“We are preparing to receive ‘em & should they come on … we shall give ‘em a repulse or … they will have to enjoy a painful & dear bought victory.”1
— George Washington, September 10, 1777
The 1775 carnage at Bunker Hill convinced many American officers they could inflict heavy casualties on the British by taking up a strong defensive position and forcing the enemy to attack it. Washington understood this principle and tried to replicate it, especially during his efforts to hold New York City and the surrounding terrain. With Howe’s army approaching Philadelphia, he decided upon a similar strategy: He would make use of natural defensive barriers to keep the British out of the capital city.
Washington originally intended to make a stand along the Red Clay Creek in Delaware, but when Howe outflanked Washington, the American leader had no choice but to fall back. The next natural terrain feature upon which to fix a defense was the Brandywine River, which flowed mostly north and south roughly 25 miles west of Philadelphia. The stream was littered with crossings, the most prominent of which was Chads’s Ford, the direct route between Baltimore and Philadelphia. Washington intended to defend the various Brandywine crossings in an effort to get Howe to launch a direct attack into the strength of his army.2
The Brandywine stretches 60 miles before flowing into Christiana Creek south of Wilmington, Delaware. Many hills, most about 200 feet in elevation, dot the landscape on either side of the river along its entire length. Steep banks along much of its course, together with thick woods in many places, made crossing the stream in force difficult except across one of the several fords.3
The ease with which a modern-day hiker can step across the Brandywine anywhere along the portion Washington defended gives a false sense of the stream’s defensive value in 1777. Historically, the Brandywine was five to six feet deep along much of its length. Even the fords were deep—at least chest-high for the average man. And that September, as the Americans deployed along the eastern side, the fords were deeper than normal because of the recent heavy rainfall.
Understanding the course and flow of the Brandywine was one thing, but Washington knew little about the rest of the terrain and the network of roads and paths that linked it all together. By the afternoon of September 10, his army was spread out over several miles, with numerous scouting parties and pickets ranging to the west to keep a watch on Howe’s army encamped around Kennett Square. Despite having an entire day in the area, Washington remained completely ignorant of the surrounding terrain and roads. Reconnaissance patrols were lacking, and no one seems to have considered talking to some of the locals who were in the army. Two battalions of Chester County militia and two Pennsylvania Line regiments from the region were in the ranks. In addition, prominent officers like Gen. Anthony Wayne and Col. Persifor Frazer had homes in the region.
Most of the local inhabitants were Quakers, whose religious convictions left them opposed to the war and generally unwilling to volunteer as guides or informants concerning the geographical and topological aspects of the surrounding area. Those few who were pro-American had either left or were already on the army rolls. The result was an “American army even more uncertain of the immediate nature of the country than were the British,” argued one writer. Washington knew the area was unfamiliar to him, and yet seems not to have taken the “precaution of having at hand someone who knew the countryside.”4
An instruction sent to one of the many dragoon patrols, dispatched to scout Howe’s approach, reflected this lack of knowledge:
Since I wrote you a few hours ago another Horseman has come in, and says that the Enemy are moving up the Lancaster Road…. His Excellency therefore desires that you would … reconnoiter the Situation and destination of the Enemy as critically as possible. As you may not be acquainted with the Roads, and to what places they lead, try to get a Country man who can give you information. The General begs you to remember of how much importance it is to him to receive very particular information, & hopes you will exert yourself to obtain it.5
The scouting parties triggered some minor skirmishing and thievery. Lord Stirling, for example, sent a detachment from the 12th Pennsylvania Regiment across the river under Captains Alexander Patterson and Stephen Chambers, who managed to pilfer cattle and sheep from the enemy. “Shall detain a Milch Cow, for a few days if you have no objection,” wrote back one of the officers, “as there is 10 of them amongst the 17 above mentioned.”6
Major roads, as they always do, play a significant role in the development of battlefield strategy. Three main roads crossed the Brandywine in the 18th century: King’s Highway (modern-day U.S. Route 13) at the head of the tidewater in Delaware’s alluvial plain; the Lancaster Great Road (modern-day U.S. Route 30), which was too far inland to be useful to Howe; and the Great Post Road (modern-day U.S. Route 1), part of the road system connecting Boston to Savannah. The latter route (known as the Great Road to Nottingham because it led to the Nottingham family land tracts in northeastern Maryland) was the main artery in the area connecting the capital city of Philadelphia to Baltimore. Despite its extravagant-sounding name, in that era the Great Post Road was little more than one cart-width wide, with woods and farm clearings lining its course. Because Washington expected Howe to travel by the main route, he arranged his divisions behind the Brandywine to defend the crossings known to him.
Washington posted Nathanael Greene’s 2,500-man First Division several hundred yards south of the Great Post Road to guard a ferry crossing and be within supporting distance of Chads’s Ford. The water was a little deeper along this stretch of the river, and a ferryman with a flatboat moved passengers and goods across by means of a rope stretched between the two banks. A four-gun battery on a hill off Greene’s left flank covered the ferry crossing.7
On Greene’s right were the 2,000 Pennsylvania troops comprising Anthony Wayne’s Fourth Division. Wayne’s primary responsibility was to defend Chads’s Ford. The name is somewhat deceiving because it was actually a pair of fords: the Great Post Road crossed at one point about 300 feet above (north of) the modern-day U.S. Route 1 bridge, and another road (no longer in existence) crossed at the second ford about 150 feet below (south) the modern bridge. Wayne deployed his men along an elevation south of Harvey Run overlooking Chads’s Ford. The right side of his line angled back away from the river toward Thomas Proctor’s Pennsylvania artillery, which had unlimbered about 600 yards northeast of Chads’s Ford. One of Proctor’s artillerymen recalled an orchard behind his guns and wrote, “Across the road on the left was a buckwheat field opposite to a wood and the Brandewine between them.”8