If you were to rank Revolutionary War battles in order of importance, this one wouldn’t make the top 10. As a historical reference point, its name is irrelevant in comparison to Lexington and Concord, Bunker Hill, Saratoga, and Yorktown. The fight took less than half an hour, and the winners abandoned the ground they had taken just two days later. Still, the Battle of Stony Point, just south of West Point, was a critical victory for the nascent nation’s Continental Army.
As with most things, context is key. The battle took place on July 16, 1779. The war had been going on for four long years. George Washington’s Army had won very few battles, but had managed to play the British Army to a virtual stalemate. That didn’t sit well with the Crown, and Henry Clinton, commander-in-chief of the British forces in America, wanted to force the issue to what was to him its logical conclusion. He would goad Washington into what military parlance of the time called “general and decisive action,” says Michael Sheehan, historical interpreter at the Stony Point Battlefield. “In other words, ‘let’s beat him and be done with this,’” Sheehan says.
