Battle of Fort Washington Manhattan Map 1777
by Peter Ogden
Title
Battle of Fort Washington Manhattan Map 1777
Artist
Peter Ogden
Medium
Painting - Lithograph
Description
This is a restored copy of a 1777 map of the American Revolutionary Battle of Fort Washington by Claude Joseph Sauthier.
Claude Joseph Sauthier,1736–1802 was an illustrator, draftsman, surveyor, and mapmaker. He was employed by the British colonial government in the American colonies prior to and during the American Revolutionary War.
Sauthier was born November 10, 1736 in Strasbourg, France. His early training was as an illustrator and draftsman, and his influences were the master garden designers Dezallier d'Argenville and Jean-Baptiste Alexandre Le Blond. Several of Sauthier’s works from the 1750s are archived in the library of the Grand Seminaire de Strasbourg. In 1763, Sauthier wrote A Treatis on Public Architecture and Garden Planning.
Sauthier migrated to America in 1767 at the request of British royal Governor of North Carolina William Tryon. Sauthier accompanied Governor Tryon throughout the Province of North Carolina from 1768 to 1771, mapping towns that were deemed militarily important to Tryon. Sauthier surveyed and created maps of Bath, Beaufort, Brunswick Town, Cross Creek (now Fayetteville), Edenton, Halifax, Hillsborough, New Bern, Salisbury, Wilmington, and the Camp and Battlefield of Alamance. He was also involved in the design of the gardens of the governor’s house (now known as Tryon Palace) in New Bern. Original copies of Sauthier’s maps are archived in the King George III's Topographical Collection at the British Library in London, the Public Record Office in London, the North Carolina Division of Archives and History in Raleigh, North Carolina, and the Clinton Collection at the William L. Clements Library at the University of Michigan.
When Tryon left North Carolina in mid-1771 to assume the position of British royal governor of New York, Sauthier accompanied him there, and was appointed surveyor for the Province of New York by Tryon. During this period, Sauthier was also instrumental in surveying the boundary between New York and Quebec.
In 1776, Sauthier surveyed and mapped Staten Island, New York, for British General William Howe, and surveyed and mapped Fort Washington on Manhattan Island after troops under the command of General Hugh Percy attacked and captured it. General Percy retained Sauthier on his staff when he commanded the British forces holding Rhode Island.
In May 1777, when General Percy returned to his familial home at Alnwick Castle in England, Sauthier accompanied him, and was employed as Percy’s secretary.
The Battle of Fort Washington was a pre-organized, pitched battle fought in New York on November 16, 1776 during the American Revolutionary War between the United States and Great Britain. It was a British victory that gained the surrender of the remnant of the garrison of Fort Washington near the north end of Manhattan Island. It was one of the worst Patriot defeats of the war.
After defeating the Continental Army under Commander-in-Chief General George Washington at the Battle of White Plains, the British Army forces under the command of Lieutenant General William Howe planned to capture Fort Washington, the last American stronghold on Manhattan. General Washington issued a discretionary order to General Nathanael Greene to abandon the fort and remove its garrison – then numbering 1,200 men[6] but which later to grow to 3,000[2] – to New Jersey. Colonel Robert Magaw, commanding the fort, declined to abandon it as he believed it could be defended from the British. Howe's forces attacked the fort before Washington reached it to assess the situation.
Howe launched his attack on November 16. He led an assault from three sides: the north, east and south. Tides in the Harlem River prevented some troops from landing and delayed the attack. When the British moved against the defenses, the southern and western American defenses fell quickly. Patriot forces on the north side offered stiff resistance to the Hessian attack, but they too were eventually overwhelmed. With the fort surrounded by land and sea, Colonel Magaw chose to surrender. A total of 59 Americans were killed and 2,837 were taken as prisoners of war.
After this defeat, most of Washington's army was chased across New Jersey and into Pennsylvania, and the British consolidated their control of New York and eastern New Jersey.
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May 9th, 2020
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