A triumphant but furious Benedict Arnold, meanwhile, led his force eastward to join the newly appointed commander of the American Northern Army, Horatio Gates. At this juncture, the appointment had become a critical issue about the respective merits of Generals Schuyler, Arnold, and Gates. In the promoting of general officers by Congress in the spring of 1777, Benedict Arnold, as senior Brigadier, should by all rights have received the top honors for his performance in the Canadian campaign. But political considerations interfered; New England’s allowance of Major Generals was already filled, keeping Arnold from the command of the Northern Army. The command should then have gone to Philip Schuyler of Albany, who had done very well under Arnold, except that New England troops refused to serve under him. An aristocrat like George Washington, he was unable to become an effective leader of men, and had already made himself unpopular by insisting on military punctilio. Moreover, he was one of the New York patroons who had opposed the settlement of Vermont by New Englanders, and who even now were trying to eject them. The leaders of the Green Mountain Boys had therefore threatened to do nothing to stop Burgoyne if General Schuyler remained as commander. Congress, on August 4, responded by giving the command of the Northern Army to General Gates.
Gates had been a volunteer in the British forces under Braddock in the French and Indian War but had been badly wounded on his first day in battle. When the war ended, Gates found that his lack of money and connections kept him from advancing in the British Army. He had retired and seemed destined to spend his days drinking and gambling. But his exposure to America had kindled a sympathy with the Patriots’ cause, and with the beginning of the Revolution he saw a chance to revive his military career. Stooped and gray, approaching fifty and looking older, he had become a valuable administrative aide to Washington in Cambridge during the first days of organizing the army. Gates was by nature a cautious man, and as his soldiers watched him move through camp with his spectacles perched low on his nose, they called him “Granny Gates.”
Horatio Gates, as a man and a soldier, is something of an enigma. He seems to have been pushed by circumstances and an ambitious wife into positions he neither wanted nor deserved. He had served in the British Army in America during the French and Indian Wars, after which he had bought a plantation in Virginia. Washington made him adjutant general of the Continental Army, a post similar to that of a modern chief of staff. His brother officers never liked him, and the soldiers observed that, unlike General Washington, he was careful never to expose himself to enemy fire. But he had enough political savvy to charm political leaders, especially those of New England, who, when disappointed in Charles Lee, made him their favorite son. The ambitious General Arnold, meanwhile, filed the snub to a long list of insults, real or imagined.