This Day in Revolutionary War History (Political Fortunes Shift at Saratoga)

October 17, 1777—The surrender of British general John Burgoyne at Saratoga, N.Y., did more than just take out of commission one-fifth of British troops fighting in America. With the results persuading King Louis XVI that the American colonists had a fighting chance against their mother country, the patriot victory brought into the American Revolution a force that eventually tipped the scales in their favor—and led to such a strain on the French treasury that it arguably produced a revolution in that country a dozen years later, too.

It might be said that the fate of American history depended on two battles that affected a foreign power’s decision to take sides in a war on American soil. The first battle was Saratoga; the second, the Battle of Antietam, 125 years later, when it was Britain’s turn to make a crucial choice about a revolutionary struggle. In the latter case, however, a Union victory, coupled with Abraham Lincoln’s issuance of the Emancipation Proclamation, convinced Foreign Minister Lord John Russell not to recognize the Confederacy. (See my prior post on this.)

The ironies of history don’t end there. Burgoyne’s surrender can be seen as the culmination of a year-long campaign to foil the British plan to cut off New England and New York from each other and the rest of the colonies. The soldier most responsible for defeating that strategy—a general who, three times over the prior 12 months, had delayed, disrupted, derailed and depleted British forces in upstate New York—was the patriot who, in three years, became synonymous with betraying the American Revolution: Benedict Arnold.

The entrance of France into the revolution underscored the geopolitical aspects of this worldwide struggle. The fates of Burgoyne, Arnold, and the three American commanders caught in the fallout of the Saratoga campaign—Philip Schuyler, Horatio Gates and George Washington—illustrated how politics inevitably affected who led the battles, and how:

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     * John Burgoyne: “Gentleman Johnny,” born under ambiguous circumstances (some suggested he was the illegitimate son of Lord Bingley, Chancellor of the Exchequer under Queen Anne), took to soldiering, a common career path for sons of the nobility. Though skilled at working enough levers to rise in the British Army, he found himself with few friends when he lost the Saratoga campaign. After he was paroled with his troops (with a promise not to fight again) and returned home, a Parliamentary inquiry into his conduct proved inconclusive. He never again commanded armies in America.

·         * Philip Schuyler: The New York aristocrat-general, friendly with George Washington, became involved in a dispute with Gates over command of the Continental Army’s Northern Department—a quarrel that the Continental Congress fanned into being by not immediately establishing a clear line of command in this area. While Schuyler was the favorite of soldiers in his home state, Gates won the loyalty of New Englanders. Schuyler’s campaign of harassment against British forces would later prove essential to victory, but his loss of Fort Ticonderoga gave his enemies ammunition. By the time a court of inquiry absolved him of fault in the campaign, he had lost his command.

·         * Horatio Gates: Before long, this English-born patriot was not only clashing with Schuyler but with Arnold, a favorite of the New Yorker as well as of Washington. When Gates failed to credit Arnold with any share of the victory for the first phase of the Saratoga campaign, Arnold quarreled bitterly with him. Gates' victory at Saratoga was more the result of the leadership of Arnold and General Dan Morgan than his own strategy.

·        *  George Washington: A faction in the Continental Congress was looking to replace the army commander in chief with “Granny Gates,” particularly since, following the Battle of Brandywine, the Virginian had lost control of Philadelphia to the British. Gates would not be discredited--and Washington's position made comparatively secure--until three years later at the Battle of Camden, the worst military defeat suffered by American forces in the entire war.

·         * Benedict Arnold: The hypersensitive New Englander had earned the hard-won respect of Washington for slowing the British advance into the New York interior at the Battle of Valcour Island, for tricking Britain’s sizable Indian allied force into abandoning Burgoyne, and for turning the tide of the second major engagement of the Saratoga campaign—the Battle of Bemis Heights---by jumping on his horse and leading a vigorous charge against the enemy—after he had resigned in a huff after an argument with Gates and had decided to go home. But Arnold had been badly wounded in the latter engagement. Washington’s well-meaning attempt to recognize his gallant but sidelined soldier with a stint as military governor of Philadelphia (now back in American hands following the British evacuation) turned out to be disastrous for Arnold, as he was accused of war profiteering. The charges (though true this time) so enraged him that in 1780, he attempted—unsuccessfully—to hand West Point over to the British.

   Nearly 150 years after the battle, Americans finally conceived of a way to commemorate the valor of the man most responsible for victory at Saratoga. The "Boot Memorial" (see the image accompanying this post) honors Arnold, who is unnamed. The thinking was that the leg--key to his triumph at Saratoga--was the only part of the patriot-turned-traitor that could not be connected to his subsequent treachery.

