"General Washington at Fort Lee" (1910) was an unusual choice of subject for a mural, since it depicted one of the Continental Army's most humiliating defeats in the Revolutionary War. Fort Washington was located at the northern end of Manhattan Island, on a bluff of high land along the Hudson River. Fort Lee was located on the opposite side of the Hudson, atop the Palisades, in New Jersey. The twin forts were about apart—separated by the width of the river—and both had been built in Summer 1776 to prevent British warships from sailing any further north up the Hudson. On the morning of November 16, 1776, the British Army executed a massive assault on Fort Washington, with some 8,000 soldiers attacking from the north, east and south. Meanwhile, bombarded the fort with cannonfire from the east, and prevented Washington from sending boats with reinforcements from New Jersey. The 3,000 Continentals garrisoned at the fort fought through most of the day, hoping that reinforcements would be able to cross the Hudson by night, but the British overwhelmed the garrison by mid-afternoon. The commander of the fort surrendered, and more than 2,800 Continentals were taken prisoner. Turner's mural depicts Washington (on horseback) and his staff monitoring the attack from the opposite side of the Hudson, but powerless to intervene. It was this defeat and Washington's subsequent retreat that inspired Thomas Paine to pen "The American Crisis", and its famous opening sentence—"These are the times that try men's souls."