I highly recommend Mr. Kidder’s most recent text Defending Fort Stanwix. His research is impeccable; the story vivid and captivating. He delves beyond facts to present a frontier war with terrors beyond modern comprehension. It is Mr. Kidder’s focus on humanity and the sacrifices taken by those thrust into a world spiraling beyond control that mark his newest contribution to our understanding and appreciation of this most crucial event. A damn good read.
Harry Schenawolf, Sr. Editor Revolutionary War Journal
Author William L. Kidder taught history for more than three decades at the Hun School of Princeton and is a historian, interpreter, and draft horse teamster at the Howell Living History Farm in Hopewell, New Jersey. He is the author of Crossroads of the Revolution, Ten Crucial Days, and Revolutionary Princeton 1774-1783.
The story of the attack against Fort Stanwix by a force of British, Loyalist, and indigenous soldiers led by Lieutenant Colonel Barry St. Leger, breveted a brigadier general for this mission, in August 1777 is a very human one. As just one element in the development of the vitally important Saratoga campaign, the story is much more complex than just evaluating the military personnel, munitions, fortifications, and tactics involved in the twenty-one-day siege. Learning about both the military and civilian people and their involvement in the events contributes to an understanding of eighteenth-century life on the New York frontier at the head of the Mohawk River on the historic water route across the colony of New York from Lake Ontario to the Hudson River. Usually understood as part of the struggle initiated by the thirteen British colonies against the motherland for their independence as a new country, this action was also part of a brutal civil war taking place within the populations of European settlers and indigenous people inhabiting the area and fighting for control of it. The narrative, therefore, has many intertwined threads providing a greater understanding of the war for independence in general, as well as the events in this one local frontier region.
The story of the fort itself begins in 1758 during the French and Indian War when British General John Stanwix was ordered to build a fort at “the carrying place” in what is today Rome, New York near the head of the Mohawk River. The structure was abandoned when the war ended and left to decay. When the American Revolution broke out, it soon became apparent that restoring and garrisoning the old fort would be important to achieving success in the evolving struggle. The story, therefore, is also about the development of the Continental Army as a sustainable and disciplined fighting force. The newly formed Continental Army’s 3rd New Jersey Regiment commanded by Colonel Elias Dayton, followed by Colonel Samuel Elmore’s Regiment raised in Connecticut struggled with leadership and supply issues. As part of the one-year second establishment of the Continental Army they only partially rebuilt the fort in 1776 and early 1777. Colonel Dayton also renamed the structure Fort Schuyler to honor an influential New York family, but the new name never replaced the original one in common, and ultimately in official, usage.
In May 1776, Colonel Peter Gansevoort’s inexperienced 3rd New York Regiment, recently raised for the three year or duration of the war third establishment of the Continental Army, came to the fort to begin its initial assignment as a complete regiment. These soldiers garrisoned the fort throughout the August siege and then for over a year afterward. During the siege, the 3rd New York was accompanied in the garrison by a Continental artillery company, some local militia, several Oneida allies, and a few local civilians. A few women and children sustained the siege in the fort and at least one child was born; the morning after her mother received a substantial wound toward the end of the siege.
Each officer and enlisted man of the garrison developed a unique, complex story fitting into the larger story of his regiment. Due to the very depressing conditions at the frontier fort before, during, and after the siege, discipline was an issue and desertion was a consistently serious problem. Both the American defenders and the British led attackers contained a personnel mix that included individuals from the Mohawk Valley region who fought against each other throughout the war, either as supporters of the rebel leadership or the British crown.
The following except from Defending Fort Stanwix: A Story of the New York Frontier in the American Revolution sets the scene for the approaching siege. The story introduces 3rd New York officers Colonel Peter Gansevoort, Lieutenant Colonel Marinus Willett, Major Robert Cochran, captains Thomas DeWitt and Henry Tiebout, French engineer Captain Bernard Moissac de Lamarquise, and Continental artillery Captain-Lieutenant Joseph Savage and their situation in late May 1777, about two months prior to the siege. Despite all their life-threatening experiences before and during the siege, they successfully defended the fort with aid of a variety of other people, and partly due to mistakes made by their opponent St. Leger. This was at a time when several other forts, including Fort Ticonderoga, had been forced to surrender, leading Fort Stanwix to become known as “The fort that never surrendered.” While winning a military victory is usually seen as a morale booster, winning the siege did not end the unpleasantness of life in the fort or the life-threatening dangers lurking outside it.
Excerpt
Fifteen days after leaving Fort Constitution and completing a slow trip along the Mohawk River with heavily laden bateaux, the companies under Willett, minus the men left with De Witt at Fort Dayton, arrived at the Carry Place landing about 1:00 p.m. on Monday, May 28.[1] The soldiers must have been disturbed to see the dilapidated structure and then be told to unload their gear in it. Once settled, their labor would be required for repair and construction projects, while also garrisoning the fort and preparing for its defense by going on scouting parties, conducting military training drills, and performing other regular military activities.
