The 1st Virginia at Fort Lee, N.J., September 1776

On September 22, 1776, Col. Isaac Read’s 1st Virginia Regiment arrived at Fort Constitution, high on a cliff overlooking the Hudson River and Manhattan Island. They were on their way to join the war’s most famous campaign.

Read had just become the regiment’s third colonel, but he wouldn’t last long. Patrick Henry commanded first, but resigned in anger when he was passed over for advancement. Frontiersman William Christian was next to command but resigned in August to lead the campaign against the Cherokee. Read was promoted from the 4th Virginia to take over. Everyone wanted to be there when they reached the main army, and Read was no exception. He was sick, though, maybe with malaria.

In fact, the men of the 1st Virginia had been dropping like flies for months. After cheerfully reconstituting itself under the army’s first three-year enlistments that summer, 120 stragglers and new recruits from the 8th Virginia were attached to make the regiment whole before its march north. A walking disease incubator, the regiment left groups of men behind in every town along the way: 28 in Williamsburg and more in Fredericksburg, Alexandria, Baltimore, and Trenton. Read’s deputy, Lt. Col. Frank Eppes, was so sick he never left Virginia. Major John Green of Culpeper County commanded day to day.

The march from Williamsburg took more than a month. Fort Constitution was under the command of Maj. Gen. Nathanael Greene, but would soon be renamed Fort Lee after Maj. Gen. Charles Lee to celebrate the latter’s June 28 victory in Charleston. Fort Washington sat directly across the water on Manhattan's highest point. Together, the forts were charged with maintaining Whig control of the strategically critical waterway.

Sergeant Thomas McCarty, one of the attached 8th Virginia men, recorded their arrival. After ferrying across the Passaic River, they “marched to the fort, which we came by several camping places and camps on top of a high hill by the North [Hudson] River.” They “halted in sight of the fort and river till Colonel Read went to speak to General Greene.” He “returned shortly” and “ordered us to march back up the hill a piece, where it was late when we pitched camp.”

For the next few days, the regiment rested and celebrated the end of their long march. They were issued flour, beef, and rum. They got paid for the first time. On the third day there, McCarty wrote, “We lay there and our men drunk very hard as they had plenty of money.”

But then things soon turned serious. The day after their arrival, soldiers across the river were assembled to witness the execution of a man for cowardice. He was bound, blindfolded, and kneeling. Washington gave him a last-minute reprieve, counting on the drama to serve as a sufficient warning. At Fort Lee, the 1st Virginia men learned that the Hessians and Scottish Highlanders had given no quarter at the Battle of Long Island the month before and had shot as many as 17 Americans in the head after they had surrendered at Kip’s Bay. They now understood there was no romance in war.

On their fourth day there, still atop the Jersey Palisades, they watched British maneuvers in the river below. McCarty wrote, “The force heard the cannon fire very brisk from the shipping of the English, and we could see them land. We could easy see their camps and every turn they would make.”

Their stay at Fort Lee was brief. Jonathan Grant, another detached 8th Virginia man, remembered that they traveled through the Jerseys “to fort Lee on the North River & thence crossed the River to Fort Washington. The enemy at that time was in New York.” Similarly, Henry Gaddis recalled that they traveled “to Fort Lee, then we crossed over the North river to Fort Washington.” They joined the 3rd Virginia to form a small, temporary brigade commanded by Col. George Weedon. Weedon was senior, and his regiment had arrived a few weeks before Read's. Now part of the main army, they were thrust into battle—first at White Plains and then at Trenton. The service was more than arduous. In January, only 21 1st Virginia men were still well enough to participate in the future-defining victory at Princeton.

The site of Fort Lee and its surrounding camps and artillery emplacements have been partially preserved. Judging purely from McCarty’s account it appears that much of the camping area has been blasted away to make room for the George Washington Bridge. Some of what remains has been preserved as Fort Lee Historic Park. The visitor center and its displays date from the 1976 Bicentennial and, though a bit worn down, still tell the story well. The massive bridge and surrounding skyscrapers have radically changed the area's appearance, but the reconstructed buildings and artillery batteries combine with imagination to suggest the original scene. The position of the actual fort is in the middle of the town of Fort Lee and is called Monument Park. A sculpture there records the presence of the fort and the events that occurred there.

Fort Lee was abandoned during the retreat through New Jersey—a retreat the fort’s namesake pointedly did nothing to assist with. 

​GABRIEL NEVILLE is the author of The Last Men Standing: The 8th Virginia Regiment in the American Revolution.