02/01/2026
https://www.facebook.com/share/p/1P25LmF8GN/
“Ten Crucial Days.” That’s how history remembers the ten days between December 25, 1776 and January 3, 1777, when George Washington turned his defeated, demoralized, and rapidly diminishing Patriot army around and won a series of remarkable victories that kept the cause of American independence alive. But when those truly crucial ten days were over, the fighting that winter was not. Washington knew the British army in New York needed forage to keep their horses and draft animals alive that winter and he was determined not to let them have it easily. And so for the next three brutal and bloody months the Patriots harassed and fought British foraging parties in what came to called “the Forage War.”
Bottled up in New York City, the massive British army had enough salt pork to feed the men through the winter, but not nearly enough forage (hay, corn, etc.) to feed their horses and draft animals. As the Patriot forces had withdrawn across New Jersey, Washington ordered that the countryside be stripped of forage, making it necessary for British foraging parties to search far and wide for what they needed. Using intelligence from spies who laced the area, throughout the winter Patriot militia and Continental regulars ambushed and fought the British foraging parties. Likewise, using intelligence gathered from Loyalist spies, the British laid traps and sprang ambushes on the Patriots who were searching for them. The seemingly nonstop ambushes and battles took a significant toll on the British forces. Historians estimate that between January 4 and March 21 there were at least 60 separate skirmishes or battles, and probably far more, with at least 1,000 British, Tory, and Hessian casualties.
Patriot casualties during the Forage War are unknown but were significant as well. One of the bloodiest (and most notorious) episodes occurred at a place called Drake’s Farm, near Metuchen, New Jersey. Patriots got word that a British foraging party was heading for the farm and the 5th Virginia Regiment set out to intercept them. But in fact, the Virginians were heading into a trap. Using the small foraging party as a decoy, British general Sir William Erskine with a large body of regulars and Hessians, supported by 8 pieces of artillery, ambushed the Continentals. But when the British appeared, rather than retreat the Virginians launched an audacious counterattack, eventually forcing the British to withdraw. During their initial recoil from the surprise British attack, seven wounded Virginians, including Lieutenant William Kelly, were left behind. When the British reached them, Kelly and the other wounded men surrendered. Rather than take them prisoner, the British “dashed out their brains with their muskets, ran them through with their bayonets, made them like sieves.” After the British withdrawal the Virginians discovered the mutilated bodies of their comrades, and they vowed revenge.
But when General Washington learned what had happened, he issued an order positively forbidding his troops from taking any retribution on captured soldiers and commanding that all captured soldiers must be treated humanely. In surviving diaries of the Hessians and British Regulars taken prisoner that winter, they frequently express surprise at how well they were being treated—having expected the worst. Interestingly, about a quarter of the captured Hessians ended up choosing to stay in America and their descendants are among us today. As NPR correspondent Robert Krulwich put it during an interview of historian David Hackett Fischer, “And so while George Washington may or may not have intended it, his decision not to seek revenge, his choice to do the honorable, the moral and the right thing in war, helped turn an army of invaders into an army of settlers and citizens and neighbors.”
The Battle of Drake’s Farm occurred on February 1, 1777, two hundred forty-nine years ago today.
The map is from the Revolutionary War Journal.
