The mood inside the room was as uncomfortable as the sweltering air outside. Most of the senior leaders of the Continental Army commanded by General George Washington were present at Englishtown’s Village Inn. The general had summoned his officers to discuss the fight with the British expected on the morrow. Washington departed that meeting believing his intentions had been thoroughly understood, when in fact his commanders remained sharply divided. The stage was set for the most controversial battle of the Revolutionary War, and the public disgrace of a military figure whose reputation had loomed large in the annals of America’s struggle for independence.

Subscribe Today

• Did you enjoy our article?
• Read more in MHQ magazine
• Subscribe online and save!
 

Momentous events were unfolding. Just twelve days earlier — June 15, 1778 — British forces had begun withdrawing from Philadelphia, occupied since the previous September 26. Signs of their pending departure had been evident for several weeks, so the movement had not been a surprise. The surprise was that most of the British soldiers and a large supply train were marching overland instead of leaving by boat. This presented an opening for the Continental Army, hardened and better disciplined after its difficult winter encampment at Valley Forge. It was an opportunity that Washington was anxious to exploit.

The officer directing the British column, Lt. Gen. Sir Henry Clinton, had been fidgeting in New York as the unhappy second-in-command to General Lord William Howe, waiting on word of a requested transfer to London, when he learned that Howe had resigned. Clinton was assigned to replace Howe in Philadelphia. For the lieutenant general, who saw no easy way out of the conflict, the news was the harbinger of worse to come. France had entered the war on the American side, and strategic planners in London were abruptly taking a different view of military priorities. No longer was the North America problem paramount; expeditions against French possessions in the Caribbean promised far more lucrative targets.

Hardly had Clinton grasped the reins of control than he learned that many of his troops would be taken from him. It became painfully clear that with resources stretched to the limit, he could no longer hold on to the captured rebel capital, for it had become what King George III called ‘a joke to think of keeping Pennsylvania.’ Clinton was instructed to evacuate Philadelphia by sea and reestablish his headquarters in New York. Such were the changing times that he was also authorized to abandon New York and retreat as far as Nova Scotia if need be. The next operational phase in the American conflict would consist of hit-and-run raids, with an emphasis on the Southern colonies where, it was believed, Loyalist sentiment was strong.

Clinton’s planning was further complicated by two other matters: the arrival of a negotiating team sent from London and the fate of Philadelphia’s loyal citizens. The terms from Parliament the Peace Commission offered in Philadelphia (concessions just short of actual independence) were dead on arrival. The now-useless commissioners became a distraction in Clinton’s efforts.

More significant was the matter of the Pennsylvanians who had publicly demonstrated their loyalty to the Crown during the British occupation. Clinton’s morally courageous decision to evacuate as many of those citizens as wished to leave meant that much of the limited shipping space available to him would be used for nonmilitary purposes. This led to his first act of insubordination when he decided to ignore his instructions and move his army overland to New York, carrying along all the supplies and munitions that could not be sent by ship.

Two American armies represented the greatest threat to Clinton’s march — fourteen thousand men under Washington at Valley Forge, and another four thousand commanded by Horatio Gates covering New York. While the prospect of a junction of these two caused Clinton many sleepless nights, he briefly considered taking the offensive to drive a wedge between the pair and defeat them in detail, but such musing soon gave way to hard realities. The provisions and military baggage, filling a train of fifteen hundred wagons, had to be protected. For some of the distance the primitive American road network allowed him to march in two columns, sometimes three, but in others only a single passageway carried the traffic. To negotiate these dangerous stretches, Clinton had no option but to adopt the risky expedient of dividing his nineteen-thousand-man army — half leading the procession, half trailing it.

Help HistoryNet by bookmarking to