Washington [211]
On September 26 the well-fed British Army entered Philadelphia and scored the propaganda victory of controlling America’s capital and main metropolis. While frightened citizens applauded the soldiers, as they had their American counterparts a month earlier, the crowd consisted mostly of women and children, many men having fled. By this point Washington knew he was engaged in a war of attrition and that holding towns was less important in this mobile style of warfare. As he informed Henry Laurens, “The possession of our towns, while we have an army in the field, will avail [the British] little . . . It is our arms, not defenseless towns, they have to subdue.”35
ALTHOUGH CORNWALLIS HAD TAKEN a detachment of British and Hessian soldiers into Philadelphia, General Howe retained the main body of his army at Germantown, a village just six miles northwest of the city, hard by the Schuylkill River. He expressly placed it there as a bulwark between Washington’s army and the capital. Eager for a victory after so much wretched news, and with 8,000 Continentals and 3,000 militia at his disposal, Washington reckoned that he could stage a surprise raid on Howe’s force of 9,000 men, an idea that grew on him when he learned that Howe had diverted two regiments to attack a small American fort on the Delaware.
At a war council on October 3, Washington told his receptive generals that Howe’s maneuver made it an auspicious moment for an operation. Forever attuned to the psychological state of his men, he knew this might be the last chance for a victory before winter. Only something dramatic could revive his countrymen’s flagging spirits. As he told his generals, “It was time to remind the English that an American army still existed.”36 Once again Washington’s aggressive instincts forced him into an action both courageous and foolhardy, one that belied his cautious image as the American Fabius. As Joseph Ellis has written of Washington’s conflicting urges, “The strategic decision to make the survival of the Continental Army the highest priority, the realization that he must fight a protracted defensive war, remained at odds with his own more decisive temperament.”37
As usual, Howe had shrewdly chosen his army camp at Germantown, a place crisscrossed by creeks, ravines, and gorges. The town’s main street, the Germantown Road, was lined for two miles with snug, stone houses, many protected by fences and hedges that could retard an American advance. Doubtless remembering his nocturnal raid across the Delaware, Washington devised another convoluted plan for a forced nighttime march. On October 3 four widely spaced but roughly parallel columns would start moving southeast at nightfall and would converge on Germantown by dawn. Along with General Sullivan, Washington would spearhead a column of 3,000 men charging down the Germantown Road. To the northeast, Greene would lead 5,000 men along a parallel path, the Lime Kiln Road, while still farther north General William Smallwood and another 1,000 militia would venture along a winding old Indian path called the Old York Road. To the south, General John Armstrong would guide 2,000 Pennsylvania militia along the Schuylkill. If all