Benedict Arnold: General in the Battle of Saratoga

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The season was changing. Hot afternoons gave way to cool evenings and cooler mornings as summer turned to autumn in New York’s upper Hudson Valley. Beneath the green, red, and orange canopy of leaves shrouding the hills that straddled the Hudson River, a different sort of transformation was taking place. Four months into British Lieutenant General John Burgoyne’s invasion of the northern colonies, his army had collided with Major General Horatio Gates’s entrenched Americans. Now, on September 19, 1777, the first of two fateful battles–bound to alter the course of the American Revolution–had begun.

At Gates’s headquarters behind the American lines on Bemis Heights (named for Jotham Bemis, a local tavern keeper), 36-year-old Major General Benedict Arnold seethed with impatience. The fiery Connecticut native held command of the American left wing, which Burgoyne had attacked that morning. After directing the American defense for much of the day, Arnold now found himself wasting his energy by repeatedly requesting that Gates give him reinforcements. He ached to sweep the field before dark.

Gates eventually sent portions of Brigadier General Ebenezer Learned’s brigade to support the Americans who were battling across a wide, stump-filled field called Freeman’s Farm. Shortly afterward, Deputy Quartermaster Colonel Morgan Lewis reported in at headquarters and told Gates of the indecisive fighting. That was enough for Arnold. ‘By God, I will soon put an end to it’ he declared, and mounted a horse to go and lead the troops himself.

‘You had better order him back,’ Lewis told Gates. ‘The action is going well. He may, by some rash act, do mischief.’

Gates immediately sent an aide to bring him back, and Arnold angrily complied. By this time Learned’s unguided infantry had wandered too far to the west, where they were all but wiped out by Brigadier General Simon Fraser’s British troops. Meanwhile, 500 German soldiers under Major General Baron Friedrich von Riedesel had marched to Freeman’s Farm and stopped the final American advance. Darkness then descended, ending the contest.

Left in command of the field, Burgoyne could technically claim victory in the First Battle of Saratoga (also known as the Battle of Freeman’s Farm), but he had suffered 560 casualties, almost twice the American total. The British Army had shrunk to less than 7,000 effectives, while Gates could boast of nearly 12,000 Continentals and militia. The Americans could still win a victory. All the soldiers needed, Arnold believed, was inspiration, but he doubted it would come from his commander.

Horatio Gates, American commander of the Northern Department, held a military position in America that far exceeded anything he could have achieved in his native England, where he had been born a commoner. Writer Hoffman Nickerson characterized Gates as ‘a snob of the first water’ who possessed ‘an unctuously pious way with him.’ Although Gates was an ambitious man, dynamic leadership was not part of his makeup. The former British officer did not believe American troops could stand up to British infantry in the open field. Though his men clearly outnumbered those of his opponent, Gates remained cautious and believed his army was better off fighting from behind fortifications.

Arnold, in contrast, was daring and imaginative. He had proven his abilities during the doomed attempt to capture Quebec in 1775 and at the Battle of Valcour Island the next year. At Saratoga his views differed from those held by Gates. From the first reports of British movement on the morning of September 19, Arnold pestered his commander for permission to send riflemen to the woods west of Freeman’s Farm. There, Arnold believed, the quick-moving Americans could set an ambush for the approaching columns. Gates permitted him to send out a ‘reconnaissance in force’ shortly before 1:00 p.m., and Arnold eagerly dispatched Colonel Daniel Morgan’s famed Rangers and Major Henry Dearborn’s light infantry.

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Tags: 17th - 18th Century, American History, American Revolutionary War, Historical Conflicts, Historical Figures

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