Saratoga Campaign - American Change of Fortune

American Change of Fortune

While the tactic of delay worked well in the field, the result in the Continental Congress was a different matter. General Horatio Gates was in Philadelphia when Congress discussed their shock at the fall of Ticonderoga, and Gates was more than willing to help assign the blame to reluctant generals. Some in the Congress had already been impatient with General George Washington, wanting a large, direct confrontation that might eliminate occupation forces but which Washington feared would probably lose the war. John Adams, the head of the War Committee, praised Gates and remarked that "we shall never hold a post until we shoot a general." Over the objections of the New York delegation, Congress sent Gates to take command of the Northern Department on August 10. It also ordered states from Pennsylvania to Massachusetts to call out their militias. On August 19, Gates arrived at Albany to take charge. He was cold and arrogant in manner, and pointedly excluded Schuyler from his first war council. Schuyler left for Philadelphia shortly after, depriving Gates of his intimate knowledge of the area.

Throughout the month of August, and continuing into September, militia companies arrived at the Continental Army camps on the Hudson. These were augmented by troops Washington ordered north from the Hudson Highlands as part of General Arnold's operation to relieve Stanwix, which arrived at the end of August, and included the crack sharpshooters of Daniel Morgan's rifle corps, which he sent north from his own army. News of the American successes at Bennington and Fort Stanwix, combined with outrage over the death of Jane McCrea, rallied support, swelling Gates' army to over 6,000 rank and file. This number did not include Stark's small army at Bennington, which was reduced in size by disease and the departure of some of its companies, but was also augmented by several hundred troops raised by General Benjamin Lincoln, who was assigned to make attacks against Burgoyne's supply and communications.