You're listening to an Airwave Media Podcast. Hello and thank you for joining the American Revolution.

Today, episode 117, retreat across New Jersey.

The last couple of weeks I stepped away from the main fighting in New York and New Jersey

to discuss other events, but before that we left the Continental Army in late

November 1776 in full retreat from New York toward Philadelphia. The Continental's had decided to make a stand at

Fort Washington and ended up losing about 3,000 soldiers as prisoners of war.

They also had to abandon Fort Lee across the river in New Jersey and when

we last left them a few weeks ago they were headed south out of Newark running toward

Philadelphia.

Now, the British invasion of New York in the summer and fall of 1776 had pushed the Americans out of the region.

General Howe and Admiral Howe had used slow but steady measures to take the city and the area surrounding it.

This was a very deliberate strategy and appeared to be working as planned.

As he retreated, General Washington had divided his army, sending a little over half of the

men further into upstate New York in case the British decided to move up the Hudson River

and cut off New England from the rest of the colonies. He put his most trusted

general Charles Lee in charge of those forces.

After getting pushed out of New York after the Battle of White Plains, Washington kept personal

command of the remaining forces as they moved through New Jersey.

Washington had planned to combine these men with the more than 3,000 men at Fort Washington, but after the British captured the fort and took all those

men prisoner, Washington was left with a command of 3,500 to 4,000 soldiers. Even worse, since it looked like the Americans were beat, many soldiers

began abandoning Washington's army as soon as their enlistments were up or simply deserting before those enlistments ended.

They were also unable to recruit any New Jersey militia to rally around the continental army, again because nobody wants to be with the

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