1776, Episode 1: The British Sounded a Fox Hunt at Harlem Heights
This fall marks 250 years since the American Revolution almost ended.
It did not end in one battle. It came apart over fourteen weeks, from the middle of September to the last night of December 1776. An army of farmers and clerks lost New York, then New Jersey, then nearly everything. Most of its men had signed on for one year. The year was running out.
Every Thursday from now until New Year's Eve, I'm going to tell you that story, one week at a time, 250 years after it happened. I'll follow the army, and one young officer inside it. When the record loses him, I'll tell you. I won't make him up.
Here's where it starts.
Kip's Bay, Manhattan. Sunday, September 15, 1776.
British warships in the East River opened fire on the American trenches. Then the boats came. The men in the trenches broke and ran. Washington rode into the flight and tried to turn them. He couldn't. By dark the British held New York City.
Harlem Heights. The next morning.
The Americans had fallen back to the high ground at the north end of the island. British light infantry chased an American scouting party off a ridge. Then a British bugler blew "Gone Away," the hunting call that means the chase is over. Washington rode to hounds at Mount Vernon. He knew that call.
Joseph Reed, one of Washington's officers, heard it. "I never felt such a sensation before," he remembered. "It seemed to crown our disgrace."
Washington answered. He sent men around the British flank. The officer leading them, Thomas Knowlton, was shot and killed. The attack went on anyway. The British gave ground, and then more ground. It was the first good day the army had had in weeks.
A lieutenant of the 3rd Virginia was on that field. He was eighteen. He had quit college to join. The record doesn't say where he stood or what he did. Only that he was there.
His name was James Monroe. Forty-one years later he would be the fifth President of the United States.
That fall he was one more lieutenant in an army with an expiration date.
September 16, 1776. 106 days to December 31.
Next Thursday: Washington tells Congress, in writing, that the army he has will not last.
