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  Gates, who had superseded Schuyler in the command of the Northern department, claimed the chief merit of the capture of the British army, nearly ten thousand strong; but this claim is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 assured, not only in the minds of American statesmen, but to European intelligence.  The French Government then openly came out with its promised aid, and money was more easily raised.

The influence of Washington in securing the capture of Burgoyne was indirect, although the general plan of campaign and the arousing of the Northern militia had been outlined by him to General Schuyler.  He had his hands full in watching Howe’s forces at Philadelphia.  His defeat at Germantown, the result of accident which he could not prevent, compelled him to retreat to Valley Forge, on the Schuylkill, about nine miles from Philadelphia.  There he took up his quarters in the winter of 1777-78.  The sufferings of the army in that distressing winter are among the best-known events of the whole war.  At Valley Forge the trials of Washington culminated.  His army was reduced to three thousand men, incapable of offensive operations, without suitable clothing, food, or shelter,

“As the poor soldiers,” says Fiske, in his brilliant history, “marched on the 17th of December to their winter quarters, the route could be traced on the snow by the blood which oozed from bare, frost-bitten feet.  For want of blankets many were fain to sit up all night by fires.  Cold and hunger daily added to the sick list, and men died for want of straw to put between them and the frozen ground.”

Gates, instead of marching to the relief of Washington before Philadelphia, as he was ordered, kept his victorious troops idle at Saratoga; and it was only by the extraordinary tact of Alexander Hamilton, the youthful aide, secretary, and counsellor of Washington, who had been sent North for the purpose, that the return of Morgan with his Virginia riflemen was secured.  Congress was shaken by the intrigues of Gates, who sought to supplant the commander-in-chief, and who had won to his support both Morgan and Richard Henry Lee.