Battle of Coochs Bridge in the American Revolution

Battle of Cooch's Bridge in the American Revolution Battle of Coochs Bridge - Conflict Date: The Battle of Coochs Bridge was fought September 3, 1777, during the American Revolution (1775-1783). Battle of Coochs Bridge - Armies Commanders: Americans General George WashingtonBrigadier General William Maxwell450 men British General Sir William HoweLieutenant General Lord Charles CornwallisLieutenant Colonel Ludwig von Wurmb293 men Battle of Coochs Bridge - Background: Having captured New York in 1776, British campaign plans for the following year called for Major General John Burgoynes army to advance south from Canada with the goal of capturing the Hudson Valley and severing New England from the rest of the American colonies.   In commencing his operations, Burgoyne hoped that General Sir William Howe, the overall British commander in North America, would march north from New York City to support the campaign.   Uninterested in advancing up the Hudson, Howe instead set his sights on taking the American capital at Philadelphia.   To do so, he planned to embark the bulk of his army and sail south. Working with his brother, Admiral Richard Howe, Howe initially hoped to ascend the Delaware River and land below Philadelphia.   An assessment of the river forts in the Delaware deterred the Howes from this line of approach and they instead decided to sail further south before moving up the Chesapeake Bay.   Putting to sea in late July, the British were hampered by poor weather.   Though aware of Howes departure from New York, the American commander, General George Washington, remained in the dark regarding the enemys intentions.   Receiving sighting reports from along the coast, he increasingly determined that the target was Philadelphia.   As a result, he began moving his army south in late August.   Battle of Coochs Bridge - Coming Ashore: Moving up the Chesapeake Bay, Howe started landing his army at Head of Elk on August 25.   Moving inland, the British began concentrating their forces before beginning the march northeast toward Philadelphia.   Having encamped at Wilmington, DE, Washington, along with Major General Nathanael Greene and the Marquis de Lafayette, rode southwest on August 26 and reconnoitered the British from atop Iron Hill.   Assessing the situation, Lafayette recommended employing a force of light infantry to disrupt the British advance and give Washington time to choose suitable ground for blocking Howes army.   This duty normally would have fallen to Colonel Daniel Morgans riflemen, but this force had been sent north to reinforce Major General Horatio Gates who was opposing Burgoyne.   As a result, a new command of 1,100 handpicked men was quickly assembled under the leadership of Brigadier General William Maxwell. Battle of Coochs Bridge - Moving to Contact: On the morning of September 2, Howe directed Hessian General Wilhelm von Knyphausen to depart Cecil County Court House with the right wing of the army and move east toward Aikens Tavern.   This march was slowed by poor roads and foul weather.   The next day, Lieutenant General Lord Charles Cornwallis was ordered to break camp at Head of Elk and join Knyphausen at the tavern.   Advancing east over different roads, Howe and Cornwallis reached Aikens Tavern ahead of the delayed Hessian general and elected to turn north without waiting for the planned rendezvous.   To the north, Maxwell had positioned his force south of Coochs Bridge which spanned the Christina River as well as sent a light infantry company south to set an ambush along the road. Battle of Coochs Bridge - A Sharp Fight: Riding north, Cornwallis advance guard, which was comprised of a company of Hessian dragoons led by Captain Johann Ewald, fell into Maxwells trap.   Springing the ambush, the American light infantry broke up the Hessian column and Ewald retreated to obtain aid from Hessian and Ansbach jgers in Cornwallis command.   Advancing,  jgers led by Lieutenant Colonel Ludwig von Wurmb engaged the Maxwells men in a running fight north.   Deploying in a line with artillery support, Wurmbs men attempted to pin the Americans in place with bayonet charge in the center while sending a force to turn Maxwells flank.   Recognizing the danger, Maxwell continued to slowly retreat north towards the bridge (Map). Reaching Coochs Bridge, the Americans formed to make a stand on the east bank of the river.   Increasingly pressed by Wurmbs men, Maxwell retreated across the span to a new position on the west bank.   Breaking off the fight, the  jgers occupied nearby Iron Hill.   In an effort to take the bridge, a battalion of British light infantry crossed the river downstream and began moving north.   This effort was badly slowed by swampy terrain.   When this force finally arrived, it, along with the threat posed by Wurmbs command, compelled Maxwell to depart the field and retreat back to Washingtons camp outside Wilmington, DE. Battle of Coochs Bridge - Aftermath: Casualties for the Battle of Coochs Bridge are not known with certainty but are estimated at 20 killed and 20 wounded for Maxwell and 3-30 killed and 20-30 wounded for Cornwallis.   As Maxwell moved north, Howes army continued to be harassed by American militia forces.   That evening, Delaware militia, led by Caesar Rodney, struck the British near Aikens Tavern in a hit-and-run attack.   Over the next week, Washington marched north with the intention of blocking Howes advance near Chadds Ford, PA.   Taking a position behind the Brandywine River, he was defeated at the Battle of Brandywine on September 11.   In the days after the battle, Howe succeeded in occupying Philadelphia.   An American counterattack on October 4 was turned back at the Battle of Germantown.   The campaign season ended later that fall with Washingtons army going into winter quarters at Valley Forge.            Selected Sources DAR: Battle of Coochs BridgePHAA: Battle of Coochs BridgeHMDB: Battle of Coochs Bridge

