USA > Massachusetts > Berkshire County > Pittsfield > The history of Pittsfield (Berkshire County), Massachusetts, from the year 1734 to the year 1800 > Part 29
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And, if it is true that we have lost three hundred cannon at Ticonderoga, it cannot be supposed that there are many near or at headquarters. Suffer us to suggest that some of the brigades marching to Fort Edward take along with them some of the field-pieces paraded at Springfield.
We shall be glad if our ebullition of resentment against the late northern conduct has not run us into indecency or impertinence. But we trust that you will forgive us, as it comes from hearty well-wishers to the common cause of America.
We are your most obedient and very humble servants, WM. WILLIAMS, in behalf of the Selectmen. JOSIAH WRIGHT, in behalf of the Committee.
PITTSFIELD, July, 13, 1777.
[ Gen. Schuyler to Col. Williams and Josiah Wright, Esq.]
HEADQUARTERS, FORT EDWARD, July 10, 1777.
GENTLEMEN, -Your favor of yesterday's date I have this moment received. The evacuation of Ticonderoga and Mount Independence is, unhappily, too true. I am informed that it was done in consequence of a resolution of the
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general officers in council. I have not yet been so happy as to see any of them, and cannot therefore inform yon on what principle the resolution was founded. I am sorry to learn from Col. Williams of White Creek, and other gentlemen, that it is imputed to me as having given an order for that purpose. If such order was ever given, I should not dare to deny it, as the means of detection must be very easy, even if principle were no restraint to asserting a falsehoo.l. Gen. Learned has seen the originals of all my letters to Gen. St. Clair; for they were returned unsealed by Col. Long, having never reached Ticonderoga. They hold up ideas widely, nay directly, repugnant to the orders I am so unjustly charged with giving. You will please, therefore, give my own words in contradiction to such report, should it have taken place with you. The enemy have appeared at Fort Ann, but at present none of them are there, except a few lurking Indians, or white men disguised like Indians, of which we are assured the enemy have many, in order to intimidate. I am in hopes, that when Gen. St. Clair and Gen. Nixon, with the troops respectively with them, arrive, that I shall be able to stop their progress in the vicinity of this place, provided we are properly supported by the militia. I am accordingly thankful for your offers of as- sistance, and will accept of any you can give. Carriages are greatly needed ; and any number you can expedite to me, however small, will be of service. I need not inform you that the more men there are sent to me, the better. If, perchance, there should be any lead attainable by you, I wish to have it sent to me with all despatch, as we are greatly straitened in that neces- sary article.
I am, gentlemen, with much respect, Your obedient, humble servant,
PIL. SCHUYLER. Col. WMr. WILLIAMS, JOSIAH WRIGHT, Esq.1
The assistance proffered by Pittsfield to Gen. Schuyler, in its most essential particular, went before its offer. When news first came that Burgoyne was advancing up the lake from Canada, Capt. John Strong and Lient. Caleb Goodrich led fifty-four men, on the 30th of June, to Fort Ann; and, if tradition is correct, they took part in Col. Long's sanguinary and almost successful fight. And it must have been immediately upon learning the disaster at Ticonderoga, that, on the 8th July, Capt. William Francis and Lieut. Stephen Crowfoot marched with forty men to re-enforce the army at Fort Edward. Ten days after, Lieut. James IInbbard led a detachment of ten men to Manchester. On the 18th of June, these corps were all in the field, making, with the thirty-two men
1 Mass. Ar.
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and several officers in the Continental service, more than one hun- dred and forty soldiers in the armies of the country.
Gen. Schuyler, on the 26th of July, dismissed one-half of the militia of New England, and of Albany County in New York ; and the greater portion of the rest a month later. The company of Capt. Strong returned home under the first order; the two others, on the 26th of August, under the second. Schuyler's pretence for this course, while there was the severest need of men, was, that the v militia of Berkshire and Albany were so impatient to return to their fields, that he released a part lest he might lose the whole; and then, having dismissed the one-half, he sent home the other. The explanation he gave in private was, that he considered every one of the Southern soldiers, whom he was importuning Washington to send him from his own too meagre force, to be worth two of the men of New England.1 Possibly the fundamental reason lay in the distrust in which he knew himself to be held by the militia of Berkshire and Albany Counties, and in hardly a less degree by those of all the Eastern States. The contemned soldiery shortly had a noble revenge, in proving upon the fields of Bennington and Saratoga, and on the shores of Lake Champlain, that, under officers in whose ability they could trust, they had few superiors in arms. Had Schuyler possessed, like Stark and Brown, the mag- nanimity to overlook their faults, that sympathy with their rude virtues which taught those leaders how to win the confidence of their men, and the genius which enabled them to render even their failings useful to their country, he might, with the soldiery whom he so grossly underrated, have forestalled the successes which soon shed lustre on the northern army, and have escaped the bitterness of removal from a command in which he believed victory almost within his grasp.
