Ticonderoga and Mount Independence on the 6th, with the loss of all his military equipments.

These posts were evacuated upon the advice of a council of officers, founded on the extreme weakness of the garrison, the extensiveness of the works, and an insufficiency of provisions. But General SCHUYLER had given no order for the evacuation. It was done without his advice, direction, or knowledge. It was as much a matter of surprise to him, as to the country. He expected to have been able in a few days to have joined General St. Clair with a very considerable body of troops, and he observed most truly in a letter of the 14th of July, to Chief Justice Jay, "that if Ticonderoga was not sufficiently fortified and supplied with provisions, it was not his fault; if there was a want of men he was not to blame."

The last scene of General SCHUYLER'S military life, was full of action befitting the occasion, and worthy of his character. Every quarter of his department was replete with difficulty and danger. The frontier on the Mohawk was menaced by an army of one thousand six hundred regulars, tories, and Indians, under LieutenantColonel St. Leger, and he cheered and encouraged Brigadier-General Herkimer to rouse the militia, and act with alacrity in defence of that frontier. He addressed the civil and military authorities in every direction, with manly firmness, and the most forcible exhortation to assist him with men, arms, and provisions, "every militia man," he said, "ought to turn out without delay, in a crisis the most alarming since the contest began." He directed that the inhabitants retire from before the enemy, and that every article be brought off or destroyed, that was calculated to assist them-that the roads, causeways, and Wood Creek be rendered impassable. He issued a proclamation to encourage the country, and counteract that of Burgoyne. He assured General Washington, on the 12th of July, that he should retard the enemy's advance by all possible means. "If my countrymen will support me with vigor and dexterity, and do not meanly despond, we shall be able to prevent the enemy from penetrating much further into the country."

St. Clair had not above three thousand five hundred men when he evacuated Ticonderoga, and he joined SCHUYLER with only one thousand five hundred, as the militia, almost to a man, had deserted him, and gone home. Nixon's and Glover's brigades had been ordered by General Washington from Peekskill, to reinforce SCHUYLER, and when the former brigade arrived on the 14th of July, it amounted only to five hundred and seventy-five men, so that Gene

ral SCHUYLER's whole strength did not then exceed four thousand five hundred men, including regulars and militia; and they were without shelter, or artillery, and sickness, distress and desertion prevailed. The enemy whose triumphant progress he had to check, amounted to upwards of six thousand regular troops, with the best equipments in arms and artillery. Fort George was abandoned on the 14th of July, for it was utterly indefensible, being only part of an unfinished bastion holding one hundred and fifty men. On the 24th of July, SCHUYLER retired with his army to More's Creek, four miles below Fort Edward, as the latter was only a heap of ruins, and always commanded by the neighboring hills. The enemy kept pressing upon his advanced posts, but in the midst of unparalleled difficulties, his retreat was slow and safe, and every inch of ground disputed. The distress of the army, in want of artillery and every . other military and comfortable equipment, was aggravated by despondency and sickness, and the restlessness and insubordination of the militia. They could not be detained. Almost all the eastern militia had left the army. By the advice of a council of general officers, SCHUYLER was obliged to let one half of the militia go home under a promise of the residue to continue for three weeks. Though the subject of popular calumny, he did not in the least despond or shrink from his duty. "I shall go on," he writes to General Washington, "in doing my duty, and in endeavors to deserve your esteem." He renewed his call on the eastern states for assistance, and told his friend, Governor Trumbull of Connecticut, (whom he always mentioned with the highest esteem, and between whom a mutual confidence and attachment had invariably subsisted,) that "if the eastern militia did not turn out with spirit, and behave better, we should be ruined." The greatest reliance was placed on the efforts of his own more immediate countrymen, and his most pathetic and eloquent appeals were made to the council of safety of the state of New York, for succors to enable him to meet the enemy in the field. By the beginning of August, he was preparing to act on the offensive, and by his orders of the 30th of July and 13th of August. General Lincoln was directed to move with a body of troops to the north of Cambridge, towards Skeensborough, and take command of the troops under General Stark, and Colonel Warner, who had orders to join him; and if he should have force enough, to fall on the enemy in that quarter. As Burgoyne advanced down the Hudson, there was constant skirmishing at the advanced posts, and General SCHUYLER retreated slowly, and in good order down to Saratoga, and then to

and below Stillwater, and in every instance by the unanimous advice of his officers.

During this eventful period, the western branch of SCHUYLER'S military district was in the utmost consternation and peril. The army under St. Leger had besieged Fort Stanwix, and General Herkimer, with eight hundred of the frontier militia, marching to the relief of the fortress, was attacked by a detachment of the enemy, under Sir John Johnson, and defeated at Oriskany, on the 6th of August. On the 16th, General SCHUYLER despatched Arnold with three regiments, amounting in the whole only to five hundred and fifty men, to take charge of the military operations on the Mohawk.

