 Well, welcome. My name is Liz Cobart. I'm working on translating my dissertation into a book, which looks mostly at the history of Albany, New York. And as I researched my dissertation, I came across this really interesting fact. So scholars termed the Battle of Saratoga correctly as the turning point of the revolution. If the Patriots had lost that battle, who knows if the French would have joined the fray? And the Patriots really needed French Navy ships, French soldiers, and French money to track Cornwallis in 1781. But what most scholars don't actually talk about is the Patriots almost lost the Battle of Saratoga. And they lost because they were embroiled in regional swaddling, most of it cultural. And today we're going to look at how Yankee, Yorker, jealousy affected the Battle of Saratoga. We can spend days talking about the jealousy and the roots of it, but today we'll limit it to Saratoga. Yankee, Yorker, jealousy affected the Patriots' work towards Saratoga in two ways. First in the commissary department and then in command. So where does this all begin? It begins pretty much in May 1775. New England is at war. The Patriots have said that Lexington and Concord were not necessarily looking for reconciliation. If we are, we're going to fight for it to get our rights. New York, they're a little more undecided. They're not really quite sure what they're going to do yet. So they're a little bit more reluctant to act. And this makes the Patriots in New England nervous. See, if they're going to actually get the British, or I shouldn't say because they're all British at that point, but they're going to get the Redcoats to leave them alone or to get them out of Boston. They're going to need more arms. Specifically, they're going to need cannon. But New England doesn't have a lot of cannon lying around and the Redcoats have gone through it and pretty much taken what they had. So the Patriots of New England looked to New York specifically to Fort Tye, Congaroga, where there was just an invalid regiment of 15 to 30 Redcoats stationed at Tye, Fort Tye, but there's a lot of cannon. So Ethan Allen starts marching over with his green mountain boys from what is Vermont at that point in time. It's called the New Hampshire Grants. And Benedict Arnold comes up from Connecticut. Again, New York hasn't declared war, so when these guys, these Patriots, write to the Albany Committee of Safety and ask for help, Albany's like, well, we have to push you off because we just can't act right now. So on May 24, 1775, the New Englanders storm Fort Tye, Congaroga and take the cannon. They have a lot of men up there and all of a sudden they need food and supplies. So they write to the Albany Committee again and ask for help. At this point, the New York Provincial Congress has said, okay, we're going to get into the war, so go ahead Albany, help these guys out. So Albany appoints five men to help gather food and supplies and help the Patriots of New England do what they need to do at Fort Tye, Congaroga. This is where the confusion and the jealousy starts to develop on our path to Saratoga in this quest of supply. So not long after Albany supplies five men to handle the supply efforts, Connecticut appoints Alicia Phelps on June 7, 1775 and his goal is to handle supplying the Patriot forces at Fort Tye, Congaroga. He arrives in Albany and one of the main commissaries there, John N. Blaker, is out of town. He's on a supply mission and Phelps asks his subordinate for the supplies and the subordinate's like, I don't know you, you don't know me. I can't hand you over everything that Blaker has until we sort this out. So Alicia Phelps gets all upset. He writes all these letters and he acts like the people of Albany don't want to help him, which isn't true. As soon as Blaker comes back and says, I see your command, you know, here are the supplies, the confusion still reigns because the Continental Congress is going to get in the mix. They are going to want to, Continental Congress wants to invade Canada. They believe that Canada is the, and this is sorry, this is an equal amount on the top and an equal amount on the bottom and another picture of Fort Tye. The Continental Congress is going to appoint Philip Schuyler to head the Northern Department and what the Northern Department is tasked with is invading Canada. Schuyler is very particular. He's also a great man for the job. Schuyler grew up in Albany. He knows all the routes to and from Canada. He had worked as a trader and a surveyor. He'd also been in the commissary department during the French and Indian War. He knows exactly what kind of supplies the Continental Army is going to need in their invasion of Canada. So he appoints his nephew, Walter Livingston to head the commissary department. So as you can imagine, Alicia Phelps is not so happy about this. There's actually a lot of problems in the commissary department just because the jobs in the commissary are seen as avenues to the wealth. The government gives you money and your job is close to supply the Army. So