliders received a square piece of white paper that was affixed to the front of their caps. General Wayne’s rousing orders of the day were read, and the men were told that at the special request of General Washington, the first five soldiers or officers to reach the enemy’s main work at the summit would be rewarded with tiered payments from five hundred dollars for the first to one hundred dollars for the fifth. Finally, they were instructed that once the enemy works had been taken they were to shout again and again, The fort’s our own!

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In the few hours remaining, the men made ready. Some, like Wayne, wrote final letters and wills. Although Wayne had a powerful premonition that he would fall in the coming fight, he was no less determined to personally command the southern assault force. When preparations were complete, the men were drawn up in columns with bayonets fixed, and the forlorn hope moved to the front. At about 11:30 p.m., the word to advance was given.

What Wayne and Washington never knew was that the high degree of secrecy they had imposed on this operation had been compromised. In testimony at his later court-martial, Colonel Johnson stated: The Intelligence I received between eight and nine o’clock on the evening of the 15th from the scouts I had sent out the preceding evening…gave me reason to expect an attack. However, those scouts (two, based on other testimony) also indicated that the American plan required artillery that had not yet arrived, so Johnson refrained from issuing a full alert. According to the orders he did circulate, the soldiers at Stony Point were to lay with all their clothes on at night, [except coats, with which] their arms, ammunition, and accouterments is to be carefully put up in such a manner as they can get them upon the shortest notice.

Despite this advantage, the British defenses at Stony Point suffered from some serious deficiencies on the night of July 15. Unlike Clinton, whose relations with the Royal Navy were generally effective, the cooperation between Colonel Johnson and the two vessels assigned to aid him was almost nonexistent. It was not unusual for the gunboat to be unaccountably absent from her station, as she would be on the night of the 15th, and while Johnson was unhappy with the situation, he did nothing to resolve it. Also this night, again without informing Johnson, the sloop Vulture had repositioned herself in midriver, so that her guns no longer bore on Stony Point’s northern flank.

Compounding this serious loss of firepower, Johnson had yet to concentrate all his defenses on the core redoubts located on the Table of the Hill, so that most of his troop strength this night was divided between picket duties and manning the outer abatis. This created the unusual situation where the American attack plan designed to bypass the outer abatis almost perfectly mated with the weaknesses of the British defense, even though some of those components — such as the absence of both flanking vessels — could not have been anticipated.

The American attacking force of perhaps 1,150 men had been divided into two unequal wings. The largest, approximately seven hundred soldiers, was to go below the fort, march up the bank of the river, and attack it from the south side recorded one officer present. The forlorn hope preceding it was led by Lieutenant George Knox, who would be closely supported by the advance party under Lt. Col. Franois Louis de Fleury, a French soldier who had fought with distinction at Fort Mifflin and Brandywine. Behind them marched Anthony Wayne and the heavy columns made up of the regiments of Lt. Col. Christian Febiger, Colonel Return Meigs, and Major William Hull.

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