“O Doleful! Doleful! Doleful!”

From 1776 by David McCulough. Page 178.

It had been the first great battle of the Revolution, and by far the largest battle ever fought in North America until then. Counting both armies and the Royal Navy, more than 40,000 men had taken part. The field of battle ranged over six miles, and the fighting lasted just over six hors. And for the Continental Army, now the army of the United States of America, in this first great test under fire, it had been a crushing defeat.

“O Doleful! Doleful! Doleful!” scrawled Chaplain Philip Fithian in his diary, expressing only the obvious.

To the British it was a “glorious day”—“a cheap and complete victory” in the terse summation of General Grant. “You will be glad,” Grant wrote to General Harvey, “that we have had the field day I talked of in my last letter. If a good bleeding can bring those Bible-faced Yankees to their senses, the fever of independency should soon abate.”

Everything had gone like “clockwork.” Clinton’s overall plan had succeeded “beyond our expectations,” reported Lord Percy to his father. “Our men behaved themselves like British troops fighting in a good cause.” In the opinion of Sir James Murray, no soldiers had ever behaved with greater spirit.

[snip]

Howe reported his losses to be less than 400—59 killed, 267 wounded, and 31 missing. The Hessians had lost a mere 5 killed and 26 wounded.

Rebel losses, on the other hand, numbered more than 3,000, Howe claimed. Over 1,000 prisoners had been taken, while another 2,000 had been killed, wounded, or drowned.

The disparity of the losses as reported by Howe was greatly exaggerated, however. Washington, unable to provide an exact count, would later estimate in a report to Congress that about 700 to 1,000 of his men had been killed or taken prisoner.

General Parsons, who had succeeded in avoiding capture, wrote that in the course of the battle the number of American dead he and his men had collected, taken together with “the heap the enemy had made,” amounted to 60, and while the total loss was still impossible to know, Parsons judged the number of killed would be “inconsiderable.”

Some of the other officers who had been in the thick of the fight were convinced that the British had suffered more men killed than had the Americans, but that the British took the most prisoners.

Very few on the American side were ready to acknowledge just how severe a defeat it had been. In fact, American losses, though far less than what Howe had reported, were dreadful. As close as can be estimated about 300 Americans had been killed and over 1,000 taken prisoner, including three generals, Sullivan, Stirling, and Nathaniel Woodhull. Sullivan and Stirling were to be treated with marked courtesy by their captors, would even dine with Lord Howe on board the Eagle. But Woodhull died of wounds a few weeks later.