Horatio Gates was an American general during the Revolutionary War. He took credit for the American victory in the Battles of Saratoga and was blamed for the defeat at the Battle of Camden.
Career
Gates entered the British army at an early age, as he was a lieutenant with the troops under Gen. Edward Cornwallis, in Nova Scotia, in 1749-1750. When the news of Washington's defeat at Great Meadows reached London, the Duke of Newcastle asked Gates to express his opinion as to what should be done. The latter's refusal to do so, on the ground that it would be impertinent, is an interesting commentary upon both his reputation and character. On September 30, 1754, he was commissioned captain in the "Independent Company of Foot doing duty in New York. " In 1755, Gates's company joined Braddock's army in Virginia. He was present at the action of July 9, before Fort Duquesne, when the British were routed and Braddock was fatally wounded. He was himself severely wounded in this battle. On April 28, 1758, Gates was at Fort Herkimer, in the Mohawk Valley, when the general of that name defended his post against a combined attack of French and Indians. During the next two years he was on duty at Oneida, Fort Hunter, Pittsburgh, Fort Ticonderoga, and Philadelphia. Late in 1761, he joined Gen. Monckton at New York, and sailed with him on the conspicuously successful expedition for the conquest of Martinique. Gates was chosen by Monckton, who had apparently become his intimate friend, to go to London with the news of the victory. He reached England in March, and on April 24, 1762, was commissioned a major in the 45th Regiment. Gates went out to join his command in New York, but as there was no vacant majority in the regiment, returned to London. On October 27, 1764, he was appointed to the 60th or Royal American Regiment then at New York, but gained a leave of absence to stay in England until the spring of 1765. On May 8, because he still did not wish to return to America, he was permitted to exchange his majority in the 60th for retirement on half pay. Then settling at Bristol, he lived there until 1769, when he moved to Devonshire. On receiving a letter from his old comrade in arms, Washington, advising him about land in Virginia, he and his wife and son, Robert Gates, sailed from Bristol in August 1772, and took up land in Berkeley County. For the next three years he lived quietly upon this Virginia plantation, taking no particular part in public life beyond accepting Lord Dunmore's offer of a lieutenant-colonelcy in the Virginia militia and serving in 1774 as a "gentleman justice" of the county court. Gates's espousal of the patriot cause in 1775 seems partly explained by his personal revolt against the English caste system. There is some evidence that he was sensitive about his rather humble origins. Probably because of the patronage of Walpole, he had done better in the Seven Years' War than might have been expected of one of his birth. As a Virginia planter and an old friend of Washington, Gates had no difficulty in gaining the position in society which the Old World had denied him. One need not be surprised, then, to find Gates commissioned as adjutant-general of the Continental Army, with the rank of brigadier-general, as early as June 17, 1775. By July he was in the camp at Cambridge, Massachussets, organizing the miscellaneous units which made up the American forces besieging Boston. Here, probably, he was at his best, a capable administrator, an indefatigable worker, and a loyal supporter of the efforts of the Commander-in-Chief. After the evacuation of Boston, Congress appointed him, now a major-general (commissioned May 16, 1776) to take command of the troops which on the failure of the Canadian expedition were withdrawing toward Crown Point. A conflict of jurisdiction at once arose between Gates and Schuyler, who was in command of the northern department. Congress settled this, on July 8, 1776, in favor of Schuyler while the troops were south of the border. Gates remained at Fort Ticonderoga until December 1776, when, under Schuyler's directions, he repaired to Philadelphia to assume command of the troops in that city. In February 1777 Congress desired that he resume his office of adjutant-general, but on March 25 ordered him back to Ticonderoga to "take command of the army there. " This displacement of Schuyler led to much ill-feeling, and on May 15, 1777, the Board of War agreed to restore Schuyler to command of the northern department and give Gates his choice, either of serving under Schuyler, or resuming the office of adjutant-general. No sooner had he been directed to repair to head-quarters in July, than, on August 4, 1777, he was again ordered by Congress to command the northern army, this time to relieve Schuyler. This shuffling of commanders was done in the face of the impending invasion by the British army under Burgoyne. Gates was finally in supreme command in the north when the two armies met in the late summer of 1777. Historical accounts of the Saratoga campaign have given abundant reasons for the American victory other than the military skill of Horatio Gates. The fierce