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

Today episode 121 Iron Works Hill.

When we last left the Continental Army,

Washington was probably at the lowest point in his life.

His attempts even to put up a decent defense against the British invasion of New York had failed completely.

By December 1776, his army had retreated across New Jersey and into Pennsylvania.

The only reason the British stopped their advance was that General Howell decided to call off any further campaigning and put his armies into winter quarters.

The British controlled all of the area around New York, took all of New Jersey,

and had moved unopposed into Rhode Island.

General Howe wrote self-congratulatory letters back to London

saying that his forces had accomplished everything they had planned for the year.

Of course that wasn't completely true. The British had originally

planned to move up the Hudson River through New York and meet up with the British forces under

General Carleton in Canada.

Carleton was to have moved down the Hudson River,

thus cutting off New England from the rest of the colonies.

That didn't happen, mostly because Benedict Arnold had forced

Carlton to delay his advance. Carlton needed to build his Navy on Lake Champlain

to defeat Arnold at Valcourt Island. The delay in doing that forced

Carlton to delay his invasion of New York until the following spring. So while General Arnold had delayed British plans,

General Washington had not stopped General Howe from doing much of anything he wanted.

Everyone seemed to come to the conclusion that General Washington just wasn't

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