The other day I made another visit to sacred ground. To a field on FREEMAN'S Farm near Saratoga New York.
To remember a time when America's fate could a have gone another way. However, Providence favored the rebels.
It was the Winter of 1777. BEFORE the French supported the Continental Army in our Revolution against the British. The Revolution was not going well. And the battle of Saratoga was pivotal.
The Continental Army General Gates chose the high ground for his stand against British General Burgoyne. Burgoyne was leading the British on a campaign that planned to take every Continental Fort as he led his troops southward from Canada along the Hudson River. They had just taken Fort Ticonderoga to the north.
General Gates and his rag-tag ill-equipped, starving and freezing men had built fortifications to hold the high ground. They were as ready as they could be to face the fire of the most powerful army in the world that had never been defeated.
Many of Gates's soldiers were militia who walked long distances from other colonies to join the fight. They left behind family and friends. Many left their blood, limbs and lives on the field of battle. There was no treatment for PTSD for those whose body survived.
Their valor and sacrifice turned the direction of the Revolutionary War.
Today, with so much confusion about America's identity it is worth remembering. They fought for self-determination and they died for LIBERTY! NOT SOCIALISM!!
They fought to Make America!
