The Battle of Germantown

Philadelphia. Early October. Indian Summer. The days are still long and warm. The foliage green and heavy. It will be a few more weeks before the landscape turns radiant yellow, orange, red, soft light brown. The transition of the seasons has me thinking of the past. It‘s Saturday and I leaf through the Philadelphia Inquirer searching for history. A reenactment of the Battle of Germantown. On Germantown Avenue, in front of the Cliveden House, at 2 pm. Before I drive over a quick look at Wikipedia.

The battle was fought on October 4, 1777. The British win, ensuring control of Philadelphia, the self-proclaimed capital of the United States of America. Control. At least through the harsh winter of 1777-78. The Philadelphia Campaign had begun badly for the Americans. Washington and the Continental Army had suffered defeats at Brandywine and Paoli, leaving Philadelphia defenseless. Cornwallis seized it on September 26, 1777. Howe left some 3,500 men to defend it and moved 9,500 up to Germantown in order to pursue and destroy the American forces.

With Howe‘s forces divided, Washington saw an opportunity to attack. He aimed at the British garrison in Germantown before the winter would set in. The plan was to attack at night, surprising the British and Hessian (German) troops in much the same way he had surprised the Hessians at the Battle of Trenton. But, the Americans were defeated. Washington had overestimated his troops‘ ability to launch a complicated attack. A heavy fog had made matters worse by impeding coordination. And the British had outnumbered the scrappy Americans.

However, had Washington’s plan been executed successfully, it very well might have brought the war to a sudden end. The British historian Trevelyan wrote that although the Battle of Germantown was a defeat, it was of “great and enduring service to the American cause“ in persuading the French to weigh in on behalf of the United States against Britain.

„That the battle had been fought unsuccessfully was of small importance when weighed against the fact that it been fought at all. Eminent generals, and statesmen of sagacity, in every European Court were profoundly impressed by learning that a new army, raised within the year, and undaunted by a series of recent disasters, had assailed a victorious enemy in his own quarters, and had only been repulsed after a sharp and dubious conflict.“

John Fiske, in The American Revolution (1891), wrote „The genius and audacity shown by Washington, in thus planning and so nearly accomplishing the ruin of the British army only three weeks after the defeat at the Brandywine, produced a profound impression upon military critics in Europe. Frederick the Great of Prussia saw that presently, when American soldiers should come to be disciplined veterans, they would become a very formidable instrument in the hands of their great commander.“

Germantown, established in 1681. German farmers, craftsmen, recruited by William Penn, to bring diligence, discipline, technical knowledge and piety. A handful of German Mennonites from Krefeld. 1688 the very first in the colonies to condemn slavery. The Quakers banning it within their Society of Friends in 1776, and all of Pennsylvania banning slavery by 1780.

Germantown in October of 2010. Remnants of a great industrial city. Black, poor, run down. Struggling, like so many neighborhoods in Philadelphia. Like so many American cities. Will they ever be revived? What will they look like in fifty, one hundred, one hundred and fifty years? I read yesterday of the spread of hunger in Philadelphia during these very difficult economic times.

But, the authenticity of the reenactment takes my mind back to another age. The cloth and color of the uniforms. Bright red, deep blue, white, tan. Replicas of British government issue, and of American homespun. Various looks depending on the type of forces. And the muskets. Long, loud, cracking sharply, throwing off billows of white clouds, the piercing smell. Volley after volley for well over an hour. Troops of ten, twenty moving up, down and around Germantown Avenue and the Clivenden House, all within a space no larger than half the size of a football field.

An Historian, teacher at nearby Malvern Prep, provides a fascinating narration, a kind of play-by-play analysis. The rifles were accurate only within fifty yards. Thus column upon column firing at almost point blank range. To soften up the enemy in order to engage in bayonet-attacks. Hand-to-hand combat. Nahkampf as the Germans would say. Small cannon fire would rip through the ranks intermittently, tearing of legs, arms, heads.

We weren‘t a particularly large crowd. A few hundred. There was plenty of room to watch. But the weather was ideal. Folks head out to high school football games, work in their yards, drive out into the country. Parking in Germantown isn‘t easy. And I suspect that white folks probably feel queasy about going into Germantown.

And history is not as relevant for Americans as it is for Germans. Two decades in Germany I‘ve lived, studied, worked. History is ever-present, almost on every corner, and certainly in the minds and hearts of the Germans. They understand and explain the present via its history. The future is an extension of who and what has gone before. A glance in the Saturday General Anzeiger, Bonn‘s daily, would have offered a dozen events, activities, exhibitions taking participants back into the past.

There is a wine growing region just south of Bonn, on the Ahr River. It‘s Autumn. Time to harvest the grapes, press them down, in the past with feet and wooden device alike. The towns have their festivals, celebrating in ways typical during the Middle Ages. Garb, speech, food, decorations taking us back five hundred and more years. A kind of living museum, on those few days each October.

We‘re Americans and Germans first, engineers, marketers, account managers, supply management specialists, manufacturers, finance folks second. How we think and work is based on who we are, where we come from, our national culture, our inclinations, habits, traditions, ways of thinking, methods, approaches, our national cultural hard wiring. „Hard“ not in the sense of unmovable or unchangeable. But certainly „hard“ in the sense of not easily moved, changed, modified, altered. „Hard“ as in heart-felt, deep-seated, strongly believed. Belief system. Not measurable, not quantifiable. Complex.

I wonder what the Americans of German descent in Germantown thought when firing on the Hessians. I wonder what many of the Hessian soldiers thought when they decided to settle in the mid-Atlantic colonies after the end of the many battles. How often Germans and Americans have shot at each other, only then afterward to become allies, friends, and family. I often wonder what German and American colleagues today, within global companies, think of each other. Friend, foe, colleague, competitor.