The Battle of Springfield was the British army's second attempt in three weeks to break through to Washington's main encampment at Morristown. After Knyphausen's failure at Connecticut Farms on June 7, he and Lieutenant General Sir Henry Clinton devised a more ambitious two-pronged assault. One column of 6,000 men would advance along the Galloping Hill Road through Connecticut Farms and Springfield; another would take the Vauxhall Road to the north. Both aimed for Hobart Gap, the pass through the Watchung Mountains that would open eleven miles of flat ground to Washington's camp. Clinton also dispatched Major General Alexander Leslie with 6,000 men up the Hudson River, hoping to trap Washington if he moved to counter Knyphausen. It was a sophisticated plan, but it underestimated the defenders.

Major General Nathanael Greene commanded the American defense with just 1,500 Continental troops and 500 New Jersey militia - a fraction of the British force bearing down on them. Greene's genius lay in his dispositions. He organized four successive lines of defense along the Galloping Hill Road: Colonel Dayton's 3rd New Jersey held Connecticut Farms at the front; behind him, Colonel Israel Angell defended the Galloping Hill Bridge with his 2nd Rhode Island Regiment, reduced by illness and expiring enlistments to only 160 men; further back, Colonel Israel Shreve held a bridge over the west branch of the Rahway River; and behind Shreve, Brigadier General Philemon Dickinson anchored the rear with New Jersey militia. On the right wing, Major Henry Lee and his 2nd Partisan Corps guarded the Vauxhall Bridge. Each position was designed to slow the British advance, bleed their momentum, and buy time for reinforcements to arrive.

Knyphausen bombarded Angell's 160 Rhode Islanders at the Galloping Hill Bridge with six cannons. The Americans answered with their only gun. After two failed charges across the bridge, the British 37th and 38th Regiments and the Hessian Jagers forded the Rahway River and drove into the woods. What followed was twenty-five minutes of tree-to-tree fighting - brutal, close-range combat where the Rhode Islanders gave ground only inches at a time. Meanwhile, on the Vauxhall Road, Major General Edward Mathew attacked the bridge defenders and drove Major Lee's detachment back nearly two miles in a fighting retreat. Lee positioned his men in echelons so they could fire from the woods onto the road, but Loyalist troops assailed them from front and flank. Only the arrival of General John Stark's Continental regiments and gathering militia on the slopes of Newark Mountain finally checked Mathew's advance.

When Mathew's column rejoined Knyphausen on the Galloping Hill Road, the British commander faced a decision. He had failed to clear his path to Hobart Gap. New Jersey militia were gathering in increasing numbers on the Short Hills, and the prospect of a counterattack by Washington's main army loomed. Knyphausen called off the assault and ordered the retreat - but not before commanding the New Jersey Volunteers to burn Springfield to the ground. Only four houses were spared. Local tradition holds they belonged to Loyalist families, though historians dispute this. The British withdrew in two columns, harassed the entire way by militia sniping from the woods. The Hessian Jagers, assigned to the rear guard, ran low on ammunition and lost five men killed and five captured before being relieved by the 37th Regiment. At midnight, Knyphausen led his division back over a bridge of boats to Staten Island.

The combined casualties for both the Connecticut Farms and Springfield engagements tell the story: 35 Americans killed, 139 wounded, and 32 missing or captured, against 25 British killed, 234 wounded, and 48 missing. Springfield was one of the last major engagements of the Revolutionary War in the north. Because the decisive battles of the conflict shifted south afterward - to Camden, Cowpens, Guilford Courthouse, and Yorktown - Springfield became known as the 'forgotten victory.' Washington himself did not forget. He praised the New Jersey militia in terms he rarely used: 'They flew to arms universally and acted with a spirit equal to anything I have seen in the course of the war.' Today, the river crossings where American forces made their stand lie near the intersection of Vauxhall Road and Millburn Avenue, and along Morris Avenue near Washington Avenue - ordinary suburban intersections that once decided the fate of a revolution.