Aware that he saw only a fraction of the British Army, Washington was tormented by a nagging question: What had happened to the bulk of the enemy’s forces? Around noon Lieutenant Colonel James Ross of Pennsylvania informed him that, on a reconnaissance expedition, he had clashed with five thousand British troops on the west side of Brandywine Creek, along the Great Valley Road; he thought these troops had been led by General Howe himself. Washington didn’t fathom the full meaning of this news, though he did, as a precaution, shift troops under Adam Stephen and Lord Stirling to bolster General Sullivan’s men at Birmingham Hill, a position to his right that was well placed to resist any sudden flanking move from the upper forks.
On the spot, as his original battle plan unraveled, Washington sorted through a blizzard of contradictory information. Charles Cotesworth Pinckney of South Carolina remembered his patent frustration: “I heard him bitterly lament that Coll Bland had not sent him any information at all and that the accounts he had received from others were of a very contradictory nature.”15 Amid sharp clashes at Chadds Ford, General Sullivan relayed a report from Major Joseph Spear saying that he, too, had been at the Great Valley Road but found not a trace of Howe’s army. Tricked by Howe many times, Washington feared that his nemesis was about to deceive him again. Indeed, he drew the wrong conclusion from Spear’s report: he imagined that Howe had turned south and was doubling back to Chadds Ford. But in fact Howe was heading north in a long, looping movement; around noon his soldiers and horses, veiled by thick fog, waded across the northern crossing at Jeffries Ford, of whose existence Washington was unaware. As they splashed through waist-high water, the British and Hessians were flabbergasted to encounter no American resistance. By one-fifteen P.M. Washington had received reports of two British brigades moving upon Birmingham Hill from the north and abruptly realized that Howe had outwitted him. He spurred his horse toward the hill as fast as it would fly, but he still didn’t comprehend that the two brigades were merely the advance guard of Howe’s vast army.
Around four P.M., to the resounding beat of drums, British and German troops barreled forward in three sharply drawn columns, undeterred by a torrent of American canister and grapeshot. Piercing a wide hole in American lines, they engineered a deadly attack, firing muskets and charging in bayonet attacks. Tree branches snapped, leaves fluttered down, and gun smoke enveloped the battlefield. Soon the ground was thickly littered with dead bodies, mostly American, and some patriot divisions turned tail and ran. To complete a pincer movement against the Americans, Knyphausen and his men blasted their way across Brandywine Creek, diving at the Americans in a fierce bayonet attack that left the water dyed red with blood. The American private Elisha Stevens recorded the horror of “cannons roaring, muskets cracking, drums beating, bombs flying all round,” not to mention the groans of dying men.16 At five P.M. Washington dictated a message to Congress: “At half after four o’clock, the enemy attacked General Sullivan at the ford next above this and the action has been very violent ever since. It still continues. A very severe cannonade has begun here, too, and I suppose we shall have a very hot evening.”17 Washington had been completely deceived by Howe. “A contrariety of intelligence, in a critical and important point, contributed greatly, if it did not entirely bring on the misfortunes of that day,” he later wrote.18
Three routed American divisions fell back “in the most broken and confused manner,” according to Nathanael Greene, who managed to fight a noble rearguard action with his division. During the American retreat Lafayette showed his usual valor, jumping into the fray to rally his men. Shot in the left calf, he didn’t grasp the severity of the wound until his boot was soaked with blood and he had to be lifted off the battlefield. Possibly with some exaggeration, he claimed years later that Washington told the surgeon, “Take care of him as if he were my son, for I love him the same.”19 If true, this was an extraordinary statement, given how briefly Washington had known Lafayette. It would confirm that the young French nobleman had touched him in some special way, and it again speaks to Washington’s unseen emotional depths. He was always impressed by Lafayette’s bravery, his eagerness to return to service. “When [Washington] learned I wanted to rejoin the army too soon,” Lafayette told his wife, “he wrote the warmest of letters, urging me to concentrate on getting well first.”20
With the sound of muskets still reverberating in their ears, the overpowered Americans streamed east toward Chester in an unruly flight. Lafayette recalled the confused swarm of carts, cannon, and other military paraphernalia that the soldiers managed to salvage. These battlefield refugees, who straggled into the American camp throughout the night, left behind so many hundreds of bleeding compatriots at Brandywine Creek that Howe asked Washington to send doctors to care for them. All told, the Americans lost about 200 killed, 500 wounded, and 400 captured versus only 90 killed and 500 wounded for the triumphant British.
