The Saratoga Campaign

Uncovering an Embattled Landscape

William A. Griswold, Donald W. Linebaugh, William A. Griswold, Donald W. Linebaugh

• Publisher: University Press of New England
• Year: 2016
• Print ISBN: 9781611688962
• eBook ISBN: 9781611689655
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: Early American History
• Index: History

The battles of Saratoga proved to be a turning point in the Revolutionary War when British forces under the command of General John Burgoyne surrendered to American forces led by General Horatio Gates. The Saratoga Campaign provides a new and greatly expanded understanding of the battles of Saratoga by drawing on the work of scholars in a broad range of academic disciplines. Presenting years of research by material culture scholars, archaeologists, historians, museum curators, military experts, and geophysicists, this definitive volume explores these important Revolutionary War battles and their aftermath, adding a physical and tangible dimension to the story of the Saratoga campaign. Presenting the latest hands-on research, The Saratoga Campaign is an original and multifaceted contribution to our understanding of this critical event in America's birth.

The Coming Revolutionary War Battles at Saratoga

GEOGRAPHY DICTATED the Champlain-Hudson corridor’s strategic primacy, and its importance was not limited to the water route between Montreal and New York City. Approximately fifteen miles east of Montreal is the junction of the corridor’s northern segment, the Richelieu River with the St. Lawrence; the Richelieu is also Lake Champlain’s outlet. Thus, an army operating from the St. Lawrence could ascend the river, cross the lake from north to south and emerge within less than twenty miles of the Hudson River at Fort Edward. From Fort Edward it is just forty miles to the old Dutch town of Albany, near where the Mohawk River, gateway to Iroquois country, joins the Hudson. To reach New York City from Albany is a trip of another 156 miles. Informed men on both sides of the Atlantic recognized the importance of the Champlain-Hudson corridor for accomplishing the strategic isolation of New England. Cutting off New England, known to the English as the “cradle of sedition,” would allow England to stamp out the colonial revolt. Strategic isolation neither implied nor required physically sealing the region from all contacts with the middle and southern provinces, an obvious impossibility. What the strategists in Whitehall intended was severing access for the large rebel armies and their supplies, to keep them from threatening the rear of British forces operating in the American interior. As historian Piers Mackesy explains: “British control of the Hudson would have been disastrous. Permanent control of the whole length of the river was unnecessary, for if the British held the Highlands they could use the waterway beyond at any time, and cut the last link in Washington’s lateral communications. His supplies and reinforcements would have been strangled with decisive effect.”¹

The British View

The Champlain-Hudson corridor’s importance was central to both the doomed American invasion of Canada in 1775 and British General Sir Guy Carleton’s aborted 1776 invasion of the American northern frontier. After abandoning the invasion, Sir Guy gave his subordinate General John Burgoyne a memorandum to deliver to Lord George Germain, secretary of state for the American colonies and the member of Lord North’s cabinet responsible for directing the American war.² Burgoyne was returning to England to attend Parliament and tend to the deaths of his wife and father-in-law, arriving in London the night of December 9, 1776. That memorandum contained general proposals and requisitions for a renewed northern offensive, and Carleton recommended Burgoyne to Lord Germain as a source of firsthand information. However, Lord Germain had already received a plan from the ranking British general in America, General Sir William Howe, that not only preceded but fundamentally affected plans for a renewed northern offensive.

On November 30, 1776, while General Washington’s demoralized men retreated across New Jersey, Sir William Howe, recently knighted for his victory on Long Island, composed two letters to Lord Germain. The first reported the details of the recent Westchester fighting and Fort Lee’s capture. The second notified the colonial minister that he intended quartering a force in “East Jersey,” and that he expected Washington to establish a defensive line on either the Delaware or Raritan River to protect Philadelphia. More important to later events at Saratoga, Howe proposed a plan for a 1777 campaign. He had learned that Sir Guy Carleton had aborted his advance down the Champlain-Hudson corridor, but expected him to renew that drive in the spring and projected reaching Albany in September 1777, a reasonable estimation.

Howe offered a plan he believed might “finish the War in one year by an extensive and vigorous Exertion of His Majesty’s arms.” He intended to continue operations against New England with two simultaneous offensives: one moving from Rhode Island against Boston, and another moving from New York City up the Hudson to rendezvous with Carleton’s anticipated advance from Canada. He also proposed a third campaign moving against Washington in New Jersey to exploit American fears for Philadelphia. He “proposed to attack [Philadelphia] in the Autumn, as well as Virginia, provided the success of the other operations will admit of an adequate force to be sent against that province.” Howe’s initial proposal required 35,000 men and ten additional ships of the line to guarantee success against the 50,000 men the Continental Congress had resolved to raise.³ Providing 35,000 rank-and-file soldiers would require hiring 15,000 men from Russia or a German state.

