The 1777 March of the Saratoga Convention Army

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 ...