This Day in Revolutionary War History (Gates Retreats Into Infamy at Camden)

August 16, 1780—Like so many other engagements of the American Revolution in the Southern colonies, the Battle of Camden became a full-fledged disaster for the Continental Army. A patriot force that outnumbered British invaders by more than three to two, fighting on its own South Carolina soil, suffered more than six times as many casualties as their opponents, along with the loss of much transport and ammunition.

But the most astonishing result of the engagement, it appears now, might have been addition by subtraction. American commander Horatio Gates (in the image accompanying this post), it is true, had not only joined the first set of militia that fled the field, but had kept galloping for three days and 180 miles before he figured he was out of harm’s way and could file a belated, self-justifying battle report. Better that such a divisive figure be sidelined than that he pose an even greater threat to the Continental high command.

The 53-year-old general’s precipitous flight brought out the incipient smart aleck in one of George Washington’s young aides-de-camp. “It does admirable credit to the activity of a man at his time of life,” joked Alexander Hamilton.

Like other staffers, Hamilton had been appalled that Gates had been seriously considered by many in the Continental Congress as a possible replacement for Washington. That notion was pretty much disposed of by Gates’ conduct at Camden. No matter how many or how difficult his defeats had been, the Virginian had kept his army together as a fighting force against all odds. And it was simply impossible to accuse him of cowardice.

Reading about Gates’ war years, you can’t help notice the similarities with a Civil War general, George B. McClellan:

* Both men were brilliant at organization—i.e., the business of outfitting, training and motivating an army—and probably made their greatest contribution to the war effort in the earliest days;

* Both men were hugely popular with soldiers because of genuine concern for their welfare;

* Both men quarreled with other generals and gained reputations as schemers;

* Both men ran afoul of the two towering American figures of their times: Gates, with Washington; McClellan, with Abraham Lincoln;

* Both men saw their greatest weakness as commanders—a failure of nerve—cruelly exposed on the field of battle.

And both bemoaned the task they were given: in Gates’ words, taking on “command of an army without strength, a military chest without money, a Department apparently deficient in public spirit, and a climate that increases despondency instead of animating the soldier’s arm.”

To hear his supporters talk, there wasn’t anything he couldn’t do. That frequently unthinking support may have led him to a continual insistence on his rights that led to clashes with others: first, with General Philip Schuyler, whom he supplanted as head of the army’s northern department, then with Benedict Arnold, who had helped to turn the tide of battle at Saratoga with a brave dash across the field, only to see Gates grab the glory.

But Gates really became a center of controversy as a result of “the Conway Cabal,” a shadowy movement within the Continental Congress to replace Washington. Gates' circuitous denials of involvement in this movement, along with his victory at the Battle of Saratoga (which many credited more to Arnold and Daniel Morgan than to himself) and election to the Board of War set up by Congress, made him a rival to Washington. Relations between the two men cooled.

General Benjamin Lincoln’s surrender at Charleston opened up a vacancy in the Southern Department of the war, and Gates’ political supporters predictably bypassed Washington’s choice for the post, Nathanael Greene, and appointed Gates to fill it. Now Gates would show what he could and couldn’t do when left largely to his own devices.

Gates’ most disastrous move in the battle was overreliance on militia. In a more free-floating, guerrilla style of operation they might have functioned well, but not as the prime defense against battle-tested British troops under Lord Cornwallis. One cheer, one volley and an exuberant bayonet charge by the redcoats crumpled up first the Virginia militia, then its North Carolina counterpart, on Gates’ left wing. He spurred on his horse and not only joined, but surpassed them in his urgent flight.

Belief in militia was not the only illusion to die hard at Camden. Washington’s enemies now realized, after this disaster, that Gates was a false savior for the Continental Army. Instead of being named head of the army, he was relieved of command and, for more than a year, sat out the decisive turn in the war, as the Continental Congress first ordered a court of inquiry into his conduct at Camden, then rescinded it.

This Day in Revolutionary War History (Patriots Bar Blacks From Struggle for Liberty)

July 10, 1775—With their war against the world’s greatest imperial power still hardly off the ground, the Continental Army assured that it would be fighting with one hand tied behind its back, as recruiters were issued an order to avoid enlisting any African-Americans. The restriction, though written by Horatio Gates, then adjutant-general of the army, reflected the thinking of its new commander in chief, George Washington.

As historian John Carey has noted, “One of history’s most useful tasks is to bring home to us how keenly, honestly, and painfully, past generations pursued aims that now seem to us wrong or disgraceful.” Therefore, though it would be simple to blame the ban solely on the slaveholding Virginian Washington, at the beginning of the war, none of the colonies was particularly keen on arming slaves or even free blacks. (Even the northern ones restricted recruitment of African-American soldiers at first.)