who are you going to get the supplies from? You're going to get them from your friends, your family members, and other people in your colony. So just like Philip Schuyler gives the job of the commissary to his nephew, Walter Livingston, Livingston starts spending 47,000 pounds New York currency with his friends and relatives, Philip von Rensselaer, Henry von Rensselaer, and Tunis von Fekten. So Alicia Phelps is feeling a little bit left out. And if you needed to know any more about how the commissary leads to wealth, well, here's just another example. In April 1776, Walter Livingston Walter Livingston actually submits a penny to Congress for a court contract that will actually result in a 700% profit. But it's not just the New Yorkers who are trying to profit. Alicia Phelps actually overcharged my 1,200 pounds New York currency. So everybody's trying to make some money here in the commissary department. Now, the command in the commissary gets money again because Continental Congress on July 19th, 1775 appoints Joseph Trumbull of Connecticut to be the commissary general for the entire Continental Army. And unfortunately, Joseph died young so there was no picture of him, so this is a picture of his illustrious family members. All of which who served important roles and who worked for independence. Now Trumbull had proven himself during the siege of Boston. Congress knew he would be capable of getting supplies. Trumbull was a merchant by trade. So that's why they appointed him to the Continental Army. Now he comes in, he supersedes Livingston with his buddy, Alicia Avery, lots of wishes in this story. So Livingston is not really happy about this. He tries to get along with both Trumbull and Alicia Avery. He's willing to submit to Trumbull's demands but he's really not happy about it. So what does this fighting in the commissary department have to do with the candidate expedition and ultimately Saratoga? Well, there's so much fighting that no one's really doing any supplying. You have the men from Connecticut that Alicia Avery and Alicia Phelps that have appointed and they're going throughout Albany County a huge county in upstate New York at that point or up colony New York. Offending every farmer in town. They don't know, they just believe that the farmer should be willing to give them supplies, take continental credit without hard currency and the farmers are like, no, we don't know you. We don't trust you. We want hard cash or we're not going to get any supplies. The New York commissary spends a lot of time going out and smoothing over the farmer's ruffled feathers. So morale in the northern department is pretty low because everybody knows that this infighting in the command in the commissary department is going on. To make matters worse, Congress writes to Skyler and orders him to start the Canada expedition. Skyler's like, look, we're not ready yet, but I have my orders so we're going to have to go. So in September 1775, pretty bad time of year to start invasion into Canada, the Continental Army starts its march on its way to Canada. Now, Skyler is not with him. He has the AGU. So Richard Montgomery pretty much leads that command. Now, as you can imagine, as our polar vortex has shown us, winter in upstate New York, Canada, and in New England can be rather harsh. And it was harsh that winter. It was very cold, roads become impassable, so even the supplies that the commissary department can gather, they can't get to the troops. And when they get to Canada, the Patriots are a little surprised. See, they thought they'd go to Canada and the Canadians would be like, yeah, we want to join the rebellion too. And they're like, no. So the Canadian merchants are not willing to supply the Patriots with the supplies they need. They're not interested in joining the Patriot cause. Those merchants that are willing to sell them supplies, they want hard currency too, which the Patriots lack. In the end, Canada fails. Like, the Americans go in, they capture Quebec, but they can't hold it. So they end up making a hasty retreat and a large part of that failure is just failure of supplies. They can't supply their men with warm clothing, with food, with firewood, or anything else that they need to supply or need to live in Canada. So this is a bit humiliating for the Congress and the soon to be United States. And so there's the blame game that starts up. So New Englanders are blaming the New Yorkers. The New Yorkers are blaming the New Englanders. Congress decides they want in on this game and they're divided into whether they're New English allies or New Yorker allies. And then the New York Provincial Congress said, wait a second, we're going to get to the root of this and they launch an investigation to see who's at fault. Is it the people of the city and county of Albany? Did the Albany County Committee of Safety not do enough? Are we talking just about the commissaries? Is it their fault? Who's responsible? So they even launch a thorough investigation. They look at provision returns. They look at prices