27 August 1776, morning
Long Island: the flank turned
On the Gowanus Road Stirling’s 1,600 men, Delaware and Maryland regiments with Samuel Atlee’s Pennsylvanians, hold Grant’s brigades for four hours. On a hill above them, later called Battle Hill, about 300 men under Samuel Holden Parsons drive back three British counterattacks, and more than 40 percent of the British dead of the day fall there.
Battle Pass, the Flatbush Pass held by Sullivan’s men, lithograph by Hayward and Lepine, 1866Wikimedia Commons, Hayward and Lepine, Public domain (Brooklyn Museum - Battle Pass Vally Grove - Hayward and Lepine.jpg)
At 9 a.m. Howe’s column, through the pass and at Bedford, fires two heavy guns as a signal. The Hessians under Leopold von Heister attack up the Flatbush Pass while the British come down on Sullivan from behind. Sullivan’s men are caught between them, the left collapses and the fighting turns hand to hand. Most of his men get back into the Brooklyn lines, but Sullivan is captured, and by noon Parsons’s men on Battle Hill find themselves surrounded and most of them are taken.
Sources
- Barnet Schecter, The Battle for New York (2002).
- John J. Gallagher, The Battle of Brooklyn 1776 (1995).
- David McCullough, 1776 (2005).
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