With the triumphs attending his pursuit of the flying garrison of Ticonderoga, the fortunes of the British commander culmi- nated ; and even these were achieved at an expense in men which he could ill afford, and which could by no means be made good from the loyalists who flocked to him at Skenesborough. Here his blunders became more palpable, and his perplexities began to accumulate. Following the most impracticable routes, it was not until the 30th of July that he found himself at Fort Edward with
1 Brancroft, Hist. U. S., vol. ix. p. 373.
. 19
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a wearied army, and surrounded by ever-increasing difficulties. Before leaving Canada, he had directed a co-operating column to proceed by the way of Oswego and the Mohawk. This body, he now learned, was already before Fort Stanwix. The defeat which it there met was not within his purview of possibilities; and it behooved him to make all haste down the Hudson, in order to form the proposed junction before the occupation of Albany, which was confidently assigned for the 22d or 23d of Angust. But his transportation was utterly inadequate to such a movement. Carle- ton, still governing in Canada, confined his assistance strictly to the letter of his instructions, and acted, even within that limit, with the reverse of zeal. The wagons contracted for in that Prov- ince, unfaithfully made, were so rickety as to be of little service; the horses, insufficient in number, arrived in wretched condition. The subsistence which could be ordinarily obtained from all sources barely sufficed for the daily consumption : it was rare good fortune when a magazine of four days' supply was accumulated.
In this strait, Burgoyne was prepared to welcome any suggestion which promised relief. Our old friend Skene of Skenesborough was in his camp ; and Burgoyne, trusting to the intimate acquaint- ance with the country which he was supposed to possess, had latterly relied much upon his counsels, raised him to the rank of colonel, and made him titular governor of the regions thereabout.
This man represented, to say the least with great exaggeration, that the Americans had established large depots of supplies, and especially of horses at Bennington in Vermont, which he asserted might easily be captured by surprise.
The veteran generals, Phillips and Reidesel, protested warmly against the scheme, as attended with too great risks. The affairs in which they had recently engaged the retreating Americans had probably persuaded them, that, whatever might be the condition of the opposing army as a whole, there were in it corps sufficiently intact, and commanded by officers of sufficient dash and ability, to render them extremely dangerous to a detached column.
Burgoyne's necessities were, however, imperious; and he not only eagerly embraced the proposed plan, but enlarged its scope. The final written instructions to Lieut .- Col. Baum, the German officer who was assigned to the command, defined the purposes of the expedition to be, -to scour the country, with Peters's corps (Tories) and the Indians, from Rockingham to Otter Creek ; to
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get cattle and horses, and mount Reidesel's Dragoons ; to go down the river as far as Brattleborough, and return by the great road, which passed through the extreme north-west corner of Berkshire to Albany, there to rejoin the army of Burgoyne; to endeavor to make the country believe that it was the advance guard of the general's army, who were to cross the Connecticut, and proceed via Springfield to Boston ; to make prisoners of all civil, as well as · military officers, holding under Congress ; to tax the towns where they halted for whatever they needed, taking hostages for their performances ; to bring all horses fit either to mount the dragoons or for battalion service, with all the saddles and bridles which could be found. The number of horses, besides those for the dragoons, ought, it was the British general's modest opinion, to be thirteen hundred; but, if more were to be obtained, so much the better.
