Baltimore Sun.
THE GRAVE OF LEATHERSTOCKING
The grave of Daniel Shipman, who is generally believed to have been the original of Cooper’s Leather Stocking, has been definitely located in the Adams cemetery at Fly Creek, near Cooperstown, N. Y. A committee has been appointed for the purpose of erecting a suitable tablet to mark the grave, which is now merely covered with a large flat stone with no inscription whatever.
THE BATTLE OF SARATOGA
(At a recent meeting of the Saratoga County Society, Mr. William L. Stone made an address on the subject of the battle, from which we make an excerpt.—Ed.)
This event (which has been called by Creasy one of the fifteen decisive battles of the world) secured for us the French alliance; and lifted the cloud of moral and financial gloom that had settled upon the hearts of the people, dampening the hopes of the leaders of the Revolution, and wringing despairing words even from the hopeful Washington.
More than a century has elapsed since that illustrious event. All the actors in the drama have passed away, and their descendants are now sharing in the rewards of their devotion and suffering. And now after years of labor a noble shaft has arisen at Schuylerville to commemorate that turning point of our National destiny; which, like those of Lexington and Bunker Hill, tells of one of the earliest bloodsheds in the cause of Cisatlantic freedom, and makes the selfsacrifice of our ancestors endure in granite records for the admiration of generations yet to be.
It is a noteworthy fact, in connection with the Battles of Saratoga, that, until recently, there has been no map of the battle-ground from an American standpoint (Neilson’s is the same as no map), our only means of information being those maps made by Burgoyne’s engineers [these were then shown by the speaker] and which were published in 1781 to illustrate Burgoyne’s defence when he was tried in Parliament for his defeat at Saratoga. But, within a few years, there has been found a map of the battle-ground, by General Rufus Putnam, which throws great light on one point in particular, viz.: It has always been a mystery, as I say in my “Burgoyne’s Campaign,” why Gates did not renew the battle on the next day, the 8th. But from this map [here the speaker exhibited the map, which has never been published] it appears that the ravines at Wilbur’s Basin had been so fortified by the British, that (to quote from the map in Putnam’s handwriting) “These defences (i. e.: on these ravines) thus fortified, prevented our attack on the British the next day.”
It is also of interest, as showing the good judgment of Burgoyne’s engineers, that the roads which they cut through the (at that time) primeval forest, are the same that the farmers and road commissioners adopted for their present roads—the one, for instance, from Victory Mills to Quaker Springs, on the high ridge which Fraser took, while Burgoyne and Riedesel took the river bank.