The Battle of Harlem Heights is an underappreciated milestone in
American military history. The engagement on upper Manhattan Island on
September 16, 1776, was the first successful battle for George
Washington's troops in the quest for independence from Great Britain and
presaged the emergence of an effective fighting force among the
citizen-soldiers who made up the Continental Army. The cooperative
effort of regiments from New England, Maryland, and Virginia--whose men
lacked any sense of national identity before the Revolution--indicated
the potential for this fledgling army to cohere around a common national
purpose and affiliation and become the primary instrument for securing
America's right to self-rule.
The action began when a contingent of rangers led by Col. Thomas
Knowlton of Connecticut encountered British light infantry while
conducting a reconnaissance mission on Washington's orders. What began
as a skirmish transformed into a full-fledged battle as both sides
reinforced, and a heavy engagement continued for several hours until,
with ammunition running low, the British withdrew. Washington decided
not to pursue and risk confrontation with a larger force, thereby
keeping his army intact. In The Battle of Harlem Heights, 1776, David
Price conveys the significance of the Continental Army's first victory
and highlights the role of one of its key participants, the largely
forgotten Knowlton--the "father of American military intelligence"--who
gave his life during the action while urging his rangers forward. No
matter how many times U.S. Army troops have recorded a battlefield
success over the past two and a half centuries--whether on American
soil, in a European wood, across a Middle Eastern desert, or on a
Pacific island--one thing about that history remains indisputable. They
did it first at Harlem Heights.
Small Battles: Military History as Local History
Mark Edward Lender and James Kirby Martin, Series Editors
Small Battles offers a fresh and important new perspective on the
story of America's early conflicts. It was the small battles, not the
clash of major armies, that truly defined the fighting during the
colonial wars, the American Revolution, the War of 1812, and the
hostilities on the frontiers. This is dramatic military history as seen
through the prism of local history--history with a depth of detail, a
feeling for place, people, and the impact of battle and its consequences
that the story of major battles often cannot convey. The Small Battles
series focuses on America's military conflicts at their most intimate
and revealing level.