fighting at Freeman's Farm and Bemis Heights served to bring out Benedict Arnold as the most dramatic figure on the American side. Gates and Arnold quarreled in September over what the latter regarded as Gates's lack of initiative and inclination to slight his services. By mid-October Gates had Burgoyne in his grasp, when news arrived that Clinton had made a desperate effort to relieve Burgoyne from the south and had captured Forts Clinton and Montgomery on the highlands of the Hudson. Negotiations looking toward the capitulation of Burgoyne's army were already under way. Burgoyne refused an unconditional surrender. Gates's army outnumbered the British more than two to one, but he feared lest Clinton strike at the arsenals in Albany, and he was not sufficiently confident of his own troops to risk another major engagement. The Convention of Saratoga, signed October 17, 1777, therefore provided for the return of the British army to England under promise that it would not serve again in the war, though it was to be subject to exchange. The severe criticism of Gates for his delay in notifying Congress and Washington of the all-important victory at Saratoga is certainly not fair, as he wrote to President Hancock the day after the surrender, and sent the messages by his adjutant, Wilkinson. Gates can hardly be blamed, save perhaps for choosing Wilkinson in the first place. As to his delay in notifying Washington, it should be remembered that Gates did not know where Washington was after the Brandywine campaign, and so requested Congress to forward the dispatches to him, and especially the letter announcing the surrender. Inasmuch as Wilkinson's dispatches had to be relayed back across the state from York to the neighborhood of Philadelphia, delay was inevitable. Congress voted Gates its thanks and ordered a medal struck in commemoration of the victory over Burgoyne, November 4, 1777. Meantime, a serious difference of opinion arose between Washington and Gates, when the latter refused to return the Continental troops demanded by the former. Although Gates, after Saratoga, expressed his feeling that the infirmities of age were creeping upon him and was determined that this should be his last campaign, Congress on November 27 elected him to the Board of War and appointed him its president. This position kept him with Congress at York through a part of the winter of 1777-1778. Meantime, the real evils of Wilkinson's dilatory trip in October began to come to light. After Brandywine some member of Congress wrote a fawning letter to Gates insinuating that Washington was a failure, Gates a hero, and that something should be done about it. On October 11 Gen. Thomas Conway seems to have written to Gates expressing his disgust with the mismanagement of the war, his intention to resign, and some insolent criticism of Washington. According to Wilkinson, Gates gave this letter such publicity that every one at his headquarters knew all about it. When he subsequently learned from Conway that Washington was aware of the letter and also of his indiscretion in showing it about, he did not wait to hear from Washington, but wrote at once to the latter complaining that the letter had been stolen from him and asking Washington's aid in finding the culprit. Washington replied on January 4, 1778, in a most dignified fashion, saying he had the information via the Wilkinson-McWilliams-Stirling route and that all it meant to him was that Conway was his enemy. Instead of letting the matter rest, Gates felt called upon to write another lengthy letter to Washington in which, besides venting his spleen on the supposed betrayer of his confidence, he now called the offensive passages a forgery. Certain members of Congress at the time, notably Benjamin Rush and Gen. Thomas Mifflin, were engaged in a plan to supersede Washington with Gates. When the matter got confused with the game of "hunting the letter, " the various participants in the Conway Cabal sought cover, and the effort to elevate Gates failed through the inability of the participants to face the withering and honest scorn of the Commander-in-Chief. It is difficult to establish the fact that Gates actually shared in a conspiracy to secure Washington's position, but he knowingly let his friends in Congress do so. Wilkinson's indiscretions led to a duel between him and Gates, which took place on September 4, 1778, near White Plains, New York. After three rounds of pistols flashing in the pan, and the participants firing into the air, the two shook hands. On April 15, 1778, Gates was again appointed to command the northern department, and took up his head-quarters at Fishkill on the Hudson. During the summer of 1778 he tried to get Washington to let him displace Sullivan in the Rhode Island expedition. On October 22, 1778, he was sent to Boston to take command of the troops in the eastern department. He remained there through the winter of 1778-1779. His functions in the eastern department seem to have been confined largely to getting supplies. On October 27, 1779, he was at Newport and reported the withdrawal of the British from Rhode Island. Thence he rejoined