WHAT IF...THE CONTINENTAL ARMY HAD NOT ESCAPED AFTER THE BATTLE OF LONG ISLAND?

Nige Tassell and Professor Benjamin Carp consider the fate of the American colonies had George Washington not ordered his troops to retreat from the battlefield in August 1776

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Three clear choices faced George Washington in late August 1776. As commander-in-chief of the Continental Army, he had just lost to the British at the battle of Long Island, the latest major skirmish in the American Revolutionary War.

Washington could have carried on fighting, but this would have been a woefully misguided decision bearing in mind the superiority of the British, both in terms of personnel numbers and strategic strongholds around the New York archipelago. He could have surrendered along with his Patriot troops, but this would have meant the war was effectively over - and a dent would have been made in any long-term struggle for independence.

Washington's only realistic option in order to preserve his men and live to fight another day - was to order a mass retreat, a large-scale escape under the cover of darkness. While this retreat gifted the crucial territory to the British, it meant the war would continue - as it did until the Patriots took ultimate victory seven years later.

Had Washington surrendered after Long Island, the momentum from the Patriot side, following the glow of victory at the Siege of Boston, would have been extinguished. So says Benjamin Carp, the Daniel M Lyons professor of American history at Brooklyn College and the author of several books, including The Great New York Fire of 1776: A Lost Story of the American Revolution (Yale, 2023).