Two hundred and forty-six years ago, this week, a few hundred Maryland soldiers bravely charged thousands of British soldiers and Hessian mercenaries to allow their brothers-in-arms to escape total annihilation.
This elite unit of Marylanders, known as “Washington’s Immortals” or the “Bayonets of the Revolution” for their Thermopylae-like charge against a British stronghold, bought with their blood “an hour, more precious to American liberty than any other in its history.”
These “Gentlemen of Honour, Family, and Fortune[’s]” selfless
sacrifice allowed General Washington, his top commanders, and much of
the fledgling American army to retreat and to fight again another day at
a point when the entire Revolution, begun only a little more than a
month earlier, might have become a mere footnote in British history. Most
of the men who made the charge would never return home to Maryland:
most would die that day or die on British prison ships, little more than
floating concentration camps in New York Harbor. .............To Read More.......
