![]() ![]() The British never grasped that it was good publicity which kept Washington's small army in the field, by producing fresh flows of volunteer reinforcements. But his failure to take Philadelphia when he could was worse. In August, he had let the defeated American army escape after the battle of Brooklyn (or Long Island). He would go back to New York and mop up Philadelphia and the Yankee army the following spring. When Washington wrote those words, he did not know that General Howe, the British commander, had already decided that it was getting too cold to carry on fighting. David McCullough's account bears out the saying that this war was lost by the British rather than won by the Americans the book could have been subtitled 'Failures to Pursue'. But Washington was wrong, as he frequently was about military things. ![]()
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