The First American Army

by Bruce Chadwick

  Burgoyne was stunned by the fast mobilization of militia and the ferocious patriotism they exhibited. In a letter that showed a far deeper understanding of the Americans’ determination to win the war than any other British general exhibited, he wrote to Lord Germain, “The great bulk of the country is undoubtedly with the Congress in principle and in zeal, and their measures are executed with a secrecy and dispatch that are not to be equaled. Wherever the King’s forces point, militia to the amount of three or four thousand assemble in twenty-four hours. [They are] the most rebellious race . . .”8

  Burgoyne was worried about his loss at Bennington, but he knew that he would soon hook up with St. Leger’s army of two thousand men, half of them Indians, further south. The British forces of Sir Henry Clinton would also join him. They had remained in New York after Howe took his larger army by boat to capture Philadelphia.

  As Burgoyne pulled back from Bennington and headed south toward Albany, Barry St. Leger was stalled in the Mohawk Valley. An Indian chief placed within St. Leger’s camp by Arnold engineered a mutiny among the Indians, who left the British. St. Leger then retreated toward Canada, chased for miles by Arnold.

  Ebenezer Wild had become a veteran by the time he and the men of the First Massachusetts pitched their tents in Saratoga. He had enlisted as an eighteen-year-old corporal in Colonel Jonathan Brewer’s Regiment in 1775 and was probably in the battle of Bunker Hill. He had seen much in his first tour of duty, which ended in December 1776. The company had been inoculated for smallpox in August 1776, when an epidemic of it hit the Boston area, an inoculation that may have saved his life.

  Wild’s regiment stayed in Boston when Benedict Arnold led the expedition to Canada, but those soldiers were sent to Fort Ticonderoga after that invasion failed. That trip, Wild’s first excursion outside of the Boston area, was plagued with problems. One town, upon hearing that the men had been inoculated for smallpox and that one man had just come down with it, refused to let the soldiers spend the night sleeping in the local church for fear that the dreaded illness would spread throughout the community. The troops had to sleep in a field.

  The regiment became lost at one point and spent an entire day wandering through a wooded area before stumbling upon the cabin of a man who sent them back in the proper direction. They completed several hazardous crossings of fast-running creeks and rivers in Massachusetts and New York. They had to pile all of their baggage onto rafts and pole their way across a turbulent Connecticut river; the crossing took five exhausting hours. It was impossible to simply ford one creek and the men had to spend an afternoon chopping down trees to lay across it as a bridge and then carefully walk across the round logs. Many of the men could not sleep on some evenings because the howls of wild animals kept them awake. At one point they ran out of provisions and in order to stay alive were forced to eat only green corn that they found in a field. The trip had been filled with rain, and it poured all night on August 31, the day they finally arrived at Ticonderoga, where Wild served as a guard and, already inoculated, was safe from the smallpox that killed so many troops there.

  Finally, on December 22, his enlistment up, Wild was furloughed and sent home to Braintree. He arrived on January 2, 1777. The corporal spent nine weeks at home and decided to rejoin the army, in Vose’s First Massachusetts regiment. This time he was promoted and made a sergeant and began his journey to Saratoga.

  Burgoyne’s large army arrived on the heavily wooded eastern bank of the Hudson River on September 13. By now, most of his Indians, unreliable throughout the trip, had departed, leaving him with few natives who knew the area and who could scout the enemy without drawing attention. The Americans had plenty of scouts, however, and they had been watching the British commander for days with their spyglasses. They could not miss him. As usual, the highly visible, flamboyant British general was marching with all of his troops together, his flags unfurled and flying high in the autumn breeze. His bands played British military music loud enough to be heard from some distance.9 His column of supply wagons, cannon, and nearly eight thousand troops stretched for several miles. He moved slowly, too, because the Americans had wrecked nearly every bridge on his route, forcing him to continually stop to rebuild them.

