The British had arrived in New York in late June 1776 under the command of Generals William and Richard Howe (brothers). They anchored their 100+ ships at Staten Island on July 2nd, on the shore of the current neighborhood of St. George. Staten Island was then only sparsely populated, so they were able to do this without facing any significant American resistance. More ships continued to arrive--by the time fighting broke out, the British ships numbered 400.

At the same time, George Washington and the Continental Army were stationed on Manhattan. During this standoff, the Declaration of Independence was adopted by the Continental Congress at Independence Hall in Philadelphia on the 4th of July. Word quickly spread throughout the colonies, and a copy of the Declaration was received by Washington by July 9th. That day, Washington had the document read to his assembled troops in New York City (then confined to Manhattan below Wall Street). The immediate reaction was to topple a statue of King George III then standing in the Bowling Green, in lower Manhattan, where there is now a park that contains the Wall Street bull, near the intersection of Broadway and Beaver Street. (Legend has it that the statue was melted down and turned into musket balls.) The next morning, the Declaration was published in New York in the Constitutional Gazette and a day later, it was published again in the New-York Packet and the New-York Journal. Probably through one of these publications, a copy of the Declaration made its way into the hands of the British.

On July 12th, a contingent of British ships attempted to sail up the Hudson, only to be fired upon from batteries in lower Manhattan, and they returned fire before sailing back to Staten Island. Negotiations were then conducted between the two sides, which failed. As more British warships arrived in Staten Island, the British began making plans to attack the Americans.

The Battle of Brooklyn (a.k.a. the Battle of Long Island):

August 22, 1776: The British crossed the Narrows, the narrowest point between Staten Island and Brooklyn (then Kings County), on Long Island, landing approximately at the present day site of John Paul Jones Park, in Gravesend, Brooklyn, right next to the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge. The Americans saw them coming from their lookout at Denyse's Ferry, which was located just west of John Paul Jones Park, approximately along the present day Bay Ridge Promenade in Shore Road Park.

From there, the British marched to the town of Flatbush (roughly centered around present Flatbush Avenue and Cortelyou Road) to camp for the night. They marched there via King's Highway (which still partially exists) to Flatbush Avenue (which still exists, too, but has been straightened out, and was back then just simply "the Flatbush road" or "the road to Flatbush").

Most of George Washington's Continental Army had sailed across the East River, and Washington himself and the troops under his direct command were positioned in the original village of Brooklyn. This position was at the intersection of what was then Smith Street, Red Hook lane, and the Ferry landing, near where the Brooklyn Dutch Church was at that time. The present site is approximately on the Fulton Mall in downtown Brooklyn, between Fulton and Livingston streets, and Hoyt and Bond streets.

Another contingent of soldiers under the command of Gen. Israel Putnam was positioned at a fort approximately at the present location of Fort Greene Park in Fort Greene, Brooklyn. Several other locations were also fortified with soldiers, some at forts near strategic locations along the roads then existing in Brooklyn, some at civilian buildings that offered good defense and/or would likely be attacked along the way, and some at earth-made forts ("redoubts") that had been hastily put together over the preceding weeks and months. Among some of these sites were a fort near the corner of DeKalb and Hudson Avenues, another near the corner of State Street and Schermerhorn, and another near the corner of Atlantic Avenue and Court Street.

August 26, 1776: British forces began to make their way up the Flatbush road to the original town of Brooklyn, where Washington and his troops were positioned.

August 27, 1776: In the early morning hours, the British met a small group of American soldiers, and the Americans retreated westward. The British pursued, and the first shots were fired near the Red Lion Inn, at a watermelon field, near present day 5th Avenue and 37th Street just outside Greenwood Cemetery. The Americans retreated northward.

When news of the shots fired reached American General William Alexander (a.k.a. Lord Stirling), he marched some of his troops toward the British and more fighting occurred near the north end of Greenwood Cemetery, between 6th and 8th Avenues.

Shortly after, news reached American General John Sullivan who marched his troops down the Flatbush road, and met the British at the present day location of Flatbush Avenue where it cuts through Prospect Park, approximately near the present Prospect Park Zoo and the Historic Lefferts House.

(Side note: the Historic Lefferts House was built at the end of the war by Lt. Pieter Lefferts, who took part in this battle and was an officer in Washington's Continental Army. The house was originally located about six blocks away on the east side of Flatbush Avenue, and was moved to its present location in the 20th Century so it could be preserved in the park, but is otherwise largely preserved in the same way it stood at the time of Lefferts' death in the early 1800s.)

Meanwhile, British General Cornwallis took the bulk of his troops up the King's Highway, where he met American troops near the present site of Broadway Junction (~Broadway and Truxton Street) which was then the junction of the King's Highway and two roads that led to Jamaica, in Queens County, and Bushwick, in Kings County. Marching through now-Evergreen Cemetery, the British captured the five American soldiers stationed there on the Jamaica road as lookouts.

Back in Prospect Park, overwhelmed by the British, Gen. Sullivan ordered his Continental Army troops to retreat. They moved west to the corner of 5th Street where it dead-ends into the park, and more fighting occurred as they tried to escape through the woods toward the Gowanus road, where they could then head northward to meet up with Washington's troops in Brooklyn.

Gen. Alexander's troops then got word that Sullivan's troops were on the run, and that Cornwallis had reached the Vechte-Cortelyou House, a.k.a. the Old Stone House, located in the present day Washington Park in Brooklyn between 4th and 5th Avenues and 3rd and 4th Streets. (The Old Stone House is still there, though rebuilt in the 1930s using some of the original elements. It is now a museum.) So Alexander and his troops were surrounded at this point with no relief. The British were following Sullivan west across now-Prospect Park toward Gowanus. Cornwallis was waiting just north of Gowanus. To the south, there were still troops where the British had landed down in now-Bay Ridge. And to the east, there were British troops occupying Flatbush, where they had camped the night before.

Alexander did the only thing he could do, which was retreat his soldiers toward the Old Stone House, and face Cornwallis and his troops, and hope to break through back to Brooklyn. They were likely to get slaughtered. They did get slaughtered, because the Americans were way outnumbered, but the battle lasted long enough, and made enough smoke, that General Washington was able to see what was going on from the Brooklyn Heights--literally called that because it was the highest point in the original village of Brooklyn. Washington then decided to retreat his troops to Manhattan.

August 28, 1776: It rained heavily, and the British had been marching since the 26th and all day long through the 27th, so Gen. Cornwallis rested his troops. Gen. Washington took the opportunity to put together a plan of escape. He reinforced some of the forts in Kings County, to relieve Gens. Sullivan and Alexander (the latter who was captured by the British during his retreat toward Gowanus), and to provide cover for the rest of the Continental Army's evacuation. Overnight into August 29th, Washington's troops were all ferried across the East River into Manhattan. The ferry was at the end of the "Ferry road", which was at that time the end of Fulton Street, but Fulton Street has since been shortened. The ferry location was approximately at the present location of the foot of the Brooklyn Bridge on the Brooklyn side, and the landing of Washington's troops occurred at the foot of the Brooklyn Bridge on the Manhattan side. The evacuation was somewhat miraculous in that it went undetected as a thick fog had settled in the area. The Continental Army was safe to fight another day.

(...cont'd...)