the British of Philadelphia,--a place desirable only for comfortable
winter quarters. When Franklin heard of it he coolly remarked that the
British had not taken Philadelphia, but Philadelphia had taken them,
since seventeen thousand veterans were here kept out of the field, when
they were needed most on the banks of the Hudson, to join Burgoyne, now
on his way to Lake Champlain.

This diversion of the main army of Howe to occupy Philadelphia was the
great British blunder of the war. It enabled the Vermont and New
Hampshire militia to throw obstacles in the march of Burgoyne, who
became entangled in the forests of northern New York, with his flank and
rear exposed to the sharpshooters of the enemy, fully alive to the
dangers which menaced them. Sluggish as they were, and averse to
enlistment, the New England troops always rallied when pressing
necessity stared them in the face, and fought with tenacious courage.
Although Burgoyne had taken Ticonderoga, on Lake Champlain, as was to be
expected, he was, after a most trying campaign, at last surrounded at
Saratoga, and on October 17 was compelled to surrender to the militia he
despised. It was not the generalship of the American commander which led
to this crushing disaster, but the obstacles of nature, utilized by the
hardy American volunteers. Gates, who had superseded Schuyler in the
command of the Northern department, claimed the chief merit of the
capture of the British army, nearly ten thousand strong; but this claim
is now generally disputed, and the success of the campaign is ascribed
to Arnold, while that of the final fighting and success is given to
Arnold together with Morgan and his Virginia riflemen, whom Washington
had sent from his own small force.

The moral and political effect of the surrender of Burgoyne was greater
than the military result. The independence of the United States was now