And yet the events since that time, which Arnold could not foresee or foreknow, rather than the concomitant circumstances of that time, which Arnold saw and knew, have proclaimed him Traitor. And had the results been otherwise, had not his own mad efforts helped turn the tide at Saratoga, Arnold might now be known as a shrewdly diplomatic young officer who, influenced by a beautiful Tory wife and seeing the cause of the Colonists desperate, had timely transferred his allegiance to the British army and bravely helped along the conquering cause of the mother country.
And Major Andre sleeps in honored rest in old Westminster Abbey; while the man twice wounded in battle, the hero of Ticonderoga, Quebec, and Saratoga sleeps in an unhonored grave having as epitaph indelibly traced upon surrounding air and earth and water and sky—Arnold the Traitor.
General Frazer.
General Frazer was mortally wounded in the engagement which took place October 7th. He died in camp the following day. The Italian historian Botta gives the following account of his burial. “Toward midnight, the body of General Frazer was buried in the British camp. His brother officers assembled sadly around while the funeral service was read over the remains of their brave comrade, and his body was committed to the hostile earth. The ceremony, always mournful and solemn of itself, was rendered even terrible by the sense of recent losses, of present and future dangers, and of regret for the deceased. Meanwhile, the blaze and roar of the American artillery amid the natural darkness and stillness of the night came on the senses with startling awe. The grave had been dug within range of the enemy’s batteries; and while the service was proceeding, a cannon ball struck the ground close to the coffin, and spattered earth over the face of the officiating chaplain.”
There is something painfully pathetic in the scene thus presented to the imagination. War has no respect for the rights of the living or the dying or the dead.
Surrender.
On the 13th of October, 1777, General Burgoyne, besieged by overpowering numbers on the heights of Saratoga and seeing that his army was facing disease and famine, and being unable to establish communication either with Lord Howe or with General Clinton—opened negotiations with General Gates as to conditions of surrender.
At first General Gates demanded that the royal army should surrender themselves prisoners of war. Burgoyne refused.
It was later agreed upon that “the troops under General Burgoyne were to march out of their camp with the honors of war, and the artillery—of the entrenchments, to the verge of the river, where the arms and the artillery were to be left. The arms to be piled by word of command from their own officers. A free passage was to be granted to the army under Lieutenant General Burgoyne to Great Britain upon condition of not serving again in North America during the present contest.”