Toward midnight, in a private home in Chester, Washington informed Congress of the shattering defeat. After asking Timothy Pickering to draft a note, he found the message so dispiriting that he said some “words of encouragement” were needed .21 If this was self-serving, it also reflected Washington’s firm belief that he had to uphold American morale at all costs. The management of defeat had become an essential aspect of his repertoire. Rather desperately, he tried to give a positive gloss to the terrible thrashing his men had taken, grossly understating American losses. His letter to John Hancock began, “Sir: I am sorry to inform you that in this day’s engagement, we have been obliged to leave the enemy masters of the field.”22 It continued: “Our loss of men is not, I am persuaded, very considerable; I believe much less than the enemy’s . . . Notwithstanding the misfortune of the day, I am happy to find the troops in good spirits; and I hope another time, we shall compensate for the losses now sustained.”23 This sounded, after the bloody disaster, like sheer fantasy, but the troops had fought in a spirited manner; the defeat resulted from the failed performance of the leaders, not the lethargy of the rank and file. Two weeks after the battle Washington still maintained that “the enemy’s loss was considerable and much superior to ours.”24
It had been an ignoble defeat for Washington, who had failed to heed clues that might have unlocked the key to Howe’s strategy. The commander in chief had frequently seemed marginal to the battle. As Pickering said, Washington had behaved more like “a passive spectator than the commanding general.”25 Fighting on home territory near Philadelphia, he should have been able to master the terrain instead of relying on crude maps and erring scouts. The carnage and chaos of Brandywine only reinforced an image of Washington as dithering and indecisive.
Thomas Jefferson traced Washington’s strengths and weaknesses as a general to a persistent mental trait. He prepared thoroughly for battles and did extremely well if everything went according to plan. “But if deranged during the course of the action,” Jefferson noted, “if any member of his plan was dislocated by sudden circumstances, he was slow in readjustment.”26 With a mind neither quick nor nimble, Washington lacked the gift of spontaneity and found it difficult to improvise on the spot. Baron Johann de Kalb, who came to America with Lafayette, echoed Jefferson’s critique when he said of Washington after the Brandywine defeat, “He is the most amiable, obliging, and civil man but, as a general, he is too slow, even indolent, much too weak, and is not without his portion of vanity and presumption.”27 Even Washington’s faithful ally Nathanael Greene confided to Pickering that he found Washington indecisive. “For my part,” he boasted, “I decide in a moment.”28 Washington’s inestimable strength, whether as a general, a planter, or a politician, was prolonged deliberation and slow, mature decisions, but these were luxuries seldom permitted in the heat and confusion of battle.
Somewhat unfairly, congressional opinion found General Sullivan culpable for passing along bad information to Washington. The latter had the good grace to acquit Sullivan of any blame, but he didn’t admit failure readily. Dr. Benjamin Rush left an acidu
lous portrait of Washington’s compliant general staff after Brandywine. He saw the commander as a passive figure manipulated by Greene, Knox, and Hamilton and portrayed his generals as a rogues’ gallery of incompetent buffoons: “The first [Greene] a sycophant to the general, speculative without enterprise. The second [Sullivan] weak, vain, without dignity, fond of scribbling, in the field a mad-man. The third [Stirling] a proud, vain, lazy, ignorant drunkard. The fourth [Stephen] a sordid, boasting, cowardly sot.”29 His description of the “undisciplined and ragged” American camp was scarcely more flattering, a scene of “bad bread, no order, universal disgust.”30 It was true that Washington surrounded himself with loyal men, but he never walled himself off from contrary opinion or tried to force his views on his generals.
