Germantown

Germantown: The Battle That Lost a Day and Won an Alliance

Long before the first musket shot cracked through its autumn fog, Germantown had already earned a singular place in American history. Founded in 1683 by German-speaking Quakers and Mennonites who were recruited by William Penn to settle along a single ambitious road northwest of Philadelphia, the community was, from its earliest days, a place where radical ideas about liberty found fertile ground. In 1688, residents of Germantown drafted the first formal protest against slavery in the English colonies—a petition drafted by Francis Daniel Pastorius, a young German attorney, and three other Quakers living in Germantown on behalf of the Germantown Meeting of the Religious Society of Friends , that asked, with disarming simplicity, whether the buying and selling of human beings could ever be reconciled with the Golden Rule. The petition was signed by Pastorius, Garret Hendericks, Derick op den Graeff, and Abraham op den Graeff.

A highly controversial document, it was forwarded up the Quaker hierarchy without being approved or rejected, and effectively disappeared for 150 years into the Philadelphia Yearly Meeting's archives before being rediscovered in 1844 by the antiquarian Nathan Kite and republished in support of abolitionism. Nearly a century after its drafting, on that same stretch of road, George Washington would stake everything on a bold, complicated, and ultimately heartbreaking counterattack against the British Army. What happened at Germantown on October 4, 1777, ended in tactical defeat for the Continental Army, but its consequences rippled across the Atlantic and helped bring France into the war—an intervention without which American independence might never have been achieved.

To understand why Germantown mattered, one must first reckon with the catastrophic weeks that preceded the battle. In September 1777, General Sir William Howe outmaneuvered Washington—defeating the Continental Army at the Battle of Brandywine on September 11 and again at the Battle of Paoli on September 20—and marched into Philadelphia on September 26, claiming the rebel capital as a prize. The Continental Congress had already fled. Washington's army, bruised and demoralized, retreated north to camps around Skippack Creek, roughly sixteen miles from the city. The loss of Philadelphia was a psychological blow of enormous proportions. To many observers in America and Europe, the Revolution appeared to be collapsing. Washington knew he needed to act—not merely for strategic advantage, but to demonstrate to the world that the American cause still had fight in it.

Howe, meanwhile, made a decision that created an opening. Rather than concentrating his entire force within Philadelphia's defenses, he posted a substantial garrison at Germantown, strung along the main road and its surrounding fields. He left a garrison of 3,462 men to defend the city, moving the bulk of his force north, some 9,728 men, to the outlying community of Germantown. After taking the American capital, British General Sir William Howe positioned two brigades under General James Grant and a contingent of Hessian troops commanded by General Wilhelm von Knyphausen in Germantown. The encampment stretched for about two miles, with the light infantry and elite units positioned at the northern edge of town, closest to Washington's army. Howe established his headquarters at the Stenton Mansion, the former country home of James Logan—the great Quaker statesman who had served as William Penn's secretary. Stenton was built between 1723 and 1730 on 511 acres as Logan's country seat, named after his father's birthplace in East Lothian, Scotland. The same house had briefly sheltered General Washington himself on August 23, 1777, on his way to the Battle of Brandywine, making Stenton the only house in Germantown used as headquarters by both commanders. According to tradition, the manor was saved from destruction by the British after the battle by Dinah, an African American housekeeper — a formerly enslaved woman who had requested and received her freedom in 1776, and who stayed on as a paid servant. The British disposition was aggressive but somewhat exposed, and Washington saw his chance.

The plan Washington devised with his generals was breathtaking in its ambition and, as events would prove, dangerously complex. Washington reinforced to 11,000 troops and decided to attack using a plan similar to the one he had employed at the Battle of Trenton in December 1776.

He decided to attack and destroy the enemy detachment using a double envelopment, dividing his army so as to strike the British from multiple directions at dawn. Four converging columns would march through the night and descend on the British camp from different approaches. The divisions of Sullivan and Wayne, forming the right wing, would attack down the main Germantown road, while Generals Nathanael Greene and Adam Stephen, forming the left wing, would march by a longer route to strike the British right. Two additional columns of militia would swing wide to hit each British flank. The troops were ordered to be ready to march at "six OClock" on the evening of October 3.

Washington had the soldiers tuck bits of white paper into their hats to help them identify each other in the darkness of early morning —a poignant detail that speaks to the improvised nature of the Continental Army's equipment and the perils of a night march over unfamiliar ground.

Around 5:30 in the morning, Sullivan's troops surprised Howe's advanced guard and forced it back towards Germantown in confusion as a dense fog blanketed the battlefield. For a brief, exhilarating stretch, the attack seemed on the verge of success. The British pickets broke and fled. But then the plan began to unravel. Approximately 100 to 120 British soldiers of the 40th Regiment of Foot took refuge in Cliveden, a large stone mansion —the country house of Chief Justice Benjamin Chew, built between 1763 and 1767 —and turned it into an improvised fortress. Under the command of Lieutenant Colonel Thomas Musgrave, the British defenders occupied the mansion and defeated several American attempts to capture it, killing 57 Americans and wounding several dozen more.

Musgrave closed the first-floor shutters and barricaded the doors, posting marksmen at the windows on the second and third floors.

The Chew House became the pivot on which the battle turned, and the decision about how to handle it remains one of the most debated tactical choices of the war. General Henry Knox, Washington's artillery commander, was reluctant to leave such a fortress in British hands, and he advised Washington to "reduce" the mansion with cannon fire. Others suggested leaving a small force at the Chew House and continuing toward Philadelphia.

Washington, on Knox's advice, decided to attack the sturdy building rather than isolate it with a small force. For two hours a Continental brigade supported by cannons unsuccessfully tried to storm the mansion, suffering heavy losses. This action diverted troops from Sullivan's main advance and also from Greene's, as some of his soldiers joined the assault.

While the fighting raged at Cliveden, the fog that had aided the Americans' approach now betrayed them. Sullivan's wing became dispirited, running low on ammunition and hearing cannon fire behind them. As they withdrew, Anthony Wayne's division collided with part of Greene's late-arriving wing in the fog. Mistaking each other for the enemy, they opened fire, and both units retreated. The confusion was compounded by the actions of Major General Adam Stephen, commanding a Virginia division under Greene, who deviated from the plan without orders and marched his men toward the sound of firing at the Chew House. Stephen's inebriated blunders contributed to the American defeat, especially at Germantown where a portion of his command was involved in a