Prelude to Glory, Vol. 4

by Ron Carter

  Within minutes the story had reached every man in camp. Evening duties were forgotten as officers and regulars alike began questioning every man and woman in camp who knew anything about it. They went to the compound where the prisoners were being held and questioned each of them. In bits and pieces, a sentence here, a word there, a terrifying picture began to take form and shape. It led to a large, captive white woman, one Mrs. McNeil, who had been stripped and was loudly cursing every Indian on the continent when the British officers threw a cloak about her and began with their questions. The officers were stunned when she told them she was the cousin of General Simon Fraser. Two captains were sent to find him.

  On his arrival he was speechless for a moment, then covered Mrs. McNeil with his own cloak, calmed her, and asked her what happened. In deep dusk they listened in shocked silence as she gave them the last, and most horrifying, pieces to the puzzle, to leave them sick in their souls, shaking with rage.

  Jane McCrae was nineteen, tall, comely, well-mannered, gifted, beloved by all who knew her. Her reddish hair was her crowning glory; it reached her ankles, and each day she brushed and cared for it. The daughter of a Presbyterian minister, she moved to the home of her brother John near Fort Edwards when her parents died. There she met a fine boy named David Jones, and in time they fell deeply in love. With the onset of hostilities between the Americans and British, David felt a loyalty to the mother country and joined the Canadian Volunteer Corps under command of Colonel Peters. John moved his family to Albany to escape the war and invited Jane to join him, but she refused to leave until she could be reunited with David and they could be married. She moved in with Widow McNeil near Fort Edward to await the return of her beloved David. By purest chance, Mrs. McNeil was a cousin to General Simon Fraser.

  After Burgoyne authorized the Indians to “chastise” the rebels earlier that day, they swept through the countryside, killing white settlers indiscriminately, including Lieutenant Van Vechten, near the McNeil log cabin. When a survivor stopped at the McNeil dwelling long enough to shout a warning that the Mohawk were coming, the two women, Jane McCrae and Widow McNeil, quickly threw aside a braided rug and lifted the trap door into the cellar. They were two minutes too late.

  At that moment the door was splintered, and the Indians came whooping into the small room waving tomahawks and knives. They seized both women by the hair and dragged them kicking and screaming outside, threatening them. In the struggle Jane’s hair came undone and fell to its full length. With knives at their throats, the horrified women fell silent as the Indians started back to camp, jerking them along, an Indian on either side of each of them. The warriors separated the women, and the two with Jane McCrae were quick to realize what a trophy her long, beautiful hair would be on a scalp stick. Within minutes they argued, then began to fight over whose captive she was, when one warrior turned from the other, shot Jane dead on the spot, and quickly took her scalp. He stripped the dead body, tomahawked it, then shoved it down an embankment. It stopped rolling not twenty feet from the body of Lieutenant Van Vechten. With scalp in hand, the Indian stared his companion down and continued on to camp to proudly wave the magnificent scalp on his scalp stick, until young David Jones bounded into him to knock him aside.

  Appalled, sickened, Fraser made a written report to Burgoyne, who sent a written message back.

  “The news I have just received of the savages having scalped a young lady, their prisoner, fills me with horror. I will visit the Indians at sunrise tomorrow. Would you assemble them? I would rather put my commission in the fire than serve a day if I could suppose government would blame me . . .”

  At dawn Fraser had the Indians assembled, with a German regiment on one side, a British on the other, both with muskets primed and ready. Burgoyne arrived, rose to his full, dominant height, and turned to the Indians. His face was filled with lightning, and his voice smacked of thunder. He did not waste one second on the usual Indian formalities.

  “Which man killed the woman with the red hair and brought back her scalp?”

  St. Luc translated for him. Not one Indian moved. Two red-coated regulars strode in among them to seize one Indian by the shoulders and thrust him out before Burgoyne.

  “Is this the man?” Burgoyne demanded.

  Again St. Luc translated, and the Indian nodded.

  Burgoyne’s arm swung up to point like the sword of the Almighty, and he bellowed, “Hang him!”