After the Brandywine disaster, Washington marched his battered army north across the Schuylkill River to Pennypacker’s Mill. No longer could he guarantee the safety of the American capital. He sent Alexander Hamilton and Henry Lee scurrying off on an urgent mission to burn flour mills on the Schuylkill before they were captured by the British. On the night of September 18, Hamilton alerted Hancock that the British might enter the city by daybreak, triggering a panicky exodus of congressmen in the night. Thomas Paine remembered Philadelphia’s moonlit streets thronged by so many people that the town resembled high noon on market day. “Congress was chased like a covey of partridges from Philadelphia to Trenton, from Trenton to Lancaster,” recalled John Adams, who was especially upset by the emergency move and disenchanted with the man he had once championed to lead the Continental Army.31 In his diary he scribbled, “Oh, Heaven! Grant us one great soul! . . . One active, masterly capacity would bring order out of this confusion and save this country.”32
The British didn’t claim possession of the capital for another week, giving Washington a chance to gather vital supplies. Invoking emergency powers, he sent Hamilton into the city, assisted by one hundred men, to requisition supplies. Many soldiers had shed blankets and clothing, and one thousand were barefoot; with the weather turning colder, these items rated high on the list of goods Hamilton demanded from residents during two frantic days of activity. Always skittish about employing autocratic powers in a war fought for liberty, Washington had Hamilton issue receipts to residents, in the hope they would someday be reimbursed. This highly effective operation yielded forty rounds of ammunition per soldier.
Around this time Washington received another sickening piece of news. On the night of September 20-21 British infantry had crept through the woods near Paoli and massacred American troops led by General Anthony Wayne. To ensure surprise, the British did not load their muskets but rushed forward with fixed bayonets and pitilessly slashed their sleeping victims, killing or wounding three hundred Americans. Even the British soldiers seemed appalled by the blood-smeared corpses, one saying it was “more expressive of horror than all the thunder of the artillery . . . on the day of action.”33 To worsen matters, hungry American soldiers went marauding through the countryside, terrorizing inhabitants. Tired of marching in drenching rains, they sought shelter wherever they could find it. When the Reverend Henry Muhlenberg had to bury a child at his church near Valley Forge, he found Washington’s men defiling it. An outraged Muhlenberg said that “several had placed the objects of their gluttony on the altar. In short, I saw, in miniature, the abomination of desolation in the temple.”34 If such desecration was the antithesis of the orderly behavior Washington craved, it was hard to maintain morale with meager pay and a dearth of military victories.
On September 26 the well-fed British Army entered Philadelphia and scored the propaganda victory of controlling America’s capital and main metropolis. While frightened citizens applauded the soldiers, as they had their American counterparts a month earlier, the crowd consisted mostly of women and children, many men having fled. By this point Washington knew he was engaged in a war of attrition and that holding towns was less important in this mobile style of warfare. As he informed Henry Laurens, “The possession of our towns, while we have an army in the field, will avail [the British] little . . . It is our arms, not defenseless towns, they have to subdue.”35
ALTHOUGH CORNWALLIS HAD TAKEN a detachment of British and Hessian soldiers into Philadelphia, General Howe retained the main body of his army at Germantown, a village just six miles northwest of the city, hard by the Schuylkill River. He expressly placed it there as a bulwark between Washington’s army and the capital. Eager for a victory after so much wretched news, and with 8,000 Continentals and 3,000 militia at his disposal, Washington reckoned that he could stage a surprise raid on Howe’s force of 9,000 men, an idea that grew on him when he learned that Howe had diverted two regiments to attack a small American fort on the Delaware.
