When British troops captured the river fortress at Stony Point, New York, in 1779, George Washington was determined to drive them out with force and fixed bayonets.

Powder flashes lit the night as musketry rattled tentatively along the British lines. Then the cannon spoke, and pellets of grapeshot ripped through weeds, water, uniforms and flesh. A bloody night lay ahead

No man dared speak as the American soldiers crept grimly toward the enemy-held promontory silhouetted against the midnight sky. Their orders stated that any man who spoke, fired his musket or took one step backward would be executed on the spot. Officers brandishing ugly iron-tipped pikes advanced quietly alongside their men, ready to impale the first who disobeyed. It was July 15, 1779, just before midnight.

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Twenty soldiers, led by a fresh-faced 21-year-old lieutenant from Pennsylvania named George Knox, headed the American column. Collectively and aptly named the "Forlorn Hope" in testament to their dim chances of survival, the men had volunteered for the honor of leading the assault on British fortifications at Stony Point, N.Y.

Knox's volunteers carried heavy axes with which to dismantle the abatis—thick rows of outward-facing sharpened logs the British had built into the double line of earthworks protecting their inner redoubt. The Americans would have to work quickly to enable the infantry marching behind them to storm through the breaches.

Success depended on surprise. The only possible approach to Stony Point lay across a boggy marsh and up a grassy slope devoid of shelter and covered in enfilade by well-trained British infantry. Redoubts mounting cannon stocked with grapeshot also covered the approach. The slightest noise—a splash, a cough, a clank of equipment—might alert the enemy and precipitate disaster.

Knox's men had been told to expect no more than two feet of water in the marsh. Instead, with their first steps, they plunged into chest-deep pools of muck. Splashes resounded through the night air as they waded forward, mud slowing their pace to a nightmarish crawl. More troops toppled in behind them, slipping, stumbling and pulling each other into the morass.

As they struggled forward, a shout, then several, echoed from behind the enemy abatis. Powder flashes lit the night as musketry rattled tentatively along the British lines. Then the cannon spoke, and pellets of grapeshot ripped through weeds, water, uniforms and flesh. A bloody night lay ahead.

Myth paints George Washington as a Fabian warrior, carefully husbanding his resources and avoiding risky battles on the assumption the United States could outlast Great Britain in a protracted war. In fact, he was an aggressive commander always on the lookout for the final, set-piece battle that would shatter Britain's army and ensure American victory. In part, this was a matter of personality—Washington was a gambler by instinct. In addition, however, Washington seriously doubted whether the fledgling United States possessed the economic wherewithal to endure a protracted conflict.

"I have seen without despondency (even for a moment) the hours which America have stiled [sic] her gloomy ones," Washington wrote to his friend George Mason in the spring of 1779. "But I have beheld no day since the commencement of hostilities that I have thought her liberties in such eminent danger as at present." Political corruption and economic weakness had spurred a wildfire of inflation that threatened to bring the country to its knees.

Lacking the power to enact legislation, Washington could not help thinking in terms of some military action that could restore the country's focus and sense of purpose. Unfortunately, British-occupied New York City looked next to impregnable, and enemy forces in Georgia and South Carolina operated well out of his reach. Opportunities to bloody the enemy seemed few and far between.

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