The End of the New York Campaign





By December of 1776, George Washington would look back at the New York Campaign mostly with loss, fear, and confusion.  The Revolution began in Boston with a half-victory at Bunker Hill which resulted in the British military evacuating that city and licking its wounds at Halifax Nova Scotia.  Washington was deemed a premature hero,

Boston was free of the Redcoats, and claims for official independence might be called for soon.  New York, however, was not going to be anything like Lexington, Concord or Boston.  British and Hessian troops would not only defeat the American Rebels handily at the largest battle in the entire war at Long Island,

then take Fort Washington, located on the Hudson River,

but would give no quarter to a mostly scared and retreating Patriot army.  Washington, by some cunning and much luck, would retreat undetected off the Manhattan Island in the night to New Jersey with a core of his army. From that point forward he was determined to fight a different kind of war, one of evasion and limited skirmishes, realizing that his own sick, hobbled, and ill-equipped army – many either abandoning after NY, or leaving on scheduled release – could not fight an Imperial Force that included over 30,000 troops, including 10,000 rented Hessian soldiers, and the most powerful Navy in the world at that time.

As the British began their pursuit of the Continental Army into the interior of the colonies at New Jersey, Pennsylvania and Rhode Island, the American people were in such a state of despair that the winter was deemed the 'black period' of the Revolutionary War – Philadelphians loyal to the Cause began to flee the city; other families, up until that point undecided as to their loyalty, swayed their allegiance toward the King.  Army recruitment not only deteriorated, but regiments were split-up to such a degree that Washington, the key target of the British, had fewer troops in his own possession than either of his two other primary generals, Gates and Lee, both located north of New Jersey.  Neither general Gates or General Lee approved of Washington's performance and Lee would purposefully disobey marching orders; questions arose as to the meaning of the Cause exactly. What kind of repercussions might there be from a revengeful British victory?  The Continental Congress, 

the civilian power base of all maneuvers, consisted of some of the most brilliant men in America – Hancock, Sam Adams, John Adams, Thomas Jefferson – but they were not in a very good position to make quick decisions and were hard pressed to communicate with General Washington.  Most everything looked to be lost in December 1776 as hope seemed to fall fatefully in unison with winter.  

It was at this moment in history that a recently enlisted officer by the name of Thomas Paine wrote a piece under the pen name Common Sense titled "The American Crisis."  

Much like the effect of the Declaration of Indpendence in the July before, this was a piece of writing that served to reinforce purpose not only to the troops, but to the entirety of the loosely connected American nation.  The pamphlet, which began with the now famous lines, "These are times that try men's souls; The summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will, in this crisis, shrink from the service of his country; but he that stands it now, deserves the love and thanks of man and woman.  Tyranny, like hell, is not easily conquered..." was a drumbeat of revival.  It rolled off the presses rapidly (Paine would not take money for its sales) and was read by virtually everybody who could read, including British soldiers, who, as expected, would come to loathe the newfound enthusiasm for the American Cause.  Soon to come, Washington found new recruits of farmers and villagers from across the colonies, received new and exclusive powers from the Continental Congress, and found his grizzled Army on Christmas night 1776 crossing the Deleware in search of a sneak attack against unsuspecting British and Hessian troops at Trenton...