At a war council on October 3, Washington told his receptive generals that Howe’s maneuver made it an auspicious moment for an operation. Forever attuned to the psychological state of his men, he knew this might be the last chance for a victory before winter. Only something dramatic could revive his countrymen’s flagging spirits. As he told his generals, “It was time to remind the English that an American army still existed.”36 Once again Washington’s aggressive instincts forced him into an action both courageous and foolhardy, one that belied his cautious image as the American Fabius. As Joseph Ellis has written of Washington’s conflicting urges, “The strategic decision to make the survival of the Continental Army the highest priority, the realization that he must fight a protracted defensive war, remained at odds with his own more decisive temperament.”37
As usual, Howe had shrewdly chosen his army camp at Germantown, a place crisscrossed by creeks, ravines, and gorges. The town’s main street, the Germantown Road, was lined for two miles with snug, stone houses, many protected by fences and hedges that could retard an American advance. Doubtless remembering his nocturnal raid across the Delaware, Washington devised another convoluted plan for a forced nighttime march. On October 3 four widely spaced but roughly parallel columns would start moving southeast at nightfall and would converge on Germantown by dawn. Along with General Sullivan, Washington would spearhead a column of 3,000 men charging down the Germantown Road. To the northeast, Greene would lead 5,000 men along a parallel path, the Lime Kiln Road, while still farther north General William Smallwood and another 1,000 militia would venture along a winding old Indian path called the Old York Road. To the south, General John Armstrong would guide 2,000 Pennsylvania militia along the Schuylkill. If all went according to plan, Washington’s central column would swoop down on the unsuspecting British, while Greene’s column swung around and pinioned their helpless army against the Schuylkill River.
As his troops gathered at dusk on October 3, Washington took several precautions that suggested a premonition of problems to come. Because the Continental Army lacked a common uniform, he had his men insert shining white papers in their hats so they wouldn’t accidentally shoot each other. Short on supplies, one New Jersey regiment donned “redcoats” captured from British troops, awakening understandable fears of men’s being killed by friendly fire. The fifteen-mile march overnight would be further complicated by a rolling fog that sealed off the four columns from one another. As had happened during the Delaware crossing, the operation ran hours behind schedule, and the element of surprise was sacrificed when a Loyalist warned the British of approaching Americans.
Washington’s column was still stalled north of town when daylight streaked the sky. Up ahead, at an area known as Mount Airy, he could hear brisk musketry fire. Everything was so obscured by morning fog that he could only conjecture what was happening. Mindful that his men bore just forty rounds apiece, he instructed Pickering, “I am afraid General Sullivan is throwing away his ammunition. Ride forward and tell him to preserve it.”38 The fighting at Mount Airy took a savage turn as Americans tried to avenge the unspeakable massacre at Paoli, shouting “Have at the bloodhounds! Revenge Wayne’s affair!”39 After heavy casualties on both sides, the British regiment finally retreated
. When Washington reached the outskirts of Germantown, he beheld a surreal sight: the British had torched the fields of buckwheat so that billowing smoke mingled with fog made the dawn “infinitely dark,” as he remembered .40 It was a hellish scene, with visibility restricted to thirty yards. For once the fog of war was more than metaphorical. One American officer remembered that “the smoke of the fire of cannon and musketry, the smoke of several fields of stubble, hay and other combustibles . . . made such a midnight darkness that [a] great part of the time there was no discovering friend from foe.”41 When Washington saw discarded British tents and cannon lying alongside the road, he concluded that the first phase of his operation was succeeding.
As he and his men advanced down the Germantown Road, they were startled by a withering shower of musket balls. Through the mist, they perceived that the fire emanated from the windows of a three-story country house owned by Benjamin Chew, which had been commandeered by one hundred British soldiers. Perched on high ground, the stone house was made of locally quarried schist, starred with mica; classical statuary dotted the grounds. The British had turned the Georgian house into an impregnable fortress by bolting and barricading the door, shuttering the many windows, and training their weapons on the Americans. For a moment, it seemed the entire patriotic effort might founder on this single stubborn obstacle. Washington summoned an impromptu conference of officers on horseback. Most favored cordoning off the Chew house and pushing on, leaving a single regiment in the rear to subdue it. Then Henry Knox, speaking with resonant authority, cited the military doctrine that, in hostile country, one never left a fortified castle in the rear. This sounded like the sage voice of experience, and Washington made a snap judgment to side with this minority view. It would prove a costly error.