Horatio Gates (26 July 1727 – 10 April 1806) was a Major-General of the Continental Army of the United States during the American Revolutionary War. Gates, a former officer in the British Army, sought to discredit the commander-in-chief George Washington in hopes of taking command himself, and Gates, Charles Lee, Thomas Conway, Thomas Mifflin, and James Wilkinson conspired to remove Washington in the "Conway Cabal". After the disastrous Battle of Camden in 1780, he was replaced by Nathanael Greene as commander in the southern theater, and the failed Newburgh Conspiracy against Washington in 1783 failed to give him command of the Continental Army. He died in 1806 in New York.
Biography[]
Gates in 1776
Horatio Gates was born in England, the son of a servant. Through noble patronage, he obtained a commission in the British Army, but his promotion was hampered by lack of money. He was in the American colonies when the French and Indian War broke out in 1754 and was badly wounded in a British defeat at Monongahela a year later - the battle in which George Washington first won renown. Gates saw further action in the West Indies, but his British army career went nowhere. In 1772, Gates settled in Virginia as a plantation owner. Siding with the American patriots in 1775, he was seen as a valuable asset because of his regular army experience and was appointed Adjutant-General of the Continental Army.
Thwarted ambition[]
Through political maneuver, Gates gained command of the forces in the northern theater (roughly, the states north of Virginia), allowing him to mastermind the defeat of John Burgoyne at Saratoga. Briefly in the ascendant, he was named president of the Board of War, but failed in his aspiration to replace Washington as commander-in-chief. Appointed to command the southern theater in 1780, Gates unwisely led a scratch force of Continental Army troops and untried militia into battle against the British general, Charles Cornwallis, at Camden, South Carolina. In the resulting disaster, Gates is alleged to have fled the field more rapidly than any of his men. This effectively ended his military career.