Nine days after marching out of Valley Forge, the Continental Army caught up with a British column withdrawing from Philadelphia to New York and fought the longest single day of combat in the Revolutionary War, in temperatures that reportedly killed more men than musket fire did. The battle nearly went wrong when an advance force under Major General Charles Lee fell into a disorganized retreat, until Washington arrived on the field and personally reorganized the line. What followed was the clearest evidence yet that the army von Steuben had drilled all winter was a fundamentally different fighting force. Washington's furious letter to Lee after the battle, and Lee's own reply demanding a court martial, both survive at Founders Online.
With France now formally allied to the United States, the new British commander Henry Clinton received orders to abandon Philadelphia and consolidate his forces in New York, a more defensible position against the possibility of French naval intervention. As Clinton's army marched across New Jersey toward Sandy Hook, Washington shadowed the column and convened a council of war to decide whether to risk open battle. Most of his generals, recalling the army's record against British regulars in the field, urged caution. Washington decided to strike at the British rear regardless, sending roughly a third of his army ahead under Major General Charles Lee.
Lee's advance force engaged the British rear guard near Monmouth Court House but lost cohesion as Cornwallis brought additional troops back to meet the threat. Without clear communication to Washington about what was happening, Lee's units began withdrawing in a manner that, by the time Washington rode forward and encountered his own army marching the wrong direction, looked very much like a retreat without orders. The confrontation between the two generals on the field became one of the most discussed exchanges of the war.
You shall have an opportunity, either of justifying yourself to the army, to Congress, to America, and to the world in General; or of convincing them that you were guilty of a breach of orders and of misbehaviour before the enemy on the 28th Inst. in not attacking them as you had been directed and in making an unnecessary, disorderly, and shameful retreat.
Lee did not accept the accusation quietly. He wrote back the same day, aware of the scrutiny his conduct would face, and made an unusual choice for an officer facing serious charges.
I could wish it might be a court martial, for if the affair is drawn into length it may be difficult to collect the necessary evidences, and perhaps might bring on a paper war betwixt the adherents to both parties, which may occasion some disagreeable feuds.
Lee got his wish. He was court-martialed, found guilty on all three charges including disobedience of orders and disrespect to the commander-in-chief, and suspended from the army for a year. He was permanently dismissed from the Continental Army in January 1780 after continuing to criticize Congress over the verdict.
Washington personally reorganized the retreating troops into a defensive line on high ground, using artillery to fix the British advance while Nathanael Greene brought a battery onto Combs Hill to enfilade the British position from the side. The fighting that followed, in temperatures that multiple sources describe as exceeding 100 degrees Fahrenheit, tested the discipline the army had spent the winter acquiring. Continental units executed complex maneuvers under fire, including battalion-level repositioning that would have been unthinkable for the army that had stumbled into Valley Forge the previous December. By late afternoon, both armies were exhausted and the fighting stopped.
Among the most enduring stories associated with Monmouth is that of a woman, traditionally identified as Mary Ludwig Hays, who carried water to artillery crews during the battle and took her husband's place at a cannon when he was wounded or exhausted. The most contemporaneous account comes from Joseph Plumb Martin, a Continental soldier whose memoir is an established primary source for the war.
attended the piece the whole time.
Clinton withdrew his exhausted army from the field overnight and continued the march to Sandy Hook, reaching the coast on July 6 and evacuating to New York by sea. Washington did not pursue. Five days after Clinton's escape, a French naval fleet under Admiral d'Estaing arrived off Sandy Hook, arriving just too late to intercept the British withdrawal but confirming that the alliance signed five months earlier was now a physical, military reality on American shores. Monmouth was the last major battle fought in the northern colonies. The war's remaining years would be decided largely in the South.
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