America 250: Washington's first steps on the road to Yorktown began in Greenburgh

France's minister to the U.S., Anne-César, chevalier de La Luzerne, (hatless on horse with raised right hoof center), Gen. George Washington (holding tricorn hat in his right hand) and other generals review the Soissonnais regiment under the command of French Lt. Gen. Jean-Baptiste Donatien de Vimeur, comte de Rochambeau (at rear right of Washington) at Dobbs Ferry on July 10, 1781. The date marked the Philipsburg Encampment, the initial gathering of French and American troops in today's Town of Greenburgh in western Westchester County, N.Y. At Washington's immediate rear are American generals Benjamin Lincoln and Henry Knox and at front right is Brigadier General Armand Louis de Gontaut, duc de Lauzun , commander of the French Hussars known as Lauzun's Legion (Illustration c. 1900 'Washington Reviewing Our Ally — the French — 1781' by Henry 'Harry' Alexander 'H.A.' Ogden, courtesy The American Revolution Institute of the Society of the Cincinnati)

In the pre-dawn hours of Sunday, Aug. 19, 1781 on what would become the Dobbs Ferry/Irvington line, Gen. George Washington's Continental forces and some French allies gathered near the intersection of today's Ashford Avenue and Broadway/U.S. 9 to begin a secret march and a rendezvous at Yorktown, Va., that would end exactly two months later with America's victory in its War of Independence against colonial master Great Britain.

The French and U.S. troops likely began their march at around 2 a.m. — Washington's preferred start time for hot weather marches — and pass through today's Irvington, Tarrytown, Sleepy Hollow, Ossining and Croton along what was then the Albany Post Road (today Broadway/U.S. 9) en route some 15-20 miles north to King's Ferry at Verplanck's Point on the east side of the Hudson River four miles south of Peekskill to cross to Stony Point on the west shore, a half mile away.

The river crossing was slow, taking six days beginning Aug. 20.

The original march began with upwards of 3,000 Continental infantry and cavalry soldiers as well as French and American artillery. French infantry under the command of Lt. Gen. Jean-Baptiste Donatien de Vimeur, comte de Rochambeau, would follow a day later.

The marches were the culmination of an historic six-week encampment of the newly-united French and American forces in today's Town of Greenburgh, N.Y., at the time part of the 52,000-acre former Philipsburg Manor. The so-called Philipsburg Encampment began July 4, 1781 with the arrival of Washington's forces in today's Village of Ardsley and the French forces in today's Hartsdale on July 6. The area at the time was in what was known as Neutral Ground or No Man's Land, which encompassed Westchester County south of the Croton River to parts of today's Bronx County just north of British-controlled Manhattan.

Allied forces were deployed in satellite areas as well, including artillery and light horse along the Hudson north to today's Hastings, land that includes today's Mercy University campus on the Dobbs Ferry/Irvington line and other forces — mainly French — back as far as today's Elmsford.

This numerically coded map of the 1781 Philipsburg Encampment of Continental and French troops shows the location of Col. Elisha Sheldon's 2nd Continental Light Dragoons to the south and northeast of Wicker's Creek adjacent to the campus of today's Marymount University on the Dobbs Ferry/Irvington border marked by the red No. 7 on the map in today's Dobbs Ferry. The main American encampment is marked No. 1 near the site of today's Ardsley High School, 300 Farm Road, Ardsley. The No. 8 marks the Appleby House headquarters of Gen. George Washington south of Secor Road in Ardsley/Hartsdale, No. 2 the French encampment in Edgemont and No. 9 the Odell House headquarters of French commander Comte de Rochambeau in Hartsdale for about six weeks beginning between July 4 and 6, 1781. Hartsdale, Edgemont, Dobbs Ferry and Ardsley are all part of the Town of Greenburgh.

The allied armies used the six weeks of the Philipsburg Encampment to scout British forces in what is now the northern Bronx neighborhoods of Kingsbridge and Morrisania, ostensibly to prepare for an attack on Britain's naval and land forces based in Manhattan. The British were led by Gen. Henry Clinton, Commander in Chief of Britain's North American forces. 

The British and allied forces also skirmished both in today's New York City area and along the Tappan Zee of the Hudson, site of the Metro-North Railroad station in Tarrytown today.

Manhattan might have been the allies' original target, but when the allied generals got a look at the Britain's strength in New York, the plan quickly changed and Washington and Rochambeau elected to head to the Southern theatre and target the Redcoats under Gen. Charles Cornwallis, 1st Marquess Cornwallis, known as Lord Cornwallis, where they were digging in at Yorktown, Va.

