It's Peaceful - Now

The biggest battle of the Revolutionary War took place in a bucolic corner of Brooklyn

By John Hanc | John Hanc is a regular contributor to Newsday.

July 2, 2003

Up the hill they charge. The cyclists pump their muscular legs like pistons. The walkers swing their arms and swivel their hips. The runners, their faces grim behind sunglasses, extend their strides, some gasping hard, others hardly working. Seven days a week, almost any time of day, you can find people testing their quads and cardiovascular systems as they attack the steep hill in the northeast corner of Brooklyn's Prospect Park. When the British attacked here 227 years ago, they weren't looking for a good workout, but rather a decisive blow that would end the American struggle for independence in its early stages.

They came very close.

On Aug. 27, 1776 - less than two months after America declared its independence - the area that we know today as the borough of Brooklyn was the setting of the largest battle of the Revolutionary War. Here, in the woods, hills and pastures of western Long Island, 20,000 British and mercenary Hessian troops under the command of Sir William Howe crushed an army of 9,000 Americans led by an inexperienced general named George Washington.

The battle was fought along a 4-mile front, extending roughly from what is now Green-Wood Cemetery near Sunset Park, northeast to today's Cemetery of the Evergreens in Bushwick. But it is in Prospect Park - the very center of the action during the battle - where nature can still help the mind's eye discern what it was like here 227 years ago. To help uncover some of the secrets of this forgotten battlefield, we enlisted the help of historian Barnet Schecter, whose acclaimed new book, "New York: The City at the Heart of the American Revolution" (Walker, $30) recounts the critical and often-forgotten role the city played in our war of independence. But before we even step into the park, he says, a brief history lesson on Brooklyn is in order:

In 1776, Kings County - what is now Brooklyn - was bucolic; a few small villages established by the original Dutch settlers and a network of wagon roads were about the only traces of civilization. As in much of the rest of western Long Island, the area's dominant features were the Terminal Moraine - a spine of hills left behind from the last glacier - and, below it, a southern, coastal "outwash" plain of sandy but fertile soil. "You can still see the outlines of that ridge on the map," says Schecter, pointing to three green swatches in a large fold-out map of Brooklyn. "Notice how Green-Wood Cemetery, Prospect Park and the Cemetery of the Evergreens line up."

It was along this natural barrier that the colonists planned to defend against the British, whose armada had arrived off Manhattan on July 2, 1776 - more than a year after the battles of Lexington and Concord had ignited the long-simmering conflict between the 13 colonies and Britain - the very same day that delegates to the Continental Congress, meeting in Philadelphia, had approved the draft of the Declaration of Independence.

The British landed unopposed on loyalist Staten Island, and set up camp. Howe and his brother, Richard - the admiral commanding the armada anchored in the Narrows - had hoped for a negotiated peace with the rebels. But when talks broke down, they began to plan their campaign. They knew they needed control of Brooklyn to sail unimpeded up the East River. So on Aug. 22, Gen. Howe landed an advance force of 4,000 troops at what is now Dyker Beach Park, to attack the American forces on the western end of Long Island.

Washington suspected that the landing in Brooklyn was a diversion for an attack on Manhattan, where he and the bulk of the American forces were based. So he hesitated to send significant reinforcements to his troops on the other side of the East River. Washington's commander in Brooklyn, Maj. Gen. John Sullivan of New Hampshire, concentrated his forces at the points where Brooklyn's four main thoroughfares - the Gowanus, Bedford, Flatbush and Jamaica roads - cut through the hills.

One of those points - or passes - was in what is now Prospect Park. It's a short walk from the park entrance at Grand Army Plaza (a memorial not to the American army of the Revolution, but the Union Army of the Civil War, 85 years later), along East Park Drive and up to the crest of the hill known as Battle Pass. The name, of course, hints at its history. So do a few old plaques, standing unnoticed in the shade on this brilliantly sunny day.

