Battle of Long Island

On August 27, 1776, British and Hessian troops under General William Howe attacked George Washington's army on Long Island near Brooklyn, New York. Howe outflanked the American position through the Jamaica Pass and drove Washington's forces back toward the Brooklyn defenses. On the night of August 29 to 30, Washington saved the Continental Army by evacuating it across the East River to Manhattan.

Long Island intensified the central military tension of 1776: the United States had declared independence, but the Continental Army still had to survive against the largest British expeditionary force yet sent to North America. Howe's victory showed British superiority in training and numbers, yet Washington's escape prevented a decisive destruction of the American army. The battle therefore made army preservation, not city retention, the essential American strategy around New York.

The defeat at Long Island led directly into the New York campaign of 1776 and the later retreats through New Jersey. Washington's survival after Brooklyn made possible the surprise victories at Trenton and Princeton that revived the American cause that winter.