One other circumstance is to be noticed in regard to this Jamaica Pass. General Sullivan, subsequently referring to his connection with this battle, claimed that while he was in sole command he paid horsemen out of his own purse to patrol the road, and that he predicted the approach of the enemy by that road. Whatever inferences may be drawn from this is not now to the point; but we have the fact that upon the evening of the 26th he exercised the same authority he had exercised in making other details, and sent out a special patrol of five commissioned officers to watch the Jamaica Pass. Three of these officers belonged to Colonel Lasher's New York City battalion—Adjutant Jeronimus Hoogland and Lieutenants Robert Troup and Edward Dunscomb; and the other two were Lieutenant Gerrit Van Wagenen, a detached officer of McDougall's old regiment, and a Lieutenant Gilliland, who with Van Wagenen had crossed to Long Island, as a volunteer. What part this patrol played in the incidents of the following morning will presently appear.
Thus on the night of the 26th the American outposts stretched along the hills from the harbor to the Jamaica Pass, with unguarded intervals, a distance of more than six miles, while in the plains below lay the enemy, nearly ten times their number, ready to fall upon them with "a sudden and violent" shock. During the night one change was made in the picket guard. Colonel Hand's riflemen, who had been on almost constant duty since the arrival of the British, were relieved at two o'clock in the morning by a detachment from the flying camp, which may have been a part of Hay's and Kachlein's men, and returning to the lines, dropped down to sleep.[128]
If we leave our outposts now upon the hills and pass into the enemy's camp on the plain below, we shall find them on the eve of carrying out a great plan of attack. The four days since the 22d had been given to preparation. On the 25th, Lieutenant-General De Heister crossed from Staten Island with the two Hessian brigades of Von Stirn and Von Mirbach, leaving behind Von Lossberg's brigade, with some detachments and recruits, for the security of that island. With this addition, Howe's force on Long Island was swelled to a total of about twenty-one thousand officers and men, fit for duty and in the best condition for active service.[129] As disposed on the 26th, the army lay with the Hessians and the reserves under Cornwallis at Flatbush, the main body under Clinton and Percy massed at Flatlands, and Grant's division of the fourth and sixth brigades nearer the Narrows.
Outnumbering the Americans three to one on the island, Howe could lay his plans with assurance of almost absolute success. He proposed to advance upon the "rebels" in three columns. Grant was ordered to move up from the Narrows along the lower road, and De Heister was to engage the attention of the Americans at the Flatbush Pass, while Clinton, Percy, and Cornwallis, with Howe himself, were to conduct the main body as a flanking force around the American left by way of the Jamaica Pass. A previous reconnoissance made by Clinton and Erskine, and information gathered from the Tories, showed the practicability of this latter movement.[130] Grant and De Heister were simply to make a show of an attack until they were assured by the sound of the firing that the flanking column had accomplished its design, when their demonstrations were to be turned into serious fighting. It was expected that by this plan the Americans stationed at the hills and passes would be entirely enveloped and thoroughly beaten if not captured in a body. With what nice precision this piece of strategy was executed, events will show.
The first collision was ominous. Grant's advance-guard, marching up from the Narrows, struck the American pickets in the vicinity of the Red Lion about two o'clock on the morning of the 27th. Whether because they were all new troops, a part of whom had but just come upon the ground, and were alarmed by the night attack, or because they were surprised at their posts and put in danger of capture, or whatever the reason, our picket guard at that point retreated before the enemy without checking their march. There was hardly more than an exchange of fire with Major Burd's detachment, as the major himself writes, and in the confusion or darkness he, with many others probably, was taken prisoner. This was an unfortunate beginning, so far as our men had abandoned one of the very posts which it had been proposed to hold; but otherwise, there being other positions available, it was not necessarily fatal to the plan of defending the hills.[131]
Word of the attack was quickly carried to General Parsons at his quarters and to General Putnam in camp. Parsons, as the brigadier on duty, rode at once to the spot, and found "by fair daylight" not only that the guards had "fled," but that the enemy were through the woods and already on this side of the main hills. Hastily collecting some twenty of the scattered pickets, he made a show of resistance, which temporarily halted the enemy's column.[132] At the same time Putnam, whose instructions were to hold the outposts "at all hazards" with his best men, called up Stirling and directed him in person to take the two regiments nearest at hand and march down to meet the enemy.[133] Stirling promptly turned out Haslet's and Smallwood's battalions and marched down. Colonel Atlee, who was also ordered forward, was on the road before him, with that part of his regiment, about one hundred and twenty men, not already on picket; and Huntington's Connecticut Continentals, under Lieutenant-Colonel Clark (Huntington himself being sick),[134] and Kachlein's Pennsylvania riflemen were soon after started in the same direction. Meanwhile, within the lines, the alarm-guns were fired, the whole camp roused, and the troops drawn up at the forts and breastworks. Hand's riflemen, who had but just lain down, "almost dead with fatigue," were turned out to take post in Fort Putnam and the redoubt on its left.[135]
When Stirling reached a point within half a mile of the Red Lion he found, as Parsons had before him, that the enemy had met with little opposition or delay at the outposts on that road, and were now on the full march towards the Brooklyn lines. As there were still good positions which he could occupy, he immediately made a disposition of his force to offer resistance. The road here ran in a winding course along the line of the present Third Avenue, but a short distance from the bay, with here and there a dwelling which together constituted the Gowanus village or settlement. Where the present Twenty-third Street intersects the avenue there was a small bridge on the old road which crossed a ditch or creek setting up from the bay to a low and marshy piece of ground on the left, looking south; and just the other side of the bridge, the land rose to quite a bluff at the water's edge, which was known among the Dutch villagers as "Blockje's Bergh." From the bluff the low hill fell gradually to the marsh or morass just mentioned, the road continuing along between them.[136] Right here, therefore, the approach by the road was narrow, and at the corner of Twenty-third Street was confined to the crossing at the bridge.