  General Gates, with seven thousand men, had blocked any route down the western side of the Hudson by building a series of earthworks around a camp that extended westward past land owned by a farmer named Freeman. The earthworks formed three sides of a square, with the open side on the south guarded by a deep ravine. Each side was about three-quarters of a mile in length. The area was thickly forested, except for a few large, open meadows within the confines of local farms, such as Freeman’s. With plenty of time, the Americans had also positioned their cannon where Gates believed they would have the most effect. The American camp lay on what was known as Bemis Heights, named after a local tavern keeper, and was two hundred feet above the Hudson, giving the Americans excellent location.10 The general was prepared for a defensive battle and awaited Burgoyne’s arrival.11 On September 15, two nights after the British crossed, all the American troops were put in readiness. “We had orders to lay upon arms and not pull off any of our clothes,” wrote Wild.

  Few slept. At 2 a.m., Wild wrote, his regiment was awakened and ordered to construct even more earthworks in the dark. The officers were certain that Burgoyne would attack them that day. The British did not and three more days passed. Burgoyne hesitated because he only had a vague idea of the terrain around him and the strength of the enemy. He did not know Gates’s position and had, in fact, practically marched right into the American forces after he crossed the Hudson.

  On September 16 and 18, Wild wrote, more earthworks were dug in front of the camp that contained the First Massachusetts, Wild’s regiment, under the command of General Ebenezer Learned. Wild’s regiment was in the center of the camp and would face the brunt of the fighting. In the middle of the morning, Wild assumed the battle was about to commence. “About ten o’clock we left work and got in preparation to receive the enemy. Soon after we heard a number of guns fired, supposed to be our advanced party. About eleven o’clock we marched from the place of our encampment to the top of an eminence about a half mile from the camp.”

  But, again, there was no attack and the men remained on alert, apprehensive and with little sleep. They all knew that this would be a major engagement of the revolution and that Burgoyne had a large army with a long line of cannon. From Gates and Arnold down to the enlisted men like Wild, all were certain that if they did not stop the English commander he would continue to march directly south to Albany and capture it. Then he could move to New York.

  The First Battle of Saratoga

  Wild rose at daylight on the following morning, September 19, to find the entire western bank of the Hudson, Bemis Heights, and the forests around it covered with a thick fog. The soupy fog was so thick men could not see more than a few yards in front of them. The fog did not lift until noon, Wild said, and it was just after that when the battle began. “About one o’clock we were alarmed by the enemy. We marched from our encampment and manned the [earth]works above us. About two o’clock, an engagement ensued between their advanced party and ours which lasted fifteen minutes without cessation. Our people drove them and took some prisoners,” he wrote of the heated battle.

  Wild’s regiment found itself facing Burgoyne himself. The British general had decided to split his army into three columns. General Simon Fraser’s was sent far west in an attempt to flank the Americans. Burgoyne led a central assault that stalled at Freeman’s farm. Baron von Riedesel was ordered to attack along the river road on the banks of the Hudson.

  Fraser’s force found itself stumbling about in thick woods and contributed little to the battle at first. The bulk of Burgoyne’s column inched its way toward the farm, moving very slowly through tangled forests, following an advance guard. Von Riedesel was ordered to bring nearly a thousand men and cannon from the river to support the British commander. On top of Bem
is Heights, Benedict Arnold fumed. Arnold told Gates in heated language that he was going to be attacked by all three British columns if he did not send men out to attack them first. It was now, Arnold believed, that the Americans had the advantage.

  Gates, like so many other officers, did not like Benedict Arnold. His hatred for Arnold was based on Arnold’s loyalty to Schuyler. Gates and Schuyler had smeared each other in letters to congressional delegates and personal appearances before Congress. It was one of the uglier feuds of the war.12 Finally, tired of Arnold’s haranguing, Gates sent Morgan’s riflemen, the best sharpshooters in the army, along with Henry Dearborn’s light infantry, with Arnold’s wing of the army, to attack Burgoyne at Freeman’s. Arnold rode off at a furious gallop to join his men.

