Wilmington

Wilmington, Delaware, and the Revolutionary War: A City at the Crossroads of Independence

When British warships began threading their way up the Chesapeake Bay in the sweltering August of 1777, the small but strategically vital town of Wilmington, Delaware, found itself standing directly in the path of the largest expeditionary force the Crown had yet assembled in North America. What followed over the next year would transform this modest milling community along Brandywine Creek into a focal point of the war for American independence — a place where armies clashed, a future nation's capital fell under enemy occupation, and the machinery of revolution was tested nearly to its breaking point. Wilmington's Revolutionary War story is not merely a footnote in the larger Philadelphia campaign; it is an essential chapter that illuminates the precariousness of the American cause and the resourcefulness that ultimately sustained it.

To understand why Wilmington mattered, one must first appreciate its geography. Situated at the confluence of Brandywine Creek and the Christina River, just two miles from the Delaware River, the town occupied a position of considerable logistical importance. The Brandywine's fast-moving waters powered a constellation of flour and powder mills that had become critical to the Continental Army's supply chain. Brandywine Village, the flour milling center that adjoined Wilmington, had been founded around 1753 by prominent Quakers William Shipley, his wife Elizabeth Levis-Shipley, and their partner Thomas Canby Jr., and by the eve of the Revolution contained twelve mills and more than sixty homes.

"Brandywine Superfine" flour was shipped all along the Atlantic coast and to the West Indies before the American Revolution.

Prior to the Revolution, the energy of three men — Oliver Canby, Thomas Shipley, and Joseph Tatnall — had given impetus to the building of eight tidewater mills on the Brandywine, with four on each side of the stream. By the summer of 1777, George Washington recognized Wilmington not only as a potential defensive position but also as a supply base whose mills could grind grain into the flour that kept his army fed. When intelligence reports confirmed that General Sir William Howe had embarked some 17,000 British and Hessian troops aboard a vast fleet and sailed south from New York, Washington moved his forces through Wilmington and established supply depots there, understanding that the town's milling infrastructure could sustain operations during what promised to be a grueling campaign.

Howe's plan was audacious. Rather than march overland through New Jersey — where Washington had already demonstrated a painful ability to strike at exposed columns, as at Trenton and Princeton — the British commander chose to approach Philadelphia by sea, sailing down the Atlantic coast, into the Chesapeake Bay, and up to its northern head. On July 21, 1777, 261 British ships arrived in the Delaware Bay, but after learning from Captain Andrew Snape Hammond of HMS Roebuck about the chevaux-de-frise obstructions installed below Philadelphia, the fleet turned south, rounded the Delmarva Peninsula, and headed north into the Chesapeake. On August 25, 1777, Howe's army began disembarking at Head of Elk, Maryland, roughly fifty miles southwest of Philadelphia. The troops were in poor condition after nearly six weeks at sea; horses had died in alarming numbers, and the men were weakened by heat and confinement. Yet the sheer scale of the force was formidable, and its objective was unmistakable: the American capital at Philadelphia, with Wilmington lying squarely along the line of advance.

Washington, having marched his army through Philadelphia in a show of resolve — drums beating, flags flying — positioned his roughly 11,000 Continental and militia troops along Brandywine Creek, selecting a defensive line centered on Chadds Ford, about ten miles north of Wilmington. But the story of what happened in and around Wilmington before that famous battle is essential to understanding the broader campaign.

Washington set up his headquarters at a house atop Quaker Hill in the southwestern portion of Wilmington on August 25, 1777 — the very day Howe landed his armada below Head of Elk — while his advanced two divisions of the Continental Army nestled into place a few miles behind him.

Planting his headquarters at Wilmington, a city twenty-six miles from Philadelphia, strategically placed Washington nearly midway between Philadelphia and the British threat. With several waterways intersecting Delaware near Wilmington — the Brandywine River, Red Clay Creek, White Clay Creek, and Christina Creek — Washington correctly judged that a sound defensive position could be staked out within an hour's horse trot from the town.

While in Wilmington, Washington personally conducted a reconnaissance of the Brandywine River and its fords between Wilmington and Chadds Ford, using a map of Delaware made especially for him by Jacob Broom, a Wilmington surveyor who would later become a Delaware signer of the Constitution.

The day after arriving, Washington launched a bold scouting mission. On August 26, he conducted a thirty-six-mile round-trip reconnaissance to Head of Elk, returning the following morning to his Quaker Hill headquarters.

Most remarkably, "most of the general officers" accompanied Washington on this reconnaissance — including Major Generals Nathanael Greene and Adam Stephen and several brigadier generals — making it a far larger expedition than previously understood. Among the officers who served in Delaware during this critical period were men who would later shape the republic: future president James Monroe and future Chief Justice of the Supreme Court John Marshall were part of the Continental Army in Delaware in 1777.

Recognizing the strategic importance of the Brandywine mills, Washington took steps to deny them to the enemy. When the British landed at the Head of Elk, Washington ordered the dismantling of the Brandywine mills to prevent them from falling into British hands. The millstones were thrown out of gear and some of them taken several miles away and secreted.

Washington also issued directives to drive off all cattle and horses and leave the country as barren as possible, ordering that any mills liable to fall into enemy hands should have their "runners" — the upper grinding stones — removed and secured, and that grain should be carried out of the way.

Washington initially expected Howe to march directly northeast along the King's Highway through Christiana and Newport toward Wilmington, and he deployed his army accordingly. The American army, numbering about 11,000, encamped between Red Clay Creek and Newport from September 6 to