On 16 September 1776 a scouting party of Connecticut rangers ran into British light infantry on upper Manhattan, and the skirmish grew into the Battle of Harlem Heights. A day after the panic at Kip's Bay, George Washington's troops held their ground in open country and pushed British and Hessian regulars back. The fight settled nothing, but it gave the Continental Army back its nerve.
A beaten army on Manhattan
After its defeat on Long Island in late August, Washington's army was strung out across Manhattan, and General William Howe's British and Hessian troops were advancing north up the island. On 15 September the British landed at Kip's Bay, and American troops there broke and ran. Washington fell back to the high ground of Harlem Heights at the north end of the island, today's Morningside Heights.1
Before dawn on 16 September he sent Lieutenant Colonel Thomas Knowlton forward with his rangers, a picked force of New England volunteers, to find out where the British were. British Battles puts the party at around 120 men, and Jim Mackin of the Bloomingdale Neighborhood History Group at 120 to 150.2
The hunting horn
Knowlton's men met British light infantry, exchanged fire and fell back into the Hollow Way, a low valley between the two ridges, roughly where 125th Street meets Broadway today. As they withdrew, British buglers sounded the call of the fox hunt, the signal that the quarry has run. According to British Battles, Washington, himself a keen fox hunter, was stung by the insult. Washington's adjutant general, Colonel Joseph Reed, who was at the front, later wrote: “I never felt such a sensation before. It seemed to crown our disgrace.”3
He decided to strike back. A small force made a show of attacking the British front while Knowlton's rangers and three companies of the 3rd Virginia Regiment under Major Andrew Leitch tried to work round their flank. In the fighting that followed both Knowlton and Leitch were mortally wounded. Their men kept going, and Washington fed in reinforcements.4
The buckwheat field
The main fight was fought in a buckwheat field on the farm of Benjamin Vandewater, between about today's 116th and 120th Streets. The British brought up more light infantry, the 42nd Highlanders, the Black Watch, and Hessian troops with field guns. By the afternoon, according to Mackin and Harry Schenawolf of the Revolutionary War Journal, some 1,800 to 2,000 Americans faced about 5,000 British and Hessian soldiers. The Americans pushed the British back across the field before Washington, unwilling to risk a general battle, called his troops back to their lines. Schenawolf has the fighting over by about 3 p.m.5
Losses and meaning
Casualty figures disagree. Schenawolf and Mackin give about 30 Americans killed and 100 wounded, and Mackin warns that the numbers are not reliable. On the British side Schenawolf cites Howe's report of 14 killed and 70 wounded, Lieutenant Colonel Stephen Kemble's figure of 14 killed and 157 wounded, and higher modern estimates. British Battles estimates about 70 killed on each side.6
Both armies ended the day where they had started, and British Battles calls the fight inconclusive. But after the flight at Kip's Bay, Washington's soldiers had seen British regulars give ground. Howe paused for about a month before trying to outflank the American lines, a move that led to the Battle of White Plains in October and the fall of Fort Washington in November.7
Also on this day
- 1779: Siege of Savannah. French and American forces besieged British-held Savannah, Georgia, in the American Revolutionary War.