  St. Luc translated, and instantly the campsite was filled with a deafening outburst from every Indian. The officers in the two armed regiments barked out orders, and the red- and blue-coated soldiers swung their Brown Bess muskets down, bayonets leveled at the encircled Indians, and every man eared the big hammer back, ready to fire.

  Fraser quickly strode to Burgoyne’s side. “Sir, twenty more seconds and this could turn into a massacre. Consider it.”

  St. Luc arrived two steps behind Fraser, his rifle held loosely in his left hand, his tomahawk dangling from his right wrist. His face was without emotion, but his voice was not.

  “You hang this man, these Indians will revolt. They’ll leave here to return to their homes, and they’ll likely kill every white person they find, burn every village they come to. They may even come back to raid your camp. You had better change your orders. This army might not survive if you hang this man.”

  He paused and for a moment locked eyes with Burgoyne. “Remember, I told you this war had to be brutalized if you were going to win. That thought was beneath you, so you and your king sent out my Indians to do it for you, and they’ve done it. Now you want to start hanging them. Are you ready to hang the white men who called for it? Your kindly and good king? Germain? Tryon? What about yourself, General?”

  St. Luc’s words were alive with sarcasm and disgust. They hit Burgoyne in the pit of his stomach like a huge fist, and he took half a step backwards. Only the fact that St. Luc had spoken at least partially in truth saved him from being thrown in irons on the spot. Burgoyne raised a hand and the campsite quieted.

  “You will delay the hanging. I must consider.”

  Burgoyne walked away for a time, and by force of will calmed himself. He listened to Simon Fraser, then remembered St. Luc’s humiliating warning. Half an hour later he returned to once more face the assembly.

  “There will be no hanging. From this moment forward, no raids will be conducted by Indians except under the supervision of a British officer.”

  St. Luc translated, and a great murmur spread over the Indians, then quieted. St. Luc spoke to the chiefs, then turned back to Burgoyne.

  “They agree.” Then St. Luc lowered his face so it could not be seen, and he shook his head. That is the most ridiculous order I ever heard! He thinks one of his officers can control a war party once the fighting starts? Again he shook his head, turned his face back to Burgoyne, and said nothing.

  The story of the murder of Jane McCrae leaped across the wilderness in hours, from settlement to settlement, family to family, growing in its hideous details with every telling. It was instantly printed to reach tens of thousands in The New York Gazette and Weekly Mercury, the Pennsylvania Evening Post, the Massachusetts Spy, the Maryland Gazette, the New Hampshire Gazette, the Virginia Gazette.

  Panic seized the countryside. Wild stories sprang up everywhere. Did you hear about the two little girls picking berries? Killed and scalped!—Have you been told about the sentries with Schuyler? Killed and scalped in the night—not a sound—right under the general’s nose!—I heard thirty-four men went on scout, and only twelve came back. The others? Caught. Tomahawked. Scalped. Daniel Herd’s family all gone, murdered while they were moving out to escape the Indians. Got caught. Scalped.—What happened to Captain Benjamin Warren? Got caught out in the wilderness—cost him eight dead and fifteen wounded, and two days later, another lieutenant and a sergeant.

  The Americans on the farms and in the settlements, including the militia soldiers, packed what they could in an hour and fled south with thei
r families, terrified of being caught in the forest. In desperation General Schuyler wrote to the Albany Committee of Safety, imploring them to do all they could to dispel the awful cloud of fear and panic that was closing in on the Americans from every quarter. His letter went unheeded, and the exodus of militia and families continued unabated.

  Desperately Schuyler led his men steadily southward, just hours ahead of the relentless march of the British. Twice his rear guard took cover and exchanged volleys with the redcoats, less than one hundred yards behind.

  Then, like an angel sent from heaven, General Benedict Arnold appeared in Schuyler’s camp.

  “Reporting under orders of General Washington and the Continental Congress. I’ve been sent to help in any way I can. How best can I serve you, sir?”