Verbal orders were given to send back the spoils of Bennington at once to Burgoyne's camp, which, in order to be nearer to Baum in case of necessity, had been advanced down the river to a point opposite Saratoga, and near the mouth of the Batten Kill. It is clear that Burgoyne's march down the Hudson could only be facil- itated by such transportation as could be obtained at Bennington ; for the fruits of the marauding beyond that point would only reach him at Albany. It will be perceived how large a share of the labors and dangers of the expedition were submitted to for another purpose. The raid beyond the first point named was an out- growth of that system of terror which Burgoyne, in council with his royal master and the most infamous of his ministers, had devised as the fittest expedient to restore the rebellious peo- ple of the Colonies to their allegiance.
Nothing, surely, could be a more efficient adjunct to such a system, than a raid of. mercenaries, ignorant of the language of the people, instructed to live upon the country, and with unlimited power to make prisoners, supplemented by a "scouring" of In- dians and exasperated Tories. And nothing could be more condu- cive to the permanence of submission - supposing terror compe- tent to induce it- than a military police, well mounted upon horses stripped from the conquered territory. But, whatever may have been the object prominent in the mind of the British com- mander when sending out this ill-starred expedition, the belief that it could safely march through the route indicated, much less
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carry out the programme laid down for it, betrays that pitiable misconception of the people with whom he had to deal which characterized his leadership from first to last.
But, in fact, he looked upon that whole region as virtually sub- dued, and only needing to be made sensible of the fact by a vigor- ons application of the rod. In the absence of all active opposition from the American forces, the natural obstacles he was obliged to encounter did not suffice to disabuse him of the fatal fallacy. As. the British camp advanced from post to post, until it was estab- lished on the banks of the Hudson, less than forty miles above Albany, Schuyler, although pure in purpose and eager to meet every personal danger, yet dispirited, irresolute, fretted by unjust imputations, and doubtless conscious of grave errors with which he was not yet charged, fell back from Fort Edward to Fort Miller, thence to Saratoga, and finally to Stillwater and the Mo- hawk River.
Washington, alarmed at the hopeless tone of his letters and his perpetual complaints of the New-England militia, robbed his own already depleted army to furnish him re-enforcement, which an officer like Stark would have rapidly drawn and organized from the surrounding country ; and sent to his aid Arnold, whom he regarded as the ablest of the major-generals, and who certainly did not lack in dash, as well as Lincoln, who had the confidence of the militia, upon whom the sagacions commander-in-chief well knew all must finally, in a great measure, depend.1
But it was left to an independent commander to carry out, although ignorant that it had been made, the suggestion which Washington in vain wrote to Schuyler, that, "if the enemy con- tinned to act in detachments, one vigorous fall upon one of those detachments might prove fatal to the whole expedition." After a brilliant record from the very inception of the present war, as well as in that of 1754, Col. John Stark of New Hampshire had retired from the Continental service in the March of 1777, disgusted with the omission of his name from the list of newly-appointed brigadiers, in which those of far inferior men figured. This cir- cumstance, untoward as it then appeared, in good time proved to be of inestimable advantage to the country, which profited by the blundering injustice of its representatives.
1 Bancroft.
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Upon the irruption of Burgoyne, New Hampshire being one of the frontiers threatened, the patriotic legislature of that State, roused by the imminence of the danger, determined to raise two brigades of militia for its defence. Stark was tendered the com- mand of one of these, and of the whole, when in combined service, by virtue of seniority ; and with this force was directed to " pro- ceed to the new State," 1 and "check the advance of Burgoyne."
The task was one from which commanders of more abundant resources were shrinking; but Stark was willing to undertake it, although only upon the indispensable condition that his command should be an entirely independent one, responsible to the legisla- ture of New Hampshire solely, and in no way subject to the Con- tinental generals. Such was the estimation in which his ability, as well as his patriotism and sound sense, was held by the legis- lature, that, unprecedented and dangerous in principle as was his demand, it was complied with without hesitation. That demand and that compliance fought and won the battle of Bennington.
Stark had hardly reached Manchester, when Gen. Lincoln arrived at the same place, charged by Gen. Schuyler with orders to bring the militia in that quarter to the west bank of the Hudson, where he was concentrating his army to oppose the progress of Burgoyne ; or fall back before him. Stark, in whose judgment, as in that of Washington, the better policy seemed to be to hang heavily on the enemy's flank and rear, flatly refused to comply, and, on the 9th of August, established his headquarters at Bennington.
