Restating History and the Philip Schuyler Saga
Musings
I was recently thinking about Philip Schuyler and the saga of his memory and monument. He was a Revolutionary War general and the owner of a number of large parcels of property in upstate New York. He played a particularly large role in the war from it's beginning when he joined the patriots and oversaw their invasion of Canada in 1775 on through the defeat of the British Army of General Burgoyne at Saratoga in upstate New York in 1777. That campaign and the surrender of the British Army was the turning point in the war as it was almost unheard of for the British to have an entire army surrender and be captured, let alone by a bunch of rabble rousing rebels in the colonies. Following that victory France and other European countries joined the colonial effort to end the British rule in the 13 colonies. Philip Schuyler was the general in charge of the tactical and strategic planning to oppose General Burgoyne and he produced a very successful campaign.
General Burgoyne began his descent upon the colonies from Quebec in May 1777 but because of all of the intrusions by the various groups of patriots organized by General Schuyler he was not able to reach the area north of Albany until September almost five months later. That was late in the campaigning season and the British became very disillusioned about their campaign and whether they would be able to obtain enough supplies from the countryside to subsist in the fall and through the winter. The British were forced to attack a superior American position and were defeated. In recognition of General Schuyler's efforts both in this campaign and otherwise in the revolution and his political actions in Albany as a leader of the state government he was lauded and various locations were named after him and statutes erected. Most recently his statue was removed from the state capitol because he had been a slave owner.. I do not believe that is a simple issue.
Contemplations
I do not have much information on Philip Schuyler as a slave owner. Most of the writings I looked at simply noted that he owned slaves that worked on his farms in New York. However, his story as a leader of the revolution is fairly clear. He was a rich landowner in the state and when the revolution began he was made a general of the militia in New York and served in that capacity in the revolutionary army. He planned the invasion into Canada in that first year of the war and remained the general in charge of the patriot forces in New York in the succeeding years. The British efforts in 1775 and 1776 to defeat the patriots in Massachusetts and the New England colonies were not successful. In response the British formed a new army under the command of General Burgoyne. His army was sent to and gathered in Quebec, marched up the Saint Lawrence river to Montreal and then turned south on a route following Lake Champlain and Lake George to connect to the Hudson River to then proceed to Albany and from there to join with the British forces in the city of New York to split the colonies in two. Burgoyne's force was approaching 10,000 men and appeared to be unstoppable as there was no organized defense at Lake Champlain, Lake George or in the northern part of the Hudson River. Schuyler employed a delaying defense of felling trees and blocking passageways to make Burgoyne's march difficult. It was successful. The British stores and supplies ran short and they began sending units off to try and gather up supplies from the neighboring area. Most of these forces were defeated, most notably by John Starks men at Bennington, Vermont. This caused great consternation in the main army as they were in the area north of Albany at Saratoga and confronted by a set of fortifications that had been established by Thaddeus Kosciuszko. He was a military officer from the Polish army that had training as an engineer and proved to be the patriots primary engineering officer throughout the revolution. Based on his fortifications the British advance was stymied.
At about this time the Continental Congress intervened to send a new general, Horatio Gates, to be in charge of the army at Saratoga, a decision which made little sense and proved to be a serious mistake.(a common political result). Horatio's actions as the new general in charge of the patriots at Saratoga almost caused the rebel army to be defeated but it did prevail in capturing the British Army. Gates subsequent actions in the war demonstrated his incompetence, He was put in command of the patriot army in the South. It was attacked by a British Army. Gates got on his horse and rode 60 miles in the other direction leaving his army to be captured and killed. The actions of Phillip Schuyler, John Stark, Thaddeus Kosciusko and Benedict Arnold were extolled in the defeat of British at Saratoga, Gates offered little of value to the campaign.
Because of Philip Schuyler's actions in attaining the victory he was recognized, monuments built and places were named after him. In recent years there has been a scrutiny of people that owned slaves in our history, in this case the 1700s and early 1800s. There is no doubt Philip Schuyler owned slaves or that slave owners were common at that point of time. It is even appropriate to note that Philip Schuyler was a slave owner in the locations where his history and contributions occurred. The difficulty is the effort to erase him because he was a slave owner.
If we are going to take this approach we wind up erasing George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, James Monroe, Patrick Henry, all of the Lees from Virginia, the Laurens from South Carolina, and many other leaders of the formation of our country. It further is inappropriate to say that people who made great contributions, even if they owned slaves get a pass. I don't believe that is a proper deviation of what in the 1770's the people then thought was meritorious. It would seem to me that rather than removing statues and erasing indications of their existence there should be some additional information put in place to note they were slave owners, when and how slavery was abolished and that we should all remember that part of our history.
Also, please note, Schuyler's statue does not correlate to the confederate statue’s glorifying the civil war rebellion of the South. Philip Schuyler helped create our country, his was not attempting to destroy it.
Thoughts
Philip Schuyler should have his statue put back in a public place with some sort of explanation as an adjunct stating his position as a slave owner and when and how the state of New York finally abolished slavery. That would be much more informative than simply hiding a statue of a person that performed a great service during the Revolutionary War and pretending none of that ever happened. We need to start stating our history the way it happened and studying it so it is clear to us what it is and what it was and to be sure we don't allow such an autocracy again.
Obadiah Plainman
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