Robert Magaw (1738–1790)

Continental Army Colonel and Commander of Fort Washington

Born in 1738 in Pennsylvania, Robert Magaw came of age in a colony defined by its complex mix of religious tolerance, commercial ambition, and political restlessness. He pursued a career in law, a profession that in colonial America demanded not only intellectual rigor but social standing and a capacity for public argument. Magaw's legal training gave him a mind accustomed to weighing evidence and constructing persuasive cases — skills that would serve him in military command, though not always with the outcomes he hoped for. Like many educated Pennsylvanians of his generation, he watched with growing alarm as British imperial policy tightened its grip on colonial life during the 1760s and 1770s. The Stamp Act, the Townshend duties, and the Intolerable Acts radicalized men of his class, transforming lawyers and merchants into revolutionaries. Magaw's involvement in the militia movement reflected this trajectory: he was not a career soldier but a civilian who believed the crisis demanded armed resistance. His background as a lawyer meant he understood what was at stake in legal and constitutional terms, and he was willing to risk his livelihood and his life for the principles at issue.

When open warfare erupted between Britain and her American colonies, Magaw moved quickly from militia service to a formal commission in the Continental Army. By 1776, he held command of the 5th Pennsylvania Regiment, a unit drawn from men across the commonwealth who had enlisted expecting to strike decisive blows for independence. Instead, they found themselves enmeshed in the grueling and demoralizing New York campaign, where General William Howe's professional British forces and their Hessian allies systematically outmaneuvered and outfought the Continental Army across Long Island, Manhattan, and the surrounding waterways. Magaw's regiment was composed of soldiers who were brave but largely inexperienced, facing an enemy that possessed superior training, naval dominance, and overwhelming firepower. The campaign tested every officer in Washington's army, and Magaw proved himself capable enough to earn the trust of his superiors during a series of difficult defensive engagements. His competence and steady temperament led to his assignment to one of the most critical — and ultimately most tragic — posts of the entire war. The transition from regimental commander to garrison commander at Fort Washington would define his place in Revolutionary history and burden him with consequences he could never have fully anticipated.

Fort Washington sat on the rocky northern heights of Manhattan Island, overlooking the Hudson River at a point where American commanders hoped to contest British naval passage. Magaw was tasked with holding this position with approximately 2,800 Continental soldiers, a garrison that included men from several states and units with varying levels of training and readiness. The fort itself was an earthwork fortification without adequate water supply, barracks, or bombproof shelters — a position that looked formidable on a map but was deeply vulnerable to a determined assault from multiple directions. Magaw organized his defenses as best he could, establishing outer lines manned by detachments spread across the hilly terrain north and south of the fort. He communicated his confidence to his superiors that the garrison could hold, a judgment shaped in part by the encouragement he received from General Nathanael Greene, who oversaw operations from across the river at Fort Lee. Magaw's decision to stand and fight rather than evacuate was not made in isolation — it reflected the collective judgment of several senior officers, including Washington himself, who wavered but ultimately deferred to Greene's optimism. The weight of that decision, however, would fall squarely on Magaw's shoulders.

On the morning of November 16, 1776, approximately 8,000 British and Hessian troops launched a massive, coordinated assault on Fort Washington from multiple directions simultaneously. Hessian columns under General Wilhelm von Knyphausen attacked from the north, British regulars pressed from the south and east, and additional forces moved to cut off any possibility of retreat across the Hudson. Magaw's outer defensive lines fought stubbornly in places — some units held their ground for hours against overwhelming numbers — but one by one they were driven back toward the fort's inner perimeter. The Hessian assault from the north proved particularly devastating, as disciplined German troops stormed up steep terrain and broke through American positions with bayonet charges that terrified defenders unaccustomed to such close combat. By early afternoon, Magaw's entire garrison was compressed into the small earthwork fort itself, packed so tightly that effective resistance became impossible. Faced with the certainty of a final assault that would produce a massacre, Magaw made the agonizing decision to surrender. He sent a flag of truce to Knyphausen and formally capitulated, handing over nearly 2,800 American soldiers — the largest single American surrender of the Revolutionary War and a loss not exceeded until the fall of Charleston, South Carolina, in 1780.

