On Saturday, November 11, from 5 to 7 pm, the Edmonston House will host a program on General Horatio Gates. This is a cooperative program of the National Temple Hill Association and the New Windsor Cantonment State Historic Site.
The home of James Edmonston has stood for over 250 years. Rescued in the 1960’s by the National Temple Hill Association, the house by that point was a junkyard showroom filled with old car parts. Now restored, the house serves as the headquarters for this local historic organization.
When General Horatio Gates was assigned the Edmonston home as winter quarters for 1782-83, he wrote General George Washington: “Your Excellency’s Dog kennel at Mount Vernon, is as good a Quarter as that I am now in”. Eyeing the larger and far more refined Ellison House, he expected to be billeted at that nearby property. To please Gates, the senior ranking Major General in the Continental Army, Quartermaster General Colonel Timothy Pickering had to evict Surgeon General John Cochran from the Ellison house. Angered by his removal, Cochran challenged the beleaguered Pickering to a duel.
Despite his utter defeat and flight from the battlefield of Camden, South Carolina, in 1780, he still remained as arrogant. An intriguer and schemer, he used friends in Congress to wrest the command of the army that would eventually defeat and capture a British army at Saratoga, in 1777. Many of his contemporaries and later historians believed that the victory was the result of the efforts of the man he replaced – Philip Schuyler. He was implicated in a plot with the same Congressional partisans who helped him supersede Schuyler to supplant Washington as commander-in-chief. While at the Ellison house he was involved in a conspiracy in March 1783, which threatened the very freedoms the country had fought to achieve.
This program is free and open to the public. Edmonston House is located at 1042 Route 94 in New Windsor.
For more information about New York State Parks and Historic Sites, click here.
Photo: James Edmonston House c. 1755, provided.
The more I look the more conflicted we seem when searching for heroes from the Revolutionary War. Gates as usurper of merit he didn’t deserve following Saratoga (he even gets to be in a painting in the rotunda of the US Capitol), Arnold (of course) as the Patriots’ most outstanding battlefield commander (if the bullet he took at Saratoga had hit his heart instead of his leg there’d be a state named after him now), papers in the hand of Charles Lee found in 1857 revealing his treason, lovable cuddly Israel Putnam surgically dismantled by Christopher Ward in his “The War of the Revolution”, even George Washington and Thomas Jefferson subjected to relentless ridicule by Gore Vidal in “Burr”. Perhaps the spirit of Richard Montgomery can find solace in his death at the gates of Quebec seeming to have fireproofed his good name.
YOU COMPLETELY IGNORE THE FACT THAT GATES WAS THE COMMANDING GENERAL AT THE MOST IMPORTANT BATTLE AND TURNING POINT OF THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION–THE BATTLE OF SARATOGA.
WHEN GATES TOOK OVER ON AUGUST 18, 1777 THE AMERICAN POSITION WAS ALMOST HOPELESS. IT WAS BECAUSE OF HIS RALLYING THE NEW ENGLAND MILITIA’S , HIS UNIFYING THE BADLY DIVIDED ARMY UNDER PHILLIP SCHUYLER AND HIS UNDERSTANDING OF THE WEAKNESS OF THE BRITISH SUPPLY POSITION THAT TWO MONTHS LATER THE ENTIRE BRITISH ARMY UNDER GENERAL BURGOYNE SURRENDERED. IT IS RIDICULOUS TO SUGGEST THAT SCHUYLER OR ARNOLD WHO WER RELIEVED OF COMMAND WERE RESPONSIBLE FOR THE VICTORY AT SARATOGA.
MOST AUTHORITIES THINK GATES HELPED PREVENT THE ARMY FROM STAGING A MUTINY AT NEWBURG.
AFTER THE WAR GATES PLAYED AN IMPORTANT ROLE IN THE NEW YORK CITY ELECTIONS OF 1800 WHICH LED TO THE ELECTION OF THOMAS JEFFERSON AS PRESIDENT. HE IS A TRUE UNDER APPRECIATED HERO.
JAMES S. KAPLAN, PRESIDENT, LOWER MANHATTAN HISTORICAL SOCIETY