paid. They look at the number of wagons that were employed. They look at the availability of food stuffs that could have been sent to Canada. They analyze Philip Stiler, Alicia Avery and Walter Livingston's accounts. And what they turn up is there is a little bit of pot stirring that may have hurt them. They uncover a letter from James Yancey who was appointed by Alicia Avery. So he's from Connecticut who were at least in that band of Connecticut commissaries. He wrote a letter to the Bennington Committee of Safety. Not a popular move from New York. Vermont, Bennington's in what is now Vermont, but that land is contested. New England says they own it. New York says they own it. Everybody's got a bit of interest in it so that nobody likes dealing with Vermont anyway. But James Yancey writes to Bennington hoping to find a sympathetic year and he says, I need you to ship immediately. I need you to immediately ship flower to Fort Ticonderoga. And I don't care what you have to pay to get it there. Just get it there. In fact, he says, quote, some evil-minded people in and about Albany have stopped the provisions from going up to Ticonderoga, end quote. So he portrays the situation of supply to Ticonderoga as solely the people of New York's fault. There's insinuations around the ranks. One militia unit actually says they hope to see Albany burn for their evil behavior. Alicia Avery, he's shown this letter during this investigation. He says, I have no idea why James Yancey wrote this or that he wrote it. I have found the New Yorkers to be nothing but helpful. So the New York Provincial Congress clears Albany and the New Yorkers of any fault, but we still don't know exactly who's at fault for the commissary problems. I'm willing to place blame on everybody on that. So Yankee, York, or jealousy, here's a battle with the facts. Sorry, I got so engrossed in the presentation I forgot to actually give you the slides in May. So this is good back. Richard Montgomery is going to die here. And remember the Trumbull family? John Trumbull painted the fall of Richard Montgomery, among other things. So he dies at that battle. Who's to blame? New York? We're going to investigate everybody. Who's at fault there? And here we are now. We're back to where we're supposed to be. So Yankee, York, or jealousy, also finds its way into command. So you have Philip Schuyler and Horatio Gates. Horatio Gates is not even from New England, but the New Englanders love him because he showed up at the Siege of Boston and he proved instrumental in helping get the British to evacuate Boston. The New Englanders like Gates because he gets along with the men, he's very egalitarian and democratic, whereas Schuyler is seen as this Dutch patrician who has this lofty attitude who could care less what his subordinates think. The New Yorkers like him, they understand Schuyler culturally, where he's coming from, but the New Englanders do not. So there's controversy, of course. So Schuyler, he gets the blame for Canada. And the New Englanders seize upon this to try and get Gates the command of the Northern Department. They start writing to their delegates in the Continental Congress, trying to get Gates the command. The New Yorkers are still sticking up for Tyler. And so the Continental Congress decides, well, we're going to seek a middle path here. We're going to give Gates the control of the army in Canada. So this is happening actually just before the Patriots lose Canada. And we're going to give Philip Schuyler command of everything else. So by the time Horatio Gates makes his way up to Albany, the Patriots have evacuated Canada. And Gates goes, well, you see, that's my army. It came from Canada. Clearly, that's what the Continental Congress wanted was for me to control the army that came from Canada. And Philip Schuyler goes, no, it said the army in Canada, and we don't have an army in Canada anymore, so it's my army. So this creates, of course, a lot of problems. So what Congress is going to do is they're going to be like, alright, you're not just focusing on battles or planning or anything else, you're just focusing on command. So what we're going to do is we're going to make Gates the commander of all the troops at Fort Ticonderoga. And that's one of the places that the Patriots fall back to is Fort Ticonderoga. And it sits right on the Hudson River Lake Champlain corridor, so it's a really important point. And everybody, especially Schuyler, knows at this point that the British are going to come down from Canada to the city, down the Hudson River. So Fort Tie is important. Schuyler knows that he's going to need about 10,000 men to guard Fort Tie, but neither he nor Gates can get the New Englanders or the New Yorkers to turn out. In fact, the soldiers that do turn out during the winter of 76, 77 arrive in all of the half-naked and diseased. So they need 10,000 men just at Fort Ticonderoga, and all they can muster is about 3,500 men. Well, Gates is not happy with this situation. He runs back down to the Continental Conference to make his