04/25/2026
Martha Washington admiring the rare Charles Blaskowitz, A Plan of the Progres of the Royal Army from their Landing at Elk Ferry to Philadelphia 1777 Under the Command of His Excellency, Sir William Howe Knight of the most Honorable Order of the Bath, Commander in Chief, one of only three surviving manuscript Headquarters maps of the Philadelphia Campaign.
Early in the Revolutionary War, the Commander-in-Chief of the British land forces, General William Howe, believed that the capture of the young nation’s capital, Philadelphia, would demoralize the rebels to the point of laying down their arms. It was with high hopes for victory in the war, then, that British forces under Howe landed at Elk Ferry (now Elkton, Maryland), south of Philadelphia, on August 25, 1777, with the goal of taking the capital and crushing the Continental Army commanded by George Washington.
This manuscript map by Charles Blaskowitz (c.1743–1823), the preeminent surveyor of the British campaign, shows the movements of the British forces as they marched and fought their way from Elk Ferry towards Philadelphia, indicating with red lines the routes of the British troops under Howe, the British and Hessian troops under Charles Cornwallis, and the Hessian auxiliaries under Wilhelm von Knyphausen. Blaskowitz marks the location of each stopping point, skirmish, and battle, including the British victories in the Battle of Brandywine (September 11) and the Battle of Paoli (September 20), and indicates the British taking of Philadelphia on September 26. He also shows the locations of later actions: the Battle of Germantown on October 4, another loss for the Continental Army, and foraging by the British troops southwest of Philadelphia on December 22.
