Gates, Horatio

Gates, Horatio

(c. 1728–1806) soldier; born in Maldon, England. He entered the British army as a boy and saw action in America during the French and Indian War. After ten years back in England, he settled in western Virginia in 1772. Appointed brigadier general in the Continental Army in June 1775, he proved himself a capable administrator and played a major role in the American victory at Saratoga in 1777. But he had a tendency to quarrel with his fellow officers—General Schuyler at Ticonderoga, Benedict Arnold after Saratoga—and in 1778 he permitted his name to be associated with the "Conway Cabal," a plot to have Gates supplant Washington as commander in chief; although not formally implicated, Gates never truly regained Washington's friendship or trust, and for two years he had little role in the action. Finally restored to command in the South on August 16, 1780, he commanded the militia at Camden, S.C., that was routed by the British; Congress demanded an investigation but no court of inquiry ever convened. He played little role in the final actions of the war and retired to his Virginia plantation in 1783. Ever the outsider, he freed his slaves in 1790 and passed his last years as a gentleman farmer on Manhattan Island, New York City.

The Cambridge Dictionary of American Biography, by John S. Bowman. Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1995. Reproduced with permission.