The Glorious Cause - Philadelphia Has Taken Howe

In the summer of 1777, General William Howe put 15,000 men on ships and sailed away from the Hudson River — and away from the second British army marching down from Canada that he was supposed to meet. This is the story of the campaign that won Britain the American capital and lost it the war. Howe outmaneuvered Washington at Brandywine with the same flanking trick that had nearly destroyed the Continental Army on Long Island, took Philadelphia without a fight, and settled in for the winter — while Washington, beaten twice, threw one last desperate dawn attack at the British camp at Germantown, only to watch it dissolve in fog and confusion, his own columns firing on each other in the murk. Through it runs a nineteen-year-old French volunteer named Lafayette, wounded in his first battle, and the wry verdict of Benjamin Franklin in Paris, who heard that Howe had captured Philadelphia and answered that Philadelphia had captured Howe. Two British victories — and the trap closing three hundred miles to the north.