Sunday · September 27, 2026

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Howe walks into Philadelphia; Congress is already gone

Washington, outmaneuvered after Brandywine and Paoli, cannot stop the British from taking the rebel capital.

Washington had spent three weeks trying to block the road to Philadelphia. On September 26, 1777, General William Howe's British troops marched into the city unopposed, seizing the seat of the Second Continental Congress. The lawmakers had already fled west to Lancaster, and the Liberty Bell had been pulled down and hidden. Howe held the city, but the war did not end…

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More from September 26

A Soviet screen shows five U.S. missiles inbound; the duty officer calls it a glitch

Stanislav Petrov had no proof the alarm was false, only a hunch that a real attack would look different.

2,711 guns open fire before dawn as America's biggest offensive begins

The barrage alone cost about a million dollars a minute, before a single soldier crossed the wire.

Washington names Jefferson to head a department that does not yet exist in practice

The Virginia planter fresh off five years in Paris becomes the nation's first Secretary of State.

Sixty-six million Americans watch from Chicago, and Nixon's camera does him no favors.

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Read the full September 26 edition →Everything that happened on September 26 →

More from Revolution & Founding

Burr fires at Weehawken; Hamilton is rowed back across the Hudson, shot through the liver

The sitting Vice President walks away unhurt. Hamilton's bullet clipped a branch above Burr's head; Burr's found its mark in Hamilton's abdomen.

Hull crosses the Detroit River; his army occupies Sandwich, Upper Canada

The Army of the Northwest pushes onto British soil weeks after the U.S. declared war, planting American forces on the Canadian side of the river.

Confederation Congress charts a path to statehood for the Ohio territory; slavery banned within its bounds

The Northwest Ordinance divides the vast British cession into future states and sets aside a township plot for public schools in every settlement.

It is now a federal crime to publish "false or malicious" criticism of officials; Adams signs the Sedition Act

The last of four laws Congress has passed since June, the act caps a Federalist push to silence perceived French sympathizers working against the government.

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