Washington [206]
To guard against any action along the Hudson River, Washington kept forces in the Hudson Highlands; to protect Philadelphia, he kept another portion of his army stationed at Middlebrook, New Jersey, ready to rebuff thrusts into the state. As usual, Howe proved diabolically clever at deception, making several feints into New Jersey. When he had tried to draw the Americans camped in Morristown into open combat, Washington had refused to rise to the bait. “We have such contradictory accounts from different quarters,” a confounded Washington reflected, “that I find it impossible to form any satisfactory judgment of the real motions and intentions of the enemy.”1 Reports that Howe was recruiting pilots acquainted with the Delaware River strengthened Washington’s hunch that the British planned to invade Philadelphia by water. Howe’s reconnaissance of American defenses on the Delaware would persuade him to try a novel approach to the city.
During this period, as he drilled his men, Washington had to sacrifice the comforts of his winter camp. At Middlebrook he slept for five weeks in one of his official tents, or “sleeping marquees.” At one point he led his troops to a “very difficult and rugged gorge” called the Clove in the Hudson Highlands, where he found only a tumbledown log cabin for shelter. He occupied the sole bed, while aides dozed on the floor around him. “We had plenty of sepawn [boiled cornmeal] and milk and all were contented,” said Timothy Pickering.2
While at the Clove, Washington was blindsided by shocking news: Fort Ticonderoga, in upstate New York, had fallen. In an ignominious defeat, the American garrison had surrendered without a shot. Simply staggered, Washington spluttered to General Schuyler that it was “an event of chagrin and surprise not apprehended, nor within the compass of my reasoning.”3 Washington feared that Ticonderoga’s downfall was merely the prelude to a British attempt to slice the country in half along the Hudson River; Howe would move up the river from New York to rendezvous with Burgoyne. Then on July 23 Howe’s New York-based fleet—the biggest armada ever to cruise North American waters—set sail from Sandy Hook, its mysterious movements keeping Washington suspended “in a state of constant perplexity.” 4 Guessing correctly that Howe was bound for Philadelphia, Washington began deploying his men southward. After breakfast on July 31, a messenger came to him with fresh tidings: the British fleet of 228 ships had surfaced off the capes of the Delaware River. By occupying Philadelphia, Howe hoped to tap latent Tory sentiment in the mid-Atlantic states and break American morale.
In his maddening way, Howe then disappeared again with his fleet, unnerving Washington anew. “I confess the conduct of the enemy is distressing beyond measure and past our comprehension,” he said.5 His army wilted in oppressive heat during exhausting marches intended to counter British moves. In late August the wily Howe showed up in the Chesapeake Bay with an unorthodox strategy for taking Philadelphia. Instead of trying to capture it from the river, he planned to land his troops at Head of Elk, in the northern bay, then march north to Philadelphia. Frankly flummoxed, Washington surmised that Howe “must mean to reach Philadelphia by that route, though to be sure it is a very strange one.”6 The truth was that Howe aimed to lure his foe into a major confrontation. Washington now professed eagerness for such an engagement: “One bold stroke will free the land from rapine, devastations and burnings, and female innocence from brutal lust and violence.”7
As he rushed to defend Philadelphia, Washington decided to march his men through the city before their looming encounter with British forces. A showman by nature, he wanted to advertise the size and élan of the Continental Army, and he choreographed their movements down to the last details. For this grand spectacle, each soldier was to wear a green sprig, a symbol of victory, affixed to his hat or hair. This stage-managed political march was designed,