The Battle of Fort Washington, fought on 16 November 1776 at the northern end of Manhattan, ended with the surrender of about 2,800 American soldiers to General William Howe's British and Hessian army. It was one of the worst Patriot defeats of the war, forced the abandonment of Fort Lee and opened Washington's retreat across New Jersey.
On the morning of 16 November 1776 George Washington crossed the Hudson to the heights of northern Manhattan with Generals Nathanael Greene, Israel Putnam and Hugh Mercer. British troops were already advancing on the last American stronghold on the island. By Greene's account they came off about half an hour before the enemy surrounded the fort1. By evening its garrison had surrendered.
The loss came after a season of defeats at Long Island and White Plains. It cost the Continental Army men and guns it could not replace, and began a bleak retreat that ended, against all expectation, in a December victory.
Part of The greatest battles of the American Revolution · Before: The Battle of White Plains · Next: Battle of Trenton
Why the fort was held
Fort Washington was a five sided earthwork1 on the high ground above the Hudson, paired with Fort Lee on the New Jersey Palisades opposite. Between them the Americans sank hulks loaded with stones in the river2 to stop British warships sailing upriver. It failed: in early November more ships slipped past.
Washington began to doubt the post. He wrote to Nathanael Greene, commanding on the New Jersey shore, 'directing him to govern himself by Circumstances1', as he later told Congress.
Greene argued for holding on. On 9 November he admitted the obstructions had failed, but insisted the garrison tied down twice as many enemy troops as it used: 'I cannot conceive the Garrison to be in any great danger3.' The fort's commander, Colonel Robert Magaw, thought a siege would take the British until the end of December3. Washington visited Greene at Fort Lee from 13 November, deferred to his judgement and did not reverse the decision4.
On 2 November Ensign William Demont, adjutant of Magaw's own regiment1, deserted to the British with plans of the defences. How much that mattered is disputed by historians.
The assault from three sides
On 15 November Howe demanded the surrender of the garrison. Magaw refused: 'I am determined to defend this post to the very last extremity2.' The fort had been designed for about 1,200 men1 and lacked water, so Magaw placed most of his roughly 2,900 troops in outer works.
The attack began about ten in the morning1 of 16 November. From the south, Lord Percy's British and Hessians pressed Colonel Lambert Cadwalader's Pennsylvanians. From the east, light infantry and Guards under General Edward Mathew, then grenadiers under Lord Cornwallis, crossed the Harlem River in boats, and the 42nd Highlanders, first meant only to feint, landed behind the American lines.
The hardest fighting was in the north. Knyphausen led Hessian and Waldeck troops from Kingsbridge up a steep, wooded slope held by Lieutenant Colonel Moses Rawlings's Maryland and Virginia riflemen. Firing from behind an abatis, the riflemen turned back two charges2, until fouled rifles and a determined bayonet charge drove them into the fort.
By early afternoon the fort was packed with men it could not protect. Washington sent a note urging Magaw to hold out until dark; Captain John Gooch carried it across the river1 and dodged back through the Hessians. It came too late. Magaw agreed to terms by three o'clock2, and an hour later the American flag came down.
Margaret Corbin at the guns
Among the defenders on the northern heights was Margaret Cochran Corbin. She had married John Corbin in 17725 and followed him when he joined the Pennsylvania forces. At Fort Washington she helped him load his cannon. When he was killed, she took over firing the cannon herself6 and was severely wounded, her left arm nearly severed.
Corbin was taken prisoner and then paroled. On 6 July 1779 the Continental Congress awarded her5 a lifelong pension at half the rate paid to male soldiers, the first pension granted to a woman by the new government for military service. She later served with the Corps of Invalids at West Point and died in 1800.
Parts of her story are uncertain. That she fought dressed as a man comes from tradition, repeated by the US Army, and her nickname 'Captain Molly' has blurred her with the legendary 'Molly Pitcher'. Even her grave is a mystery: in 1926 the Daughters of the American Revolution had remains believed to be hers reburied at West Point6, but after the grave was disturbed in 2016, Army forensic studies found they belonged to an unidentified man6.
The American view
For the Americans, Fort Washington was a disaster partly of their own making. Writing to Congress that evening, Washington warned that the loss of so many officers and men, many of them carefully trained, 'will I fear be severely felt1', and the loss of their arms even more. An anonymous American correspondent at Fort Lee blamed the length of the lines the next day: too few men to hold them, too many to fit inside the fort. The deeper failure was indecision. Washington doubted the post, Greene trusted it, and neither forced a clear choice while the garrison could still have been withdrawn.
The British and Hessian view
For Howe, the capture was a clean professional success that cleared Manhattan and opened the way into New Jersey. The Hessians paid most of the price. Of the 77 to 84 British and German dead and 374 wounded, the Germans alone lost 58 killed and 272 wounded1, many of them in the regiments that climbed the slope below Rawlings's riflemen. The British renamed the captured work Fort Knyphausen after the general who had led that assault. The whole garrison marched out around four o'clock.
The consequences: Fort Lee, New Jersey, Trenton
Four days later the blow fell on the other bank. On the morning of 20 November the Americans abandoned Fort Lee2 as Cornwallis and his troops crossed the Hudson and climbed the Palisades a few miles to the north.
Washington's shrinking army fell back across New Jersey through Newark, New Brunswick and Princeton, and crossed the Delaware into Pennsylvania in early December7.
The prisoners paid the highest price. Many died in captivity; the American Battlefield Trust estimates that only about 800 of them survived their imprisonment2. Then, on 26 December, Washington struck back at Trenton, capturing most of a Hessian garrison and turning the story of 1776 around.
If you visit
Nothing of the earthwork survives. Bennett Park, on Fort Washington Avenue in the Hudson Heights part of Washington Heights, holds the highest point of land in Manhattan, 265.05 feet above sea level8. At the south end of the park, bluestone and granite paving outline the contours of the eastern section of the fort.
On the park's eastern perimeter wall stands a marble and granite stele designed by Charles R. Lamb and erected in 1901 by the Sons of the American Revolution8 to commemorate the battle. Fort Washington Park is a separate riverside park below it. A short walk north, Fort Tryon Park names its main drive and entrance circle after Margaret Corbin.
Why Fort Washington still matters
Fort Washington is remembered far less than Trenton, but the two belong together. Historians often see in the defeat a lesson Washington absorbed: keeping the army alive mattered more than any single post. The 250th anniversary falls on 16 November 2026; see On This Day in Military History, and for the wider war, the greatest battles of the American Revolution.