Cornwallis played into the allies' hands by electing to establish a base at Yorktown where he anticipated being resupplied and reinforced by the British navy because of the town's proximity to the York River, Chespeake Bay and the Atlantic Ocean. In reality, he was digging his own trap.

The Philipsburg Encampment allowed Washington and Rochambeau time to forge the attack plan for the Yorktown engagement, rest and feed their forces and conduct training exercises.

On the march, the combined allied forces would have passed directly through the lands of four tenant farmer families on the former Philipse Manor estate. Those families had the surnames Buckhout/Jewell, Odell, Acker/Ecker/Eckar and Dutcher and their properties a century later would form the Village of Irvington.

Each of those farm families did or would own enslaved people of African descent, likely purchased from the Lords of the Manor, the Philipse family, who engaged in the slave trade in addition to farming and other business interests.

The original "Irvington" tenant farmers would go on to purchase their farms from the new State of New York in 1785. The land had been taken by New York in 1789 because of the British loyalist sympathies of the Philipse family.

PREQUEL TO THE MARCH

Many historians believe the future United States had less than a 5 percent chance of succeeding in winning outright independence when representatives of 12 of the 13 British colonies at the Second Continental Congress in Philadelphia approved the Declaration of Independence on July 2, 1776. 

The declaration was made public on July 4, thus Independence Day being observed on the 4th of July. The vote would not become unanimous until July 9, 1776 when the one holdout colony, New York, finally backed the declaration.

In other words, General George Washington and the Continental Army were considered something like 95-to-1 underdogs at the outset of the Revolutionary War according to historians.

The odds narrowed drastically almost exactly two years later with the arrival of help in the form of a French fleet and some 4,000 French troops under the command of Admiral Jean-Baptiste Charles Henri Hector, Comte d'Estaing. The Americans' new French allies attempted to liberate British-held Newport, R.I., but failed. Comte d'Estaing's fleet removed to the Caribbean where he engaged the British at St. Lucia and Grenada, tying up British naval forces, but doing little else. His only other attempt to aid the U.S. came in autumn 1779 when he joined with U.S. forces to try to remove the British from Savannah. Again he failed.

Things were looking bleak for America. Its Continental Army was in tatters, funding was almost non-existent, its split land forces were waging a fighting retreat in the South where Savannah and Charleston, S.C., had fallen and Gen. Horatio Gates had abandoned his troops to a rout at the Battle of Camden, S.C., fleeing on horseback, only ending his flight after reaching North Carolina's wartime state capital of Hillsborough, some 3½ days and 180 miles later.

Only the strategic fighting retreat by Gates' replacement, Gen. Nathanael Greene kept a sliver of Southern hope alive.

Washington, meanwhile, spent the latter half 1780 and the first half of 1781 biding his time with his northern forces holding defensive positions outside the strong British garrison in Manhattan.

A little known fact about the Revolutionary War was that it turned into a virtual world war. The French entered the conflict on the American side in 1778, the Spanish in 1779, the Dutch secretly supplied the American colonies with smuggled arms, gunpowder and funds through their Caribbean colony of St. Eustatius beginning in 1775 (the British finally declared war on the Netherlands in December 1780 and captured St. Eustatius the following year.)

The Spanish, who had major colonial holdings in the west and southwest as well as Louisiana and western Florida, played an important role in the eventual American victory even before officially entering the war. Using its colonies as conduits, Spain early on covertly funneled critical supplies to the Americans including gunpowder, clothing, blankets and arms as well as money to fund the campaign and keep the American economy afloat. Washington famously acknowledged that without Spain’s financial backing, the war effort could not have succeeded.

After entering the fray officially, Spain joined French forces in blockading ports to deprive British access, including Yorktown, and capturing British strongholds at Baton Rouge and Natchez (1779), Mobile (1780), and Pensacola (1781), that kept the Mississippi River open to American trade and shipping.

The war, believe it or not, extended as far as India. Like the British, the French had colonies in India and the two nations fought each other in that arena. The last battle of the Revolution was actually fought there some six months after the signing of the 1783 Treaty of Paris that officially ended the conflict.

The British also had "allies," but not of the nation-state ilk. The British employed some 30,000 to 37,000 Hessian mercenaries from six German-speaking principalities. They comprised about one in four British land troops during the war. The mercenaries were referred to as Hessians because most of them came from two of the six principalities: Hesse-Cassel and Hesse-Hanau.

