New York City

New York City in the Revolution: Battleground, Prison, and Birthplace of a Nation

Few American cities bore the weight of the Revolutionary War as heavily, or as long, as New York. From the summer of 1776, when George Washington's Continental Army suffered its most devastating defeat on the fields of Brooklyn, to November 1783, when the last British soldiers sailed out of the harbor on what New Yorkers would celebrate for generations as Evacuation Day, the city endured more than seven years of enemy occupation — longer than any other place in the thirteen colonies. New York was not merely a backdrop to the Revolution; it was a strategic prize, a killing ground, a nest of spies, and ultimately the stage on which the new republic announced itself to the world. To understand the American Revolution without understanding what happened in New York is to read only half the story. Nearly one-third of all the engagements fought during the Revolutionary War were fought in New York , and the city itself was at the center of that maelstrom.

The British recognized what Washington also understood: whoever controlled New York controlled the Hudson River, and whoever controlled the Hudson could sever New England from the rest of the colonies. This geographic reality made the city the most strategically consequential piece of terrain on the continent. New York State was strategically important to both American and British forces during the American Revolution, because it contained the second largest city in North America, good harbors, and an excellent network of waterways to move troops and supplies on. In the spring and summer of 1776, Washington moved his army south from Boston, where he had successfully forced a British evacuation in March, to fortify Manhattan and the surrounding heights. He knew the British were coming. What he could not have fully anticipated was the scale of what arrived. In late June and throughout July, a massive British armada — more than four hundred ships carrying approximately 32,000 troops under General Sir William Howe, supported by his brother Admiral Richard Howe's naval forces — assembled in New York Harbor and on Staten Island. It was the largest expeditionary force Britain had ever sent abroad, and the sight of it filling the harbor must have been terrifying to the roughly 19,000 Continentals tasked with defending the city.

Even before the battle was joined, New York became the setting for one of the Revolution's most electrifying symbolic acts. On July 9, 1776, after the Declaration of Independence was read to Washington's troops at the current site of City Hall, local Sons of Liberty rushed down Broadway to Bowling Green, where they toppled the statue of King George III. It was melted into two tons of metal and turned into 42,088 musket balls for George Washington's Continental Army.

The king's statue, composed of 4,000 pounds of lead, was a tempting storehouse of potential ammunition. The cast-iron fence surrounding Bowling Green survives to this day — the finials on the fence were sawed off on July 9, 1776, the day the Declaration reached New York. The saw marks remain visible today.

The blow fell on August 27, 1776, at the Battle of Long Island — also known as the Battle of Brooklyn — the first major engagement fought after the Declaration of Independence. Howe landed his forces on the southwestern shore of Long Island and executed a brilliant flanking maneuver through the unguarded Jamaica Pass, rolling up the American left and driving Washington's troops back toward the fortified positions on Brooklyn Heights. The result was a catastrophe for the Continental Army. Roughly 1,000 Americans were killed, wounded, or captured in a single day; the Maryland 400, a regiment that mounted a suicidal rearguard action to cover the retreat, was nearly annihilated. Washington, watching from a redoubt on the Heights, reportedly said, "Good God, what brave fellows I must this day lose!" Only a desperate nighttime evacuation across the East River on August 29–30, carried out in fog and silence by Massachusetts fishermen under Colonel John Glover, saved the army from total destruction. It was one of the war's most remarkable escapes — but it was only the beginning of New York's agony.

The disasters continued to mount with terrifying speed. On September 15, Howe landed his army in an amphibious operation at Kip's Bay, on the eastern shore of Manhattan, along the East River. After a bombardment of the American positions on the shore, 4,000 British and Hessian troops began to disembark. The American troops began to flee at the sight of the enemy.

Washington and Putnam unsuccessfully tried to halt the stampede and rally the men behind stone walls, but they continued to stream past. Washington angrily shouted at them and even struck some with the flat of his sword to no effect. The rout at Kip's Bay gave the British control of New York City, but the following day brought the first glimmer of hope. The Battle of Harlem Heights was fought on September 16, 1776, in what is now the Morningside Heights area of northwestern Manhattan Island. Washington's men, stung by a mocking fox-hunt bugle call from pursuing British light infantry, rallied after British troops made what became a tactical error by sounding a fox hunt bugle call while in pursuit. This instead infuriated the Americans, who galvanized to hold their ground and rallied for victory. It was a small engagement, but it proved the Continental Army could stand and fight.

Within days of the fall of Lower Manhattan, the city was consumed by an even more spectacular catastrophe. The Great Fire of New York was a devastating fire that burned through the night of September 20, 1776, and into the morning of September 21, on the West Side of what then constituted New York City at the southern end of the island of Manhattan.

The fire crippled a city that was the focal point of the 1776 campaign. Crowding plagued the city's British garrison for the rest of the war. Trinity Church was reduced to ashes, and roughly a quarter of the city lay in ruins. The British suspected Patriot arson and arrested more than 200 people, but no charges were ever filed. Washington himself, in a private letter to his cousin, wrote that "Providence—or some good honest Fellow, has done more for us than we were disposed to do for ourselves." Whether arson or accident, the fire shaped the remainder of the occupation: the charred ruins became the site of "Canvas Town," a sprawl of tents perched on the charred ruins of the Great Fire , where the homeless and displaced huddled in squalor for years.

The fire coincided almost exactly with one of the war's most poignant martyrdoms. On September 22, 1776, the British executed 21-year-old Nathan Hale as a spy in New York City. Although Hale's mission failed and ended in his death, he serves as an example of selfless sacrifice in the service of his country.

Washington had called for a spy behind enemy lines, and Hale was the only volunteer. Captured while attempting to return to American lines, he was hanged without trial the next day. Though he is supposed to have said before his death, "I only regret that I have but one life to lose for my country," modern historians note that no official records of his final speech survive. His tragic failure, however, taught Washington a critical lesson: the new nation needed a far more professional intelligence apparatus.

That lesson bore fruit in 1778, when