Stony Point

The Rock That Changed the War's Momentum: Stony Point, New York, and the Revolutionary War

On a humid July night in 1779, roughly 1,300 American soldiers moved in absolute silence through marshland and rising tide water toward a rocky promontory on the west bank of the Hudson River. Their muskets were unloaded. Their bayonets were fixed. Any man whose weapon discharged accidentally would be executed on the spot. They wore pieces of white paper in their hats to avoid confusion in the darkness and to be used for visual recognition. The objective rising before them in the darkness—a craggy, 150-foot-high peninsula jutting into the Hudson—was Stony Point, and what happened there over the next thirty minutes would electrify a war-weary nation, restore confidence in the Continental Army, and prove that American soldiers could execute the most demanding operation in eighteenth-century warfare: a nighttime assault with cold steel against a fortified position. But the story of Stony Point's significance neither begins nor ends with that single dramatic assault. This small piece of ground in the Hudson Highlands played a role in the strategic chess match between George Washington and Sir Henry Clinton that defined the middle years of the Revolution, and it connects directly to themes of leadership, morale, alliance politics, and the long road to Yorktown.

To understand why Stony Point mattered, one must first understand the geography. The Hudson River was the strategic spine of the American rebellion. Control the Hudson, and the British could sever New England—the cradle of revolution—from the middle and southern states. West Point, the great American fortress upriver, was the linchpin of this defense, but the river narrows and crossings below West Point were nearly as important. At Stony Point on the western bank and Verplanck's Point on the eastern bank, King's Ferry operated as the most critical crossing point for American troops and supplies moving between New England and the rest of the country. King's Ferry was a major crossing point on the Hudson, connecting Stony Point on the west side of the river with Verplanck's Point on the east side, and was strategically important as the southernmost crossing site that could be safely used while the British held New York City.

Stony Point's military significance, moreover, predated the famous 1779 battle. During Britain's 1777 three-prong invasion of New York, British forces under Sir Henry Clinton landed troops at Stony Point to begin the overland march to Fort Montgomery and Fort Clinton.

On the foggy morning of October 6, Sir Henry Clinton landed 2,100 men at Stony Point on the west side of the Hudson as part of an effort to create a diversion in support of General Burgoyne's faltering campaign near Saratoga. That earlier British use of the promontory as a staging point underscored the geographic reality that Washington and his engineers understood well: whoever controlled Stony Point held a key to the Highlands.

When Sir Henry Clinton launched a surprise offensive up the Hudson on May 30, 1779, seizing the unfinished American works at Stony Point on June 1 and capturing the small garrison at Verplanck's Point shortly after, he struck directly at this vital link. In early 1779, Parliament sent a directive to Clinton to bring George Washington into a general action. Clinton's plan was to throw a force up the Hudson River to threaten the vital Hudson Highlands while a smaller force raided the Connecticut coast, ideally forcing Washington out of his West Point stronghold.

Clinton, with approximately 6,000 British, Loyalist, and Hessian soldiers under his command, sailed up the Hudson, transported by the Royal Navy and landed unopposed. Stony Point was defended by a meager force totaling around 40 American Patriots, and before escaping to the north the small garrison set fire to the wooden blockhouse that was the unfinished fort built atop Stony Point.

The British forces, in order to capture nearby Fort Lafayette, hauled several cannons up the steep and rugged slopes of Stony Point and used the vantage point to shell Fort Lafayette. The loss of King's Ferry forced American communications onto longer, more vulnerable routes and threatened to unhinge Washington's defensive posture across the Highlands. British engineers quickly set about fortifying Stony Point with two concentric rings of abatis—sharpened logs angled outward like enormous chevaux-de-frise—and a series of gun batteries that commanded the river and the landward approaches. The British position at Stony Point was a fortified one, but it was never intended to be a true fort in the eighteenth-century European sense of the word. No stone was used and no walls were constructed. The defenses consisted of earthen fleches and wooden abatis.

A detachment of the Royal Artillery manned fifteen field pieces that included five iron and two brass cannon, four mortars and four small howitzers.

A Royal Navy gunboat was assigned to protect the river approaches to the fortifications, and the armed sloop Vulture was also anchored in that part of the river. Lieutenant Colonel Henry Johnson of the 17th Regiment of Foot commanded the garrison, which included four companies of the 17th in the outer works joined by two grenadier companies of the 71st (Fraser's) Highland Regiment, while in the upper works four more companies of the 17th were stationed along with a company of Colonel Beverly Robinson's Loyal American Regiment and a detachment of Royal Artillery. The troops totaled about 525, with them nearly seventy women and children.

After reinforcing Stony Point, the British commander regarded it as a "little Gibraltar." Johnson had reason to feel secure. The position was nearly surrounded by water at high tide, accessible only by a narrow causeway over a marshy saddle, and bristling with artillery. It was, by most professional estimates, a very hard nut to crack.

But Washington was already studying the problem. He observed construction of the fortifications through a telescope from atop nearby Buckberg Mountain. He also employed one of the war's most resourceful intelligence officers. Captain Allan McLane of Delaware agreed to play the role of a rather simple-minded relative of a local woman who had been given permission to visit Stony Point to see her son, who had recently defected to the British from a local militia unit. While the mother spoke with her son, McLane wandered about the post, noting defensive positions, numbers of troops and the garrison's security procedures at night.

Washington personally reconnoitered Stony Point with Wayne on July 6, covered by Lee's light dragoons and McLane's attached infantry company, and Wayne briefed him on a plan for a surprise night attack. Based largely on McLane's information that the works were incomplete, Washington approved.

To lead the assault, Washington turned to one of his most aggressive subordinates: Brigadier General Anthony Wayne of Pennsylvania. A former surveyor and proprietor of a tannery, Wayne had joined the Continental Army as a colonel in 1775. By 1779, he was