Lessons and Resources
A concise guide to the Battle of Bennington
By Phil Holland
Background to the Battle
Since the end of the French and Indian War (1763), tension had been mounting between the King and his North American colonies. The King wanted his Americans to pay for the British army that was supposedly there for their own defense. The colonies, which had no voice in Parliament, objected to “taxation without representation.” War broke out at Lexington and Concord in 1775, and a year later came the Declaration of Independence.
Britain was a formidable foe, with a powerful army and navy and the money to hire foreign troops. The Continental Congress had to raise an army of its own, fast. George Washington drove the British out of Boston, only to see them seize New York and almost strangle the Revolution in its cradle. But Washington rallied his men, crossed the Delaware, and hit Trenton and Princeton in surprise attacks as 1776 drew to a close, raising American morale.
King George had had enough of his rebellious subjects. He approved an invasion from Canada by an 8,500-man army made up of British and German troops, as well as Indians and French Canadians, under General John Burgoyne. The German contingent, 4,000 strong, known to history as Hessians, came courtesy of various German dukes with family connections to the King – and a need for cash. Burgoyne’s army headed south from Montreal in the summer of 1777, expecting to meet up above Albany with another British force coming down the Mohawk valley.
The American fort at Ticonderoga on Lake Champlain fell without a fight, and the British pursued the fleeing American forces into Vermont, catching their rear guard at Hubbardton. Burgoyne’s orders were to seize Albany, and he continued to move southward to the Hudson. But his rapid advance and the American campaign to deny him provisions began to cause supply problems. He was short on cattle, pork, horses, and carriages.
Burgoyne learned of a Continental supply depot at Bennington, at the site of the future Bennington Monument, where supplies for the American army at Stillwater were being gathered. Hearing that the depot was lightly defended, he decided to send a raiding party in hope of easy pickings.
But the fledgling government of Vermont had not been idle during Burgoyne’s advance. In mid-July it raised the alarm and appealed to New Hampshire and Massachusetts to send militia to defend New England’s western flank. New Hampshire enlisted General John Stark, the tough and proud veteran of Bunker Hill and Trenton who had been passed over for promotion and had resigned his Continental commission in disgust, to lead its men. Stark marched across the Green Mountains to Manchester and Bennington, arriving on August 8 with a force of 800 militia. A day later a British detachment of 600 under Lt. Col. Baum headed toward Bennington, unaware of Stark’s presence.
Stark caught wind of the advance and sent out a party of 200 men under Col. Gregg to investigate. Gregg’s men and Baum’s vanguard encountered each other at a mill in what is now North Hoosick. After a brief skirmish the outnumbered Americans retreated until they met up with Stark’s main force coming to their relief, just inside New York territory in the hamlet of Walloomsac (along modern Route 67). Baum’s force, consisting of German dragoons, British sharpshooters, Indians, Canadians, and 300 Loyalists or “Tories” (settlers who supported the King), met Stark’s at a bridge across the Walloomsac. Stark was ready to fight and soon picked off 30 of Baum’s men, including an Indian chief, but Baum saw that he was outnumbered, halted his advance, and assumed a defensive posture. Each side called for reinforcements.
Stark set up camp along what is now Harrington Road in North Bennington as hundreds more militiamen arrived from Vermont, Massachusetts, and New York. In consultation with Cols. Warner, Herrick, and Brush, he devised a bold plan of attack. But heavy rain delayed it for a day, as Baum fortified positions on both sides of the river and at the top of the hill that is now part of the Bennington Battlefield site. Meanwhile, the British relief force of 600 was marching through the mud to join Baum, while a smaller but seasoned party of soldiers – Warner’s regiment of Green Mountain Boys, who had taken losses at Hubbardton – hastened down from Manchester to bolster Stark’s army.
The Battle Begins
History – or is it legend? – has it that on the steamy morning of the 16th General Stark vowed to his men that if he and they did not win the day, “this night Molly Stark sleeps a widow.” After stealthily enveloping the British positions – the hilltop, the bridge, and the so-called Tory Fort across the river on a rise of ground -- the Patriots struck at three o’clock in the afternoon in a coordinated burst of musket fire. Baum’s dragoons and his two three-pound cannons gave it right back. The sound, said Stark, was like “a continual clap of thunder.” The Americans assaulted the German and Tory fortifications and overran them “with irresistible impetuosity,” in the words of the Rev. Thomas Allen, the so-called fighting parson of Pittsfield. The Indians fled, and large numbers of Baum’s other forces were killed or taken prisoner. The Americans, who sustained fewer casualties, savored a victory, some by draining their rations of rum.
At that moment, however, the British reinforcements under Lt. Col. Breymann arrived, led by a military band and two six-pounders firing canister shot. The scattered Americans had to regroup to resist this new advance and were suddenly at a disadvantage. And at that moment Major Rand and 90 men from Massachusetts and Col. Seth Warner’s regiment of a hundred or more Continentals arrived from Manchester with a score to settle. The fighting was intense and ended in the rout of the British force as darkness fell.
The result shocked both sides. For the first time in the war, Patriot militiamen had assaulted and defeated an entrenched force of professional soldiers. Burgoyne had lost more than a thousand men killed or taken prisoner and had been denied critical supplies. He had to delay his advance to Albany, where American strength was building day by day. When the moment of truth arrived at Saratoga, the Americans under Horatio Gates and Benedict Arnold prevailed. Burgoyne surrendered on October 17, his invasion a spectacular failure.
Aftermath of the Battle
When news of the British defeat reached France, Benjamin Franklin was standing by in Paris to propose an alliance. The French, who had held back from joining a cause that appeared militarily dubious, became believers, and the French navy and treasury proved critical to American victory. It took till 1781 for the last domino to fall at Yorktown. If in retrospect Saratoga was the turning point of the War of Independence, Bennington was the tipping point.
In 1809, when he was 81, John Stark reflected on the meaning of the triumph at Bennington in a message to veterans of the Battle. “As I was then, I am now – the friend of the equal rights of men, of representative democracy, of republicanism, and the Declaration of Independence, the great charter of our national rights: and of course the friend of our indissoluble Union and Constitution of the states.”
Phil Holland lives in Pownal and is the author of A Guide to the Battle of Bennington and the Bennington Monument.oom and beyond
Please review, copy and download the following Battle of Bennington lessons and educational resources for use in the classroom and beyond
The Battle of Bennington Slideshow
The Battle of Bennington Lesson Questions
The Battle of Bennington Worksheet
The Battle of Bennington Scavenger Hunt
