The 1777 March of the Saratoga Convention Army

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...