The 1777 March of the Saratoga Convention Army

British Brigadier General Patrick Gordon died on August 1, 1776 , a week after he was shot near St. Johns, Quebec, by American Lieutenant Benjamin Whitcomb .  Three days later Sir Guy Carleton, the commander in chief of British forces in Canada ordered: "The commanding Officers of Corps will take especial care that every one under their command be informed, that Letters, or messages from Rebels, Traitors in Arms against the King, Rioters, disturbers of the public Peace, Plunderers, Robbers, Assassins, or Murderers, are on no occasion to be admitted: That should emissaries from such lawless Men again presume to approach the Army, whether under the name of Flag of Truce Men or Ambassadors except when they come to implore the King's mercy, their persons shall be immediately seized and committed to close confinement to be proceeded against as the Law directs: Their Papers & Letters for whomsoever directed (even this Com'r in Chief) are to be deliver'd to the Provost Ma...

Lieutenant Benjamin Whitcomb's statement in his report of his scout into Canada  that on July 24, 1776, he "fired on an officer, and moved immediately into Chambly road" lacks two key details; who he shot, and what happened to him.  It's possible Whitcomb didn't know when he returned to Ticonderoga.  The answer explains the intensity of the British effort to locate Whitcomb and the strong reaction on both sides.  The British response also shows how "words matter", in regard to a small detail which would take on major significance after the surrender at Saratoga and bedevil some reenactors two hundred years later. Whitcomb's account of what happened after he fired focused on his escape, as "... being discovered, [I] retreated back into the woods, and staid till night; then taking the road and passing the guards till I came below Chambly, finding myself discovered, was obliged to conceal myself in the brush till dark." [1]   British accounts ...

"July 14 [1776] set out from Crown Point..." Continental Army Lieutenant Benjamin Whitcomb wrote in his after-action report three weeks later, "... went seven miles that night."  After describing the challenges he faced traveling one hundred miles north from the Northern Army's position in New York into British controlled Canada, on July 20 he continued: "In the evening we came within about five miles of St. John's, heard the drum beat, etc.".  There, on the east bank of the Richelieu River, as two of the others traveling with him were "uneasy and not willing to go near St. John's, I told them to take a Frenchman and examine him and return home". [1.  Whitcomb's full report is in the footnotes, below.] The next day he and his remaining companion "...lay there all day in hopes of taking a prisoner, but none appeared."  On July 22, "... at day-break, we went down to the river side, staid there till the sun was half an...

Why did Major General Horatio Gates choose Brigadier General William Whipple as one of his two delegates to negotiate the surrender at Saratoga, and to escort Lieutenant General John Burgoyne to Cambridge? Lieutenant Colonel James Wilkinson, Gates adjutant, claimed credit for the first of these decisions.  Wilkinson wrote in his memoir that on October 15, 1777, when Burgoyne proposed two officers from each side meet: "... General [Gates] was pleased to name me as one of his representatives, and at my request appointed Brigadier-general Whipple of the militia, to accompany me..." [1]  The key to John Trumbull's painting of the surrender, shown here, identifies all three: Gates, figure 14, at its center; Wilkinson, figure 13, to the left of Gates far back in the distance; and Whipple, figure 25, in profile looking left with his left forearm on the far wheel of the cannon. Gates selection of Wilkinson as one of his two negotiators makes sense.  Wilkinson served as a voluntee...

Half a century ago, as the United States prepared to celebrate its two hundredth birthday, New York historian Paul Scudiere began the introduction to his biography of New York's signers of the Declaration of Independence with the statement: "The most important single event in the history of the American nation was the adoption of the Declaration of Independence by the Continental Congress on July 4, 1776."  He went on to point out: "Although New York played a key role in the winning of independence and in the establishment of American democratic government, the New York delegates then in Congress did not vote on Richard Henry Lee's resolution 'that these United Colonies are and of right ought to be, free and independent states,' on July 2, 1776, nor on the Declaration itself when it was considered two days later." [1] Historians tell us the Declaration of Independence was not signed on July 4, and the process of signing didn't look anything like ...

How well recognized was Henry Knox for his journey to Ticonderoga and return to Cambridge? On November 16, 1775, General George Washington tasked twenty-five-year-old Henry Knox (seen here in a 1778 painting by Charles Wilson Peale, from the collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art ), a bookseller from Boston, Massachusetts, to travel to New York and bring back artillery, ammunition and gun flints for the Continental Army which surrounded British occupied Boston.   The story of Knox's return from Fort Ticonderoga with his "Noble Train of Artillery" is fairly well know today.  Two hundred and fifty years ago only a few seemed to have taken note of what he did.  Many still overlook the first two parts of his mission.   Washington's instructions first directed Knox  "... to examine into the state of the artillery of this army, and take an account of the cannon, mortars, shells, lead, and ammunition, that are wanting."   Next, Knox was "... t...