lows which the hero of Saratoga ex- ordered by Congress, cheered meanwhile changed for his northern laurels. on his way by a friendly reception from the General Assembly of the State, then in session at Richmond. He was finally acquitted by the Court, and restored to his rank before the close of war. He then retired to his "Traveller's Rest," in Berkeley County, where he enjoyed the reputation of a hospitable planter; and we find him some seven Gates reached Charlotte, in North Carolina, with the remains of his defeated army, and thence pursued his way to Hillsborough, where, on the 30th of August, he wrote to Washing ton, subdued in spirit, admitting the obloquy of his situation, and appealing to his generosity to protect him from the cold judgments of the world. Wash-years later manumitting his slaves, preington, never wanting in magnanimity, approved in his reply of his efforts to reinstate the army, and not long after, when domestic grief, in the death of a son, was added to the calamity of the fallen General, condoled with him in terms so sympathizing, that the heart of his old Virginia companion was touched to the quick. In the beginning of December, General Greene having taken the command, Gates left for his home in Virginia, to await the action of the Court of Inquiry vious to taking up his residence in New York. He resided at what was then the neighborhood of the city, near the present Second Avenue and Twentythird street. In 1800, he served a single term in the State legislature. He died in New York, April 10, 1806, closing, at an advanced age, a mixed life of prosperity and adversity, of good and ill, from which greater mag. nanimity a sounder judgment and allegiance to the principles of Washington might have extracted a greater felicity. PHILIP SCHUYLER. MAJOR GENERAL PHILIP SCHUYLER a lady whose force of character ana was a descendant of that respectable cultivation were every way equal to race of colonists who came from Hol- the charge. The youth, of an ingenuous land to the first settlement of New disposition, was well trained at home York. They were men of many virtues; and at a seminary at New Rochelle, in a pious, industrious, liberty-loving race. Westchester County, in New York, The Schuylers held rank with the fore- where he acquired the French language. most of them in their advanced post at A severe attack of the gout, which he Albany. Colonel Peter Schuyler, the inherited and which afflicted him grandfather of Philip, rose to be mayor greatly in these school-days, did not of the city, commander of the northern prevent his acquisition of much solid militia, agent of Indian Affairs, and learning. He was especially fond of president of the Provincial Council. the mathematics, and as he grew up, He had great influence with the became versed, says Irving, in finance, Indians of the Five Nations, and a pro- military engineering and political ecoportionate jealousy of the French, nomy. He entered the army on the whom he attacked with vigor at the breaking out of the French war, at the head of Lake Champlain in 1691. He age of twenty-two, commanding a comafterward carried with him five Indian pany of New York levies, under Sir chiefs to England, to assist in his repre- William Johnson, at Fort Edward. sentations of the policy of opposing the Three years after, in 1758, he was with French in Canada. His son, John, left Abercrombie's expedition against Ticonseveral children, of whom Philip was deroga, attending Lord Howe as chief the oldest, and hence at that time the of the commissariat department, and heir to his father's real estate. It is when that nobleman fell, in conflict related as characteristic of his magna- with the French, in the advance at nimity, that he waived this right of Lake George, it became Schuyler's birth, and generously shared the pro- honorable though mournful charge to perty with his brothers and sisters. convey the body of the chieftain to Albany for burial. Philip Schuyler was born at Albany, November 22, 1733. His father, dying while he was quite young, his early education was provided by his mother, With this experience in an important department of the army, Colonel Schuyler, when the war was closed, continued bridge, he was accompanied as far as New York by General Schuyler, who had already gained his confidence by the ability which he had shown in the arrangement of military affairs in Congress. "Many things," says Irving, who throughout his History appears always attracted by the generous qualities of Schuyler, "concurred to produce per to be employed in the public service first organization of the Continental in numerous civil duties. He was army. When Washington set out for appointed by the General Assembly the headquarters of the army at Camof New York, in 1764, one of the commissioners to arrange the boundary line of that colony with Massachusetts. In 1768, he was elected a member of the General Assembly, and so continued till that body was superseded by the new authorities of the Revolutionary era. As the principles of this struggle for popular rights began to be made manifest in the proceedings fect harmony of operation between of the first Continental Congress of 1774, he endeavored, with such associates as George Clinton and Philip Livingston, to mould the Assembly to the growing patriotic temper of the times. On the third of March, 1774, he moved declaratory resolutions against the obnoxious act of the British Parliament, imposing duties for raising a revenue in America, for extending the jurisdiction of Admiralty courts, and other grievances. But nine members were left in the House of Assembly, of whom seven voted in favor of the resolutions, when the opposition rallied, and a sharp contest ensued, supported by Schuyler and George Clinton, which "laid the foundation for those lavish marks of honor and confidence which their countrymen were afterwards so eager to bestow."1 In 1775, Schuyler appeared at Phila delphia, in the Congress of that year, when he was immediately appointed one of the four Major Generals in the these distinguished men. They were Arrived at New York, he received orders from the commander-in-chief to take command of all the troops destined for the New York Department, and look generally after the military affairs of the province. He was enjoined to "keep a watchful eye" upon Governor Tryon, and Colonel Guy Johnson, the Indian Agent, and to supply the posts on Lake Champlain James Kent's Anniversary Discourse before the New with provisions and ammunition. A York Historical Society, 1828. few days later, at the end of June, he |