The fall of Fort Washington reverberated through the American command structure and exposed painful fractures in the decision-making process that had led to the disaster. General Washington, who had crossed the Hudson to observe the battle from the New Jersey Palisades near Fort Lee, reportedly wept as he watched his men being overwhelmed. Nathanael Greene, whose advice to hold the fort had been decisive, bore significant responsibility for the catastrophe, though his reputation ultimately survived and he went on to become one of the war's greatest generals. Magaw's relationship with Greene was one of trust and shared conviction — Greene believed in the fort's defensibility, and Magaw acted on that belief with the determination expected of a garrison commander. Washington's own role was more ambiguous; he had expressed doubts about holding the position but had not issued a definitive order to evacuate, leaving the final decision in the hands of subordinates. The disaster also precipitated the immediate crisis at Fort Lee, across the Hudson in New Jersey, where Greene was forced to abandon vast quantities of supplies and equipment when British forces under Lord Cornwallis crossed the river just days later. Magaw's fate thus became inseparable from the larger chain of defeats that nearly destroyed the American cause in late 1776.

Robert Magaw was taken prisoner after the surrender and spent several years in British captivity before eventually being exchanged. He returned to Pennsylvania, but unlike many Continental officers who rebuilt public careers after the war, Magaw lived quietly and died in 1790, just as the new nation he had fought to create was establishing its constitutional government. His story raises uncomfortable questions that are essential to understanding the Revolution honestly: questions about the cost of misjudgment, the burden of command, and the thin line between courageous determination and catastrophic stubbornness. Historians have generally treated Magaw with sympathy, recognizing that the fort's position was strategically untenable and that the decision to hold it was not his alone. Yet the nearly 2,800 men who marched into British captivity — many of whom perished on the notorious prison ships anchored in New York Harbor — paid the ultimate price for a collective failure of judgment. Magaw's legacy reminds us that the American Revolution was not a story of unbroken triumph but a desperate struggle marked by terrible losses, difficult choices, and the human cost of leadership in war. His experience at Fort Washington stands as one of the conflict's most sobering episodes.

WHY ROBERT MAGAW MATTERS TO FORT LEE

Robert Magaw's story is inseparable from the story of Fort Lee. When his garrison at Fort Washington fell on November 16, 1776, the shock wave crossed the Hudson River immediately. Fort Lee, perched on the New Jersey Palisades directly opposite, lost its strategic partner and its reason for existence in a single afternoon. Within days, British forces under Cornwallis crossed the Hudson and nearly captured the Fort Lee garrison, forcing a desperate American retreat that became the opening act of Washington's famous withdrawal across New Jersey. Students and visitors standing at Fort Lee today are standing at the place where the consequences of Magaw's surrender were felt most directly — where the American cause reached one of its lowest points before the miraculous recovery at Trenton. Magaw's story teaches us that defeat and disaster were as much a part of the Revolution as victory.

TIMELINE

• 1738: Born in Pennsylvania
• 1775: Enters militia service as the Revolutionary crisis escalates into armed conflict
• 1776: Receives Continental Army commission and assumes command of the 5th Pennsylvania Regiment
• 1776 (summer–fall): Serves in the New York campaign, participating in defensive operations around Manhattan
• 1776 (fall): Assigned to command the garrison at Fort Washington on northern Manhattan
• 1776, November 16: Surrenders Fort Washington and approximately 2,800 troops to British and Hessian forces under General Knyphausen
• 1776, November 20: Fall of Fort Lee follows as a direct consequence of Fort Washington's loss
• 1776–c. 1780: Held as a prisoner of war by the British
• c. 1780: Exchanged and returns to Pennsylvania
• 1790: Dies in Pennsylvania

SOURCES

• Schecter, Barnet. The Battle for New York: The City at the Heart of the American Revolution. Walker & Company, 2002.
• Fischer, David Hackett. Washington's Crossing. Oxford University Press, 2004.
• Lengel, Edward G. General George Washington: A Military Life. Random House, 2005.
• National Archives. Papers of the Continental Congress: Returns and Accounts of the Garrison at Fort Washington. https://www.archives.gov
• Golway, Terry. Washington's General: Nathanael Greene and the Triumph of the American Revolution. Henry Holt and Company, 2005.