It is uncertain how many Native Americans — Indians, as they were called until fairly recently — fought for the British, but most of the North American native tribes the entered the fray fought for King George III. Several outlier tribes fought for the Patriot cause, most of them through ties to the French with whom they had been allied during the previous Seven Years' War (known as the French and Indian War in North America) of 1756-1773. Many American leaders, including George Washington, had fought against the French and for their colonial British brethren in that war. The French and Indian War actually began in 1754, two years earlier than the wider Seven Years' War.

French Gen. Rochambeau (center, pointing with index finger) and American Gen. George Washington (at right of Rochambeau) emerge from Rochambeau's marquee (the striped tent at rear featuring flags of both nations) are pictured in artist Auguste Couder's monumental historic painting 'Siege of Yorktown, 17th October 1781,' c. 1836. The 14-foot by 17-foot painting hangs in the Palace of Versailles in suburban Paris. (Courtesy Galerie des Batailles, Palace of Versailles)

The broadening of the Revolutionary War forced the British to spread their resources — men, ships, arms, cash and supplies — expending it much more thinly throughout the entire theatre of battle to meet new challenges posted by their European adversaries. One such response forced the British to abandon their land and sea base at Newport in late 1779 to shore up of their land and naval forces to meet the Patriot forces in the southern colonies and to fend off French, Spanish and Dutch actors in the Caribbean.

Meanwhile, a major opening developed for the French to help the beleaguered Patriots. A  French Army of almost 6,000 soldiers under Lt. Gen. Rochambeau took advantage of the British departure from Newport. Rochambeau's naval and land forces established their base of operations in the New England port city and surrounding Narragansett Bay on July 10, 1780. The date was almost exactly a year before Rochambeau and his forces headed north to meet Washington's army at the Philipsburg Encampment.

Washington and Rochambeau met in Wethersfield, Conn., halfway between their respective headquarters just north of Peekskill, N.Y., and Newport, on May 21, 1781 to discuss future joint operations against the British. The two agreed to combine forces by early July at what would become the Town of Greenburgh in West Central Westchester County, N.Y.

NOTABLE PHILIPSBURG ACTIONS

In July 1781, Continental Army Col. Elisha Sheldon's 2nd Continental Light Dragoons camped along Wicker's Creek and the Hudson River adjacent to today's Mercy University campus in Dobbs Ferry. Their encampment  was in close proximity to the headquarters of Gen. Washington. Washington was at the Joseph Appleby House which until 2021 was the site of now-defunct radio station WFAS 1230 AM, 365 Secor Road, Hartsdale. 

The Comte de Rochambeau, commander in chief of the French special expeditionary force allied with Washington's forces, was headquartered less than a mile southeast of Washington at the Odell Rochambeau House, today's 425 Ridge Road in Hartsdale. Each of the commanding generals' headquarters lay some 3 miles east of Agawam as the crow flies, 3.5 miles by today's paved roads.

"Sheldon's Horse," as Sheldon's cavalry was nicknamed, was the first horse-borne fighting unit in the Continental Army, and had seen action in most of the key northern battles of the war. The outfit was a favorite of Washington's and served as his personal bodyguard. In addition, Sheldon's unit played a key role fighting alongside the French, who referred to it as the "Corps de Dragons de Sheldon." 

Dominic Serres' "The Action at Tarrytown" is held by the National Trust of the United Kingdom at Melford Hall, Long Melford, Sussex, England. The oil-on-canvas work by the French-born British artist for King George III dates to 1791. It depicts the action of the British fleet including the 40-gun frigate HMS Phoenix to intercept and destroy Patriot supply ships that were unloading their cargo Tarrytown. American and French soldiers as well as American fireships beat back a British landing force and saved critically needed supplies for their comrades at the nearby Philipsburg Encampment. A fireship was an expendable vessel loaded with explosives or flammable material used to deter an enemy ship. (Image courtesy National Trust) 

Among the skirmishes Patriot and French forces fought was "The Action at Tarrytown" on July 15, 1781 close to today's Tarrytown Metro North rail station, 4.2 miles north of the Irvington-Dobbs Ferry line on the Hudson River's east bank.

In that action, Sheldon's cavalry and allied French troops were on hand to fend off British warships attempting to intercept Patriot supply vessels from West Point that had put in at what was known as the Martling-Requa Dock in Tarrytown. The Patriot ships were carrying weapons, artillery, food and other supplies to soldiers at the Philipsburg Encampment just south. 

Earlier, Sheldon's Horse took control of British spy Major John André after his capture on Sept. 23, 1780 by Patriot militiamen John Paulding, David Williams and Isaac Van Wart in Tarrytown. André was fleeing with plans to the American stronghold at West Point, N.Y., provided by traitorous Maj. Gen. Benedict Arnold on Sept. 23, 1780. André was captured near today's Patriots Park on North Broadway at the Tarrytown/Sleepy Hollow border. He was fleeing on what was then known as Albany Post Road south towards British forces near Manhattan when discovered and captured. 

