As America Approaches the 250th Anniversary of the Declaration of Independence, New York’s Crucial Role in America’s Fight for Freedom Falls into Stark Relief
The British Army was on the move. But the American militia—farmers, shopkeepers, brewers—were spread far and wide. As the redcoats marched, a lone Patriot volunteered to ride horseback through the darkness to rouse the local men. Grab your muskets and come fight the English!
You’ve already heard this story? Of course you have. It’s now hallowed in Revolutionary War history as the Midnight Ride of…Sybil Ludington?
Paul Revere has his place in romantic lore, but so too does Sybil. The 16-year-old girl rode 40 miles through New York’s mid-Hudson Valley on a dangerous, rainy, cold night in April 1777—almost two years to the day after Revere’s ride—to warn of a British attack.
When most people consider Revolutionary War sites, they commonly think of Massachusetts (Lexington and Concord, the Boston Massacre), Pennsylvania (Valley Forge, Philadelphia), and Virginia (Yorktown, location of the final British surrender).
In fact, New York should top the list. “If we hadn’t won Saratoga, nobody would have recognized the United States,” said Albany County historian Jack McEneny over dinner at, ironically, the Olde English Pub, housed in the 1736 Quackenbush House, one of the oldest structures in Albany. “Without New York, we would never have won the Revolution.”
Why New York Was So Important
Next year marks the 250th anniversary of the adoption of the Declaration of Independence on July 4, 1776. Celebrations are being planned in communities nationwide. History museums are preparing special exhibitions. In anticipation of the anniversary, Ken Burns is finalizing a documentary on the Revolutionary War that may rival his lauded The Civil War. There will be festive concerts, fireworks, and revelry of all sorts. As founding father John Adams wrote to his wife Abigail, Independence Day should be rich with “Games, Guns, Bells, Bonfires and Illuminations from one End of this Continent to the other from this Time forward forever more.”
But the glitz and revelry of the patriotic jubilee should come with a simple understanding: The American Revolution was successful only because of New York’s Hudson River.
The peaceful, navigable, and mostly straight and wide Hudson separated New England from the rest of the colonies. It was a supply line, a communications pathway, a source of drinking water, and a shipping resource for mills, foundries, and brick factories. More than any other river in the colonies, the Hudson, from Albany in the north to New York City in the south, was the most important waterway of the Revolution.
Whoever controlled that 200-mile-long watercourse could very well control the war.
Saratoga—the Turning Point
History buffs, road-trippers, and lovers of the outdoors can easily take in much of New York’s Revolutionary heritage on a scenic drive over the course of three or four days. For a chronological trip that traces much of the Northern Campaign (as the British called this region of the war), start along the Hudson’s northern reaches and head south to New York City. And there’s no better place to start than Saratoga.
The British goal, in August 1777, was to move pincer-like on Albany, today New York’s capital. The city lay at the critical junction of the Mohawk and Hudson rivers, offering easy access to the west and the south. Lieutenant Colonel Barry St. Leger was to approach Albany from the west, General William Howe from the south, and, from the north, General John Burgoyne, who crafted the strategy. It was a brilliant plan. Until it wasn’t.
General Howe, commander-in-chief of all the British forces in America, decided that his Army would be better used in attempting to overtake Philadelphia. St. Leger was stopped by the Continental Army at Fort Stanwix, 110 miles west of Albany. By the time Burgoyne arrived in Saratoga, 30 miles north of Albany, his weary troops had been harried by guerrillas much of the way.
Without support from St. Leger and Howe, Burgoyne’s 8,000 men stood little chance against the colonists, whose ranks at Saratoga had swelled to some 14,000.
Saratoga was not a single battle, but two major ones: Freeman’s Farm on September 19, 1777, and nearby Bemis Heights more than two weeks later. Shortly after that, Burgoyne surrendered his entire army at a spot now called the Field of Grounded Arms in Schuylerville.
The American victory at Saratoga was so crucial that historians consider it the revolution’s Turning Point.
Today, the widespread battlefield is open to the public as Saratoga National Historical Park. The landscape there is stunning: gentle hills, farm fields, forests of pine and birch. A narrow, meandering asphalt path allows visitors to drive from one battlefield to another, from one grand monument to the next, from skirmish site to skirmish site, with historical markers along the way.