  Morgan’s riflemen, with extraordinary accuracy and even better luck, killed most of the officers in the advance guard at Freeman’s in several volleys and steady sharpshooting. The rest of the British fled back into the forest behind Freeman’s cabin. The Americans, shouting, chased them, but ran directly into the main British force under Burgoyne, advancing quickly upon hearing the sound of the guns. Morgan’s men fled, dispersed, and regrouped on the other side of the meadow, where they were joined by Arnold and other American regiments. Arnold surveyed the situation quickly and took command, barking orders over the sound of gunfire. Burgoyne’s forces were joined shortly by Fraser’s men, emerging from the thickets.

  What followed was one of the most furious battles of the Revolution; a hot, four-hour-long fight with each side attacking and retreating and volley after volley fired across the field in the warm afternoon. The fighting involved volleys fired from just a few dozen yards, bayonet charges, and hand to hand combat. Burgoyne, later joined by Riedesel’s troops who saved the day for the English, led the overall British attack. Arnold, frantically giving orders and riding back and forth between companies, led the Americans. Gates had sent several more regiments to assist at the farm and they rapidly responded to Arnold’s commands.

  By the time the sun went down, the grass in the meadows of Freeman’s farm was covered in blood. British casualties were horrific. Overall, the enemy suffered a total of six hundred casualties that afternoon. Of the men battling the Americans back and forth at Freeman’s, 44 percent were killed, wounded, or captured. American casualties were far smaller, 319, with 57 killed.13

  “Both armies seemed determined to conquer or die. [There was] one continual blaze without any intermission ’til dark,” wrote Massachusetts general John Glover at the scene. “The enemy . . . were bold, intrepid, and fought like heroes, and I do assure you, sirs, our men were equally bold and courageous and fought like men fighting for their all.”14 The Redcoats on the other side of that meadow agreed. “The heavy artillery, joining in concert like great peals of thunder, assisted by the echoes of the woods, almost deafened us with the noise,” wrote a British soldier. “This crash of cannon and musketry never ceased ’til darkness parted us.”15

  Burgoyne then received a message from Sir Henry Clinton, telling him that he would try to reinforce him with about two thousand men in ten days. He trusted Clinton because the general had tried to convince Howe to send his entire army to meet Burgoyne in upstate New York instead of attacking Philadelphia.16 Gentleman Johnny then decided to dig in behind Freeman’s cabin and wait for Clinton’s army. It was a mistake. The delay not only gave Gates’s army time to rest and regroup, it gave militia commanders throughout New England needed days to raise thousands of men. That was easy because everyone seemed to believe that the defeat of the Redcoats could mean the end of the war. They also wanted to protect their homes against the British.

  Dan Granger, a teenager who had finished one enlistment, joined up with dozens of other men and boys when a recruiter staged a rally with bands, singing, and patriotic speakers in his village. The speakers told the people that the British were cornered across the river and could be beaten if enough men joined the fight. Nearly all the able-bodied men in the village marched toward Saratoga, most without even going home to say goodbye to their families.17

  In addition to the immediate crisis at hand, all of the residents of the Hudson Valley had learned through newspapers that weeks before several of Burgoyne’s Indians had murdered a white woman, Jane McCrea.18 They wanted revenge. By the time ten days had elapsed, Gates’s force of seven thousand at Saratoga had swelled to over eleven thousand armed and angry colonists.

  The tension between Gates and Arnold had simmered throughout the day on September 19 and reached the boiling point in late afternoon, when Arnold’s leadership of the left flank resulted in halting the British advance. Arnold’s tough, bold leadership had once more won the admiration of his men. Gates waited three days and then reassigned Morgan’s riflemen, the heroes of the battle and among the most reliable troops in the army, away from Arnold’s command without even telling him. He had also sent a report to General Washington and Congress about the September 19 battle and took all the credit for pushing the British army back; he never mentioned Arnold’s bravery and never even wrote that he had joined in the fighting. The deliberate insults had the result that Gates knew they would—Arnold stormed into his headquarters, limping as always, and demanded his men back plus a formal apology.

