At Saratoga National Historical Park, the Boot Monument shows a single left boot on a cannon barrel with a major general’s stars, praising the most brilliant soldier of the Continental Army without naming Benedict Arnold. The episode treats the 1777 campaign as a study of three men. Lieutenant General John Burgoyne marched south from Canada expecting to meet Barry St. Leger and William Howe at Albany, but Howe sailed for Philadelphia, St. Leger turned back at Fort Stanwix, and most Native allies left after the defeat at Bennington. Burgoyne crossed the Hudson anyway. Horatio Gates, who had replaced Philip Schuyler, dug in at Bemis Heights behind works designed by Tadeusz Kosciuszko, while Arnold pressed to fight in the woods.
At Freeman’s Farm on September 19, Daniel Morgan’s riflemen targeted British officers, the 62nd Regiment was nearly destroyed, and Burgoyne held the field at a cost of nearly 600 men he could not replace. Gates left Arnold out of his report, the two fought openly, and Gates stripped Arnold of command. On October 7, as Simon Fraser fell, Arnold took a horse against orders, led the attack on the Balcarres Redoubt, then galloped to the Breymann Redoubt, which fell and exposed the British camp. His horse was shot and his left femur shattered. Burgoyne surrendered on October 17, and France entered the war.
- Neutral colonists flooded the American camp after the killing of Jane McCrea, fiancee of a Loyalist in Burgoyne’s army.
- Historians still debate whether Arnold fought at Freeman’s Farm or directed it from Gates’s headquarters.
- Gates sent Major John Armstrong to order Arnold back, and he caught up only after Arnold was wounded.
- Arnold later said he wished the ball had struck his heart instead of his leg.
- Congress reneged on the promise to send Burgoyne’s Convention Army home, and Gates later fled the field at Camden in 1780.
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