Soldiers from Sheldon's unit oversaw André's captivity across the Hudson from Dobbs Ferry in Tappan, N.Y., as well as his execution there on Oct. 2, 1780.

One of the little known stories of the Philipsburg Encampment involved Founding Father Alexander Hamilton. Then-Lt. Col. Hamilton had served Washington as his aide-de-camp throughout the previous four years of the war, handling every contingency possible to allow Washington to focus on the big picture.

But Hamilton, who had served in the field as a captain in New York artillery company in 1776 at the battles of Trenton and Princeton, chafed at the restrictions of his desk job, and harangued Washington seeking appointment to a field command. On Feb. 16 1781, at Washington's headquarters in New Windsor, N.Y., Hamilton had resigned from Washington's staff over what both Washington and Hamilton considered acts of disrespect. Washington had chastised Hamilton for disrespecting him by making him wait 10 minutes after asking to meet him. Hamilton had been delayed delivering a letter and then having a short discussion with to fellow aide Maj. Gen. Marie-Joseph Paul Yves Roch Gilbert du Motier, the Marquis de La Fayette (Lafayette spelled as one word in America). He apparently was upset because of Washington's lack of interest in what caused the delay and resigned on the spot.

Map shows the position of Lt. Col. Alexander Hamilton's 400-man force at the point of its attack on British Redoubt No. 10 at the Battle of Yorktown in 1781. Hamilton's successful attack on the British stronghold, accompanied by a simultaneous French attack on Redoubt No. 9, allowed the allied forces to bring artillery forward and directly to bear, deciding the fate of Gen. Cornwallis' large British force now trapped at Yorktown. Cornwallis' surrender would effectively end the Revolutionary War and grant the former 13 colonies their de facto independence. (Map courtesy Warfare History Network)

While Washington was camped at Philipsburg, Hamilton again offered his services as a field commander. On July 31, 1781 Washington granted his wish, giving him command of the newly-formed Second Battalion of Light Infantry at Philipsburg. The battalion was comprised of two companies from New York State's 1st and 2nd regiments and two provisional companies from Connecticut, some 400 men in all. The new battalion was attached to the elite Continental Corps of Light Infantry under the command of Lafayette. Hamilton's force marched south with Washington on Aug. 19 where they joined Lafayette's force in Yorktown itself. Hamilton his battalion in a light Infantry assault on British Redoubt No. 10 — an earthen fortification bristling with a defensive rim of sharpened tree trunks resembling overgrown pencil tips — at Yorktown itself.

This image illustrates the 'Assault on Redoubt 10 at Yorktown.' In order to complete the second siege parallel in front of the British fortifications surrounding Yorktown, Washington ordered the seizure of two British redoubts near the York River. The French were assigned the first, Redoubt 9, and the American Second Light Infantry under Lt. Col. Alexander Hamilton the second, Redoubt 10. On the evening of October 14, 1781, as covering fire of shot and shell arched overhead, the Americans and French moved forward. The Americans, with muskets and fixed bayonets, did not wait for sappers to clear away the abatis, or defensive array of sharpened tree trunks, as the French did, but climbed over and through the obstructions. Within ten minutes the garrison of Redoubt 10 was overwhelmed. The French also met with success but suffered heavier losses. (Image courtesy U.S. Army Center of Military History ).

Hamilton's action proved decisive. The taking of Redoubt No. 10 on Oct. 14, 1781 (and Redoubt No. 9 around the same time) allowed Washington to advance his artillery so close to the British lines that Cornwallis asked for surrender terms on Oct. 17 and capitulated on Oct. 19.

Hamilton, Washington's former Treasury Secretary who famously was shot and mortally wounded in a duel at Weehawken, N.J. by a fellow Founding Father, U.S. President Thomas Jefferson's Vice President, Aaron Burr, on July 11, 1804, was basically bankrupt when he died, survived by his widow and eight children. 

One of those children, third-born son James Alexander Hamilton in 1834-35 would go on to build a 150-acre estate at what would become the Ardsley-on-Hudson section of Irvington, just a mile or so from where his father would have camped at Philipsburg. He named the estate Nevis for the British West Indies island where his father was born. Nevis, although trimmed of much of its acreage, still exists as Nevis Labs of Columbia University dedicated to scientific research just off South Broadway in Irvington north of the Dobbs Ferry line.