The Americans knew they would need foreign assistance to ultimately win the war. With their success at Saratoga, they received such aid from France, including 12,000 soldiers, a fleet of warships, and significant loans to finance the war. Spain and the Dutch, too, offered their support. Military leader Wilhelm von Steuben came from Prussia (now Germany) to train American troops two months after Saratoga. Polish officer Casimir Pulaski joined at around the same time.
If you were to walk among the hills, fields, and forests of Saratoga today, you would be hard-pressed to even imagine the importance of these grounds. A car passes slowly along Route 32, which edges the park. Two starlings tussle in a sugar maple. A pair of teenagers pose for selfies in front of the Boot Monument. There is hardly a sound beyond the breeze rustling the surrounding pines. Saratoga, for a moment, is the most peaceful place on earth. But not in 1777.
“If it wasn’t for Saratoga,” said McEneny, the Albany historian, “the French never would have lent us their support. And we wouldn’t have won without that support.”
All of this was a major draw for documentarian Ken Burns, whose six-part series The American Revolution debuts November 16 on PBS and was partly filmed at Saratoga.
“The Saratoga Campaign and what followed is why Ken Burns filmed so much in New York,” said Sean Kelleher, Saratoga’s town historian. “He said he filmed more tape in New York than in any other state.”
Where Do You House a ‘Gentleman-Prisoner’?
After the American victory at Saratoga, General Burgoyne was held, in great comfort, as a “gentleman-prisoner” at a stately brick mansion in Albany, the home of wealthy American Major General Philip Schuyler. Schuyler commanded the Northern Forces, and created the successful battle plan for Saratoga, although he was replaced as leader before the battle began.
The Schuyler Mansion State Historic Site, which offers tours of the 1763 house-museum, presents an insightful look into the lives of the 18th-century rich. It was the first Georgian mansion in Albany. Period furniture, carpets, chandeliers, and artworks provide visitors with a sense of the ease and elegance in which the Schuylers lived, even before electricity and modern plumbing. A dignified stairway, rounded door tops, decorative medallions, and thick ceiling moldings prove the aesthetic sophistication of the man who built the house. (Schuyler was a Patriot, but, ironically, he preferred English architecture)
Alexander Hamilton, future Treasury secretary and Washington’s aide-de-camp during the war, married Schuyler’s daughter Eliza in the mansion’s parlor. “One of Hamilton’s children learned to walk in this room,” said a docent in the second-floor salon.
“Benjamin Franklin once was a guest here [when he was postmaster-general of the fledgling nation]. And Washington stayed here three times,” said the docent, with no little pride in her voice.
The Schuyler Mansion hosts numerous events around the calendar. On December 14, 2025, the mansion will bring out reenactors to celebrate the Noble Train of Artillery, in which Colonel Henry Knox moved 60 tons of cannons from Fort Ticonderoga, just north of Saratoga, 300 miles to Boston in the winter of 1775-76. On January 3, the mansion will be the site of a Twelfth Night festival with 18th-century foods, bonfires, and wassail toasts.
Heading South along the Hudson
Schuyler was by no means the only rich man to gamble everything on America’s freedom. The question of why is one for the heart, not the intellect.
Though the famous names of Revolutionary history are vast, many are unjustly forgotten. Consider Robert R. Livingston, another wealthy landowner who put everything on the line for the cause.
The mansion where Livingston raised his family, Clermont, is now a house-museum, 50 miles south of Albany. Because seven generations of Livingstons would live in the mansion, from 1730 until 1940, it’s full of original furnishings, artworks, and family keepsakes. The family donated the house in 1962 to New York.
The estate overlooks one of the most scenic stretches of the Hudson and the Catskill Mountains to the west. In fact, many consider the view from the front door to be the most spectacular, inspiring vista in the entire Hudson Valley. The British burned Clermont, but the determined Livingstons soon rebuilt it better than before.
Apart from his mansion, why should anyone care about Livingston? Make a cup of tea, have a seat, and read on. It’s impressive.
Livingston was on the committee that drafted the Declaration of Independence. A lawyer and judge, he swore in Washington for his first term as president in 1789. He was New York’s first chancellor, at the time the highest judicial position in the state. He helped design and finance Robert Fulton’s first steamboat, appropriately named the Clermont. He was the lead negotiator for the Louisiana Purchase, and America’s first Secretary for Foreign Affairs. Livingston’s collection of 4,000 books ranked second only to Thomas Jefferson’s. Yet few beyond Revolutionary War scholars know his name or his many accomplishments.