Sir William’s second letter to the secretary of state reflected a significant strategic assumption that only the hope for French help kept the rebellion alive. If, he reasoned, the threat of that support were neutralized and the force he proposed was “sent out, it would strike such Terror through the Country, that no Resistance would be made to the Progress of His Majesty’s Arms in the Provinces of New England, New York, the Jerseys & Pennsylvania, after the junction of Northern and Southern Armies.” Howe’s ultimate objective continued to be recovery of territory rather that the destruction of the rebel army. Like Henry Clinton and unlike Lords Cornwallis and Germain, Howe believed that victory ultimately required expansion of the area of imperial control, meaning that he sought to retake only so much territory as he expected to be able to occupy. The royal army’s presence, he argued, would enable the loyal majority to declare itself, organize loyalist corps, and assume an expanding participation in restoring imperial authority.⁴ Britain’s senior commander in the thirteen colonies expected to be victorious by moving with overwhelming power through centers of rebellion, “relying upon overawing the disaffected, animating the loyal, and demonstrating to the wavering the futility of resistance, rather than upon hard and costly fighting against an elusive and resilient adversary.”⁵

Sir William’s correspondence reached Germain on December 30, 1776, and the Cabinet began discussing the letters on January 10, 1777. Like most Britons, the ministers expected an early victory in America, and the general’s first letter endorsed that optimism, setting the tone for responding to the second. Because the general’s strategic proposals for 1777 did nothing to dispel the prevailing euphoric view of a short conflict, Lord North’s colleagues approved them. However, his projection of manpower requirements made them uneasy, and Germain’s letter to Howe of January 14 reflected that disquiet.

A compulsion for reassurance produced a body of correspondence marked by wishful thinking, ambiguity, and flawed interpretation of critical information. The Cabinet members persuaded themselves that a reinforcement of 15,000 troops would increase Howe’s strength to about 42,000 men, more than the 35,000 he said he needed. A failure to analyze returns from the field provided the ministers with what seemed like a good basis for believing that a 7,000-man reinforcement would bring Howe’s strength to nearly 34,000 troops.⁶

Howe’s goal of recovering only as much territory as he could effectively occupy, and thus his estimate of the needed reinforcements, presupposed garrisoning occupation troops in the regained regions. In brief, the strategy for defeating the rebellious colonists required a continuing expansion of military reconquest until all the colonies were restored to the British Empire. This implied that with tactical success, more men would be required to occupy the regained territory and, simultaneously, continue campaigning against areas still in rebellion.

Whitehall delayed official comment on Sir William’s strategic plans until after Lord North’s ministers learned more about the American situation at year’s end. Lord Germain informed Howe that judgment was suspended until “His Majesty . . . shall have an Opportunity of taking into consultation the whole State of this Momentous Affair.”⁷

While the government in London struggled to develop a strategy, the situation in America changed. On December 20, ten days before his November 30 letters reached London, Howe sent Germain a new plan for 1777, responding to a dramatically different situation. As discussed in more detail below, Howe’s army had pursued Washington across New Jersey to the Delaware-Pennsylvania line, making the American capital at Philadelphia enticingly vulnerable; the rebellion seemed to be stumbling toward collapse. People were daily forswearing their treasonous acts and seeking pardons that would restore their allegiance with Great Britain. Those persisting in their disloyalty were finding it increasingly difficult to maintain the revolt’s momentum.⁸

Both British and American strategists knew that Pennsylvania and its neighbors were critically important to the success of their causes. The region was politically and economically mature, consisting of a relatively well-informed, prosperous citizenry that included a larger proportion of men of liberal views than any other region. Philadelphia was America’s major port, a lively cultural and financial center, the empire’s third-largest city, and since the autumn of 1774, the Revolution’s political capital.

Pennsylvanians and their neighbors were less militantly hostile to imperial policies than Virginians and New Englanders. Their diversified economy was less vulnerable to parliamentary measures, and many people sensed that they profited from membership in the empire. Recalling the painful nature of breaking imperial ties, William Livingston reported that residents of the Middle Colonies “had themselves suffered little, if at all, under imperial rule. . . . Under it they had prospered and multiplied.” Colonists living in the pluralistic middle of British North America already enjoyed, to an important degree, the kind of economic and political society that other Americans aspired to, and it had become a reality without a revolution. In spite of articulate and reasoned opposition, an effective majority favoring resistance to imperial rule developed with difficulty.⁹

Because Howe believed that American reverses in New York and New Jersey enhanced opposition to rebellion, he reasoned that threatening Philadelphia would force an elusive Washington to stand and give battle, bringing British victory within his grasp. Howe wrote:

[T]he opinion of the people being much changed in Pennsylvania, and their minds in general, from the progress of the army, disposed to peace, in which Sentiment they would be confirmed by our getting possession of Philadelphia, I am from this consideration fully persuaded the Principal Army should act offensively on that side where the enemy’s strength will certainly be collected.¹⁰

Changing the order of priorities required delaying the New England offensive until after reinforcements arrived from Europe, so “that there might be a corps to act offensively on the lower part of Hudson’s River to cover Jersey and facilitate in some degree the approach of the Canada army.”¹¹ The 3,000 men committed to that effort could do little to support action on the northern frontier, but Howe did not expect that it would be needed before September, by which time events in America and reinforcements from Europe would have enhanced British capabilities. Sir William’s December 20 letter departed from assumptions upon which British strategy had been founded since 1775. Instead of concentrating power against New England, he proposed letting the army from Canada force its way southward, while he overran the middle states, captured Philadelphia, and ended organized rebellion.¹²

Before the Cabinet had received either of the general’s proposed plans, events in New Jersey took a dramatic turn that destroyed the optimism on which Howe pred...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction
• Chapter One: The Coming Revolutionary War Battles at Saratoga
• Chapter Two: The Tactics of the Battles of Saratoga
• Chapter Three: The British Fortifications
• Chapter Four: The River Overlook Fortifications on Bemis Heights
• Chapter Five: The American Fortifications
• Chapter Six: The Retreat to Victory Woods
• Chapter Seven: The Surrender and Aftermath of the Battles
• Chapter Eight: The Schuyler House
• Chapter Nine: The Saratoga Battles in Fifty Artifacts
• Chapter Ten: Commemorating and Preserving an Embattled Landscape
• About the Contributors
• Index