Standing Up for a Hero of Saratoga

NY Times ^ | July 5, 2010 | CLYDE HABERMAN

[Pharmboy]

For a 14th straight year, James S. Kaplan spent the Fourth of July walking in the middle of the night among ghosts of the American Revolution.

... What Mr. Kaplan does every Independence Day, in recent years under the aegis of the Fraunces Tavern Museum, is guide several dozen people to sites in Lower Manhattan that have Revolutionary War significance.

Only his tour begins at 2 a.m..snip...

Perhaps another distinction is that Mr. Kaplan makes a point of stopping outside Trinity Church to note an injustice that he believes has been done to Horatio Gates, a Revolution-era general who commanded the American Army in northern New York. Those forces defeated the British in 1777 in the Battle of Saratoga... Gates died in 1806 and was buried in the Trinity Church cemetery. Lots of luck finding his grave. It is unmarked. snip...

Mr. Kaplan...feels that the general has been slighted for far too long.... Historians today are more likely to give Benedict Arnold — yes, that Benedict Arnold, before he became synonymous with treason — the credit for victory at Saratoga.

Arnold was a field commander. Gates wasn’t. “But the whole organization of the battle was really Gates’s,” Mr. Kaplan said after completing this year’s tour. What turned things around for faltering American forces, he said, was Gates’s ability to persuade New England militias to join up with the New York troops.

snip..

The issue for Mr. Kaplan is that the old soldier became history’s orphan, and deserved better.

snip...

Not that he expects everyone to share his passion. But he said, “To me, it’s almost a mystical experience to talk about General Gates and the Battle of Saratoga at 5 in the morning in front of Trinity Church, where you know he’s buried but no one else does.”

[Pharmboy]

Yet another example of incomplete and irresponsible reporting by the NY Times, this time covering a 200+ year old story. Reading this, you would think that Gates was an unfortunate victim here, but Kaplan and Haberman leave out the most important material related to "Granny Gates."

Allow me to sketch out a few things: 1) From the beginning, he believed that HE should be the Commander in Chief of the Continental Army rather than Washington, but Congress wanted an American; 2) He had advised against the attack on Trenton, and when he was overridden, absented himself from the battle; 3) He worked against The General as part of the mutinous Conway Cabal; 4) He got lucky while behind the lines at Saratoga because he had real heroes do the fighting (e.g., Arnold, Morgan, Poor and Lincoln); 5) He was almost court martialed for his abysmal showing at Camden and broke records fleeing north from the advancing Brits.

Great reporting by the Times, eh?

[dware]

Bump

[Pharmboy]

Gen. Horatio Gates

The RevWar/Colonial History/General Washington ping list...

Freepmail me to get on or off...

[Kartographer]

Gates was a Damn Fool!

[Pharmboy]

Agreed...and worse!

But Gates illustrates another way in which General Washington was so outstanding, i.e., he never, to my knowledge, went after Gates after all the back-stabbing Gates had accomplished against The General.

Lesser men would have finished Gates off after his first insubordination...

[JoeProBono]

[pgkdan]

Granny Gates was a well deserved and well earned nick name for the General. Arnold was the true hero of Saratoga and should have gotten much more credit than he did. Gates was more interested in his personal glory and perks, privelges and creature comforts than he was in executing the war. Gates undermined Washington at every opportunity and worked tirelessly to advance himself at the expense of the Revolution. He’s by far my least favorite Revolutionary Commander...I even prefer Charles Lee over him.

[Kartographer]

A lesser man would have called Gates in from the field to their office and fired him.

Sound familiar?

Damn the times we live in that such evil and hapless men try to fill the shoes of giants that have come before.

[KC_Conspirator]

This is the same Lee, who committed Treason while in captivity by giving advice to his fellow British on how to beat Washington and the Rebels.

No wonder the NY Slimes is supporting a traitor.

[BlueLancer]

Agreed ... Gates was one of the most useless pieces of flotsam to ever wear the uniform of an American Army. Arnold and Morgan, Poor and Lincoln, were responsible for the victory at Saratoga.

What an uninformed, ignorant piece of work.

[70th Division]

Wasn’t Gates challanged to like 7 duels after he retired?

[Stultis]

James Kaplan resembles "Granny Gates" a bit.

Related? Or do they just share the "weenie" gene?

[Pharmboy]

Ha! Now THAT'S a hard call...who was worse, Gates or Lee? At least Lee died ignominiously in a tavern (a while after being wounded in a duel when challenged by one of Washington's aides--John Laurens of SC) while Gates went on to lead a good lfe in NYC.

Lee was a bisexual, fond of dogs and likely a traitor to both England (when he joined our side) and to our side when he provided the Brits with information while their captive.

While visiting Christ Church in Philadelphia several years ago, I stumbled across Lee's grave.

[Pharmboy]

The only one I know of (but there may certainly be more) was the duel Wilkinson challenged Gates to, but Gates cried and apologized when they met, so no shooting occurred. Lee was wounded in a dual against Laurens.

[george76]

Thanks.

and Granny Gates ( using intrigue ) also displaced General Schuyler.

General Gates, piqued by the omission of the Continental Congress to appoint him one of the major-generals in the army , but only adjutant-general, with rank of brigadier-general...

Late in 1776 Gates repaired to the Congress at Baltimore and renewed his intrigues so successfully that, on account of false charges against Schuyler, he was appointed his successor in the command of the Northern Department in the spring of 1777. The report of a committee of inquiry caused Schuyler’s reinstatement a few weeks afterwards. Gates was angry, and wrote impertinent letters to his superiors. He refused to serve under Schuyler

http://www.sonofthesouth.net/revolutionary-war/general/philip-schuyler.htm

Then, Thomas Conway ( an Irishman who was educated in France ) started the Conway Cabal with Granny Gates and others

http://www.ushistory.org/march/other/cabal.htm

[aculeus]

Thanks for the info.

(There’s so much I don’t know!)

[SunkenCiv]

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[Buckeye Battle Cry]

Gates over and above effort to seize all credit for Saratoga and deny Arnold any credit was one of the first dominos to fall in the series of events that resulted in Arnold’s treasonous effort to give West point to the Brits. It was insulting and enraging to Arnold that he suffered severe battle wounds that crippled him for life and Gates, sitting in a tavern near his HQ the whole time, took the glory.

[pgkdan]

Lee was a bisexual, fond of dogs and likely a traitor to both England (when he joined our side) and to our side when he provided the Brits with information while their captive.

You're right of course, that is a hard call, but I made the comment mostly in jest to illustrate my contempt for Gates. Lee was quite a fellow! I read somewhere that hiis retreat at Monmouth was probably treachery, part aof a plan hatched while Howe's prisoner. I also read that several British officers thought the most damaging thing they could do to Washington's efforts was to return Lee to him. They were right.

[NonValueAdded]

Enoch Poor 1st NH bump.

Was thinking just the other day that it is time to re-read Ketchum's Saratoga.

Lafayette toasts in 1824 with great emotion: "Light Infantry, Poor, and Yorktown, Scammell."

see Simms, William G, Edward D. Ingraham, and Rufus W. Griswold. Washington and the Generals of the American Revolution: With Sixteen Portraits on Steel. Philadelphia: Carey and Hart, 1847. Free in Google Books.