  What Arnold told Schuyler was the truth, but not all of it. Angered at a capricious Congress, which granted promotions based on favoritism or politics or prejudices or for reasons no one ever knew, both Benedict Arnold and John Stark had been passed over while men who were both younger and untried were promoted over their heads. Arnold and Stark had choked down the humiliation for the last time. Arnold wrote his letter of resignation and delivered it to Congress on July tenth, only to receive a letter from General George Washington on July eleventh, pleading with him to report immediately to the Northern Department, General Philip Schuyler, to render all possible assistance in checking Burgoyne. Arnold’s letter of resignation was instantly withdrawn, and he left that day to find Schuyler near the Hudson.

  Flooded with relief, Schuyler asked Arnold but one question: “How can I slow down Burgoyne?”

  Arnold answered. “Give me three hundred men with muskets and axes and shovels. I’ll take care of it.”

  Within hours the men were assembled, and Arnold moved among them, commending them, shaking hands, an arm about a shoulder here, a hand on an arm there, touching them, building them up. His voice rang strong, confident, as he gave orders. “Move north until you find Burgoyne. Start felling trees across the trails. Dam streams. Burn the wheat fields and crops. Run off the cattle and livestock. Flood roads and valleys. Tear up bridges. Block the narrow passes. Burn causeways. Force him to traverse bogs and swamps. Move big rocks where his horses and carts must go. Keep your muskets handy, and take turns keeping fifty pickets out watching for Indians or redcoats or Germans in the forest. If he sends out men to get you, don’t engage them. Fade into the forest and wait. They’ll go back to report you’ve disappeared, and when they do, go right back and continue cutting trees and tearing up the roads.”

  If there was one thing the American settlers understood better than any Englishman or German following them, it was how to use an ax and a shovel in the great wilderness. Clearing forests and digging stumps had honed their skills to the finest edge. Time and again Burgoyne’s soldiers stood in grudging admiration at how many trees the Americans could fell in what seemed minutes, with precision deadly enough to lay them side by side, a measured nine feet apart. It seemed the American shovels had magic in them as they moved tons of dirt and rock to dam a stream well enough to back it up for miles to stop Burgoyne’s advance dead in its tracks while his regulars spent hours, sometimes a day, digging out the dam.

  Days later Schuyler faced Arnold. “General, your services here have been excellent, but I’m giving you new orders. Go west to Fort Stanwix. Burgoyne has sent Colonel Barry St. Leger with a force to take the fort, and then bring his army down the Mohawk Valley to gather all the Indians and loyalists he can to join Burgoyne and attack us. I can’t let that happen. You are to go to Stanwix and give any help you can to Colonel Peter Gansevoort, who is in command. Do you understand?”

  Arnold left that day, with Schuyler watching him until he was out of sight.

  The three hundred men Arnold had sent into the woods with axes and shovels to slow the relentless march of Burgoyne’s army did not let up. Reports began appearing on the table in Burgoyne’s great command tent. One day had been lost clearing nine giant fir trees that lay across the trail. Two days lost finding a way around a shallow valley flooded when trees and dirt dammed the small stream. The three-mile log causeway over the tremendous bog had been burned and five days had been lost replacing it. Mosquitoes in clouds so dense they darkened the sky had swarmed all over his men. Copperhead snakes slithered into the tents at night to terrify and afflict them. Heat exhaustion and diarrhea were taking down his work force by the droves. Food was low. Men were killing and eating porcupines. The howling of wolves at night stirred up the horses, and the men.

  With each delay, the British were growing weaker, while the ranks of Schuyler’s fragmented army were being swelled with men arriving from the great Connecticut River valley to the east, angry at the marauding Mohawk Indians, eager to meet them in open battle, win or lose.

  It became apparent to Schuyler that Burgoyne was steadily moving toward Fort Edward, and once he understood, he again changed his plans and his line of march accordingly. He issued new orders to his men.

  “March past Fort Edward, on south to Saratoga. We will gather all our militia and continentals there, and we shall prepare to meet Burgoyne. Saratoga. We will gather at Saratoga.”

  The die was cast.

  Notes

  Unless otherwise indicated, the following is taken from Ketchum, Saratoga, on the pages identified.