Baum set out from Batten Kill early on the morning of the 13th, the general showing his interest in the expedition by riding with him across the stream. The force consisted of four hundred Brunswick dismounted dragoons, a detachment of Hanan artiller- ists with two field-pieces, Capt. Frazer's English marksmen, all the French Canadians, a considerable body of the Queen's Royal Rangers (Peters's corps), and bands of savages to the number of perhaps one hundred and fifty. Those who have examined the huge long sword, the ponderous musket, and brazen helmet, now in the Massachusetts Senate Chamber, which were worn by the German troops in Baum's expedition, will comprehend how utterly unfit such a body were for a rapid movement. Surprise is an effect
1 Vermont, which had then just assumed its independent rank and its beautiful name.
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which they seem to have only been capable of producing in the minds of those who witnessed their selection for such a movement as the present. Their tactics, also, were as cumbrous as their armor; and the British officers affirmed, that, in forest-roads which incessant rains had rendered beds of unfathomable mire, the Ger- man officers halted their men ten times an hour to dress their ranks.
The distance from the mouth of the Batten Kill to Bennington, by the route pursued, was probably little more than thirty miles. The presence of the Indians at Cambridge, twelve miles from Bennington, where they were committing their usual outrages, was reported to Stark late in the afternoon of the 13th ; and Lieut .- Col. Gregg, with two hundred men, was sent out to check and chastise them. During the following night, word was received that the savages were merely the advanced scouts of a large body of troops pushing directly for Bennington. Stark immediately put the whole force at headquarters under arms, sent express to Gen. Lincoln in command of the forces collected at Manchester, and dispersed messengers in all directions to summon the local militia to the rescue.
The tradition has long been current, that the alarm reached Pittsfield on the Sabbath; that the messenger coming to the door of the meeting-house, where the people were still engaged in divine worship, announced the approach of the British; that thereupon the pastor descended from the pulpit, and, standing on the little platform beneath it, called upon his people to go forth with him to do battle with the enemies of his country.
The tradition is not one of those current among Mr. Allen's descendants ; and it is disproved by the fact that the battle was fought on Saturday. The origin of the story probably was, that, when the alarm reached town, the citizens, as was their custom, assembled in the meeting-house to take measures for an effectual response ; and that there the minister, with his heart full of the emotions excited by his late experience at Ticonderoga, made an address whose eloquence and power were remembered long after the attendant circumstances became obscured.
This explanation is rendered the more plausible by that portion of the legend which affirms that Mr. Allen spoke musket-in-hand ; while, since the days of Indian surprises, the most belligerent clergymen had given over the practice of making an armory of their pulpits.
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A large portion of the able-bodied men of the town were already in the field; others had just returned, and were scattered upon their farms, deeply engrossed in their too long-delayed agricultural labors. But the exigency was felt to be of the most pressing and alarming nature ; and the best citizens of the town pressed forward to meet it, irrespective of legal exemption from military service, or any other personal consideration.
Twenty-two men enrolled themselves in all, under the command of Lieut. William Ford, an officer who saw much service in those days. With him served the veteran Col. Easton, Rev. Mr. Allen, Capts. Charles Goodrich, James Noble, and William Francis, Lients. Joseph Allen (second in command), Josiah Wright, and Rufus Allen.
On the 16th, and of course before news of the battle was received, a second detachment of seventeen men, under Lieut. James Hubbard, set out for Bennington; and this, too, was peculi- arly constituted, for in its ranks were Capts. Isaac Dickinson and John Strong and Lieut. Oliver Root. Major Israel Stoddard and Woodbridge Little, Esq., also signalized their newly-sworn alle- giance to the "Independent United States of America " by volun- teering in Lieut. Hubbard's detachment ; and we find in its rolls, as well, the name of Ezekiel Root.
The first detachment hurried to the threatened point in hot haste. Possibly every man got there as best he could. Certainly there was no superfluous weight of armor, and no dressing the ranks on the march. Mr. Allen set out in the old sulky, the wonted companion of his pastoral visits; going to war in his chariot, like the heroes of classic and scriptural story.