plea in person for command. So Arthur Sinclair has given command of Fort Ticonderoga. Now, John Pergoing is going to march down the Hudson River, and he's going to have a two-prong assault. He is going to take 8,000 men and he will personally lead them down the Hudson River, but he sends Barry St. Ledger with 2,000 men to march in from the Mopoc Valley. Their target is Albany. If they can control Albany, then they will have a clear shot down to New York City, which is already in the hands of the British. So on June 13th, 1777, Pergoing launches his assault down the Champlain River. By July 2nd, 1777 between July 2nd and July 5th, he takes Fort Ticonderoga. Congress is really mad about but lost. They blame Schuyler. They end up replacing Schuyler with Gates, which works out great for Gates and horribly for Schuyler. Because Schuyler did a lot to beat up the defenses around the Hudson River. He went and had his men cut up trees, want to get this right, but basically chopped down the dams that were of dykes that were holding up water. So he's flooding the forest because Pergoing has this really long wagon train so he's making it sure that they get stuck in the mud for that. But Gates is the one that's going to get all the credit for Ticonderoga, for Saratoga rather. So the New Englanders are happy about this, but they're not necessarily showing up in any great numbers when Gates, where the Gates command starts to spread. So what gets the New Englanders and the New Yorkers to finally cooperate, to finally form some sort of unified army that works towards one goal? The murder of Jane McCrae. Now Jane McCrae is this, she's a loyalist. She's waiting, she refuses to evacuate. Everybody knows Pergoing is coming. The Albany committee sends orders that anybody in the area should evacuate. And McCrae says no, I'm going to stay. My officer, Beau, is coming down with the British army. I'm going to wait for him. Well, Pergoing's holding the Shoney allies, the Iroquois, some of the members of the Iroquois nations. They go through their terms of warfare and they end up killing and scalping Jane McCrae and others. Paintings like this are painted. Propaganda flows around that Pergoing can't control his Indians so if you don't do something, they're going to come into your town. This plays on fears of like a century of imperial warfare where Native American allies had gone through and massacred towns like Schenectady and Deerfield, Massachusetts. So nobody wants this to happen so New Yorkers and New Englanders alike start turning out in droves and they all end up at Saratoga. So the battles of Saratoga start on September 19th, 1777. That's when you have the Battle of Freeman's Farms. The other big battle is on October 7th, 1777 at Bemis Heights. It all leads to Pergoing's surrender. This is huge. The French go, wow, those Patriots, they can actually stick it out and defeat a major British force and at this time that's not an easy feat because the British army is the best army in the entire world. The most well-equipped and highly trained army. So the French are impressed. Sir Vermier, King Louis the 16th they decide, well, we're going to join this fray and on March 1778 they declare war on Great Britain. They start sending ships. They start sending men and they start sending money. So in the end the Americans are able to corner Cornwallis at Yorktown in October 1781. So almost three or four years after the Battle of Saratoga Cornwallis surrenders and the fighting ends. So that's the end of that story. It's kind of a long confusing one. Just gives you an idea of what the confusion must have been like in terms of who's in command or who's in the commissary department. But that turning point of the revolution that very important battle almost didn't happen because the Americans weren't united. They weren't united in whether they were going to be Patriot Loyalists or to ride somewhere in the middle and even those who were Patriot weren't necessarily united into whether they were going to support the cause. What did play a big role? Region. What is best for my region? What is best for my people? It all goes back to these local fighting and fighting and that took a major toll and almost cost the Patriots a big doubt. So that's all I have. If you have any questions I'd be happy to explain something further or try to answer them. Liz, this is way more interesting and very creative story than the headlines we usually think of the Battle of Saratoga. Did you say this came out of a dissertation? I mean this sounds like way more interesting than that. It came out of a dissertation and I like details so there's a lot of details in that. I don't know how it all translated into the book but I think this is about Chapter 6. 