Totally stigmatizing Washington for his responsibility for the order is not a particularly illuminating exercise, either. Far from being simply the army’s commander in chief, Washington was also the nation’s chief realist. Though circumstances led him, at the start of the war, to avoid doing anything to alienate Southern colonies, he would reverse himself on the role of African-Americans in the armed forces not just before the war was over, but before the year was out. Five thousand blacks served in the Continental Army throughout the conflict, and hundreds more joined the new nation's navy.

The more interesting question is this: did Washington's observations on the fighting ability of African-Americans begin an inner re-examination of slavery that resulted in him emancipating all those on his plantation within a few years of his death in 1799?

Aside from the obvious factor--racism--what other circumstances might have led to Gates' initial restricting order? It can also be seen:

* As a desire to limit anything that might drag down the effectiveness of the American fighting force. The relevant section of the order relating to blacks read: “You are not to enlist any deserter from the Ministerial (British) army, nor any stroller, negro, or vagabond, or person suspected of being an enemy to the liberty of America.” Yes, there certainly is something, to modern ears, ironic about “enemy to the liberty of America,” but the immediate context of the words around “negro” seems to group the race as malingers—perhaps, as Henry Wiencek suggested in his study of Washington as conscience-stricken slaveowner, An Imperfect God, the general assumed at the start of the conflict that blacks around the army were bound to be runaways.

* As a reflection of Southerners’ fears in the months preceding the order that the British would incite slave insurrections. General Thomas Gage’s march from Boston to seize ammunition at Concord has gotten all the historical attention for starting the war, but two days later, when Virginia’s colonial governor, Lord Dunmore, tried something similar, the political fallout took on a whole different dimension: by disarming citizens, it was feared, he was weakening their ability to quash slave uprisings. These were not exaggerated incidents: in the week just before Dunmore’s order, several slaves had been convicted of conspiring in such events.

* As indicative of the urge for security that takes hold quickly in nearly every American war. Gates’ order that day also took into account the foreign-born as possible fifth columns: “"You are not to Enlist any Person who is not an American-born, unless such Person has a Wife and Family, and is a settled Resident in this Country." In Massachusetts, Indians were also barred, in 1776, from enlistment in the militia.

The tragedy was, as Ray Raphael notes in A People’s History of the American Revolution (2001), that African-Americans had already fought bravely—even losing their lives—at Lexington, Concord, and Bunker Hill before Washington had Gates issue his order. And, for awhile, after a war council of Washington’s senior officers agreed that not only slaves, but even freedmen would not be allowed to bear arms in the conflict, it appeared that African-Americans would play no role whatsoever on the rebel side.

By the end of the year, however, Washington had, at least partially, walked back his order, noting that “Numbers of Free Negroes are desirous of inlisting” and that, therefore, they should not be discouraged from doing so. What prompted the turnaround was Lord Dunmore’s November 1775 proclamation of manumission to any slave joining the British cause, and the Continental Army’s own demographic dilemma—i.e., failure to meet its recruitment rolls.

When he first assumed command in Massachusetts, Washington already did not have all the troops he expected. By the end of December 1775, only half his army was re-enlisting. By 1777, as the general understood he was engaged in such a long-term struggle that three-year enlistments would be required, filling army vacancies became harder still. That crumbled any resistance that Washington--or Congress--might have had to enlisting not just free blacks but also slaves.

It is believed that, because of actions such as Lord Dunmore’s, more African-Americans served as loyalist than patriot soldiers. But in at least two instances, African-Americans played major roles in Washington’s two most important battles of the war.

Colonel John Glover’s Massachusetts regiment, which contained a large number of blacks as well as whites, ferried him across the Delaware in the surprise attack (and victory) at Trenton. Nearly five years later, Washington chose the First Rhode Island Regiment--an African-American unit with white commanders--to carry out a critical nighttime attack that secured victory at Yorktown.

In history, changes of heart are more likely to come from several (or even more) episodes than from one single, Paul-on-the-road-to-Damascus one. Washington illustrates the point. He would remain a slaveholder to the end of his life, and even brought his slaves with him when he resided in Philadelphia as the nation's first President. But his thinking on the "peculiar institution" may have already begun to change.

In the closing years of the revolution, Washington had heard two of his finest young aides, Alexander Hamilton and John Laurens, call for manumitting slaves who fought for independence. Washington was not one fast for decision, but their arguments—and what he saw of the performance of African-Americans in the war—may have contributed to his eventual change of heart about slavery.

Washington's last will and testament contained explicit instructions not only for the emancipation of his slaves upon his wife’s death, but also for the education that would prepare them for life on their own. No other Founding Father—including fellow Virginians Patrick Henry (“Give me liberty or give me death”) or Thomas Jefferson (“All men are created equal”)—did likewise.