Washington [177]
The Americans soon faced thirteen thousand British and Hessian soldiers who must have looked brilliantly invincible in autumn sunlight as they stepped forward in smart columns. As General Heath recalled, “The sun shone bright, their arms glittered, and perhaps troops never were shown to more advantage.” Amid this impressive display of force, British artillery fire began to darken the fine, crisp air. In the evocative words of a Pennsylvania soldier: “The air groaned with streams of cannon and musket shot; the hills smoked and echoed terribly with the bursting of shells; the fences and walls were knocked down and torn to pieces, and men’s legs, arms, and bodies mangled with cannon and grape shot all around us.”5
The bloodiest combat unfolded at Chatterton’s Hill. In the first wave of attacks, Captain Alexander Hamilton, positioned with two fieldpieces on a rocky ledge, sprayed the invading forces with deadly fire, driving them back. After regrouping, the British grenadiers and Hessian soldiers forded the Bronx River and bravely clambered up the wooded slope under a thick hail of bullets. Their artillery set fire to autumn leaves, creating a thick canopy of smoke. As they rushed through burning grass, the Hessians hoisted their cartridge boxes above their heads so as not to blow themselves up. In the end, enemy soldiers succeeded in dislodging the American forces as the militia lost heart and ran. Their fright was understandable as cannonballs flew thick and fast. One Connecticut soldier recalled how a cannonball “first took the head of Smith, a stout heavy man and dash[e]d it open, then it took off Chilson’s arm, which was amputated . . . it then took Taylor across the bowels, it then struck Serg[ean]t Garret of our company on the hip [and] took off the point of the hip bone . . . What a sight that was to see within a distance of six rods those men with their legs and arms and guns and packs all in a heap.”6
For all that, the British and the Hessians suffered 276 casualties, or twice as many as the Americans. Once again General Howe dawdled after victory and bungled a major opportunity. In later testimony before Parliament, he traced his sluggish behavior to an aversion to unnecessary combat losses but also cited unnamed “political reasons”—perhaps his preference for a negotiated solution rather than outright conquest of the Continental Army.
Both sides continued to place a premium on commanding the Hudson River. The twin American outposts of Fort Washington and Fort Lee, combined with obstructions sunk in the river, were supposed to bar British ships. This assumption represented a triumph of hope over experience. On October 9, with Washington on hand to witness it, the British tested American defenses by sending three warships up the river. While American guns blasted away from both shores, killing nine British sailors, the ships coasted by largely intact, their movement unimpeded by submarine obstacles and a boom flung across the river. “To our surprise and mortification,” Washington told Hancock, the ships passed “without receiving any apparent damage from our forts, though they kept up a heavy fire from both sides.”7 Nonetheless Congress refused to end reliance on this porous barrier and demanded that the river