In 1843 the local paper, The Vermont Phoenix, published a revised history of Vermont’s influence during the Revolutionary War. The events in the Revolutionary War that were up for reinterpretation concerned Brattleboro and the Battle of Bennington.
In 1843 the War for Independence had been over for 77 years and people thought they knew what had happened. History books had written about the reasons and outcomes of the war but new information was coming to light from sources that had not previously been represented in the documentation concerning the Revolutionary War.
History books had long established that the Battle of Bennington, between the British and the Americans, was one of the turning points of the war. The Americans won the battle capturing, killing and wounding almost 1000 British soldiers. The British objective of the battle had been to seize as many supplies…including food, horses, cattle, wagon and oxen from the Vermonters as possible. The British had been marching from Canada and had hoped to make it all the way south to New York City but they were running out of supplies and the ability to transport the soldiers and supplies necessary for such a long trip. The British planned to attack Vermont in hopes of capturing enough supplies to make it to New York City.
On the front page of the November 3, 1843 edition of The Vermont Phoenix the orders from the Commander of the British Army, General Burgoyne to the leader of the attack on Vermont, Colonel Baum were published. This letter had just been discovered, 77 years after the Battle of Bennington, and contained new information about the reasons for the attack on Vermont by the British.
In the orders, written three days before Baum set off with over 700 soldiers to attack Vermont, it was clear that the goal of the attack was not Bennington. In the original orders Bennington was not even mentioned. Instead, the orders had Baum and his men traveling east from Arlington and Manchester and eventually arriving in Brattleboro. There were two objectives. One was to travel over the hills of Vermont and capture as many supplies as possible to send back to the main British Army waiting in New York. The second objective was one of deceit. Colonel Baum was marching through Vermont to Brattleboro in order to convince the Americans that the goal of the British Army was to travel down the Connecticut River Valley and eventually attack Boston. This was a diversionary tactic as the British plan was to collect needed supplies in Vermont and actually travel down the Hudson River Valley to attack New York City.
Sometime after the orders were written, but before Baum left to attack Vermont on August 9, 1777, General Burgoyne changed his mind. British spies erroneously reported to the General that there was a great collection of horses, cattle and oxen in Bennington. General Burgoyne told Colonel Baum to abandon the plan to travel all the way to Brattleboro and, instead, attack Bennington.
While General Burgoyne was changing orders, American General John Stark and the New Hampshire Militia were organizing at Fort #4, up the Connecticut River, in Charlestown, NH. The Vermont government had sent a letter to the NH government requesting military help because American spies were telling the Vermonters that the British would soon invade.
Stark marched his NH Militia to Bennington and rallied with the Vermont Militia and troops from Massachusetts. Colonel Seth Warner led the Vermont soldiers and, together, the men from NH, VT, and Mass. traveled to Walloomsac, NY to battle the invading British soldiers led by Colonel Baum.
As we know, the New England soldiers defeated the British, Vermont was protected from invasion, the British plan to create a diversionary tactic in Vermont failed and, in about a month the British plan to march to New York City and cut New England off from the rest of the colonies was defeated at the Battle of Saratoga.
It wasn’t until 77 years after the so-called Battle of Bennington that people knew how Brattleboro, and the rest of southern Vermont, played in the plans of British military strategy during the Revolutionary War.
By November of 1843, the battle between New England soldiers and the British Empire in Walloomsac, NY had been called the Battle of Bennington for over 70 years. With this new information found in the orders of General Burgoyne to Colonel Baum about the intent of the British Army, some historians argued that the battle should more correctly be named the Battle for Vermont.
It was in 1843 that the real purpose of the planned British invasion of Vermont was revealed in the Vermont Phoenix newspaper. Maybe the Battle of Bennington should be re-named the Battle for Vermont.