Gates, Horatio

Gates, Horatio (1727/8–1806), Revolutionary War general.Born in Old Malden, Surrey, to an unlettered English customs official and the housekeeper of the duke of Bolton's mistress, Gates was commissioned a British army lieutenant in 1745, through Bolton's influence. In the French and Indian War, after being wounded at Monongahela in 1755, he rose to the rank of major, but eventually barred from further advancement, he retired in 1769. Living in Virginia at the outbreak of the Revolutionary War, Gates was appointed adjutant general by the Continental Congress, and he helped George Washington organize the Continental army. Popular with New Englanders, he replaced Philip Schuyler as commander of the northern army after the loss of Fort Ticonderoga. At the two battles of Saratoga, he employed his numerical superiority to force the surrender of British Gen. John Burgoyne's entire army on 17 October 1777.

Gates planned to follow up by invading Canada, but Washington blocked the expedition. A hero after Saratoga, Gates became Washington's rival, but in 1778 was discredited on the spurious charge that he had plotted with the “Conway cabal” to elevate himself over Washington. Assigned to command the Continentals in South Carolina in 1780, he undertook a rash offensive with ill‐prepared troops and was disastrously defeated at the Battle of Camden by Gen. Charles Cornwallis. In 1783, he was associated with, but took no active part in, the officers’ aborted Newburgh “conspiracy” to coerce Congress into giving them backpay. A novel combination of professional and populist, Gates managed short‐term militia unusually well, and was a generally competent, if ultimately flawed, commander.

Bibliography

Paul David Nelson , General Horatio Gates, 1976.
Max M. Mintz , The Generals of Saratoga: John Burgoyne and Horatio Gates, 1990.

Max. M. Mintz