Colonel Richard Humpton

Richard Humpton was a British-born officer who had served in the British Army before emigrating to Pennsylvania, where he settled and eventually cast his lot with the patriot cause when the Revolutionary War began. His background in professional military service made him a valuable officer for the Continental Army, which desperately needed men with experience of actual military organization and tactics to leaven the ranks of militia officers and gentlemen volunteers who had enthusiasm but little training. He received a commission in a Pennsylvania Continental regiment and served through the campaigns of 1776 and into 1777.

At Paoli on the night of September 20-21, 1777, Humpton commanded a regiment of Pennsylvania Continentals within Wayne's division when Major General Charles Grey's force struck the encampment in a coordinated bayonet attack. His regiment held one of the positions most directly in the path of the British assault, and the fighting around his command was among the most intense of the engagement. Humpton was severely wounded in the attack, cut down in the darkness by soldiers who had been ordered to use only the bayonet and who moved through the camp with a speed and lethality that gave organized resistance almost no time to form. His regiment suffered heavily — among the highest casualties of any unit in Wayne's division — and Humpton's survival was, as those who noted it remarked, fortunate given the ferocity of the assault on his position and the severity of his wounds. The attack scattered his regiment and tested the endurance of the survivors, who had to regroup in the Pennsylvania countryside and reconstitute unit cohesion after a night of traumatic violence.

Humpton recovered from his wounds and continued his Continental service after Paoli, eventually reaching the rank of colonel and serving through the remainder of the war. His experience at Paoli — wounded, his regiment shattered, surviving an engagement that might easily have killed him — was representative of the brutal contingency that combat in the Revolutionary War imposed on officers and soldiers alike. His pre-war experience in the British Army may have given him the professional tools to recover from the defeat and maintain effective command in its aftermath, qualities that the Continental Army needed at every level of its structure.