Washington on the Hudson in December 1779. In the winter of 1780 Gates retired to his plantation in Virginia. On June 13 he was directed by Congress to take command of the army in the southern department where, because of the surrender of Lincoln at Charleston, the patriot cause was in desperate straits. He reached Hillsborough, then the capital of North Carolina, on July 19. He tarried there to get in touch with the Revolutionary leaders in that state, particularly the leaders of the North Carolina troops and the partisan corps, who still had plenty of fight in them. By August he was on the banks of the Peedee and on the 15th encamped with his army at Rugeley's Mill, near Camden, South Carolina. Cornwallis and the British were directly in front of him, and it was obvious that a conflict could not be avoided. He chose his ground with considerable skill and care, as Greene afterward attested, and secured the agreement of all his general officers that a battle must be fought. There is reason to believe, however, that his general officers were opposed to his getting into such a position in the first place. On August 16 occurred the battle of Camden, one of the most disastrous of the war, for the militia, who composed more than half of his army, ran like sheep. The Maryland troops, the backbone of his Continentals, stood firm, while Gates and the North Carolina general, Richard Caswell, strove in vain to rally the fugitives. The extent of the rout is attested by the fact that on the evening of the day of the battle, Gates reported the affair from Charlotte, North Carolina, seventy miles from the field. The causes of disaster were the virtual starvation of the troops for weeks beforehand, the reliance on raw militia, and the utter lack of cavalry in the face of Cornwallis's excellent equipment in this branch of the service. On October. 5, upon receiving the news of the disaster, Congress turned upon its erstwhile favorite and voted that an inquiry be made into his conduct, and that Washington appoint another commander of the southern department until that inquiry be held. Gen. Nathanael Greene relieved Gates at Charlotte on December 2, but soon found that the reorganization of the southern army was enough work without the additional task of holding an inquiry. Moreover, such a court required the presence of more general officers than could be spared from their duties elsewhere. Greene treated Gates with the utmost kindness. Despite the absence of proper witnesses and generals, Gates was willing that the court of inquiry be held anyway, but Greene, upon the unanimous advice of the general officers, declined to hold it. Gates therefore withdrew to his plantation, where he was waited on by a committee of four, Patrick Henry, R. H. Lee, Lane, and Thomas Nelson, from the Virginia House of Delegates, who assured him that the House had voted unanimously, on December 28, 1780, that his previous glorious services were such as could not be obliterated by any reverse of fortune. Throughout the year 1781 Gates remained at "Traveller's Rest, " writing constantly to Washington and to Congress requesting that the inquiry into his conduct be held. In April he went personally to Philadelphia to press his demand. Washington then wrote Gates, on May 12, 1781, that no court could proceed until charges were preferred, and that he, for one, had no intention of making such charges. Congress thereupon resolved, on May 21, 1781, that their previous act demanding the inquiry did not operate as a suspension of Gates from his command in the line, and that he might go to headquarters and assume such command as Washington might indicate. Gates, however, left Philadelphia and retired once more to Virginia, where he was when Washington passed by on his triumphant march to Yorktown. A year later, on August 5, 1782, Gates again demanded either exoneration or a court martial, and Congress generously responded by repealing its resolve of October 5, 1780, and by ordering Gates to take such command in the main army as Washington should direct. Gates, his self-respect restored, set out for headquarters and during the remainder of the war was with Washington at the cantonment at Newburgh, where he nobly seconded the Commander-in-Chief's efforts to quell the mutiny and discontent among the badly treated Continentals. In 1783 he returned once more to his Virginia home, and there was made president of the state Society of the Cincinnati, on October 9, 1783. In 1784 he and Washington were requested by the General Assembly to bring about cooperation with Maryland in regard to inland navigation and communication with western waters, and drew up a report, though the illness of Gates made it necessary for Washington to act alone. Gates continued to reside in Virginia until 1790, when, his old doubts as to social inequality besetting him, he emancipated his slaves and moved to New York. There he took up his residence at "Rose Hill Farm, " a place which to-day would be bounded by Twenty-third and Thirtieth Streets and Second and Fourth Avenues. He served one term in the New York legislature, 1800-1801. He died at "Rose Hill" on April 10, 1806.