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The cannon fire could be heard from Brandywine Hundred. It was louder in Concord. It was deafening in Chadd’s Ford. The Battle of the Brandywine was in full swing, and the result was a defeat of the American Forces leaving Philadelphia wide open to the British invasion.
Sadly for us this marks the end of Delaware’s direct involvement in the Revolutionary War. After this battle, the war in the North became a sitting game, and Cornwallis felt compelled to shift to the South to try and gain some momentum. He misread the South’s resilience, and the war of course ended when he got boxed at Yorktown.
As for Delaware, the British had previously marched up from Glasgow through Newark then up Kirkwood Highway and camped at Marshalltown. One can still see the embankments they threw up. The Americans realized that they had only a narrow route north before did the British. Had the British chosen to fight through the night, the war would have been over with Washington’s defeat. He was trapped by water on three sides. General Howe was a person adverse to exertion, and chose to investigate the following morning. When the British awoke, they saw the Americans had disappeared in the night, leaving their camp fires burning to fool the British watchmen.
The British marched north to Kennett Square, probably along what is now Route 82… On the morning of 9/11 the British marched towards Philadelphia. Washington assumed the lazy Howe would march the easiest route and set up defenses in Chadd’s Ford covering the road to Baltimore, which is Route 1 today. What Washington miscalculated is that the British had better intelligence than he. Here is how.
Washington was employing those in Philadelphia to give him advice. Howe was approaching on the outside, and chose those locals to tell him the layout. The difference in intelligence was a simple as one looking out, and one looking in. Perhaps you may remember the meme last decade of showing a city as the makeup of their entire World? For instance one of Rehoboth, would show Rehoboth and Dewey and Ocean City in Great detail, and Washington and Baltimore as tiny patches on the last edge of the map? Well that myopia actually affects our judgment. As one approaches the unknown, one is apt to know only his one way. But to use that same analogy backwards, as one approaches the known, from the area of the unknown, one is far more perceptive of all other options leading towards that goal or destination.
So it was with Howe, who found out there were two ford to the north, both overlooked by Washington, and the access to the battle field was relative easily. Howe committed 5000 of his 18,000 troups to attacking Washington’s front lines, and sent 13,000 north to cross both the west and east branches of the Brandywine, then head south. imagine the surprise of the American army who had been confident that they were holding their own, to find they’d been fighting a measly 5000 men in the fog, and now had 13,000 marching behind them on their right side….
We retreated. Some said it was a disciplined retreat, and Lafayette is given a lot of credit for that. He was wounded this day in history by the way, yet he established a rallying point, communicated it to all the troops, and an orderly retreat was managed. But the surprise to our right cost us dearly. We lost 11 of our 14 artillery guns. The British listed 587 as killed, missing or wounded, but no records of the Americans lost is known.. General Nathaniel Greene is later quoted as guessing 1200 to 1400 Continentals were lost… Commander Howe wrote to the British Foreign Secretary that 300 dead, 600 wounded, 400 prisoners were the total of America’s casualties.
One cannot imagine how dark things seemed for the prospects of an American nation after this day.
- Americans had been tricked and easily routed.
- They’d lost 79% of their artillary, having only 3 cannons left.
- The Continental Congress fled in the night to Lancaster for one day, then to York.
- Military supplies were moved to Reading.
- Philadelphia, the cradle of democracy, was wide open to the British Army.
- It was 52 years before the founding of Yeungling’s brewery, so none was available to drown one’s sorrows.
They suffered fully sober. If we can remember the tragedy of our 9/11, try to imagine something ten times worse. There was no hope, period.
A makeshift hospital was scrambled together in Wilmington Delaware, and 350 causalities were sent.
Occasionally something that you looked at many times, but have never seen, suddenly jumps out and changes your whole perspective. For example, I had always thought that as far as the Revolutionary War went, Delaware’s only claim to fame was that the new flag was first flown in battle on Delaware’s soil…….
Not so! Two hundred thirty-six years ago today, things were really jumping in these parts. It may seem like a long time ago to most of us, but in reality it is only a string of three ten year olds who each knew someone who was ninety. In the vernacular, that means that most of us know someone, who themselves knew someone who actually had spoken to someone, who was alive during the Revolutionary War!…… Whoa…….
August 25, 1777 close to 300 ships sailed up the Chesapeake Bay, anchored off off Elk Neck, Maryland, and began disembarking. That has been called the largest fleet ever assembled off either of the America’s coasts. To put that number into perspective, the famous Spanish Armada, consisted of a meager 130 Spanish ships. The most-oft talked about Battle of Trafalger, consisted of a combined total of some 60 ships. Modern historians can get a perspective by comparing those 300 ships to the 700 off of Dunkirk or the 900 off of Normandy…….
