Gangs of New York: America’s revolution was fought across the city

“The United States came out of violence,” the historian Maya Jasanoff reminds us in our series “The American Revolution” (premiering tonight on PBS). And in 1776, the awful violence of war was centered in and around New York City.

Between late August and mid-November, five significant battles were fought within New York City’s present-day borders — Long Island (Brooklyn), Kips Bay, Harlem Heights, Pell’s Point and Fort Washington.

Redcoats and Continentals fired musket balls at close range into each other’s lines, while artillery shattered limbs from a distance and bayonets made the killing intimate. Trying to escape death or capture, fleeing Patriots drowned in Gowanus Creek. Many who surrendered would die in captivity, starving to death aboard cramped prison ships anchored in the East