The First American Army - Bruce Chadwick [112]
It had been a horrific encounter. One man wrote, “The batteries at [Chadd’s] ford opened upon each other with such fury as if the elements had been in convulsions; the valley was filled with smoke and . . . for an hour and a half this horrid sport continued.”3
McMichael and his fellow soldiers were disappointed that they had been driven back and forced from the area, and relieved that the British had foolishly decided not to pursue them. All felt like Captain Samuel Shaw, of Massachusetts, who wrote, “No person could behave with more bravery than our troops; but, somehow or other, we were not successful.”4
The defeat at Brandywine was a stinging setback for the public, though. The Continental Army lost approximately eight hundred men, killed or wounded, and four hundred Americans were taken prisoner. The British lost 577 killed or wounded. Washington’s army had failed to halt Howe and permitted him to continue his campaign to capture Philadelphia. Washington came under intense criticism, especially when the English army took the city without a shot being fired in defense of it and paraded through town to the loud cheers of the thousands of Tories who lived there.
Washington learned that after Howe’s capture of Philadelphia Howe had divided his army, with three thousand in Philadelphia and about two thousand at Wilmington, Delaware. The remaining seven to eight thousand encamped just northwest of the town at the village of Germantown. The commander decided to attack them there. Recent enlistments had swollen Washington’s army to eight thousand continentals and three thousand militia, giving him superior numbers for a single engagement for one of the few times during the war.
On October 3, the battle of Germantown began. Washington decided to copy the Trenton plan of attack and marched the army all night for a surprise assault at dawn. The Americans would hit Howe from four different directions at precisely the same time in a coordinated attack. It would have worked, too, but an early morning fog slowed down the offensive and caused two regiments to collide and fire on each other. Confusion ensued and Washington ordered a retreat. McMichael was angry about the order to turn back. He wrote, “Here we had disagreeably to leave the field when we had nearly made a conquest.”
The retreat was slow and difficult. Wrote a drained McMichael that night, “I had previously underwent many fatigues but never any that so much overdone me as this. Had it not been for fear of being taken, I should have remained on the road all night. Considering my march when on picket [the night before], I had in twenty-four hours marched forty-five miles and in that time fought four hours during which we advanced so furiously through buckwheat fields. It was an almost unspeakable fatigue.”
Rumors of the Saratoga triumph reached Washington on October 18 and all celebrated. There was not much else to cheer about that fall and winter. Following the double defeats at Brandywine and Germantown, and the loss of Philadelphia, the American forces in Pennsylvania moved from village to village and camped for a night in one location and a week in another. Finally, on December 19, they arrived in Valley Forge for the winter.
McMichael had obtained a furlough just after he arrived at Valley Forge and returned in early January. The lieutenant’s hut was finally completed near the end of January; he slept in a tent with others during its construction. By that time, the tragedies of Valley Forge, caused primarily by dysfunction in the commissary and quartermaster divisions—and a lack of assistance from Chester County residents—had already started to unfold. The men had starved from time to time throughout the winter. Many died in the hospitals.
McMichael returned at the height of the clothing crisis that had begun prior to the army