  Philip Skene had obtained a fifty-six thousand acre land grant from King George for property just south of the junction of Lake George and Lake Champlain, on the east side of the lakes. He built a tremendous estate consisting of many outbuildings, farms for his tenent workers, and a great stone home. The Skene landholdings became known as Skenesborough. His neighbors detested him because of his harsh business dealings. He ingratiated himself to General Burgoyne, who gave him authority “to assure Personal Protection and Payment for every species of Provisions etc, to those who comply with the terms of his Manifesto.” The manifesto was a document written by Burgoyne, offering safety to all Americans who would agree to refrain from resisting the British (pp. 235–36).

  When General St. Clair abandoned Fort Ticonderoga, he sent the loaded bateaux he had south on Lake George, to dock at Skenesborough, where the Americans had a great number of bateaux waiting. St. Clair intended marching his army overland to join them, then sail south with his entire command to Fort George, at the southern tip of Lake George.

  General Burgoyne anticipated it perfectly. After blasting through the great boom and Great Bridge, he sent his fleet of gunboats down to Skenesborough to attack the Americans. On 6 July 1777, with General Burgoyne and his staff aboard the Royal George watching, the British sank, burned, and destroyed virtually the entire American flotilla of bateaux, and the Americans fled. As they left, the Americans burned nearly every building at Skenesborough. The great stone mansion was left intact. The harbor was filled with the wreckage of burned and sunken American bateaux.

  General Burgoyne commandeered the Skene mansion for his headquarters. Then he held a war council, in which he read to his officers the letter he had sent to Lord Germain, informing him of their conquest of Fort Ti without firing a shot. The letter is quoted verbatim in the text of this chapter. The letter was later published in the London newspaper, Gazette, and it was certain Burgoyne was a candidate for the high and lofty Order of the Bath. However, in his exalted view of himself, the Order of the Bath was beneath him, and he requested his wife’s nephew, the Earl of Darby, to so inform the administration. Burgoyne also wrote letters of high commendation for his officers, particular generals Fraser and von Riedesel who had pursued the Americans and successfully fought the Battle of Hubbardton.

  General Burgoyne proceeded to march south from Skenesborough, twenty-three miles to Fort Edward, where he arrived with an exhausted army and decided to wait for weeks while his supplies and cannon caught up with him. His wagons were breaking down, his horses were starving and dying, and his men were reduced to eating whatever they could find in the forest. In these conditions,
General von Riedesel brought news of large stores of grain and many horses in a small town to the east, named Bennington. The facts were discussed with Burgoyne, who decided he would soon send a force to Bennington to get the grain and horses he so sorely needed.

  During the British march to Fort Edward, General St. Clair learned of the catastrophe at Skenesborough and changed course, marching his men to Pawlet, later St. Anne, where he fought another brief engagement with the British, who were pursuing him relentlessly. General Benedict Arnold, under orders from General Washington, arrived. Arnold had threatened to resign from the American army, feeling Congress had dealt unfairly with him, but upon receipt of the letter from General Washington, he withdrew his letter of resignation and immediately headed north to help. He quickly recognized what was needed and asked General Schuyler for three hundred men. He thereupon set about destroying bridges, corduroy roads, blocking trails, damming streams, burning crops, scattering livestock, and in general harassing and stopping General Burgoyne’s army on their march to Fort Edward, until they were exhausted, weary, hating the forest and the Americans who were always present but never seen. Arnold’s efforts had forced Burgoyne to use twenty-one days to cover twenty-three miles.

  The weeks Burgoyne spent waiting for his supplies and cannon and resting his battered army, gave St. Clair time to gather his army, send word for reinforcements, and gather supplies.

  Burgoyne carefully explained to his war council his options for pursuing the rebels further south. He could travel south from Skenesborough, on either side of Lake George, or, he could move the army north, back to Fort Ticonderoga, cross South Bay, portage everything the three and one-half miles to Lake George, then sail back down Lake George, carry everything the twelve miles from Lake George to the Hudson River, and sail on down to Albany. He had already decided he was not going to move back north, since doing so would give the army the impression they were giving up ground they had already won. The members of his war council were divided on the question, but Burgoyne would not change his mind. He was going to move south, either on the east side of the lake, or the west side.