On September 30, 1778, near this spot, 350 Continental soldiers successfully attacked a column of 100 British-allied Hessian soldiers in the engagement now known as the Battle of Edgar's Lane, one of the rare victories in Westchester during the Revolutionary War. In September 1778, George Washington's Continental Army was in the third year of what would become an eight-year War of Independence, sending light infantry units into Westchester to probe enemy defenses and stop foraging raids by British troops. The conflict had grown from colonial resistance to the relentless taxation imposed by King George III, with Thomas Paine speaking out against taxation without representation and British rule; after the Revolution began in 1775, Washington became commander-in-chief of the Continental Army, and the Americans issued the Declaration of Independence on July 4, 1776. The war also divided the colonists, as Loyalists supported the king, and after British forces invaded New York City in August 1776, the city became a Loyalist refuge. Hessian soldiers fighting for the British occupied northern Manhattan and by 1778 were raiding Westchester for crops, property, and livestock. In June 1778, 15,000 troops under British General Sir Henry Clinton abandoned Philadelphia and moved north to New York City, and the war settled into a stalemate that left much of Westchester contested. At dawn on September 30, American soldiers secretly moved to a position south of Tarrytown with a plan to stop Hessian patrols coming north from Yonkers, and the two forces clashed on Broadway. The wider violence of 1778 also included the killing of Sachem Daniel Nimham and most of his Indian Company militia unit in an ambush at what is now Van Cortlandt Park on August 31, the landing of 6,000 British troops at Paulus Hook on September 22 for raids into New Jersey, and the Baylor Massacre three days before Edgar's Lane, when 600 British soldiers attacked Colonel George Baylor's 3rd Continental Dragoons in New Jersey, killing 69 American soldiers and slaughtering 80 horses.