ABSTRACT

According to Ebenezer Mattoon, who wrote to General Philip Schuyler after the battle, General Arnold, who was accompanied by General Lincoln, rode out from Bemis Heights about one o’clock, on hearing the signal guns that heralded the British advance. The victors returned to Bemis Heights, bearing their spoils, six captured cannon and 240 prisoners of war. Learned, whom John Brooks calls a ‘weak man’, advocated the abandonment of the captured redoubt and a retreat to Bemis Heights. The battle, which it is convenient to call the Battle of Bemis Heights, progressed in two phases from the first onset to the death of Simon Fraser; and from the intervention of General Arnold, of whose equivocal part in the battle we shall hear later. General Gates remained in camp on Bemis Heights, receiving reports of the battle, not one incident of which he personally observed.