  What followed in the large marquee tent that Gates used as his field headquarters at Saratoga was one of the most heated arguments between two generals during the war. Gates not only refused to give Arnold back his men, but told him that his services during the September 19 battle had been inconsequential and that he had, in fact, added nothing to the overall campaign. Gates’s aide, James Wilkinson, who was an eyewitness to the argument, wrote that Arnold “was ridiculed by General Gates; high words and gross language ensued.”

  Gates was relentless in his condemnation of his second in command. He brusquely told him that he had been discussing Arnold’s demotion with members of Congress and that he had warned delegates that Arnold should never have been promoted to a major general. He had failed in his invasion of Canada, lost the battle of Quebec, led a chaotic retreat southward into New York in which hundreds of men died, and had a naval fleet under his command destroyed on the waters of Lake Champlain. Looking straight at him, Gates then told Arnold that not only would he continue at Saratoga without a command, but he would be replaced by General Lincoln as soon as he arrived. He did not want Arnold in the army at all, he finished, and suggested he resign and simply go home to Connecticut. Gates said that he would write him a pass on the spot. Enraged by the scathing denunciation, Arnold told Gates he would leave all right, but he would ride to Pennsylvania and report the entire matter to George Washington. Gates sneered and told him to go right ahead and offered to write him a pass to Pennsylvania to see the commander in chief, too.

  Benedict Arnold turned and hurried from Gates’s tent. Later, he sent Gates a blistering note that Gates ignored. Arnold sent another note that Gates returned with the type of common traveling pass he would issue to any private going home on furlough so that Arnold could leave the army. The hatred between them was so great, one officer wrote, that he was certain that while Burgoyne sat in his camp pondering defeat the two leading American generals at Saratoga would kill each other in a duel.19

  The British officers and men knew nothing about the dispute between Arnold and Gates. They had their own troubles. There was nothing but anxiety behind the British lines as the American forces grew each day. The Redcoats were running out of supplies. One messenger informed Burgoyne of Barry St. Leger’s retreat back to Canada and another explained that none of the couriers he sent riding off to Henry Clinton, each carrying a plea more desperate than the last for more troops, reached the one man who could save them; all were arrested.

  Those days were filled with worry for Wild and the troops waiting for something to happen. “Very dark and foggy this morning,” wrote Wild in his diary the day after the September 19 engagement, fearful that the British would attack, aided by the poor visibility. They did not.r />
  The next few days were nerve-racking as Wild and the men in his regiment awaited a British assault. They were constantly moved from one position to another. “Marched off to the earthworks on our right wing,” he wrote on the morning of September 20. That night he scribbled, sarcastically, “At sundown the regiment returned and pitched our tents on the same ground they were on before.”

  Wild’s regiment was moved about camp constantly, occupying a hill to their right one day and a wooded area to the left the next. Alarms were sounded after pickets with spyglasses spotted any minor British movement. On September 22, Wild wrote, attack alarms were sounded at 8 a.m. and at 11 a.m. On September 28 there were alarms at 10 a.m., 2 p.m., and 8 p.m.

  Wild almost lost his life on September 25. He was ordered to join a scouting party shortly before dawn to check on the latest British troop positions. “We marched within a quarter of a mile of [enemy]. The fog and darkness of the morning prevented our going any further ’til after daylight, when we rushed on the guard and a very hot fire ensued for the space of two or three minutes. The guard ran into their lines as fast as they could. We killed and wounded eight of them and took one prisoner and returned to our camp again about sunrise.” He noted that four men in his party were lost in the engagement.

  The success of the operation encouraged a commanding officer to send out another scouting party, again including Wild, on a three-day journey around the British encampment to ascertain its strength and its access to forage in the area. On October 1, after a lengthy trip through forests around Saratoga Lake, the men came upon a mill that had fallen into the hands of the British. It was previously owned by General Philip Schuyler.

  “We marched upon a rising ground above the mill and ground our arms and a party of us, with axes, went cutting away Schuyler’s bridge. After we had destroyed it with axes as much as time would admit of, we set fire to it. We stopped till it got well a-fire and then marched off in a different road.”