While most traces of Revolutionary New York have vanished under the infrastructure of the modern city, this is one spot that has not changed significantly. The park drive follows the original route of what was then the Flatbush road. When the landscape architects Frederick Law Olmsted and Calvert Vaux came in the 1860s to design Prospect Park, they left this area undisturbed. "They knew the battle was there, but that's not why they left it," says Tupper Thomas, president of the Prospect Park Alliance. "They didn't mess with anything that looked good already."

It still does. But to properly appreciate the battle, Schecter says, we need to get a slightly different perspective. With the blue-suited historian taking the lead (a stark contrast, no doubt, to the ragged, homespun uniforms of the American soldiers once positioned here), we step off the park drive and clamber up the wooded cliffs overlooking the road. Suddenly, the pedestrian traffic of modern-day Prospect Park vanishes, and we're in the midst of a tangled bramble that, Schecter says, is pretty close to the way things looked in 1776. What's this? A trench, dug on the top of the hill, filled with leaves. The hole, we learn later, was probably dug by an overzealous parks volunteer looking for Revolutionary artifacts. However, Schecter confirms that there was a redoubt - an earthen fort - on this spot. Here, cannon were positioned, ready to take aim at Redcoats coming up the hill, no doubt as conspicuous as the two colorfully clad cyclists I see down there at that very moment.

As you stand atop the hill, those American volunteer soldiers - teenage boys, many of them - become more tangible. You can begin to imagine what it must have been like for them that morning, crouched behind the trees they had felled to provide defense, their homemade "Liberty" flags waving, as they waited anxiously for the inevitable attack by the world's mightiest military force.

But they were in for a surprise that day. Howe's second-in-command, Henry Clinton - who had grown up on Long Island while his father was New York's royal governor - knew the area and had devised a bold plan. He proposed to send small detachments against the Americans at the four passes, while the main force would execute a nighttime flanking march around the American defenses and then come up behind them.

Had the British won the war, Clinton's daring midnight march probably would be as famous as Paul Revere's midnight ride is today. Four thousand men and 14 artillery pieces moved in silence, following footpaths along the edge of the woods, behind the American lines. They found the Jamaica Pass - located near the intersection of today's Jamaica Avenue, Fulton Street and Broadway - virtually unguarded.

The trap was about to be sprung: Two hours later, General Howe joined Clinton with 6,000 more men behind the American lines. Soon they were in position for their attack. To communicate to his forces facing the Americans that they were ready, Howe fired off three signal guns. "Imagine what it must have been like for these men," Schecter says. "Here they are, up in these woods, looking down this road, waiting for the British onslaught. Suddenly at 9 a.m., we're standing here and we hear 'boom, boom, boom' ... behind us!"

The British attacked and the American position in Battle Pass disintegrated: Hessians and the elite Scottish Highlanders came charging up the hill and through the woods, swarming over the rebel defenses. By some accounts, a massacre ensued.

"The enemy," wrote one Hessian officer later, "were mostly pierced by the bayonets to the trees. These men deserve more pity than fear."

"The Hessians and our brave highlanders gave no quarter," wrote a British officer. "It was a glorious achievement ... and will immortalize us and crush the rebel colonies."

Colonists who could fled Battle Pass through what is now the park's magnificent Long Meadow, down Park Slope and toward the Gowanus Creek. With the enemy in hot pursuit, the Americans retreated all across the line - except for one unit: a regiment of Marylanders, under the command of an American general with the very British- sounding name of Lord Stirling. At the site of a stone house owned by the Vechte family (a rebuilt version of which is today a museum in J.J.Byrne Park), they turned and fought. Although they suffered heavy casualties, they charged the British six times, holding up the enemy advance long enough to allow a substantial part of the American force to get beyond the creek and to the relative safety of their forts closer to the East River.

The brave Marylanders are remembered in a monument in Prospect Park - but it is on the other side of the park from Battle Pass, atop a hill named Lookout Mountain. With Schecter leading the way, we head off to find it. Along the way, we pass Lefferts Homestead - a reconstruction of a home that stood near here during the battle and that was burned in the early skirmishing. It is now a children's museum.