strategic value of the frontier fortresses, before beginning the story
of the campaign itself.

Few armies have ever suffered more, or more nobly redeemed an apparently
lost cause, than the one which was defeated at Quebec and victorious at
Saratoga. The train of misfortunes which brought Burgoyne's erratic
course to so untimely an end was nothing by comparison. And the
quickness with which raw yeomanry were formed into armies capable of
fighting veteran troops, affords the strongest proof that the Americans
are a nation of soldiers.

So many specific causes have been assigned for Burgoyne's failure, that
it is hardly practicable to discuss all of them within reasonable
limits. The simplest statement of the whole case is that he allowed
himself to be beaten in detail. It seems plain enough that any plan,
which exposed his forces to this result, was necessarily vicious in
itself. Moreover, Burgoyne wofully misestimated the resources, spirit,
and fighting capacity of his adversary. With our forces strongly posted
on the Mohawk, St. Leger's advance down the valley was clearly
impracticable. Yet such a combination of movements as would bring about
a junction of the two invading columns, at this point, was all essential
to the success of Burgoyne's campaign. To have effected this in season,
Burgoyne should have made a rapid march to the Mohawk, intrenched
himself there, and operated in conjunction with St. Leger. His delays,
attributable first, to his unwise choice of the Fort Anne route, next,
to Schuyler's activity in obstructing it, and lastly, to his defeat at
Bennington, gave time to render our army so greatly superior to his own,
that the conditions were wholly altered when the final trial of strength
came to be made.

What might have happened if Sir W. Howe had moved his large army and
fleet up the Hudson, in due season, is quite another matter. The writer
does not care to discuss futilities. In the first place, he thinks that
Burgoyne's campaign should stand or fall on its own merits. In the next,
such a movement by Howe would have left Washington free to act in the
enemy's rear, or upon his flanks, with a fair prospect of cutting him
off from his base at New York. Of the two commanders-in-chief,
Washington acted most effectively in reenforcing Gates's army from his
own. Howe could not and Carleton would not do this. From the moment that
Burgoyne crossed the Hudson, he seems to have pinned his faith to
chance; bu