To George Washington from Major General Horatio Gates, 5 November 1776
From Major General Horatio Gates
Tyonderoga 5th November 1776:
Sir
I have The Honour to send your Excellency a Copy of my Letter by the Bearer Major Stuart to the president of The Congress.1
General Schuyler has this morning inform’d me of the Rumour of an Action near the White plains,2 I hope soon to Felicitate Your Excellency upon Having conducted Your Campaign in the most Brilliant and Triumphant manner. I am Sir Your Excellencys most Obliged & most Obedient Humble Servant
Horatio Gates
ALS, DLC:GW.
1. The enclosed copy of Gates’s letter to Hancock of this date, which is in Gates’s handwriting and is signed by him, conveys news of the evacuation of Crown Point by Carleton’s fleet and army on 3 November. A subaltern who reconnoitered Crown Point with a small scouting party that day “reported that he saw the Enemy embark, a Number of their Vessels under Sail, and the whole preparing to get under Way,” and another scouting party on 4 Nov. confirmed “that the Enemy were all gone from that Post.” Carleton’s force returned to St. Jean to spend the winter. “I cannot help observing here,” Gates writes, “that the Removal of our Army from Crown-point to Ticonderoga, was a most fortunate and Salutary Measure; for, had it Continued at Crown-point, after the Disaster that befel our Fleet, the Enemy might have cut off all our Resources, by Stationing their Fleet above the Point. Desperate must then have been the Situation of our Army” (DLC:GW; the letter that Gates sent to Hancock is in DNA:PCC, item 154).
2. See Schuyler to Gates, 2 Nov., in , 5th ser., 3:489–90, and Gates to Schuyler, 5 Nov., ibid., 526.