It must have been quite a sight to stand on the top Iron Hill and see over 300 tall masts sailing to defeat you. And on board those ships, were 15,000 solders disembarking to begin marching towards your capital city….That’s close to the total number of women living across Greater Newark in 2010.
Were we living 236 years ago, we would all be on edge! Anticipating a major battle on Delaware soil, 11,000 continental troops were moved into Delaware and bivouacked at what used to be known as Red Mill Neck, and now is near the Marshalltown bridge over top of Red Clay Creek.
The British moved in steps, out of Elkton to Gray’s hill, then up the road to Newark. One account said their line stretched from Glasgow to the bridge across the Christiana, where the I 95 and 896 interchange is today. They marched through the village of Newark, and then advanced parallel to today’s Kirkwood highway and camped at Milltown, just two miles from the American Camp in Newport. For one day, they stared each other down. The potential existed for a pitched battle to have occurred on Delaware soil. When no attempt was made by the British, Washington got scared that he was to be flanked to the north. Had General Howe chosen to do so, Washington and the Continental Army would have suffered a catastrophic defeat. At 2 am, the Continentals forced marched north to Chadd’s Ford, thereby occupying the high ground, and then on the following day, occurred the Battle of the Brandywine, the second to last major battle to be fought by Washington until Yorktown, four years latter.
Just a small footnote: it was in Delaware where General Pulaski, from Poland, met Washington while in Wilmington and was placed in charge of developing the calvary.
Although only a small skirmish actually occurred in this small state, with just a few things happening differently, a major conflagration could have happened that could have ended the war for the Americans.
Needless to say, it was relatively scary “in these parts” just 11 score and sixteen years ago.
Based on what was heard before the House Armed Services Committee, our now famous embassy in Baghdad was built with slave labor.
“Mr. Chairman, when the airplane took off and the captain announced that we were heading to Baghdad, all you-know-what broke out on the airplane. The men started shouting, it wasn’t until the security guy working for First Kuwaiti waved an MP5 in the air that the men settled down. They realized that they had no other choice but to go to Baghdad. Let me spell it out clearly: I believe these men were kidnapped by First Kuwaiti to work at the US Embassy… I’ve read the State Department Inspector General’s report on the construction of the embassy. Mr. Chairman, it’s not worth the paper it’s printed on. This is a cover-up and I’m glad that I’ve had the opportunity to set the record straight.”
That was before Waxman’s committee on oversight of the building of the new US embassy in Baghdad. These men thought they had signed up to work at Dubai hotels. One man said he was excited to began work as a telephone repairman in Dubai. Once landed in Baghdad, they were loaded onto buses and smuggled past American security into the Green Zone. Whereas Americans lived one person per trailer, they lived 25 to 30 to a trailer. They worked on scaffolding without shoes or harnesses, and they could not leave….While there, six or some scaled the wall of the Green Zone. Why? They wanted to find better work. 1st Kuwaiti sent security out to find them, found them and brought them back to the compound. They were told that they were property of 1st Kuwaiti and could not be employed by any other construction firm……..
Understandably this is delegation in the Third World. Understandably it is abrogation. “We do not have to concern ourselves with that…..let 1st Kuwaiti do it.” We gave up our oversight. It wasn’t us; it was our hired help.
But more shocking was the reaction of the 2 Republican congressmen, from Va and Ca. Obviously they were under Cheney’s orders to shore up the failing defenses. They accused the whistle blowers of perfidy and treason. They were however totally unconcerned over human rights abuses. From their questioning all could see that they were solely concerned that Republicans were going to get blamed for this fiasco. You are damned right they are.
Watching them pounce all over the witnesses, churned my stomach like watching maggots swarm over a dead fish. Even had they just briefly shown an appearance of shock or outrage, that would at least offset their complicity in such actions. But no, they were unrepentant. They cared not that our country paid for the kidnapping of employees to build our embassy. They badgered the witnesses who fortunately, because of another court case, could retreat behind the statement “I am not legally permitted to answer that question.”
These poor Americans, shocked that the America they saw abroad, was not the same America about which they were taught in school, stood up and tried to do something patriotic. What was the result? The exposure to all the world, that the America represented by republicans in Washington DC, is also not the same America we learned about in schools.
“In essence, you Republicans are saying that it is ok for the United States, to be an enabler in the trafficking of human beings.”
And to think,…. our favorite son, Delaware’s lone Congressman, a republican, is one of them………..
Time for a change?