Of the Berkshire militia districts, Col. Symonds, of that nearest the scene of action, marched his full regiment. Col. Brown, the commander of the middle district, in which Pittsfield lay, was absent; and the detachment of his corps was led, and command- ed with great spirit and military skill, by Lieut .- Col. David Rossiter of Richmond. From southern Berkshire, several towns sent volunteers. Meanwhile, as the people of the surrounding district were rallying to his support, Stark, on the 14th, had checked Baum's forces at a point in Hoosac, N.Y., five iniles from Bennington Church, and near the Wallamsac, a little wind- ing branch of the Hoosac River. On a small elevation near this stream, Baum occupied a strong position, which, during the heavy
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rain of the 15th, he was able to fortify with two lines of breast- works, although suffering severely from Stark's skirmishers. On the 14th, these sharp-shooters succeeded in killing or wounding thirty of the enemy, with no loss to themselves; and, on the 15th, the woods where the Indians had camped were so thoroughly scouted, that the savages, declaring the forest full of Yankees, be- gan to desert in large numbers.
Among the volunteers of Southern Berkshire was a company of Stockbridge Indians, who, although civilized, retained, for the con- venience of the service, their national costume, and were among the most valued of Stark's scouts. An incident of the battle was related by Linus Parker, which illustrates the double danger to which these faithful allies of the colonists were subjected. On the night previous to the fight, which was dark and dreary, Parker was on picket, and was induced to take double duty, and remain unrelieved at his post until morning. When the light broke, he found himself near a heavy belt of pines and hemlocks, which at once struck him as an admirable covert for lurking savages. He accordingly betook himself to watch behind a large tree; and, sure enough, a huge Indian with war-paint, musket, tomahawk, and scalper, soon showed himself, and, after taking a wary observation, walked straight towards Parker's hiding-place. The latter drew his musket to his shoulder; but, bethinking himself that a party of Mohegans were out on scout, determined to challenge, and shouted, " Who comes there ?" -" A friend," was the reply. " A friend to whom ?" After a painful hesitation, "To the Congress !" --- " Advance, and give the countersign !" -"I can't," exclaimed the stranger, advancing and trembling with emotion : "O Parker! thank God, it is you! If it had been anybody else, they'd never stopped to talk to poor Indian. I'd been a dead man, sure."
The stranger proved to be Capt. Solomon, a Stockbridge chief, who had been out three days with a scouting-party, who had exhausted their provisions. "Now, Solomon," said Parker, “give me your gun, tomahawk, and scalper, and sit down yonder. Play my prisoner, and we'll get a drink." The guard soon came along ; and, to the inquiry of the sergeant, " Who have you there?" Parker's reply was, "You can see, can't you ? ask him." But Solomon, having been duly instructed, could talk nothing but Indian ; and was taken, with his " captor, " to the colonel, who at once recognized the scout. The drams were produced; and
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Solomon was soon on his way back with supplies for his famishing tribesmen.
Stark continually gained strength by the arrival of the militia, by inuring his raw troops to danger, and by organizing the frag- mentary squads in which some of the most ardent of his recruits had come.
The Berkshire militia arrived during the night, thoroughly drenched, of course, with the rain, and clogged with the mire through which they had trudged thirty miles, but having kept their powder dry, and full of heart for immediate action. The frequent tedious marches, which, in the midst of harvest-time, they had recently made, only to be sent home again without the opportunity to face the enemy, had left the militiamen in no very good humor ; and the alarm of Bennington had been regarded by many as the old cry of " Wolf." Only the splendid reputation of Stark as a fighting commander obtained the effectual rally which was made to his standard. And even his name could not altogether dispel the distrust which had become chronic in the militia. This was the origin of the following scene, which is re- lated by Edward Everett in his Life of Stark, and is probably as truthfully told as such traditions ever are : -
" Among the re-enforcements from Berkshire county came a elergyman [Rev. Mr. Allen] with a portion of his flock, resolved to make bare the arm of flesh against the enemies of his country. Before daylight on the morning of the 16th, he addressed the commander as follows: 'We, the people of Berkshire, have been frequently called upon to fight, but have never been led against the enemy. We have now resolved, if you will not let us fight, never to turn out again.' Gen. Stark asked him 'if he wished to march then, when it was dark and rainy.' -' No," was the answer, 'not just this minute." -" Then," continued Stark, "if the Lord should once more give us sunshine, and I do not give you fighting enough, I will never ask you to come again.'"
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