Washington steadies a crumbling vanguard at Monmouth; Clinton slips away in the dark

Six months after the darkest winter of the war, Washington's rebuilt Continental Army finally had something to prove. On June 28, 1778, General George Washington's forces engaged General Sir Henry Clinton's British Army near Freehold Borough, New Jersey — the last battle of the Philadelphia campaign — as Clinton attempted to march his army north to New York after abandoning Philadelphia. Washington confronted a near-collapse of his own vanguard, personally rallied his troops, and held a strong defensive line on Perrine's Hill through a brutal heat wave that felled men on both sides. Clinton slipped away under cover of darkness, but the British acknowledged what they had seen: a Continental Army that no longer fought like amateurs…