The eNotes Blog 2013 National Book AwardWinners

2013 National Book AwardWinners Is your Kindle finger itching? Do you have a yearning to go to the bookstore or library but dont know what sounds good? Well, maybe this will help.   Last night, this years National Book Awards were announced. Here is the complete list of winners and finalists. James McBride took the fiction prize for his novel The Good Lord Bird (Riverhead Books/Penguin Group USA): Abolitionist John Brown calls her â€Å"Little Onion,† but her real name is Henry. A slave in Kansas mistaken for a girl due to the sackcloth smock he was wearing when Brown shot his master, the light-skinned, curly-haired 12-year-old ends up living as a young woman, most often encamped with Brown’s renegade band of freedom warriors as they traverse the country, raising arms and ammunition for their battle against slavery. Though they travel to Rochester, New York, to meet with Frederick Douglass and Canada to enlist the help of Harriet Tubman, Brown and his ragtag army fail to muster sufficient support for their mission to liberate African Americans, heading inexorably to the infamously bloody and pathetic raid on Harpers Ferry.   Starred Review, Booklist   Carol Haggas Finalists for the prize included: Rachel Kushner, The Flamethrowers (Scribner/Simon Schuster) Jhumpa Lahiri, The Lowland (Alfred A. Knopf/Random House) Thomas Pynchon, Bleeding Edge (The Penguin Press/Penguin Group USA) George Saunders, Tenth of December (Random House) The winner for non-fiction is George Packer for The Unwinding: An Inner History of the New America (Farrar, Straus and Giroux) How have we come to feel that neither the government nor the private sector works as it should and that the shrinking middle class has few prospects of recovering its former glory? Through profiles of several Americans, from a factory worker to an Internet billionaire, Packer, staff writer for the New Yorker, offers a broad and compelling perspective on a nation in crisis. Packer focuses on the lives of a North Carolina evangelist, son of a tobacco farmer, pondering the new economy of the rural South; a Youngstown, Ohio, factory worker struggling to survive the decline of the manufacturing sector; a Washington lobbyist confronting the distance between his ideals and the realities of the nation’s capital; and a Silicon Valley entrepreneur pondering the role of e-commerce in a radically changing economy. Interspersed throughout are profiles of leading economic, political, and cultural figures, including Newt Gingrich, Colin Powell, Raymond Carver, Sam Walton, and Jay-Z. Also spr inkled throughout are alarming headlines, news bites, song lyrics, and slogans that capture the unsettling feeling that the nation and its people are adrift. Packer offers an illuminating, in-depth, sometimes frightening view of the complexities of decline and the enduring hope for recovery.   Starred Review, Booklist Vanessa Bush Finalists in the Non-Fiction Category were: Jill Lepore, Book of Ages: The Life and Opinions of Jane Franklin (Alfred A. Knopf/Random House) Wendy Lower, Hitler’s Furies: German Women in the Nazi Killing Fields (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt) Alan Taylor, The Internal Enemy: Slavery and War in Virginia, 1772-1832 (W.W. Norton Company) Lawrence Wright, Going Clear: Scientology, Hollywood, the Prison of Belief (Alfred A. Knopf/Random House) Mary Szybist took the Poetry Prize for her collection,   Incarnadine: Poems (Graywolf Press) Love poetry and poetry of religious faith blend and blur into one transcendent, humbled substance. . . . Whether or not readers are attuned to the religious content, these are gorgeous lyrics, in traditional and invented formsone poem is a diagrammed sentence while another radiates from an empty space at the center of the pagewhich create close encounters with not-quite-paraphrasable truths. This is essential poetry.  - Publishers Weekly Poetry finalists included: Frank Bidart, Metaphysical Dog (Farrar, Straus and Giroux) Lucie Brock-Broido, Stay, Illusion (Alfred A. Knopf) Adrian Matejka, The Big Smoke (Penguin Poets/Penguin Group USA) Matt Rasmussen, Black Aperture (Louisiana State University Press) The winner for young peoples literature is Cynthia Kadohata for The Thing About Luck (Atheneum Books for Young Readers/Simon Schuster) It seems that if Summer’s Japanese American family didn’t have bad luck, they’d have no luck at all. Certainly good luck (kouun) is elusive. Consider that Summer has had malaria; her little brother, Jaz, is friendless; her parents have to fly to Japan to take care of elderly relatives; and her grandmother (Obaa-chan) and grandfather (Jii-chan) must pay the mortgage by coming out of retirement to work for a custom harvesting company. When the siblings accompany their grandparents on the harvest, Summer helps her grandmother, a cook, while Jaz is Jaz: intense, focused, and bad-tempered. At first, things go reasonably well, but then Jii-chan becomes sick, and it appears that it might be up to Summer to save the day. Will she succeed? Kadohata has written a gentle family story that is unusual in its focus on the mechanics of wheat harvesting.   (Grades 4-8) Starred Review,   Booklist Michael Cart Finalist for the young peoples literature award included: Kathi Appelt, The True Blue Scouts of Sugar Man Swamp   (Atheneum Books for Young Readers/Simon Schuster) Tom McNeal, Far Far Away (Alfred A. Knopf/Random House) Meg Rosoff, Picture Me Gone (G.P. Putnam’s Sons, a division of Penguin Group USA) Gene Luen Yang, Boxers Saints (First Second/Macmillan)