5, 6 of the book. So where is this book in life? I'm going to call it America's First Gateway and I don't know what the title after the semi-colon will be but it's going to look at how Americans form cultural communities to become Americans. I'm actually a New Englander but my advisor was like, well you should study New York specifically already. More on that later if you want to attend the post-revolution New England migration talk. But New England, it's founded by English people and New York, it's founded by Dutch people who aren't all Dutch. They don't have to become Dutch before they become British or American so it's a really neat complex story and this is just part of the story that plays in as more affects these cultural communities and sometimes these cultural communities have a hard time adapting to the situation around them. So, who's that? You made a distinction on how gates being controlled like, you know, Army, Canada and these landscapes being controlled in America. Why is it important at that point that the United States runners are coming to the United States? Is making distinctions between American and Canadian colonies because they're all still British colonies? So, why is there a distinction? Well, they Canada, they hope Canada will join the rebellion but it's not going to happen. So, they do make a distinction between Canada. Also, Canada at that point has been largely French. They are just new Britons. The traditional Britons, the ones that live in the 13 colonies still aren't quite sure what to make of these Frenchmen, some of whom are Catholic which the winglanders in particular are very worried about fighting over the Quebec Act or lumping it in with the intolerable acts shows this. So, that's why they would make a distinction between Canada. The Continental Congress they're just, I think sometimes they get so embroiled in fighting they're just trying to put out little fires all the time. This was a fire that could become a really big place so they're trying to just kind of put a temporary hole on it. So, they're like, alright we'll appease the winglanders. We're very bold one Congress. And we'll give their main gates a little bit of something and we'll make it Canada so we can tell the New Yorkers we're not taking away Phillip Sackpiler's command at all but we're going to keep his activities in New York. So, it's kind of, it's a compromise that they're hoping will kind of smooth things over and put out this plane but all it really does is make people angry. Okay, after the battle did that did the outcome of the battle sort of serve to sort of quell these inter-regional rival rivalies for any time or were they always sort of bubbling under the surface or did I think did I think New Yorkers and New Englanders were what happened? It's an interesting question I haven't thought about it on a term. The New Englanders are going to invade New York after the revolution and there's going to be a lot of similar cultural infighting along the subtle communities of the Hudson River because the New Englanders are going to go in and they're like, we're going to turn this into a second New England and they do that in much of New York State. They basically re-established, replant their new New Orleans architecture and everything in the New York frontier and that just proves harder to do on the settlements of the Hudson and in fact the New York Yankees are actually going to invade New York City too. At one point there's going to be a New England majority in New York City and the culture that develops there as well. So they're going to be called. So to answer your question I think they're still bubbling under the surface, but especially as the war goes further south they're still less close to home. They're not worrying about the British at that point invading from Canada into the New England frontier or into New York at that point. There is going to be some outlets for it. I need to do some more research on this, but Sullivan and George Clinton brought up James. James Clinton are going to lead an assault on the Hudson-Shoney peoples of western New York in 1778-1779 I think is one of their campaigns. So what's known as Sullivan's campaigns and they're going to massacre a lot of civilians and Native Americans during that and the Native Americans and the Loyalists who are fighting Sullivan's expedition well, they're going to massacre people as well. So I think there's just some sort of outlets like oh you're driving me nuts and it's like oh I killed a Yorker today or I killed an Indian today. I don't know, I have to do a little bit more research and I suspect that they're just bubbling under and for those who go south it's just a little less present because they're not that close to home. I wonder if you could talk more about the cultural class that you mentioned because I really like what you're saying about this political infighting and this rival political regionalism. Can you broaden that out and talk about the cultural piece because I think that's really a treat. Okay, how can I do this in like 60 seconds? So the New Englanders I'm going to simplify this but the New Englanders think of them as land hungry they build their towns everybody's going to get a piece of the land and that only works for the first couple of generations and then they start looking west to New York where the