On November 5 three British ships again mocked the defenses of the two Hudson forts, passing by unharmed. Three days later Washington wrote to Nathanael Greene, who was in charge of the forts, and questioned the wisdom of retaining Fort Washington: “If we cannot prevent vessels passing up . . . what valuable purpose can it answer to attempt to hold a post from which the expected benefit cannot be had? I am therefore inclined to think it will not be prudent to hazard the men and stores at Mount Washington, but, as you are on the spot, leave it to you to give such orders as to evacuating Mount Washington as you judge best.”⁸ The letter bespoke tremendous confidence in Greene, at a time when a skeptical Washington should have been more autocratic; he should never have delegated such a crucial decision to an inexperienced general. One suspects that, in losing New York City, his self-confidence had suffered serious damage and that he had temporarily lost the internal fortitude to obey his instincts.

Oblivious to imminent danger, Greene regarded Fort Washington as an impregnable stronghold and thought it would be bloody folly for the British to attempt to take it. Should the worst happen, he reasoned, he could easily transfer troops to Fort Lee. Misled by these baseless assumptions, he ignored Washington’s advice to empty Fort Washington of its rich store of supplies. Unknown to American commanders, a deserter named William Demont had defected to the British on November 2 and not only delivered a blueprint of Fort Washington but reported “great dissensions” and low morale in the rebel army.⁹

Washington worried that his army might simply melt into nothingness. The men were shivering with cold, ravenous for food, and prey to one malady after another. With many enlistments set to expire in late November, Washington forbade officers from “discharging any officer or soldier or giving any permission to leave the camp on any pretense whatsoever,” as if he wanted to bolt his troops in place.¹⁰ So many soldiers were giving up that one Washington aide described the roads as thick with ragged men “returning to their homes in the most scandalous and infamous manner.”¹¹ While wishful thinkers in the Continental Army thought Howe might retreat into winter quarters in New York, Washington knew he might besiege Fort Washington. More likely, he believed Howe would race across New Jersey and try to pounce on Philadelphia. From his letters, it is clear that Washington was preoccupied with this imagined British threat, reflected in the fact that he himself took command of two thousand men in New Jersey. He left Greene in charge of Forts Washington and Lee; had General William Heath guard the Hudson Highlands with several thousand men; and assigned Charles Lee to protect the approach to New England with seven thousand men.

On the evening of November 13 Washington held a rendezvous with General Greene at his Fort Lee headquarters. Far from taking Washington’s hint to downgrade Fort Washington, Greene had pursued the opposite tack, pouring in more troops and supplies. A chorus of staff officers, led by Joseph Reed, pleaded with Washington to countermand these orders. Reed left a striking image of a befuddled Washington who “hesitated more than I ever knew him on any other occasion and more than I thought the public service permitted.”¹² In hindsight, Washington admitted to a secret “warfare in my mind” that led him to bow to Greene’s faulty judgment, even though it was “repugnant to my own judgment.”¹³ He continued to misread signs of a British buildup aimed at Fort Washington, telling Hancock that “it seems to be generally believed on all hands that the investing [i.e., siege] of Fort Washington is one object” the British have in view. “But that can employ but a small part of their force.”¹⁴

That General William Howe had unfinished business in New York grew plain on November 15 when he sent his trusted aide Colonel James Paterson to hand an ultimatum to Colonel Robert Magaw, the superior officer at Fort Washington. The British offered a frightening choice: either relinquish the fort within two hours or brace for its destruction. Washington had underestimated the British forces that would be mobilized to this task: Howe dedicated thirteen thousand men to the operation. With three thousand men at his command, the unbending Magaw vowed that he was “determined to defend this post to the very last extremity.”¹⁵ This wasn’t the war’s last instance of misplaced bravado. Washington learned of this ultimatum while in Hackensack, New Jersey, and he instantly spurred his horse to Fort Lee, arriving at sundown. Nathanael Greene and Israel Putnam had crossed to Fort Washington, and Washington jumped into a boat to follow them. He encountered them in the darkness in midstream, as they were being rowed back to the Jersey shore. Messrs. Greene and Putnam reassured an agitated Washington that the men at Fort Washington were “in high spirits and would make a good defense.”¹⁶ The three men then spent the night at Fort Lee.

The next morning refuted the generals’ soothing words. Along with Greene, Putnam, and Brigadier General Hugh Mercer, Washington was boarding a rowboat to go to Fort Washington when they heard an uproar on the far bank: the British had launched a many-sided assault against the fort, the cannon thunder amplified by the rocky cliffs of the Hudson. Notwithstanding the danger, Washington and his generals sped across the river, landed on the opposite shore, and mounted to Harlem Heights, downriver from the besieged fort. They proceeded to the Roger Morris house, a mile south of Fort Washington, whose elevation enabled them to survey patriot defenses. There they stood, said Greene, “in a very awkward situation,” watching the enemy advance, but they “saw nothing amiss” and derived a false sense of comfort.¹⁷ American shells pulverized the Hessian lines, littering the battlefield with hundreds of enemy casualties. As one Hessian recalled: “They lay battered and in part shattered; dead on the earth in their own blood; some whimpering, looked at us, pleading that . . . we would ease their suffering and unbearable pain.”¹⁸ It attested to Washington’s dauntless courage that he wished to stay with his exposed men, but his companions convinced him that he stood in extreme danger. After insisting that the three generals accompany him, Washington was rowed back across the Hudson out of harm’s way. He made a hairbreadth escape: the British arrived at the Roger Morris house a scant fifteen minutes later.

From the rocky terrain of Fort Lee, Washington watched the disaster unfolding across the water. General Howe unleashed the full terror of his arsenal on Fort Washington, and by one P.M. almost all of the terrified American soldiers were squeezed inside the cramped fortress, now turned into a veritable death trap. The enemy then went on a rampage, bayoneting to death any American troops they could capture. As he stood high on the Jersey Palisades and watched through his telescope, George Washington gave way to strong emotions. As Washington Irving, who claimed to have heard the story from eyewitnesses, later wrote, the defeat “was said so completely to have overcome him that he wept with the tenderness of a child.”¹⁹

An hour later the Hessian general, Baron Wilhelm von Knyphausen, called for the surrender of the doomed fort. By four P.M., 2,837 soldiers, including 230 officers, emptied out and marched down a gauntlet of Hessian soldiers, who kicked and punched them. Even some of the victors found the procession of shabby, unkempt men a heartrending sight. “A great many of them were lads under fifteen and old men, and few had the appearance of soldiers,” wrote Lieutenant Frederick Mackenzie, who said that many colleagues guffawed at this sad mimicry of a professional army.²⁰ The American captives were dispatched to the grisly confinement of British prison ships in New York Harbor.