But the period of his eminent services was drawing to a close. Congress, yielding to the clamor and calumny of the people and militia of the eastern states, suspended General SCHUYLER'S command, and on the 19th of August, (three days after the victory at Bennington,) General Gates arrived in camp, and superseded him. General SCHUYLER felt acutely the discredit of being recalled in the most critical period of the campaign, and after the labor and activity of making preparations to repair the disasters of it, had been expended by him, and when he was in vigorous preparation to win, and almost in the act to place the laurels of victory on his brow. "I am sensible," said this great and injured man, in his letter to congress, "of the indignity of being ordered from the command of the army, at a time when an engagement must soon take place;" and when, we may add, he had already commenced offensive operations, and laid the foundation of future and glorious triumphs.

to act.

Though he was directed by the order of congress of the 1st of August, to repair to head-quarters, he was afterwards allowed by the resolution of congress of the 14th November, to attend to his private affairs, "as they had greatly suffered by the barbarous ravages of the British army," until the committee of inquiry were ready This preeminent rariot, statesman, and soldier, rising above all mean resentments, continued his correspondence with congress, and afforded his valuable counsel. He even tendered to them his gratuitous services as a private gentleman, in any way in which he could be useful. As president of the board of commissioners for Indian affairs, he gave specific advice respecting the conduct of the six nations, and he recommended preparations to carry the war into their territories; and his counsel eventually terminated in the expe dition under General Sullivan, in 1779.

After long and painful delays, in which his eastern enemies, both in and out of Congress, had full opportunity to search for testimony against him, he was gratified with being able to have his military conduct tested before a court-martial, in October, 1778. He was tried and acquitted "with the highest honor" of every charge preferred against him, notwithstanding congress had eight months previously, appointed "two counsellors, learned in the law, to assist and coöperate with the judge-advocate in conducting the trial.” The sentence was of course confirmed by congress, and though it was the desire of his friends, and particularly of General Washington, who, in January, 1779, stated to him that "it was very much his desire that he should resume the command of the northern department." He had too much self-respect and pride of character to be shaken in his purpose. After repeated applications, congress, in April, 1779, accepted his resignation, and SCHUYLER finally withdrew from the army.

He continued during the remainder of his life to be eminently useful in the civil departments of government: he was one of the commissioners from New York in 1784, and again in 1787, to settle the boundary line between that state and Massachusetts: the difficulty depended essentially on the variation of the magnetic needle, and the perusal of the correspondence shows that he executed his. trust with great industry and skill. He was continued a delegate in congress from New York in 1778 and 1779, and all the authorities and leading patriots of that state, and his fellow-citizens at large, who thoroughly knew his worth and transcendent merits, continued to afford fresh proofs in every way, and on every proper occasion, of their warmest affection, and exalted sense of his talents, activity, and devotion to his country. In 1781, and for several years thereafter, he was a member of the New York senate. He took a zealous part in promoting the adoption of the constitution of the United States, and in 1789 he was elected a member of the first senate under that constitution. His sagacity, and practical skill and zeal for the public interests, led him to give the earliest and most strenuous support to measures for the improvement of internal navigation. He drafted the acts for incorporating the western and northern inland lock navigation companies, and was placed at the head of the direction of both those companies, and he was truly the master spirit which infused life and vigor into the whole undertaking. He had sketched and caused to be executed, the plan of locks at the little falls on the Mohawk, and of connecting the head waters of the

Mohawk and Wood Creek. Those feeble beginnings led on step by step to the bolder and glorious consummation of the Erie canal.

In 1796 he urged, in his place in the New York senate, and afterwards published in a pamphlet form, his plan for the improvement of the revenue of the state. It contemplated the institution of the office of comptroller, and that branch of the plan was literally adopted by the legislature. He demonstrated that upon the measures he suggested, the surplus fund, beyond all reasonable wants, might at the period of 1826, or thirty years from that time, be made to accumulate to three million five hundred and fifty thousand dollars. But he predicted that under bad management "very little principal would be left, and the people burthened with taxes for the support of government."

In 1797 SCHUYLER was unanimously elected once more a senator in congress, and he took a final leave of the senate of his native state, in an affecting address, which to his honor was ordered to be inserted on their journal. General SCHUYLER at that time labored under the pressure of ill health, and he was not able long to continue his seat in congress. He lived for the last few years of his life in dignified retirement, commanding universal veneration and attachment, arising from the known memorials of his illustrious services; his stern integrity; his social virtues; his polished manners; his extensive knowledge; his generous hospitality. When Washington died he clothed himself in mourning. His bodily health was not only broken down by disease, but he was severely visited with domestic afflictions. In 1801 he lost his daughter, Mrs. Van Rensselaer, which dissolved an honorable and highly gratifying family connexion. In 1803 he lost the wife of his youth, and was left at the age of seventy in painful solitude. In July, 1804, he was deprived, under circumstances the most distressing, of his beloved and distinguished son-in-law, General Hamilton. "Consolation," as he afterwards stated in a letter of the 6th of August, "was to be sought, where it can only be truly and effectually found, in an humble acquiescence with the Divine will." This great man died on the 18th of November, 1804, at the age of seventy-one, leaving in the history and institutions of his country, durable monuments of his fame.

J. K.

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