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Even Gen. Washington didn't win every battle

Liberty Belle

Well-known member
Escape From New York
Even Gen. Washington didn't win every battle.

BY BRENDAN MINITER
Tuesday, July 3, 2007


In 1776 Lt. Col. Thomas Knowlton seemed to be precisely the kind of military officer the American military needed to win the Revolution. He was a veteran of the French and Indian War two decades earlier. He proved to be a supreme leader of men in combat outside Boston. And he was tapped by Gen. George Washington to start a new elite military unit--Knowlton's Rangers--that was capable of operating behind enemy lines.

On Sept. 16, 1776, in a skirmish in northern Manhattan now known as the Battle of Harlem Heights, Knowlton was preparing a surprise attack against crack British troops when his unit's position was given away.

Knowlton knew what was at stake. That summer the British had landed some 34,000 troops in Staten Island--an invasion about the size of the U.S. surge in Iraq over the last few months--and ferried them into what is now Brooklyn. Using diversionary tactics and a night march, the British outflanked Washington's army in late August, trapping it against the East River. The American Army and the Revolution might have been crushed on the spot.

Realizing his peril, Washington slipped his troops out of Brooklyn and across the East River into Manhattan in the dead of night and then retreated up the island into Harlem. In mid-September, with the British bearing down on him, Washington was desperate to escape from New York. Knowlton's forces had stumbled across advance British units, briefly retreated and then re-engaged as part of a larger military maneuver.

When he lost the element of surprise, Knowlton might have opted to pull back. But he led an attack instead and was killed. Today he is remembered in an award handed out by the Military Intelligence Corps Association to those who distinguish themselves in the service of army intelligence.

It is often remarked that in deciding to rebel against the most powerful European empire in the world, the Founding Fathers risked losing everything. What is too often forgotten is that many of those who joined the rebellion did lose everything. About 40 miles north of where Col. Knowlton fell rest the remains of another often-forgotten skirmish of the Revolution. Inside what is now Bear Mountain State Park, not far from West Point, fortifications were built to stop the British from gaining control of the Hudson River and with it the ability to split New England and eastern New York from the rest of the country, which might have allowed the British to pacify less rebellious Southern states.

American soldiers had stretched a large chain across the Hudson, built fortifications and waited. A year after Washington was driven from New York City, the British launched an ambitious campaign. Gen. John Burgoyne was dispatched to move south from Canada and link up with other British forces, some of whom would sail up the Hudson. In October 1777, the king's army arrived in the Hudson Valley, assaulted the fortifications and, with a final bayonet charge, defeated the Americans. They then broke the chain.

Those who defended the redoubt that still stands today held off waves of British soldiers before finally being defeated. And their gallantry wasn't in vain. By forcing the British to take the valley by force, the Americans set in motion a series of events that would help win the war. Burgoyne didn't receive the support he needed and ended up, after dragging his forces through miles of wilderness to the outskirts of Albany, defeated at Saratoga, N.Y. He surrendered his army of some 6,000 men, a stunning defeat for the British that convinced the French to enter the war.

Today it seems that every soldier killed in action and every minor skirmish involving American troops is front-page news. But 231 years after the Declaration of Independence was ratified by the Continental Congress, we seem to have lost sight of the everyday heroics and sacrifices that made this republic possible. The Revolutionary War took eight years to win, with many defeats and setbacks along the way. We owe those who stuck with it and made those sacrifices more than we know.

Mr. Miniter is assistant editor of OpinionJournal.com. His column appears Tuesdays.

http://www.opinionjournal.com/columnists/bminiter/?id=110010287
 
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