THE MORNING SKIES DARKENED OVER BROOKLYN on this date in 1776.
The 28th of August was a day filled with tension and decision-making. In 1776, McCullough sums it up nicely:
“Having been outsmarted and outfought, they were now hemmed in at Brooklyn in an area about three miles around, their backs to the East River, which could serve as an escape route only as long as the wind cooperated. With a change in the wind, it would take but a few British warships in the river to make escape impossible.”
After the near-massacre at the Old Stone House, Washington ordered still more soldiers over from New York, “almost as though he did not comprehend how perilous his position was.” The valiant surge by the Marylanders proved that a young, moderately disorganized army could fiercely defend its territory, but on that wet August morning the arrival of Mordecai Gist and his nine compatriots—the only survivors of that Maryland battalion—was a chilling reminder of the previous day’s slaughter.
It would rain all day, as if the skies wept in honor of the fallen and wounded. As the storm continued into the night, so did the sound of gunfire. Washington, holed up in the Heights, aware that overall morale was declining by the minute, had some serious contemplating to do.