After the fall of New York there followed a complex campaign.The resourceful Washington was now, during his first days of active warfare, pitting himself against one of the most experienced of British generals.Fleet and army were acting together.The aim of Howe was to get control of the Hudson and to meet half way the advance from Canada by way of Lake Champlain which Carleton was leading.On the 12th of October, when autumn winds were already making the nights cold, Howe moved.He did not attack Washington who lay in strength at the Harlem.That would have been to play Washington's game.Instead he put the part of his army still on Long Island in ships which then sailed through the dangerous currents of Hell Gate and landed at Throg's Neck, a peninsula on the sound across from Long Island.Washington parried this movement by so guarding the narrow neck of the peninsula leading to the mainland that the cautious Howe shrank from a frontal attack across a marsh.After a delay of six days, he again embarked his army, landed a few miles above Throg's Neck in the hope of cutting off Washington from retreat northward, only to find Washington still north of him at White Plains.A sharp skirmish followed in which Howe lost over two hundred men and Washington only one hundred and forty.Washington, masterly in retreat, then withdrew still farther north among hills difficult of attack.
Howe had a plan which made a direct attack on Washington unnecessary.He turned southward and occupied the east shore of the Hudson River.On the 16th of November took place the worst disaster which had yet befallen American arms.Fort Washington, lying just south of the Harlem, was the only point still held on Manhattan Island by the Americans.In modern war it has become clear that fortresses supposedly strong may be only traps for their defenders.Fort Washington stood on the east bank of the Hudson opposite Fort Lee, on the west bank.These forts could not fulfil the purpose for which they were intended, of stopping British ships.Washington saw that the two forts should be abandoned.But the civilians in Congress, who, it must be remembered, named the generals and had final authority in directing the war, were reluctant to accept the loss involved in abandoning the forts and gave orders that every effort should be made to hold them.Greene, on the whole Washington's best general, was in command of the two positions and was left to use his own judgment.On the 15th of November, by a sudden and rapid march across the island, Howe appeared before Fort Washington and summoned it to surrender on pain of the rigors of war, which meant putting the garrison to the sword should he have to take the place by storm.The answer was a defiance; and on the next day Howe attacked in overwhelming force.There was severe fighting.The casualties of the British were nearly five hundred, but they took the huge fort with its three thousand defenders and a great quantity of munitions of war.Howe's threat was not carried out.There was no massacre.
Across the river at Fort Lee the helpless Washington watched this great disaster.He had need still to look out, for Fort Lee was itself doomed.On the nineteenth Lord Cornwallis with five thousand men crossed the river five miles above Fort Lee.General Greene barely escaped with the two thousand men in the fort, leaving behind one hundred and forty cannon, stores, tools, and even the men's blankets.On the twentieth the British flag was floating over Fort Lee and Washington's whole force was in rapid flight across New Jersey, hardly pausing until it had been ferried over the Delaware River into Pennsylvania.
Treachery, now linked to military disaster, made Washington's position terrible.Charles Lee, Horatio Gates, and Richard Montgomery were three important officers of the regular British army who fought on the American side.Montgomery had been killed at Quebec; the defects of Gates were not yet conspicuous; and Lee was next to Washington the most trusted American general.The names Washington and Lee of the twin forts on opposite sides of the Hudson show how the two generals stood in the public mind.
While disaster was overtaking Washington, Lee had seven thousand men at North Castle on the east bank of the Hudson, a few miles above Fort Washington, blocking Howe's advance farther up the river.On the day after the fall of Fort Washington, Lee received positive orders to cross the Hudson at once.Three days later Fort Lee fell, and Washington repeated the order.Lee did not budge.He was safe where he was and could cross the river and get away into New Jersey when he liked.He seems deliberately to have left Washington to face complete disaster and thus prove his incompetence; then, as the undefeated general, he could take the chief command.There is no evidence that he had intrigued with Howe, but he thought that he could be the peacemaker between Great Britain and America, with untold possibilities of ambition in that role.He wrote of Washington at this time, to his friend Gates, as weak and "most damnably deficient." Nemesis, however, overtook him.In the end he had to retreat across the Hudson to northern New Jersey.Here many of the people were Tories.Lee fell into a trap, was captured in bed at a tavern by a hard-riding party of British cavalry, and carried off a prisoner, obliged to bestride a horse in night gown and slippers.Not always does fate appear so just in her strokes.
In December, though the position of Washington was very bad, all was not lost.The chief aim of Howe was to secure the line of the Hudson and this he had not achieved.At Stony Point, which lies up the Hudson about fifty miles from New York, the river narrows and passes through what is almost a mountain gorge, easily defended.Here Washington had erected fortifications which made it at least difficult for a British force to pass up the river.
