The Fall of Fort Lee

In the autumn of 1776, the American cause teetered on the edge of collapse. What had begun with the heady optimism of the Declaration of Independence just months earlier had given way to a series of devastating military defeats in and around New York City. General George Washington's Continental Army had been routed at the Battle of Long Island in August, driven from Manhattan in September, and forced into an increasingly desperate defensive posture. Fort Washington, the last American stronghold on Manhattan Island, fell to British forces on November 16, 1776, resulting in the capture of nearly three thousand American soldiers. Just four days later, the disaster deepened when British forces turned their attention across the Hudson River to Fort Lee, the companion fortification perched atop the towering New Jersey Palisades near the village of Hackensack.

On the morning of November 20, 1776, a formidable British and Hessian force under the command of Lord Charles Cornwallis crossed the Hudson River several miles north of Fort Lee, landing at a point called Lower Closter Dock. The crossing was accomplished with striking efficiency, and Cornwallis moved his columns swiftly inland and southward toward the fort. General Nathanael Greene, the capable Rhode Islander whom Washington had entrusted with command of the garrison, received intelligence of the British advance and recognized almost immediately that the position was untenable. With enemy forces closing in rapidly and the memory of the catastrophic surrender at Fort Washington still fresh, Greene made the difficult decision to abandon Fort Lee rather than risk the capture of his entire force. The evacuation was conducted in such desperate haste that the retreating Americans left behind an enormous quantity of valuable military stores — tents, entrenching tools, artillery pieces, hundreds of barrels of flour, and a wide array of personal equipment that the poorly supplied Continental soldiers could scarcely afford to lose.

The fall of Fort Lee sent reverberations far beyond the immediate military situation. For the residents of Hackensack and the surrounding communities of Bergen County, the British advance transformed the war from a distant conflict into an immediate, terrifying reality. British and Hessian troops soon occupied the area, and the civilian population found itself caught between warring armies, forced to navigate the dangers of loyalty oaths, property seizures, and the ever-present threat of violence. Among those whose lives were upended were not only the free citizens of Hackensack but also enslaved individuals such as Sam of Hackensack, whose experience reminds us that the Revolution's upheaval touched every layer of colonial society. For enslaved people, the arrival of British forces introduced both peril and possibility, as the chaos of war occasionally opened pathways to freedom even as it brought new forms of suffering and displacement.

The loss of supplies abandoned at Fort Lee compounded an already critical shortage within Washington's army. Months of painstaking procurement — the slow, grueling work of gathering food, ammunition, and equipment for an underfunded army — were wiped out in a single morning. As Washington led his battered and shrinking force on a harrowing retreat across New Jersey, pursued by Cornwallis's confident columns, the Continental Army reached perhaps its lowest point. Enlistments were expiring, morale was crumbling, and many observers on both sides of the Atlantic believed the rebellion was effectively over.

Yet the very desperation born from disasters like the fall of Fort Lee ultimately set the stage for one of the most remarkable reversals in military history. It was this same ragged, retreating army that Washington would lead back across the Delaware River on the night of December 25, 1776, to strike the Hessian garrison at Trenton in a surprise attack that revived the patriot cause and changed the trajectory of the war. The fall of Fort Lee, then, occupies a critical place in the Revolutionary War narrative — not as a moment of glory, but as a moment of crisis that tested the resolve of an army, a commander, and a community, and that revealed both the fragility and the resilience of the American struggle for independence. For the people of Hackensack, free and enslaved alike, it marked the beginning of a long and painful period of occupation that would leave lasting scars on the fabric of their community.