Remember the Revolution
Why one New Yorker marks the Battle of Brooklyn every year
M OST people enjoying the view from Brooklyn Heights don’t notice the small stone marker at the end of Montague Street. But every Aug. 27, I leave flowers there.
The stone marks the loca- tion of the Four Chimneys, a house that was George Washington’s headquarters during the Battle of Brooklyn 240 years ago. Ordered to hold New York at all costs, Washington commanded some 12,000 citizen soldiers, including a young artillery captain named Alexander Hamilton.
A British armada that sum- mer landed 32,000 British and German troops on Staten Island — a force larger than New York’s population at the time. The British weren’t kidding around.
On Aug. 27, 1776, they swept across the Narrows into Brooklyn. One attacking col- umn approached Brooklyn Heights on the shore. A second column went up through the middle of Brooklyn, and a third marched up Kings Highway to what is now Atlantic Avenue.
By Aug. 29, the Americans were desperate. To save them, Washington decided to flee across the East River to Manhattan.
“In a prodigious effort, op- erating on his last reserves of energy, Washington pushed himself past the point of exhaustion and personally led the evacuation,” Ron Chernow wrote in “Washington: A Life.”
On the morning of Aug. 30, all the American soldiers had made it safely across the East River; Washington boarded the last boat out. Though he failed to hold New York, he and his ragged band of citizen soldiers survived to fight again — and win the Revolutionary War.
Seven years later, the last of the British navy in New York set sail for Canada. Staten Islanders mooned their ships as they sailed past. Washington entered the city with his victorious army.
The British occupation left New York in ruins. Houses were burned, and thousands of Patriots died on rotting prison ships in the East River.
It wasn’t the last time death and destruction hit our doorstep. That stone marker on Montague Street reminds me of the courage and sacrifice that have made New Yorkers the survivors they are.