Hessian Forces Scale the Palisades at Dawn

**The Fall of Fort Lee: Hessian Forces Scale the Palisades at Dawn, November 1776**

The loss of Fort Lee in November 1776 was not an isolated disaster but rather the culmination of a series of devastating blows that nearly destroyed the American cause in its infancy. To understand the events of that cold November morning, one must look back to the broader strategic situation in New York. Throughout the summer and autumn of 1776, General George Washington's Continental Army had suffered a string of painful defeats at the hands of the British forces commanded by General William Howe. The Battle of Long Island in August had been a catastrophe, and Washington had been forced to evacuate Manhattan in stages, fighting rearguard actions at Harlem Heights and White Plains. Fort Washington, perched on the northern heights of Manhattan Island, and Fort Lee, situated directly across the Hudson River on the New Jersey Palisades, had been constructed to deny British naval passage up the river. That strategy had already failed — British warships had sailed past both forts with relative impunity — yet Washington, against his better judgment and partly on the advice of General Nathanael Greene, allowed Fort Washington to remain garrisoned. On November 16, 1776, just four days before the events at Fort Lee, Hessian and British forces stormed Fort Washington in a coordinated assault, capturing nearly 2,800 Continental soldiers and vast quantities of supplies. It was one of the worst American losses of the entire war, and it left Fort Lee exposed and strategically purposeless.

Despite this, the garrison at Fort Lee remained in place, and it was into this vulnerable position that the British struck with devastating speed. In the pre-dawn hours of November 20, 1776, approximately 4,000 Hessian and British troops under the command of Lieutenant General Charles, Lord Cornwallis, crossed the Hudson River and landed at Closter Landing, roughly six miles north of Fort Lee. Their approach was guided by a Loyalist informant named Abraham Polhemus, who led the column to an unguarded path ascending the towering Palisades cliffs. These cliffs, rising steeply from the river's edge, were considered a natural defensive barrier, and the Continental forces had evidently not posted sufficient guards along every possible route to the summit. By the time American sentries detected the enemy column, the soldiers were nearly at the top. The scaling party achieved complete tactical surprise.

Washington himself was not at Fort Lee when the alarm was raised. He arrived from Hackensack just in time to witness the British and Hessian troops completing their ascent up the cliffs and immediately recognized that the situation was beyond salvage. He ordered the garrison to abandon the fort at once, directing the men to leave behind anything that could not be carried on their backs. The evacuation was frantic and disorderly. The retreating Continentals left behind twelve cannons, hundreds of tents, entrenching tools, and a significant quantity of provisions that the struggling army could ill afford to lose. Twelve Continental soldiers who failed to escape in time were captured. The garrison had roughly one hour from the first alarm to the moment British forces overran the position — barely enough time to save the men themselves.

The fall of Fort Lee, coming so closely on the heels of Fort Washington's capture, plunged the American cause into its darkest chapter. Washington led his battered and dwindling army on a desperate retreat across New Jersey, pursued by Cornwallis, who followed at a pace that kept constant pressure on the Continentals. Morale collapsed, enlistments expired, and thousands of soldiers simply went home. The British and their Hessian allies appeared to be on the verge of ending the rebellion entirely.

Yet the very depth of this crisis set the stage for one of the war's most dramatic reversals. It was this same retreating army, reduced and ragged, that Washington would lead back across the Delaware River on Christmas night, 1776, to strike the Hessian garrison at Trenton in a surprise attack that revived American hopes and changed the trajectory of the war. The humiliation at Fort Lee, therefore, was not the end of the story but rather a necessary passage through despair that forged the resilience the revolution would need to survive.