Now about six months old, the regiment was not yet even dressed uniformly. It had been decided to outfit the 3rd New York Regiment in blue uniform coats with white lining and red facings for the turned back coat tails, cuffs, collars, and lapels. However, supplies had been insufficient in both quality and amount. As a result, men wore various length coats and jackets made from a variety of fabrics colored brown, red, blue, and other hues with various colored linings. Many men still wore at least portions of the clothing they had worn when they enlisted. Most men had an infantry cocked hat. Uniformity of muskets, bayonets, and cartridge boxes was even more important than uniform clothing, but was also not always possible to achieve in numbers or uniformity of model.[2]
However, De Witt’s men united for the first time with the men of their regiment who had arrived several weeks earlier with Major Cochran and, as always, continued absorbing new recruits. That day, Patrick Mahan enlisted in Tiebout’s company and twenty-one- year-old Conrad Acker enlisted on May 29, both for the duration of the war.[3]
Private Henry Ritter of Tiebout’s company was just one of the men immediately struck by, and vividly remembered into his old age, the incompletely restored fort. He clearly recalled that due to its condition, after their arrival “he & the soldiers worked there and finished it.”[4] Equally unimpressed, Lieutenant Colonel Willett found the fort to be “in a weak and untenable state.” He noted that the “fort had fallen into decay; the ditch was filled up, the pickets had rotted and fallen down.” He described the fort, much as Captain Bloomfield had over a year earlier, as square, “with four bastions, surrounded by a ditch of considerable width and depth, with a covert [covered] way, and glacis around three of its angles; the other being sufficiently secured by low, marshy ground.” Even if only three bastions were complete, probably all four mounted at least one cannon. The larger cannons had stationary carriages mounted on platforms while the light cannons had traveling carriages.[5]
Willett used the past tense in describing several of the fort’s elements, including that, “in front of the gate there had been a drawbridge, covered by a salient angle, raised in front of it on the glacis.” A row of vertical pickets erected in the center of the ditch were now rotted away. More positively, he noted that at least there were still some “rows of horizontal pickets fixed around the ramparts under the embrasures,” forming a fraise to break up and slow down enemy forces scaling the rampart walls.[6]
Colonel Gansevoort dutifully promised General Gates that he would provide engineer Lamarquise with “every assistance in my power to promote the speedy completion of the works.” Primarily, this meant that, virtually daily, he would order the soldiers of his regiment to perform fatigue duty, except when serving as guards or scouts. However, Gansevoort felt that even pushing the men to that extreme would not be enough to complete the required work, because “the whole fort and barracks is to be new modelled,” as per Lamarquise. That engineer just would not give up his desire to build a completely new fort, leading to continuing frustration.
Among his many problems, Gansevoort also struggled to accelerate the slow turn-around time for bateaux travelling between the fort and Schenectady. He had been expecting one group of boats for about six days. When bateaux arrived at his end of their journey, Gansevoort always had them unloaded quickly and sent back the same day they arrived, or at least the following morning. He wondered why those in charge at the other end of the bateaux trips could not do likewise. If he was to speed up the fort restoration work, he really needed additional bateaux to bring lumber from a sawmill located between the fort and Caughnawaga. He also could use at least ten bateaux to bring in lime, needed to make the mortar for brick fireplaces, and boards for construction of barracks, bunks, tables, and other projects.[7]
Willett continued to be highly critical of Lamarquise and found him “wholly incompetent to this task,” and the very hard work of the garrison’s soldiers had proven ineffective under his direction. Willett wanted to get rid of him, but Colonel Gansevoort was hesitant since General Schuyler, his superior officer and the fort’s namesake, had assigned Lamarquise to manage the restoration work. So, Lamarquise remained in charge of restoration.
***
Like Dayton’s and Elmore’s men before them, Gansevoort’s soldiers, and the wives and children travelling with them, had to find ways to carve out accommodations for themselves in the fort’s incomplete barracks and casemates or pitch tents in or around the fort. At this point, the barracks spaces inside the fort had partially been restored, although still unable to accommodate the required number of people. Two buildings facing the eighty-five by ninety-foot parade at the center of the fort where troops assembled for mounting guard, exercising, reviewing the guard, inspecting arms, witnessing punishments, and parleys with Indians provided quarters for company level officers and enlisted men. Each building was divided into several rooms and each room had a fireplace. When completed at an unknown date, the East Barracks was approximately 20-feet wide and 110-feet long with a floor of wooden planks nailed to sleepers resting on the ground. The West Barracks was approximately 20-feet wide and 120-feet long also with a wooden plank floor.[8]
Blatantly displaying his questionable competence, Lamarquise insisted on construction of a new, large building intended to serve as an additional barracks to stand outside the fort, just beyond the foot of the glacis. That location would not only make the structure useless, but would clearly be a hindrance during a siege.
