Both were heading for the same objective as on June 7: Hobart Gap, the path through the Watchung Mountains that would allow an advance across eleven miles of flat ground to Washington's main encampment at Morristown.

In anticipation of this response, Major General Alexander Leslie was dispatched up the Hudson with 6,000 men in order to prevent Washington from retiring behind the Watchung Mountains.

Meanwhile, Major General James Robertson was to remain in reserve in Elizabethtown with five regiments (1,865 men[11]) to protect Knyphausen's rear against attack from militia and to reinforce Leslie if necessary.

[13] At Springfield and Elizabethtown, barring Knyphausen's path to Hobart Gap, Major General Nathanael Greene had 1,500 Continental troops and 500 New Jersey Militia.

Behind Dayton, Colonel Israel Angell with his 2nd Rhode Island Regiment, reduced by illness and expiring enlistments to only 160 men, was to defend the Galloping Hill Bridge.

[citation needed] On the American right wing, Greene reinforced Major Lee and his 2nd Partisan Corps at the Vauxhall Bridge with Colonel Matthias Ogden and his 1st New Jersey Regiment.

[citation needed] In reserve, at Bryan's Tavern up on the high ground of the Short Hills, Greene retained the rest of Maxwell's and Stark's brigades.

[11] The New Jersey Volunteers under Lieutenant Colonel Joseph Barton, now approached Connecticut Farms and engaged Dayton's force, who were well positioned in an orchard and behind a thicket.

As the American artillery ran low on wadding, James Caldwell, the Continental Army chaplain, who had lost his wife during the Battle of Connecticut Farms, brought up a load of hymn books published by English clergyman Isaac Watts to use instead.

Major Lee and his detachment made a fighting retreat of almost two miles to the upper west branch of the Rahway and positioned his men in echelons, so that they could fire out of the woods onto the road.

As the militiamen began to engage Colonel Barton's New Jersey Volunteers, Mathew became concerned about the possibility of a counter-attack on his flank by Washington's main army, and he turned his column back southward to the Galloping Hill Road to rejoin Knyphausen.

Having failed to clear his path to Hobart Gap, Knyphausen was disheartened by the numbers of New Jersey Militia who were gathering on the Short Hills and he decided to call off the attack and return to Elizabethtown Point.

[citation needed] This was one of the last major engagements of the Revolutionary War in the north and effectively put an end to British ambitions in New Jersey.

Washington praised the role of the New Jersey Militia in the battle, writing, "They flew to arms universally and acted with a spirit equal to anything I have seen in the course of the war".