Washington [207]
On August 24, 1777, George Washington marched his army, twelve thousand strong, through Philadelphia, first down Front Street, then up Chestnut Street. Mounted on a white horse, he presented a shining figure at the head of the procession, with Lafayette riding at his side and Alexander Hamilton and John Laurens close behind. The tide of soldiers poured on for two hours, the men trooping twelve deep “with a lively smart step,” said one observer, to the nimble beat of a fife and drum corps in each brigade.9 A stickler for rhythm, Washington warned his soldiers to mind the beat, “without dancing along or totally disregarding the music, as too often has been the case.”10 Anyone who abandoned the parade route faced a stiff penalty of thirty-nine lashes. With every window and rooftop crammed with gaping spectators, the soldiers received a rousing reception from the exultant crowds. Although Washington tried to offer a sanitized version of his drab army, the half-clad soldiers fell short of the spic-and-span panache that John Adams wanted. “Our soldiers have not yet quite the air of soldiers,” he protested. “They don’t step exactly in time. They don’t hold up their heads quite erect, nor turn out their toes exactly as they ought.”11 The rest of the crowd, however, seemed thrilled by the survival of this scrappy army against the world’s foremost military machine.
As Howe moved toward Philadelphia, Washington decided to cut off his approach at a place called Brandywine Creek, a difficult stream to negotiate. He informed his men that the upcoming battle might be decisive. Should the British be defeated, he proclaimed, “they are utterly undone—the war is at an end. Now then is the time for our most strenuous exertions.”12 Not trusting to patriotism alone, he reminded his men that fleeing soldiers would “be instantly shot down as a just punishment to themselves and for examples to others.”13 Rediscovering the virtue of alcohol in battle, Washington issued an extra gill of rum (five fluid ounces) to each man on September 9 to fortify wavering courage.
A landscape of plunging ravines and forested hills, Brandywine Creek presented a natural line of defense southwest of Philadelphia. Washington concentrated the bulk of his forces on wooded high ground behind Chadds Ford, on the east side of the creek, where the major road crossed. Relying on flawed intelligence, he posted detachments the length of the creek, stretching up to what he thought was the northernmost crossing.
On the night of September 10, a spy informed Howe of the existence of two fords still farther north—a flagrant breach in American defenses that had gone unnoticed, in a manner reminiscent of the Battle of Brooklyn. Howe decided that he and Cornwallis, with 8,200 men, would secretly execute a bold sweeping movement to the north. They would then turn east, cross these newly discovered fords, circle back to the south, and sneak up behind the right flank of Washington’s army. All the while, an advance column of 5,000 troops under Baron Wilhelm von Knyphausen would smash straight east into Washington’s army at Chadds Ford, distracting the Americans and duping them into thinking this was the main enemy offensive. While Washington’s military instincts told him that Howe might steal up behind his right flank, he didn’t assign a high enough priority to investigating this possibility and delegated a crucial scouting mission to General John Sullivan and Colonel Theodorick Bland. Unaccountably, the Americans proved ignorant of their own home turf, while Howe operated with faultless information.
In the predawn light of September 11, 1777, General Howe launched his maneuver. In the early morning, Knyphausen’s units clashed, as planned, with the main American force at Chadds Ford. Washington presided over the troops there and, as usual, showed no qualms about exposing himself to enemy