Balance of War
Stirling was released in a prisoner exchange, in return for governor of the Bahamas Montfort Browne, and promoted to the rank of major general, and became one of Washington's most able and trusted generals. Washington held him in such high regard that during the second Middlebrook encampment, he placed him, headquartered at the nearby Van Horne House, in command of the Continental Army for nearly two months, from December 21, 1778, when he left to meet with Congress in Philadelphia, until he returned about February 5, 1779.
Throughout most of the war Stirling was considered to be third or fourth in rank behind General Washington. At the Battle of Trenton on December 26, 1776, he received the surrender of a Hessian auxiliary regiment. On June 26, 1777, at Metuchen, he awaited an attack, contrary to Washington's orders. His position was turned and his division defeated, losing two guns and a hundred fifty men in the Battle of Short Hills. Subsequent battles at Brandywine and Germantown in Pennsylvania during the campaign to defend the Patriot capital of Philadelphia and Monmouth in New Jersey, cemented his reputation for bravery and sound tactical judgment.
Stirling also played a part in exposing the Conway Cabal, a conspiracy of disaffected Continental officers looking to remove Washington as Commander-in Chief and replace him with General Horatio Gates. According to one author, "Lord Stirling never gave dull parties. His dinners were a Niagara of liquor. His love of the bottle was notorious..." One of Gates' aides, James Wilkinson, stopped at Stirling's headquarters at Reading, Pennsylvania and stayed for dinner because it was raining. Wilkinson got drunk and began repeating criticisms of Washington that he had heard from other officers. Finally, he claimed to have read a letter from Thomas Conway to Gates that stated, "Heaven has determined to save your country or a weak general and bad counselors would have ruined it". The loyal Stirling wrote to Washington the next day and repeated what Wilkinson said. Washington, in turn, wrote to Conway, repeating what Stirling had written. Once exposed, the cabal went to pieces. Conway denied ever writing the note, Wilkinson called Stirling a liar, and Gates made statements that made himself look guilty.
At the Battle of Monmouth on 28 June 1778, Stirling commanded the American Left Wing. This included the 1st (429), 2nd (487), and 3rd Pennsylvania (438) Brigades, John Glover’s (636), Ebenezer Learned's (373), and John Paterson’s (485) Massachusetts Brigades. He displayed tactical judgment in posting his batteries, and repelled with heavy loss an attempt to turn his flank. During the devastating winter encampment at Valley Forge, northwest of British–held Philadelphia, his military headquarters have been preserved. In January 1780, he led an ineffective raid against Staten Island on the western shores of New York Bay.
When Washington and the French comte de Rochambeau took their conjoined armies south for the climactic Battle of Yorktown in 1781, Stirling was appointed commander of the elements of the Northern Army, left behind to guard New York and was sent up the Hudson River to Albany. He died shortly thereafter in January 1783.
