No Turning Point

American historian Theodore Corbett’s history book, No Turning Point: The Saratoga Campaign in Perspective (2012), focuses on the Saratoga Campaign, often regarded as a key turning point in the American Revolutionary War. However, Corbett argues that locally the Campaign is best understood as a phase in an ongoing civil war between local factions, a civil war that continued into the 1780s. “Most military historians disregard the civil war altogether, while focusing on the professional armies. This account of the Saratoga Campaign shows that one does that at one's peril." Corbett’s finding that British general John Burgoyne “did not realize that his plans would have to be imposed upon an already existing and confusing civil war, and that it would be difficult to separate friend from foe” is regarded by academic historians as opening a new window into a central episode of the Revolutionary War.

Corbett’s account begins with an overview of the complex dynamics of the Hudson-Champlain backcountry region, extending along the Canadian border with New Hampshire and Vermont, at the outbreak of the Revolutionary War. These tensions reached back two decades to the early 1760s when the first Euro-American settlers arrived in the region. Almost immediately, low-level violent unrest became the norm, and there were many axes of tension. Tenant farmers attempted to undermine the patrician approach of large landowning families like the Van Rensselaers and the Schuylers; settlers from New York disputed rights to the future Vermont Republic with the Green Mountain Boys of New Hampshire. Meanwhile, the area had become a melting pot of different ethnic and religious groups, many of them at loggerheads. Irish Methodists, Catholic Highlanders, Scotch-Irish Presbyterians, and the Congregationalists of New England were separated by irreconcilable cultural and religious differences.

These conflicts within the Euro-American community were exacerbated by the presence of thriving Native American groups, including the Iroquois League of Six Nations, a potent diplomatic and military force. Corbett completes his picture of a deeply divided society by reminding the reader that this Northern region also had a significant population of African-American slaves.



Given the complexity of local politics, it is perhaps not surprising that in this region, the Revolutionary War never became a simple conflict between American Patriots and British Loyalists. Instead, the Hudson-Champlain backcountry collapsed into a civil war, with many parties, principally motivated by local issues of land ownership rather than nationalist ideologies. Corbett argues that no understanding of the Saratoga Campaign of 1777 is possible unless it is situated within this context.

From the outbreak of the War, British leaders tried to exploit the local tensions to diminish the region’s participation in the rebellion. First Sir Guy Carleton (the Governor of Canada) and then Burgoyne invaded the region. Burgoyne recruited a significant number of Native fighters, including local Mohawks and other nations from the Great Lakes region. The rebels responded by recruiting the Oneida and Tuscarora nations. However, the local agendas of rebel and British commanders rarely coincided exactly with those of their Native allies: the result was accelerated fractionalization and a local situation of even greater complexity, which neither commander could hope to fully understand.

The initial actions of the two armies also intensified divisions. Burgoyne tried to inspire renewed loyalty to the British crown, first by offering the locals protection and paying for provisions, and later by recruiting as many as 800 local men to fight on the British side. Meanwhile, the American general Philip Schuyler adopted a “scorched earth policy,” seizing provisions without compensation, hoping to force the locals to leave the area.



Burgoyne’s policy may have ended, Corbett argues, as a direct result of local conflicts. A local Loyalist, Philip Skene, convinced the British general to send his German forces under Baron von Riedesel to Burlington, a rebel stronghold. The tactical basis for this advice is obscure, and Corbett suggests that Skene may have hoped to inflict damage on a local rival. Riedesel’s force was comprehensively defeated, and Burgoyne was forced to rethink his “pacification policy.”

These maneuvers reached their climax at the battles of Freeman’s Farm and Bemis Heights, in the fall of 1777. Burgoyne found himself commanding a force of 6000 against 9000 Americans, with another rebel force threatening his supply line.

Corbett argues that here Burgoyne made the error that cost him victory. Instead of retreating while retreat was still possible, he chose to dig in and wait for a relief force from New York City: “Burgoyne, claiming to be under orders to reach Albany, was fixed on the south and the possibility of Clinton's successful foray advancing the British to Albany—a dilemma that influenced his conduct during the siege." By mid-October 1777, Burgoyne was trapped. He allowed his Loyalist troops to escape and surrendered his force of professionals on the 17th.



At this point, Corbett diverges sharply with received opinion about the importance of Burgoyne’s surrender. Where it has traditionally been seen as the end of the War in the northern region, in reality, the escaped Loyalists retreated to Canada, where they became “the nucleus for future invasions and continuation of the civil war.” The British continued to invade the region, while the various disputes between non-Loyalist locals also raged on. Indeed, the new governor of Canada, Frederick Haldimand, launched regular raids of Loyalist, Native American, and regular troops to inflame local tensions. The local civil war, Corbett argues, continued well into the late 1780s, encompassing conflicts like Shays’s Rebellion of 1786.