The weeks of bloody maneuvering and fighting along the Delaware River at Fort Mercer, Fort Mifflin, and Gloucester receive but scant attention in the literature of the American Revolution. The same is true for the five-day Whitemarsh operation and other important events in December 1777. Award-winning author Michael C. Harris’s impressive Fighting for Philadelphia: Forts Mercer and Mifflin, the Battle of Whitemarsh, and the Road to Valley Forge, October 5–December 19, 1777 rescues these important actions from obscurity, puts them in context with the Saratoga Campaign, and closes his magnificent trilogy that began with the battle of Brandywine and left off with the slugfest at Germantown. This period of the war started when General Sir William Howe’s army of 16,500 British and Hessian soldiers set out aboard a 265-ship armada from New York to capture Philadelphia in late July 1777. Six difficult weeks later, Howe landed near Elkton, Maryland, moved north into Pennsylvania, and defeated Washington’s army at Brandywine on September 11. Philadelphia fell to the British. Obscured by darkness and a heavy morning fog, Washington launched a successful surprise attack against the British garrison at Germantown on October 4. The recapture of the colonial capital seemed within Washington’s grasp until poor battlefield decisions brought about a reversal of fortune and a clear British victory. Like Brandywine, the bloody Germantown scrap proved Continental soldiers could stand toe-to-toe with British Regulars. A protracted and complex quasi-siege of the British garrison followed. This fascinating and little-studied chess game had Washington trying to close the Delaware River and harass enemy foraging parties to starve out Howe’s command, while the British tried to capture or neutralize the key American bastions of Forts Mercer and Mifflin and keep the river open. Harris’s Fighting for Philadelphia is the first complete study to merge the strategic, political, and tactical history of the complex operations sandwiched between Germantown and the arrival of the Continental Army at Valley Forge. His sweeping prose relies almost exclusively on original archival research and a deep personal knowledge of the terrain, highlighted by 21 original maps, illustrations, and modern photos. Told largely through the words of those who fought there, Fighting for Philadelphia is sure to please the most discriminating reader and assume its place as one of the finest military studies of its kind.
