On August 29, 1778, Continental Army and militia forces under Major General John Sullivan fought British and Hessian troops at the Battle of Rhode Island, also known as the Battle of Quaker Hill. The engagement concluded the first major attempt at a combined Franco-American operation in the Revolutionary War. A severe storm had damaged both the French and British fleets, and the French fleet’s departure for repairs left Sullivan without the naval support needed to continue the siege of British-held Newport. Faced as well with the prospect of British reinforcements, he withdrew his army northward on Aquidneck Island toward fortified positions near Portsmouth.
The British moved quickly to strike the retreating Americans. Sullivan’s army formed a defensive line across the island: troops under John Glover held the eastern approaches around Quaker Hill, while Nathanael Greene’s command defended the western sector near Turkey Hill. British forces advanced on the east, while Hessian troops under Friedrich Wilhelm von Lossberg pressed the American right. From prepared ground, Continental troops used musketry and artillery to slow and check the attacks.
The battle is especially remembered for the service of the 1st Rhode Island Regiment, a notably multiracial Continental infantry unit that included many Black and Native American soldiers. Posted in Greene’s sector, the regiment participated in hard fighting against Hessian forces on the American right. Accounts differ on the precise sequence and number of assaults, but the regiment’s performance became one of the battle’s most enduring legacies. Greene ultimately counterattacked and pushed the British-Hessian force back toward Turkey Hill, helping bring the day’s fighting to an end.
The battle was tactically inconclusive: Sullivan did not retake Newport, but his army successfully held its defensive position long enough to withdraw from Aquidneck Island to the mainland the following evening. The campaign exposed the limits and strains of the new Franco-American alliance, yet the fighting at Rhode Island also showed that Continental forces could make a disciplined defensive stand and execute an organized withdrawal against British regulars and their Hessian allies.
One year to the day after the stand on Aquidneck Island, Sullivan again found himself commanding American forces in a major engagement. On August 29, 1779, he led roughly 3,200 Continental troops against Loyalist auxiliaries, British regulars, and nearly 1,000 Haudenosaunee (Iroquois) warriors at the Battle of Newtown in present‑day Chemung County, New York. The victory became the decisive set‑piece battle of the Sullivan–Clinton Expedition, a campaign ordered by Washington to break the military capacity of the Iroquois Confederacy following years of frontier raids. The strange symmetry of the dates—two major battles fought exactly one year apart—captures the rapid evolution of Sullivan’s wartime responsibilities, from conducting a disciplined rearguard action in Rhode Island to executing a large‑scale offensive deep in the New York interior. He later continued his public service as the third President (Governor) of New Hampshire.
