Pittsburgh

Pittsburgh in the Revolutionary War was not a battlefield in any conventional sense. No major engagement between Continental and British regulars took place at the Forks of the Ohio. What happened there was something more sustained and in some respects more consequential: for eight years, Fort Pitt served as the linchpin of the entire American western strategy, the supply base from which Continental forces reached into the Ohio Valley, and the one fixed point that kept the western frontier from collapsing entirely.

The geography explains everything. Where the Allegheny River comes down from the northeast and the Monongahela comes up from the southwest, they meet to form the Ohio, which flows nearly a thousand miles to the Mississippi. Whoever controlled that confluence controlled the practical gateway to the interior of a continent. The French had understood this in 1754, which is why they built Fort Duquesne on the exact spot. The British understood it when General Forbes destroyed Fort Duquesne in 1758 and immediately built a larger fort on the same ground and named it for William Pitt. Constructed as the second largest British fort on the colonial frontier, Fort Pitt measured about 18 acres. It was a classic star-shaped fort with 5 bastions projecting at the corners. Fort Pitt was constructed from 1759 until its completion in 1761, and the massive military complex was key to the British control of the western frontier and its waterways, repelling attacks by natives in 1763 during Pontiac's War. The Americans understood it when they took over the fort in 1775 and turned it into the westernmost anchor of the Continental supply system. During the American Revolutionary War, Fort Pitt served as the American headquarters for the western theater of the war, while British forces garrisoned Fort Detroit at the present-day location of Detroit, Michigan.

The transition from British to American hands was not straightforward. By 1772 the fort was no longer needed for the purpose for which it was originally built, and flood damages from over the years had left it in deplorable condition. To save money and to help strengthen Native American relations, the British decommissioned Fort Pitt in 1772, selling the garrison, its buildings, and its materials to private citizens Alexander Ross and William Thompson. At that time, the Pittsburgh area was claimed by the colonies of both Virginia and Pennsylvania, which struggled for power over the region. After Virginians took control of Fort Pitt, they called it Fort Dunmore, in honour of Virginia's Governor Lord Dunmore. The dispute between the two colonies over jurisdiction — which would persist well into the war years — complicated military command at the Forks from the start.

Even before the Continental Army arrived, the strategic importance of Pittsburgh made it a target for Loyalist intrigue. In 1775 John Connolly, a Loyalist officer who had lived at Fort Pitt for some years and knew the frontier situation, proposed to Lord Dunmore that Connolly should enroll a force of British troops and Indians at Detroit, capture Fort Pitt, march on Winchester, Virginia, and join Lord Dunmore in putting down the rebellion in Virginia.

Dunmore and British General Thomas Gage both voiced support for the plan, whereupon Connolly set out for Detroit. George Washington had been warned, however, and sent word to the Maryland Committee of Safety. Connolly was captured on 20 November 1775 at Hagerstown, Maryland, and imprisoned in Philadelphia.

Had it been successful, the plot might have caused western Indians to attack the frontier two years before they actually did.

The first Continental commander at Fort Pitt was Brigadier General Edward Hand, an Irish-born physician and former British Army surgeon's mate who had served at Fort Pitt during his time with the 18th Royal Irish Regiment. On April 1, 1777, Hand was rewarded for his really exceptional services by promotion to the rank of brigadier general, and soon thereafter General Washington further displayed his appreciation and confidence by assigning General Hand, then 33 years old, to the Pittsburg post, to defend the western border. It was on Sunday, June 1, 1777, that General Hand arrived at Fort Pitt and took over the property from Captain Neville. Hand arrived in June 1777, finding just two companies of the 13th Virginia.

Hand carried authority to call upon the militia officers of the frontier counties of Pennsylvania and Virginia for assistance in whatever undertaking he might plan, but he found this assistance very unreliable. Hand found himself with almost no regular troops and an unreliable militia confronting a vast and porous frontier. As early as September 1777 the general dealt with an epidemic of small-pox and measles among his men by establishing a hospital on land on Chartiers Creek, acquired by him during his first tour of duty in the west.

This has been called the first hospital west of the Susquehanna River.

The situation on the frontier worsened rapidly. By 1777, the Continental Congress had learned of efforts by Governor Henry Hamilton, British commander of the garrison at Fort Detroit, to incite Ohio country Indian nations and local American Loyalists against the lightly guarded American western border and feared an attack. Hand's correspondence to Washington painted a desperate picture. In a September 1777 letter from Fort Pitt, Hand reported that "the western Indians are United against us" and that Hamilton's proclamation together with his agents had gained many of the inhabitants "even of this remote Corner to the British Interest."

In November 1777, Congress appointed three commissioners to travel to Fort Pitt and investigate and report on the situation of the Western Department.

The commissioners included Colonel Samuel Washington (younger brother of George Washington) and Gabriel Jones, both from Virginia, and Colonel Joseph Reed from Pennsylvania.

In February 1778, Hand attempted to take the offensive. He launched what may be one of the oddest campaigns of the American Revolution, more famous for its fecklessness than any benefit to the American war effort.

The goal was to capture a British supply depot believed to be located along the Cuyahoga River, thereby limiting support to Indigenous nations aligned with the Crown. The campaign went badly wrong. Failing to distinguish among Native