New York and New Jersey campaign
The New York and New Jersey campaign in 1776 and the winter months of 1777 was a series of American Revolutionary War battles for control of the Port of New York and the state of New Jersey, fought between British forces under General Sir William Howe and the Continental Army under General George Washington. Howe was successful in driving Washington out of New York, but overextended his reach into New Jersey, and ended the New York and New Jersey campaign in January 1777 with only a few outposts near New York City under British control. The British held New York Harbor for the rest of the Revolutionary War, using it as a base for expeditions against other targets.
Landing unopposed on Staten Island on July 3, 1776, Howe had assembled an army that included components that had withdrawn from Boston in March following the British failure to hold that city, combined with additional British troops, and Hessian troops hired from several German principalities. Washington's Continental Army included New England soldiers and regiments from the Thirteen Colonies as far south as the Colony of Virginia. Landing on Long Island in August, Howe defeated Washington in the largest battle of the war in North America, but the Continental Army was able to regroup and make an orderly and covert retreat to Manhattan that night under a cover of darkness and fog. Washington suffered a series of further defeats in Manhattan but prevailed in a skirmish at the Battle of Harlem Heights and eventually withdrew his troops successfully to White Plains, New York. Howe, meanwhile, returned to Manhattan and captured those forces Washington had left on the island.
Washington and much of his army crossed the Hudson River to Rockland County and then south into New Jersey, retreated across the state, and then crossed the Delaware River into Pennsylvania. Along the way, his army shrank due to the ending of enlistment periods, desertions, and poor morale. Howe ordered his troops into winter quarters in December, establishing a chain of outposts from New York City to Burlington, New Jersey. Washington, in a tremendous boost to American morale, launched a successful strike against the Trenton garrison on the morning of December 26, 1776, prompting Howe to withdraw his chain of outposts back to New Brunswick and the coast near New York. Washington, in turn, established his winter camp at Morristown. During the following winter months and through the rest of the war, both sides skirmished frequently around New York City and New Jersey as the British sought forage and provisions.
Britain maintained control of New York City and some of the surrounding territory until the war ended in 1783, using it as a base for operations elsewhere in North America. In 1777, General Howe launched a campaign to capture the revolutionary capital of Philadelphia, leaving General Sir Henry Clinton in command of the New York area, while General John Burgoyne led an attempt to gain control of the Hudson River valley, moving south from Quebec and being defeated at Saratoga.
Background
When the American Revolutionary War broke out in April 1775, British troops were under siege in Boston. They defeated Patriot forces in the Battle of Bunker Hill, suffering very high casualties. When news of this expensive British victory reached London, General William Howe and Lord George Germain, the British official responsible, determined that a "decisive action" should be taken against New York City using forces recruited from throughout the British Empire as well as troops hired from small German states.Washington, who was named commander-in-chief of the Continental Army by the Second Continental Congress in Philadelphia, echoed the sentiments of other in the Congress that New York was "a post of infinite importance", and began the task of organizing military companies in the New York area when he stopped there on his way from Philadelphia to take command of the siege of Boston. In January 1776, Washington ordered Charles Lee to raise troops and take command of New York's defenses. Lee made some progress on the city's defenses when word arrived in late March that the British army had left Boston after Washington threatened them from heights south of the city. Concerned that General Howe was sailing directly to New York, Washington hurried regiments from Boston, including General Israel Putnam, who commanded the troops until Washington himself arrived in mid-April. At the end of April, Washington dispatched General John Sullivan with six regiments to the north to bolster the faltering Quebec campaign.
General Howe, rather than moving against New York, withdrew his army to Halifax in Nova Scotia, and regrouped while transports full of British troops, shipped from bases around Europe and intended for New York, began gathering at Halifax. In June, Howe set sail for New York with the 9,000 men assembled there, before all of the transports arrived. German troops, primarily from Hesse-Kassel, and British troops from Henry Clinton's ultimately unsuccessful expedition to the Carolinas, were supposed to meet with Howe's fleet when it reached New York. General Howe's brother, Admiral Lord Howe, arrived at Halifax with further transports after the general sailed, and immediately followed.
