Washington had already moved from New Jersey, and on the 24th of August he set forth from Philadelphia, riding at the head of his troops, who, as they marched through the streets, were decorated with sprays of green and watched by great crowds. With him rode the marquis de la Fayette, and other foreign officers of renown accompanied the march—Pulaski, the gallant Pole, the marquis de la Rouerie, and Louis de Fleury, a young and spirited compatriot of La Fayette, on duty with Stirling's division.
Part of the army, including the division of General Stephen, had preceded the commander's march to Chester, and at that place General Armstrong had been for some days gathering the Pennsylvania militia. There moved with Washington the remaining divisions of the army under Sullivan, Stirling, Wayne and Greene, the artillery alone excepted. This, General Nash was to place upon flatboats at Philadelphia, and so float down to Chester.
By the 26th the whole army was in and about Wilmington, then only a modest town, the larger part gathered on one side along the Christiana, and the other clustered about the great mills upon the Brandywine, whose corn-meal gave the place its chief repute. Washington fixed his head-quarters in the mansion of one of the mill-owners (presumably Joseph Tatnall's spacious house), and the troops occupied the hills around, on which some traces of their lines of defence may still be discovered. The Delaware militia, urgently called upon by Congress, had been aroused, as far as possible, by the ever-faithful Rodney, the Signer of the Declaration—that tall, thin, odd-looking man, with a green patch covering the cancer that consumed his face—and they had taken the field under the command of General Thomas Collins of Belmont Hall in Kent, recently sheriff of that county, and afterward governor of the State. Part of their duty had been an attempt to save from the enemy's hands the stores, including a large quantity of that precious article, salt, which had been gathered at the "Head of Elk."
The British had arrived. Their enormous fleet, proceeding slowly, had kept well together, and now lay anchored in Elk River, the greatest company by far that these quiet estuaries, the home of the wildfowl, fish and crab, had ever seen; and on the 25th the debarkation of the troops began, Cornwallis's command landing first, and Knyphausen's, local chronicles say, not coming ashore until the 31st of the month. The long voyage had been especially trying to the horses: those that survived were almost starved, and in no condition either to carry dragoons or drag cannon. General Howe issued a proclamation to the people declaring that he came only to punish the rebellious, and making all due assurances to those disposed to maintain the royal authority. They were informed they would be paid in gold and silver for all the horses, cattle and produce they would bring in, and the Tories, we are told, thereupon drove in some of the stock of their Whig neighbors. Knyphausen's men destroyed the county buildings of Cecil at Court-house Point, and the public records were carried away, most of them being subsequently recovered in New York. Several thousand bushels of oats and corn were amongst the stores captured.
Heavy rains fell on the 26th, the day after the debarkation began, and no forward movement of importance was made until the 27th, when Cornwallis marched to Elkton (the Head of Elk), and thence issued the proclamation referred to. The next day his advance-guard occupied Gray's Hill, two miles to the east.
The two armies therefore confronted each other at a distance of some fifteen to eighteen miles, and the unhappy people between sustained the usual penalties of such a situation. The American "light-horse," part of which was the famous command of Harry Lee, scoured the country, annoying the British outposts and capturing numbers of prisoners. On the 28th they secured thirty or forty, and the next day twenty-nine were reported, besides twenty deserters who had come in, eight of them from the fleet. General Collins, with his Delaware militia, hung upon the right flank of the British, commanded by Knyphausen, and preserved the lower section of New Castle county from being despoiled. Numerous skirmishes occurred, and amongst them one which, upon the scale of other Revolutionary encounters, almost rises to the dignity of a battle. Should we call it by that name, it was the only battle ever fought in Delaware during the struggle, unless we except some bloody local fights between the Whigs and the Tories of Sussex. This affair took place on the 3d of September. The British were then advancing slowly eastward, and their vanguard, composed of German yagers, supported by light infantry, encountered at Cooch's Bridge, a crossing of the White Clay Creek, the riflemen of Maxwell and some of the Delaware militia. Maxwell's men, posted thinly and under cover, poured a deadly fire into the British ranks as they advanced, but were presently forced back by their superior numbers across the stream. The Americans admitted a loss of forty killed and wounded, and while the casualties on the other side were not known, a woman who came the next day from the British camp declared she had seen nine wagonloads of wounded brought in.
Meanwhile, the American commanders had been choosing a position in which to meet the advance of the enemy. During the rains of the 26th, Washington himself rode down nearly to the British front, and Greene and Weeden, reconnoitring carefully, had selected the high ground of Iron Hill, near the British lines on Gray's Hill, as a strong position. A council of general officers, however, decided against this location, choosing instead an advance of five or six miles out of Wilmington to the east side of Red Clay Creek. To the position thus chosen on September 5th the whole army moved, except a brigade under General Irwin, which was left to occupy the defensive works around Wilmington. On the Red Clay the line extended from near the confluence of that stream with the Christiana on the left up to Hockessin on the right. Greene disapproved altogether of the position. He pointed out that it did not cover Philadelphia, and that it would be easily turned by the march of Howe northward into Pennsylvania—exactly what subsequently occurred.
Three days after the line of the Red Clay had been occupied, the British, having bought and seized horses enough to serve their pressing needs, began their forward movement. Their tents and heavy baggage, the last to be disembarked, had now been landed, and the rear, under General Grant, was ready to follow the onward march. On the 8th, therefore, Cornwallis extended his left flank well up into the country above Newark, far outreaching the American lines, while a strong column of the right wing threatened the American front, moving directly toward it as far as Milltown, only two miles away. This manœuvre developed the untenable character of the Red Clay line, and Washington hastened to extricate himself. On the night of the 8th he broke camp and marched rapidly northward. At two o'clock on the morning of the 9th he crossed the Brandywine at Chad's Ford, and posted his army on the high hill-slopes east of the creek, directly in Howe's path toward Philadelphia. The British commander, disappointed and chagrined when he perceived at daylight the escape of the Americans, moved also, and on the evening of September 10th united his two columns at Kennet Square, directly west some seven miles, by a well-used road, from Washington's position.
The Brandywine Valley, near the battle-ground, then, as now, teemed with agricultural wealth. The fine farms of the thrifty English settlers, many of whom traced their ownership back in a family line of three-quarters of a century, spread out along the creek in fine meadows of natural "green grass," and rolled upward over the hill-slopes, which, though broken and irregular, nowhere rise precipitously or to great height. The invading forces, as they marched up from the Chesapeake, could not but see the richness of the region, and one of their officers, conversed with by Joseph Townsend, exclaimed "in some rapture," Joseph says, "You have got a hell of a fine country here; which we have found to be the case ever since we landed at the Head of Elk."
Along the hill-slopes, on the east side of the Brandywine, from Chad's Ford up to Brinton's, a distance of about three miles, the Americans lay on the night of September 10th. Wayne was posted to guard the lower ford, and Sullivan had his own division and those of Stirling and Stephen stretched up along the stream. Greene's division formed the reserve. Sullivan's duties included the guarding of the fords above Brinton's, and he had become possessed of the unfortunate idea that there were but three of these fordable, and that beyond the three in question there was no place for a distance of twelve miles where the hostile army could cross. He therefore sent detachments on this evening of the 10th to the three fords—the Delaware regiment to Jones's, and battalions of Hazen's regiment to Wistar's and Buffington's. With this he rested content. It is, however, true that the cavalry at his command seems to have been pitifully meagre: he asserts that on the morning of the battle he had four light-horsemen only, two of whom he sent on scouting duty, retaining the other two to serve as couriers to head-quarters.