OCR Text |
Show SARATOGA BATTLEFIELD. W mentioned some time agJhat a movement was on hand in New York to set aside and improve im-prove the battlefield of Saratoga. The bill haa been introduced aud the Sun, referring to it, says: ( ' "In the last forty years the state has expended many hundreds of thousands of dollars in making historic sites which owe their interest to the civil war. At Saratoga, -undisturbed by all of the ordinary or-dinary circumstances of years, there' remains a battlefield on which the farmers of Virginia and Massachusetts as well as those of New York, divided divid-ed the glory of decisively defeating a common enemy." en-emy." And further on it says: "The story of the battle of Saratoga is one of the. most romantic in the whole American range of American battles." And that ia all true. The splendor of that fight gathers around two conspicuous men. General Fraaer of the British army on that .day bore repeated re-peated assaulta, and by his personal courage and magnetism held his men up to an unequal contest, until finally, just as the day was closing, in a last desperate effort to maintain himself, he was killed. On the other side Benedict Arnold, who had differed dif-fered with General Gats, and who was virtually deprived of bis command, while watching the fight saw that it was going to be lost except that he should save it, and without command as he wart, he mounted his horse, rode to the head of the troops, and three times led them to the assault, the last time going down with a shattered limb, the hero of the battle. There were other names that since have grown famons there, the whole field is crowded with aacred memories, and New York will be untrue to herself if she doesn't add to the appropriation ap-propriation asked for and make that battlefield sacred ground for all time. |