When General Howe arrived in the outer harbor of New York, the ships began sailing up the undefended Narrows between Staten Island and Long Island on July 2, and started landing troops on the undefended shores of Staten Island. Washington learned from prisoners taken that Howe had landed 10,000 men, but was awaiting the arrival of another 15,000. General Washington, with a smaller army of about 19,000 effective troops, lacked significant military intelligence on the British force and plans, and was uncertain exactly where in the New York area the Howes intended to strike. He consequently split the Continental Army between fortified positions on Long Island, Manhattan, and mainland locations, and also established a Flying Camp in northern New Jersey that was intended as a reserve force that could support operations anywhere along the New Jersey side of the Hudson River.
Capture of New York City
The Howe brothers had been granted authority as peace commissioners by the British Parliament with limited powers to pursue a peaceful resolution to the conflict. King George III was not optimistic about the possibility for peace, however, saying, "yet I think it right to be attempted, whilst every act of vigour is unremittingly carried on". Their powers were limited to granting of "general and special pardons" and to "confer with any of his Majesty's subjects". On July 14, pursuant to these powers, Admiral Howe sent a messenger with a letter addressed to "George Washington, Esq." across the harbor. Washington's adjutant, Joseph Reed, politely informed the messenger that no person with that title was in their army. Admiral Howe's aide wrote that "the Punctilio of an Address" should not have prevented the letter's delivery, and Howe was said to be visibly annoyed by the rejection. A second request, addressed to "George Washington, Esq., etc." was similarly rejected, although the messenger was told that Washington would receive one of Howe's adjutants. In that fruitless meeting, held July 20, Washington pointed out that the limited powers the Howe brothers had been given were not of much use, as the rebels had done no wrong requiring an amnesty.In late August, the British transported about 22,000 men, including 9,000 Hessians, from Staten Island to Long Island. In the Battle of Long Island on August 27, the British outflanked the American positions, driving the Americans back to their Brooklyn Heights fortifications. General Howe then began to lay siege to the works, but Washington skillfully managed a nighttime retreat through his unguarded rear across the East River to the island of Manhattan. Howe then paused to consolidate his position and consider his next move.
During the Battle of Long Island, the British captured General John Sullivan. Admiral Howe convinced him to deliver a message to Congress in Philadelphia and released him on parole. Washington also gave his permission, and on September 2, Sullivan told the Congress that the Howes wanted to negotiate, and had been given much broader powers to treat than those they actually held. This created a diplomatic problem for Congress, which did not want to be seen as aggressive, which is how some representatives felt a direct rejection of the appeal would appear. Consequently, Congress agreed to send a committee to meet with the Howes in a move they did not think would bear any fruit. On September 11, the Howe brothers met with John Adams, Benjamin Franklin, and Edward Rutledge in the Staten Island Peace Conference. The positions expressed by the two groups in the three-hour meeting were irreconcilable.
Washington, who had previously been ordered by the Continental Congress to hold New York City, was concerned that he might have escaped one trap for another, since the army was still vulnerable to being surrounded on Manhattan. To keep his escape routes open to the north, he placed 5,000 troops in the city, and took the rest of the army to Harlem Heights. In the first recorded use of a submarine in warfare, he also attempted a novel attack on the Royal Navy, launching Turtle in a failed attempt to sink, Admiral Howe's flagship.
On September 15, General Howe landed about 12,000 men on Lower Manhattan, quickly taking control of New York City. The Americans withdrew to Harlem, where they skirmished the next day, but held their ground. Rather than attempting to dislodge Washington from his strong position a second time, Howe again opted for a flanking maneuver. Landing troops with some opposition in October in Westchester County across the Harlem River and north of Manhattan, he sought once again to encircle Washington. To defend against this move, Washington withdrew most of his army to White Plains, where after a short battle on October 28, he retreated further north. The retreat of Washington's forces was aided by a dense fog that concealed their movement from the British troops. This isolated the remaining Continental Army troops in upper Manhattan, so Howe returned to Manhattan and captured Fort Washington in mid-November, taking almost 3,000 prisoners.
Four days later, on November 20, Fort Lee, across the Hudson River from Fort Washington, was also taken. Washington brought much of his army across the Hudson into New Jersey, but was immediately forced to retreat by the aggressive British advance.
General Howe, after consolidating British positions around New York harbor, detached 6,000 men under the command of two of his more difficult subordinates, Henry Clinton, and Hugh, Earl Percy to take Newport, Rhode Island and its strategic port east across Long Island Sound, while he sent General Lord Cornwallis to chase Washington's army through New Jersey. The Americans withdrew across the Delaware River into Pennsylvania in early December.