Meanwhile, the more important work on the fort’s defensive structures lagged.[9] The infuriated Willett kept inspecting and finding the restoration work to be faulty, ineffective, and incompetent. He diligently reported all his findings to Colonel Gansevoort, who took no immediate action. Meanwhile, the soldiers must have resented being ordered to work on useless projects rather than on improvements geared to protect them during a siege.[10]
When they did work on fort restoration, Gansevoort’s troops labored to replace rotted timbers and rebuild old, or build new, structures using freshly cut logs. They had to replace all the vertically set pickets of the palisade around most of the fort. For the earth structures they had to fill in areas that had eroded away and then add slabs of sod to the slopes to diminish the effects of artillery fire, as well as erosion. In the barracks and casemates, wooden bunks for the soldiers were being built. Brick fireplaces, primarily for cooking, were built or being built in each room with brick chimneys passing through the casemate or barracks roof. Work details went out to chop down trees, bring in the logs, collect sod, and even work to improve the miserable road to Fort Dayton. To hinder possible enemy troops attacking east from Lake Ontario, work parties cut down trees on the banks of Wood Creek, felling them into the creek to obstruct the passage of bateaux.[11]
The lack of important supplies contributed to everyone’s unhappiness. Colonel Gansevoort appealed to General Gates on May 23 to immediately send him a “quantity of rum,” noting that his “fatigue and work-men have already been 7 days without it, what little is left being reserved for the Indians who daily come and go from this Place.”[12] Gansevoort signed an order on May 26 to purchase rum for the fatigue parties working under the engineer’s supervision. The men on those fatigue parties cut down trees, cut back the forest, served as waggoners bringing in supplies, and worked as artificers, such as carpenters and blacksmiths, reconstructing the fort. The fatigue party men always got whatever rum was available before anyone else, but the amount varied.[13]
The continual problems involving lack of pay and clothing for the garrison drove twenty-six members of Captain-Lieutenant Savage’s artillery detachment to desperately petition General Schuyler on May 17 for pay and “cloathing.” Graphically emphasizing their needs, they complained, “Some of us is mounting guard barefooted.”[14] They also were not very happy serving under Savage. Twenty-three men signed a petition stating that they had been promised to serve under Captain-Lieutenant Fernival, who had recruited them, but then he left the company for unknown reasons and left them under Savage, whom they did not want as their commander.[15] This is a clear example demonstrating that officer quality was one important factor when encouraging men to enlist.
The lack of sufficient supplies continued to encourage soldiers to make a profit from, rather than carefully use, any items issued to them, and company commanders repeatedly received orders to take care that soldiers did not “sell their clothes, armor, [or] accoutrements.” The insufficient supply situation made it difficult to enforce the general order to the soldiers not to trade with the Indians. To prevent such sales to anyone, in accordance with the garrison orders issued May 30, every Saturday at 3:00 p.m., each man had to account to his captain for “such articles as have been delivered to them.” The captains would ensure that any man found guilty of selling items would be punished.[16]
The Fort Stanwix garrison knew that British army commanders were planning a strong effort to crush the rebellion that year and that the fort’s position at the Oneida Carry on the ancient travel, trade, and war route put it directly on the probable path of British troops, along with their Loyalist and Indian allies. Indeed, Fort Stanwix stood directly on the route of a force to be led by Lieutenant Colonel Barrimore Matthew, “Barry,” St. Leger in the 1777 campaign.[17] The British believed that the Americans would need to divert some of their troops forming to oppose Burgoyne near Albany to deal with St. Leger, but he would still be able to join with Burgoyne.
[1] Willett Orderly Book, May 28, 1777. Willett, Narrative, 42. In his Narrative, Willett says he got to Stanwix on May 29. Lowenthal, Days of Siege, 12 gives their arrival date as May 28.
[2] Watt and Morrison, The British Campaign of 1777, 116-117.
[3] Patrick Mahan, NARA M881, Compiled Service Record Card. BLW 7498-100-24 Aug 1790, pvt NY Line; NARA M853, Numbered Records Books, V, List of New York Troops. 1776-1783.
[4] Henry Ritter PF S 19,449. Also, his support statement for Christian Shell PF R 9,253.
[5] Hanson and Hsu, Casemates and Cannonballs, 27; Luzader, Torres, and Carroll, Fort Stanwix, 94.
[6] Willett, Narrative, 43,
[7] Peter Gansevoort to Horatio Gates, cMay 22, 1777, Gansevoort Papers, A0131, 114-115.
[8] Hanson and Hsu, Casemates and Cannonballs, 21-23, 231-27.
[9] Willett, Narrative, 44; Lowenthal, Days of Siege, 29.
[10] Willett, Narrative, 45.
[11] Glatthaar and Martin, Forgotten Allies, 151-152.
[12] Luzader, Torres, and Carroll, Fort Stanwix, 79. Gansevoort to Gates, May 23, 1777, Gansevoort Papers, AO-131, 114-115. Also, Ranzan and Hollis, eds., Hero of Fort Schuyler, 44.
[13] Luzader, Torres, and Carroll, Fort Stanwix, 79: Order signed by Col. P. Gansevoort, May 26, 1777, Miscellaneous American Revolution, New York State Library.
[14] Scott, Stanwix and Oriskany, 98, citing the Schuyler Papers.
[15] Watt and Morrison, The British Campaign of 1777, 108.
[16] Willett Orderly Book, May 30, 1777
[17] Lowenthal, Days of Siege, 12-13.