Example 1777 World Events

Battle of Sag Har

TOC

The Battle of Sag Harbor on Long Island showed how the American Patriots won battles with initiative, courage, ingenuity, and audacity. It also demonstrated that our war of rebellion was also a civil war. Seventy men from Lt. Colonel DeLancey's Tory Battalion were dispatched from New York on a foraging expedition to Sag Harbor – sailing in 12 well armed vessels and protected by an equally well armed schooner. All went well for the Tories until Colonel Return J. Meigs Sr. heard about it and took things into his own hands. He and 170 men on the evening of the May 23 rd promptly set off in whale boats from Guilford, Connecticut, to engage the foragers. Sailing across a Long Island Sound "full of British cruisers“ they landed at Sag Harbor at 2 AM the next day, May 24th . "Taking DeLancey's troops by surprise they killed six men and captured the rest, burnt all their vessels except the schooner, also a large store of provisions and forage, and were back in Guilford by noon, having covered a distance of 100 miles in eighteen hours, and suffering no casualties. For this feat, the only Patriot victory on Long Island, the Congress voted Return Meigs an 'elegant sword' .” Meigs’s sword was donated by Return Jonathan Meigs IV to the Smithsonian Institute’s Museum of American History.