Identifier: historyofamericap02wils (find matches)
Title: A history of the American people
Year: 1902 (1900s)
Authors: Wilson, Woodrow, 1856-1924 John Davis Batchelder Collection (Library of Congress)
Subjects: United States -- History
Publisher: New York and London, Harper & brothers
Contributing Library: New York Public Library
Digitizing Sponsor: MSN

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end of the 3Tear showed the strugglehopefully set forward another stage. The military operations of that memorable yearwere a striking illustration of the magnitude of thetask the British generals were set to accomplish, andof their singular lack of the energ\r, decision, and de-spatch necessary to accomplish it. They seemed likemen who dallied and dreamed and did not mean tosucceed. They planned like men of action, but thentarried and bungled at the execution of their plans.It was their purpose that year (1777) to strike fromthree several directions along the valley of the Hudson;and break once for all the connection between the NewEngland colonies and their confederates. GeneralBurgoyne was to move, with eight thousand men, downLake Champlain; Colonel St. Leger, with a small butsufficient force, along a converging line down the val-ley of the Mohawk, from Oswego on Ontario; and Gen-eral Howe was to meet them from the south, movingin strength up the Hudson. More than thirty-three268
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JOHN BURGOYNE A HISTORY OF THE AMERICAN PEOPLE thousand men would have effectually swept the wholeof that great central valley, north and south, whentheir plan was executed. But it was not executed.The British commanders were to learn that, for theirarmies, the interior of the country was impracticable. Both St. Leger and Burgoyne were baffled in thatvast wilderness. It was simple enough for Burgoyneto descend the lakes and take once again the forts whichguarded them. Even Ticonderoga he took withouta blow struck. A precipitous height, which the Amer-icans had supposed inaccessible b) any sort of carriage,rose above Che strong fortifications of the place beyonda narrow strip of water; the English dragged cannonto its summit; and General St. Clair promptly withdrewin the night, knowing his position to be no longertenable. But it was another matter to penetrate theforests which lay about Lake George and the upperwaters of the Hudson with militiamen out of everycountry-side within reach

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