250 and Counting

When Washington’s Council of War (with a single exception) determined that sticking around New York City was a bad idea, the next step was deciding which way to go, and how to go about it. To a certain extent, the decision was made for them, because the British had pretty well sewed up the Hudson River, which meant that getting across and into New Jersey stealthily would be problematic. The other option was to move north, into the Bronx and the downstate area west and north of Pelham. There wo

The Most Honourable Order of the Bath is a British order of chivalry that was first created by King George I in 1725. It’s typically bestowed by a monarch based on the advice of His/Her Majesty’s government. When General William Howe received his order, there was a single class called the Knight Companion. However, in 1815 this class was discontinued in favor of three separate classes for civilians and another three (with the same class names) for the Military Division. Now, I said that George

By the time Charles Lee returned to duty, the Continental Army in New York was in a sad state of affairs. Many men had been injured or deserted. Supplies were low. Ammunition was low. Morale was low. And the British were up in the Bronx, gearing up for…something, who knows what. Lee had, of course, missed all the action in Brooklyn and Manhattan, so he brought a new perspective to the table. And it was fortunate that Lee felt free to say what he thought of the situation, namely that it was unte

Charles Lee was born in Great Britain and only came to British America in 1773, when he purchased an estate in western Virginia. It wasn’t his first time in America; he’d fought for the British in the French and Indian War and married the daughter of a Mohawk chief. Lee was injured in 1758 during an attack on Fort Ticonderoga. The following year he was part of the capture of Fort Niagara and of Montreal the year after that. Lee returned to Europe and served in Portugal as a lieutenant colonel

The Battle of Split Rock is really just a continuation of the Battle of Valcour, and a lot of it takes place in a location called Button Mould Bay (or Buttonmold Bay). So why is it called the Battle of Split Rock? That’s a fine question. On the western shore of Lake Champlain, just north of Button Mould Bay, is a formation called Split Rock Mountain. It rises sharply from the lake to an altitude of just over 1000 feet, and it’s where the confrontation between the British and the Americans resu

The Battle of Throgs Neck, or Throg’s Point, or a number of other names, was part of a move intended to trap Washington’s forces through flanking them from the north while Washington concentrated on the troops already in front of him on Manhattan Island. Washington did anticipate that this might happen, and sent American troops that way, but part of the problem that he had was that there were so many possibilities, and he just couldn’t cover them all. So he took a little gamble in sending his n