- During the Battles of Saratoga (1777) the Continental Army had no cannon, while the British Regulars, led by General John Burgoyne, had 18. After the American victory the cannons were seized and used by Washington’s Army for the remainder of the War. Today there are only three of these
six-pounders
remaining. Read how one of them (The New York Times, 10-Nov-2013) has been on a strange odyssey since 1961, but now is back at the Saratoga National Historical Park where it belongs.
Missing Cannon from Battle of Saratoga Returns
The Federalists of the 1780s had a glimpse of what America was to become — a scrambling business society dominated by the pecuniary interests of ordinary people — and they did not like what they saw. This premonition of America’s future lay behind their sense of crisis and their horrified hyperbolic rhetoric. The wholesale pursuits of private interest and private luxury were, they thought, undermining America’s capacity for republican government. They designed the Constitution in order to save American republicanism from the deadly effects of the private pursuits of happiness.
The Idea of America: Reflections on the Birth of the United States (2011)