The Bird and Bottle Inn
The main surface road from Albany to New York is Route 9, also called the Albany Post Road, paralleling the Hudson. The path rises and descends, twists one way and bends the other, meandering through the hilly, forested countryside of Dutchess and Putnam counties. The road runs past the Vanderbilt Mansion, Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s home, and the Culinary Institute of America in Hyde Park. It rambles through Poughkeepsie with its Walkway Over the Hudson, a pedestrianized railroad bridge that spans the river. On its path are Rhinebeck, Fishkill, and Cold Spring, quaint, church-steepled villages that existed 250 years ago and more.
During the Revolution, in Putnam County, midway between Albany and Manhattan, the Post Road was slightly east of the modern route. The road was also narrower, windier, and dustier. Near present-day Garrison, it passed by Warren’s Tavern, built in 1761. Because of its vital location, the hostelry became an important stagecoach stop. The house and grounds were used for a time by the Continental troops as a regional headquarters. The inn is still there, serving dinners of crab-stuffed Chesapeake oysters, Faroe Islands salmon, Berkshire pork chops, fine wines, and ales to an enthusiastic local crowd.
Warren’s Tavern had many names and owners over the years. Skitch Henderson, the first bandleader of the Tonight Show, owned it in the 1960s and attracted the entertainment crowd. General Douglas MacArthur, in his retirement years, dined there often, taking the same seat at the same table every time.
Today, the tavern is the charming Bird & Bottle Inn, an upscale restaurant and B&B owned by two locals, Marjorie Tarter and Brendan McAlpine.
During a recent visit, guests asked Tarter about whether Washington ever “slept here.”
“I can’t say for sure that he ever slept here,” she said, “but there wasn’t a lot else around here. He definitely would have passed by and watered his horse here. And probably came inside for a pint of ale.”
Drama on the Western Banks of the Hudson
Like Saratoga, West Point lies on the western shore of the Hudson, across from Garrison. If the key to winning the Revolution was the Hudson, the key to winning the Hudson was West Point—not the academy itself, but the grounds on which the military school now stands.
West Point, some 60 miles north of New York City, is the oldest (1778) military academy in the U.S. Much of the Revolutionary history of the Hudson Highlands (the local name for this part of the river) is told at the academy’s West Point Museum. Even better is a walking tour of the campus to get a sense of the land’s defensive strengths.
West Point, in geographic terms, refers to the spit of land jutting out into the Hudson, creating an unusual, narrow S-curve in the otherwise straight and broad waterway. Ships were obliged to reef their sails or even be pulled by rowboats to more slowly negotiate the dangerous bend in the river.
Washington, understanding West Point’s military significance, ordered the high bluffs to be fortified against British warships early in the war. The man who designed the fortifications was Polish military engineer Tadeusz Kościuszko, who would later return to his homeland to fight for Polish liberty.
The bulwarks and redoubts he laid out bore little resemblance to the palisaded enclosures like those the U.S. Cavalry built during the Indian Wars a century later or the battlement-topped high stone walls of European castles. They were, to put it kindly, primitive but effective.
“The fortifications here were built of stone, wood, and dirt walls,” said veteran West Point guide Mary Cardi. The citadel may have looked unimpressive from a cinematic point of view, but the number of soldiers it held—thousands on the bluffs and spread across the surrounding hills—and the cannons’ control of the river gave West Point an unconquerable advantage.
West Point was never vanquished. It was never even attacked. But it was betrayed by its commanding general, Benedict Arnold.
America’s First Civil War
Fort Montgomery and its nearby twin, Fort Clinton, are only five miles south of West Point, and overlook a similar, if less dramatic bend in the Hudson.
“Not as many people know about us, because we lost,” said Peter Cutul, assistant supervisor of Fort Montgomery State Historic Site. “Victory has a thousand fathers, but defeat is an orphan.”
On October 6, 1777, only 600 Americans defended Forts Montgomery and Clinton on the high bluffs above the river, across from present-day Peekskill. Sailing up the Hudson from Manhattan, the British landed nearby with an insurmountable number of troops. The soldiers guarding Montgomery and Clinton were overwhelmed.
