Philadelphia campaign

Philadelphia campaign
Part of the Pennsylvanian front of the American Revolutionary War
Statue of Anthony Wayne at Valley Forge
Date July 1777–July 1778 Location New Jersey, Maryland, Delaware, and Pennsylvania Result Inconclusive
Belligerents
United States 2nd Canadian Regiment Oneida[1]	Great Britain Hesse-Kassel
Commanders and leaders
George Washington Nathanael Greene Benjamin Lincoln Lord Stirling John Sullivan Anthony Wayne Marquis de Lafayette Henry Knox Moses Hazen	Sir William Howe Sir Henry Clinton Lord Cornwallis Charles Grey Wilhelm Knyphausen Carl Donop † Ludwig Wurmb
Strength
Around 20,000+	Around 16,000+

The Philadelphia campaign (1777–1778) was a British military campaign during the American Revolutionary War designed to gain control of Philadelphia, the Revolutionary-era capital where the Second Continental Congress convened and formed the Continental Army and appointed George Washington as its commander in 1775, and authored and unanimously adopted the Declaration of Independence the following year, on July 4, 1776, which formalized and escalated the war.

In the Philadelphia campaign, British General William Howe failed to draw the Continental Army under George Washington into a battle in North Jersey. Howe then embarked his army on transports, and landed them at the northern end of the Chesapeake Bay, where they began advancing north toward Philadelphia. Washington prepared defenses against Howe's movements at Brandywine Creek, but was flanked and beaten back in the Battle of Brandywine on September 11, 1777. After further skirmishes and maneuvers, Howe entered and occupied Philadelphia. Washington then unsuccessfully attacked one of Howe's garrisons at Germantown prior to retreating to Valley Forge for the winter, where he and 12,000 faced the harshest winter of the war, including insufficient food and clothing.

Howe's campaign was controversial because, while he succeeded in capturing the revolutionary capital of Philadelphia, he proceeded slowly and did not aid the concurrent campaign of John Burgoyne further north, which ended in disaster for the British in the Battles of Saratoga and brought France into the war. Howe resigned during the occupation of Philadelphia and was replaced by his second-in-command, General Sir Henry Clinton.

In 1778, Clinton was ordered to evacuate Philadelphia and consolidate his troops in New York City, in anticipation of a combined Franco-American attack there. Many Loyalists also left Philadelphia, fearing persecution. Washington's forces shadowed the withdrawing British Army until they clashed at the Battle of Monmouth, one of the war's largest battles.

At the end of the Philadelphia campaign in 1778, the two armies found themselves in roughly the same strategic positions that they had been in before Howe launched the attack on Philadelphia.