Washington withdraws from Manhattan
By Tom Range, Sr.

By mid-November 1776, the disastrous campaign for New York was coming to an ignominious close.  With few victories, the Continental Army had suffered one humiliating costly reverse after another. The taking of more than 1,000 American prisoners by the British at Brooklyn, the relatively unchallenged Redcoat invasion and occupation of York Island, with the Continentals barely escaping New York City to join General Washington's forces farther up the island, and the continual reinforcement of the enemy by Hessian mercenaries bode ill for the continuation of the Revolutionary War.

The only American victory in a force of arms was the battle of Harlem Heights in September.  Washington chose as his headquarters the mansion of a departed loyalist Colonel Roger Morris.  He gathered the remnants of the Continental Army on the heights of Harlem, the most elevated area of Manhattan.  With the commander-in-chief were his staff officers Nathanael Greene, Henry Knox and Israel Putnam; and the junior officers Aaron Burr and Alexander Hamilton, as well as his personal secretary Joseph Reed.  More than 100 Connecticut "Rangers," some of the best soldiers in the army led by one of the best field officers under the general's Colonel Thomas Knowlton, a veteran of the battle of Bunker Hill, served as an elite force of highly trained and motivated patriot soldiers.

Knowlton and his Rangers were to probe for the enemy along the wooded ridges to the south of the American position, along the valley known as the Hollow Way at 125th Street in modern day Harlem.  In the ensuing engagement, the British committed 5,000 men.  A struggle went on for hours, but for the first time since Bunker Hill, the patriot forces were victorious.  The British turned and ran.  "The pursuit of a flying enemy was so new a scene," wrote Joseph Reed, "that it was with difficulty our men could be brought to retire," as Washington had ordered so that his position on the heights would not be weakened.  Tragically, Colonel Knowlton was lost in the engagement. The headquarters, the Morris-Jumel mansion, survives as a museum at 160th Street in Manhattan.

The euphoria of battlefield success was short-lived.  Outnumbered, out provisioned and out maneuvered, Washington was forced to withdraw the army into the Bronx, then farther north into Westchester County where, at White Plains another military action occurred, and ultimately across the Hudson River into New Jersey.  With some misgivings, the general left a garrison force at an elevated height, Fort Washington that commanded the Hudson River close to the site of the modern George Washington Bridge.  This heavily fortified area was presumed to be impregnable to an invading force.  However on November 16 British and Hessian troops successfully stormed the steep, rock-bound approaches to the fort.

Along with Colonel Knowlton, the action in Manhattan produced another little known American hero, Margaret "Molly" Corbin, the wife of a Pennsylvania soldier, John Corbin.  She had gone into battle at her husband's side.  John was an artilleryman, killed by the attacking British during the siege of Fort Washington.  Molly stepped into his place to load and fire the cannon until she fell wounded, nearly losing one arm.  After the surrender, she was allowed by her British captors to return home to Pennsylvania.  A monument has been erected in her honor at the site of the battle.  In recognition of her wounds, in 1779 the Congress awarded Corbin a military pension, the first American woman to receive such aid.  She is buried in the military cemetery at West Point, NY.

Through the balance of November and much of December 1776, Washington's bedraggled Continental Army was pursued through New Jersey and across the Delaware River into Pennsylvania.  Within four months the patriot forces had lost four battles - at Brooklyn, at Kip's Bay in Manhattan where the British had invaded, at White Plains north of the city, and at Fort Washington. Washington had only about 3,500 patriot troops under his command to continue the country's attempt to win its freedom.