Dutch have not done a great job of supplying their colony with people so the New Englanders from Connecticut go in and they basically take one island and Governor Stuyvesant is like okay well there's not much I can do here I'm going to let you have the land just you need to behave yourselves and just know that you're in the jurisdiction of New Netherland and not in the jurisdiction of Connecticut and that doesn't always work because they do what they want to do so the New Englanders are always looking to get into New York but they don't want it to be part of New Netherland or part of New York they want it to be part of New England and you see this on the eastern banks of the Hudson River New York and Massachusetts they're not going to settle their boundary until 1786 and part of that is because it's political but the other part is it's just New Englanders and New Yorkers they just have a very different outlook New England tends to be very homogenous they tend to be congregationalists which is not all that it is different but not all that different from the Dutch Reformed Calvinism so they have different religious views of building things so even like the city of Albany and Esophus and other areas in New York are going to look very different than a New England village so it just goes back to the colonial roots and there's a lot of infighting and hard feelings during colonial wars like the war, King's War, King George's War that you could root this cause to so I hope that answers your question I don't have hours on it I'm just wondering how that culture of class shows itself in sort of this commissary who's in charge I'm not sure how that plays out in the actual event they don't trust each other so like Trumbull takes Livingston because he has to to appease Skyler not because he wants Livingston Trumbull had his way he would be all Connecticut people just as like Skyler had his way he would not appoint anybody from Connecticut so some of it is just local this is the way we do things here we don't get it and some of that is cultural but I can't right off the top of my head I'm just wondering if you could say a little bit more about the murder of James Gray I'm not familiar with this particular events what I was hearing was like we're fighting, we're fighting, we're fighting oh my god the Americans are selling people and that sort of like gets over the Americans are sort of threatened it brings the threat real so the New Englanders start turning out because they don't, if we're going gets into New York how quick is he going to get into New Hampshire grants in New Hampshire or Connecticut or Massachusetts and the only place the British I think are at that point is in Newport Rhode Island New England is largely a British free zone and they don't want the British soldiers back they also have a long history of going back of French and Indian Warfare British and Indian Warfare and the countryside towns get massacred because of that in the war so when James Gray and other civilians are killed in that incident it's saying the British are coming and they can't control what comes with them so we're going to have another deer field we're going to have another skin empty massacre on our hands and we're supposed to be innocent like there's no way she'd be involved in the war she was waiting her bow most people would just forget the fact that you know she was a whale it's waiting for a British officer to come down with her goings army which is like she was an innocent Indian to massacre her her going has no control over his Indian allies and they're coming to our town next so that's what that incident does it says we don't want them in our town so quickly your research on supports or oppose the contention that Benedict Arnold maybe was more instrumental in the Saratoga victory than he hates himself I am not a military historian I talk about this controversy because it plays into the cultural but I don't really go into that from what I've read Benedict Arnold was a hero of Saratoga at this point he's really a hero of the whole thing he's one of the officers that gets the shaft in terms of promotion which is what they say drove him to become a traitor but at this point he's a hero and an underappreciated one but Gates just kind of takes all of the happiness from the battle he takes all of the athletes from the battle but I've read sympathetic accounts of Gates too that says he really knew what he was doing and whatnot but I tend to stick up the sky because I do think he got the shaft a little bit alright well if there are any other questions you're more than welcome to come and ask me I want to just give you a few minutes break before the next session at 11.15 John Bell will be in here to talk about the Boston bankruptcy that led to the American Revolution that's what will be in this room if you want to learn more about the Erie Canal I'll be up on the second floor talking about the quality degree idea thank you very much for coming and thank you for your questions I hope you can enjoy the rest of your screen