Horatio Gates

Portrait by Gilbert Stuart, c. 1793—94

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QUICK FACTS
BORN:
26 July 1727 in Maldon, Essex, England
  DIED:
10 April 1806 in New York
Buried in the churchyard at Trinity Church, New York. The location of his grave is unknown, but a plaque dedicates his burial there.

Horatio Gates, American general, was born at Maldon in Essex, England, in 1728. He entered the English army at an early age, and was rapidly promoted. He accompanied General Braddock in his disastrous expedition against Fort Duquesne in 1755, and was severely wounded in the battle of 9 July — and he saw other active service in the Seven Years’ War.

After the peace of 1763 he purchased an estate in Virginia,where he lived till the outbreak of the War of Independence in 1775, when he was named by Congress adjutant-general. In 1776 he was appointed to command the troops which had lately retreated from Canada, and in August 1777, as a result of a successful intrigue, was appointed to supersede General Philip Schuyler in command of the Northern Department.

In the two battles of Saratoga his army defeated General Burgoyne, who, on 17 October, was forced to surrender his whole army. This success was, however, largely due to the previous maneuvers of General William Schuyler and to Gates’s subordinate officers.

The intrigues of the so-called Conway Cabal to replace George Washington with Gates completely failed. Gates was president for a time of the Board of War, and in 1780 was placed in chief command in the South. He was totally defeated at Camden, South Carolina, by Cornwallis on 17 August 1780, and in December was replaced by General Nathanael Greene, though an investigation into his conduct terminated in acquittal (1782).

He then retired to his Virginian estate, then moved to New York in 1790, after emancipating his slaves and providing for those who needed assistance. He died in New York in 1806.

ADAPTED FROM:
Encyclopedia Britannica, 1911 ed.

 

But what set [Baron von] Steuben apart from his contemporaries was his schooling under Frederick the Great, Prince Henry, and a dozen other general officers. He had learned from the best soldiers in the world how to gather and assess intelligence, how to read and exploit terrain, how to plan marches, camps, battles and entire campaigns. He gleaned more from his seventeen years in the Prussian military than most professional soldiers would in a lifetime. In the Seven Years’ War alone, he built up a record of professional education that none of his future comrades in the Continental Army — Horatio Gates, Charles Lee, the Baron Johann de Kalb, and Lafayette included — could match.

Paul Lockhart
The Drillmaster of Valley Forge: The Baron de Steuben and the Making of the American Army (2008)