“The numbers weren’t in their favor,” said Cutul. “The British outnumbered the Americans three-to-one. Governor Clinton [commander of Fort Montgomery] barely escaped by jumping into the Hudson.”
At first glance, there’s not much to see at Montgomery besides the visitor’s center. But walk up a winding dirt trail to a high point and you begin to comprehend what was once there. The foundations of a guardhouse. The remains of a stone ammunitions dump. A cannon emplacement. Most striking are the views at the strategic bend in the Hudson, now the site of the picturesque, 100-year-old Bear Mountain Bridge.
“To me, the saddest part of the war was that you had the Loyalists and Patriots fighting each other,” Cutul sighed. “They were all Americans. This was really America’s first civil war.”
A Pint of Ale—and the Start of a New Nation
The war worked its way west from New England to Albany, then down the Hudson River to New York City, a Loyalist stronghold. But there were plenty of Patriots in early-day Manhattan.
Back then, New York City comprised only the southern tip of Manhattan Island. The protective wall against its northern flank is now Wall Street, the world’s most important financial center. The mostly brick and wood commercial and residential structures rarely rose more than three or four floors above the narrow cobblestone streets.
Today, the crowded, winding lanes still remain, a jumble of shops, delis, apartments, bars, businesses, and soaring 1920s-era skyscrapers on streets barely wide enough for a single car. The famed (and free!) Staten Island Ferry, which runs past the Statue of Liberty, departs from and arrives here. And the 12-belled Trinity Church (destroyed by fire in 1776 and rebuilt in 1846), a star location in the 2004 thriller National Treasure, still looms over Broadway. By the way, for history buffs and fans of Hamilton, Hamilton himself is buried in Trinity’s graveyard.
The 1719 Fraunces Tavern, the oldest existing building in Manhattan, is a New York City Landmark and listed on the National Register. On the ground floor is a fine-dining restaurant. Upstairs, history happened.
“In 1762, Samuel Fraunces turned it into a tavern,” said Melissa Lauer, in charge of the Fraunces Tavern Museum’s educational and public programs. “He prided himself on the service he provided. You’d have quite a mix of people. A sailor just off his ship might be sitting next to a wealthy lawyer. In Revolutionary-era New York, you had British, Americans, Blacks (both free and enslaved), French, Germans, Dutch, and more. As a port city, New York attracted ships from around the world. Fraunces Tavern was a community where people would share the news. And because Samuel Fraunces was a Patriot, he also attracted that crowd.”
In September 1776, just two months after the Declaration of Independence, British troops sailed into New York Harbor and occupied Manhattan. They would remain in control for the next seven years. Everyone in the city was suspect. Patriot or Loyalist? Friend or traitor? Innocent tradesman or spy? Sam Fraunces, a rebel to his core, fled to the relative safety of Elizabeth, New Jersey, just across the Hudson from Lower Manhattan.
“Fraunces was captured in 1778,” said Lauer, “but his reputation as an excellent cook saved him from prison. While he was cooking for the British Army brass, he became a spy for the Americans.”
The End of the War, and Washington’s Good-bye
Although Lord Cornwallis surrendered to Washington in October 1783, the British continued to occupy Manhattan for another month. When they finally evacuated in November (the last British troops to vacate American soil), the war was at long last over. On December 4, Washington bid adieu to his generals in the Long Room of Fraunces Tavern.
Hamilton, Washington’s chief adjutant, was likely at the farewell (no definitive list of attendees exists). He certainly dined in the Long Room on July 4, 1804, just a week before his fatal duel with Aaron Burr, who was in the room at the same time. By all accounts, Hamilton was outgoing and talkative that night. Burr was sullen and surly.
Not only did New York State play a pivotal role during the war, New York City served as the first capital of the new USA. The Founding Fathers worshiped at St. Paul’s Chapel, just up Broadway from Fraunces Tavern. President Washington moved into the first presidential manor, the Osgood House, at the corner of Pearl and Cherry Streets (now the site of a footing of the Brooklyn Bridge).
As we approach the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence, complete with (in the words of John Adams), “Games, Sports, Guns, Bells, Bonfires and Illuminations,” there’s never been a better time to say, I love New York.
Freelance writer and author Mark Orwoll has lived in New York City and the Hudson Valley for more than 40 years. In 2025 he received the silver award in the prestigious Lowell Thomas Travel Writer of the Year competition sponsored by the Society of American Travel Writers.