answer is, well, what made somebody be a loyal. i mean obviously the american revolution really popular and all the cool kids were doing. so what made somebody be a loyal oc? rich when you woke up this morning, did you get up, stretch and say, i'm going to obey all the laws of the united today. no. who would do that? that's insane. you just go about your business and you'll live your life in a simpler manner. you have to wake up one morning and say, i am going to violently overthrow government. people became rebel. people didn't become loyalists. loyalists was everyone left behind from all the cool kids who were just living their as they saw fit for what the many myriad reasons you that you mentioned it was just who they were. and i'm sure if you ask some of them, they might give you a specific reason or not.

but having gone through literally thousands of claims. motivation is mentioned. other than that. they were simply enjoyed living under his majesty's government. that's that was enough for them. jane mcrae's fiancee lieutenant, davy jones. i was under the impression that he left the army, the campaign, and he went a little nuts. but gavin white had disagreed with me on that. do you know exactly happened to him after jones, i believe, was an officer of the queen's loyal rangers and his brother actually came mccray's brothers were officers in the queen's rangers in the army, in america, in new york. this is actually the second jones question i've gotten year, and i'm trying diligently to the answer because the first one i gave, as far as i know, he did not because he made claims after

end of the war. so he was around them. so i don't think he went nuts. how? i'm sure the incident was not a pleasant one for him. i'm sure being a human being, it affected to what degree? i no personal knowledge. but he was around at the end of the war to make and whatnot so he didn't he didn't off a cliff or something. we have two online questions. well, actually, it's a question for me. this is great because in part it clear up a lot of the organization of these from 77 to later on when we encounter them back here at ticonderoga and detaching at least in late 1781 under st leger and in my work through there come across at least one letter slight, only reprimanding or accusing think it was peters of men of african descent and prohibiting that practice. and in the role of his companies, the place where i have found a man whose place of

origin is africa. and i wondered if you could comment on enlistment of men, of african descent, of the relationship, those with these royalists coming out of canada. as far as the royalists corps themselves are concerned. i found one or two. i think what they nero and either peter's corps or chesapeake's core one of the two now as the loyal rangers are concerned the oil once they're all formed up in november of 81. there's only two sets of roles for them. they're actually signs roles from. december 1780 1st december 1782 were notes where the men were born and enlist again. may be two from africa now the northern army and the army in america were two very different

things. the army in america was governed by a provincial inspector general as as provincials were concerned. and sir william howard ordered no blacks whatsoever. ought be enlisted. and those who had been previous to that were to be discharged. the northern army have that didn't have any inspector general, didn't he existed. and there are some mentions from the king's who arrangement of new york from one of the privates there, bring 14 from the mohawk valley in 82 and wanting them to be enlisted. i do not how that worked out because there must roles are not that great either. but he was making their case which i found that this guy had private or a purple was going out on a and tried to enlist those men. so he had all this obviously

made some sort of bond with them. but the final disposition of that, i you can make up a happy ending if you like. i do have one comment here from the online audience, which may be a little further afield from this question, which is how would you characterize, the loyalism of joseph brandt? obviously very strong. he was a extremely zealous partizan on behalf of the british in that both native tribes and would follow him and a number of white settlers would follow as well. and what was loosely referred to was branch volunteers ostensibly part of the indian department in which he loosely served as well. so he certainly made a name himself. if anybody in the colonies. knew of one native leader, it was going to be joseph branch.

he made all the papers. so once you get the press, you know, you've got you've got the following. so, yeah, he was extremely, extremely zealous for the cause. and, you know, depending on whose side you're on great things or horrible things. thank you, todd todd. we'll take a seven minute break before the next speaker. it the fact that there's three presentations revolving around saratoga is purposeful but it wasn't intended when we were doing a call for papers it's just the way that the papers kind of fell together. so sometimes there's some

serendipity involved when we're pulling together our programs for the afternoon before i introduce introduce our next speaker, i wanted to just briefly thank our volunteers, some of whom are in the room and most of whom are not because they're helping make other things happen during the day. so patricia curtis janet. denny, todd guilford. bonnie shealy. beth folsom and kristin scott, thank you for all your help. our next speaker is david sheehan, who will speak about energy, geography and geology in the saratoga 1777. similar to all living organisms, armed forces have a military. one that requires food, fuel work, work, animals and, food for those animals in order to and fight in saratoga campaign brutish hessian forces face daunting challenges when acquiring and using this shape. the outcome of the battles and

had a long term on the battlefield environment. david shu, professor of history at jinny junior area college in pennsylvania, is a book about the environmental history of the war of independence. welcome, david. thanks. good work. okay. all right. okay. thank you, rich. thank you again to volunteers, but also the other folks here at fort ticonderoga go who have organized this seminar and keep things running so smoothly thank you all for spending weekend here, folks, online. thank you for for zooming in. i don't think i'm going out on a limb to assume that this group is familiar with, told them

that, you know something, about maybe a lot about the battles of saratoga who's been to the battlefield battlefield. all right right. i'll it short so you can come to to the podium and out the afternoon about about saratoga there. as you know, there's been a lot written about saratoga. what i have to add to all that comes from the perspective of environmental history, and by that i mean how human and the natural world have interacted and affect each other in a continuous, ongoing, dynamic relation. humans shape the environ ment that changed environ and then shapes how humans think about and and act in natural world and about 250 years historians have

tried to understand the american revolution and they most often have approached it from the political or economic social and cultural spheres of human activity. what i would to do is add a little to this incredible body of scholarship by paying attention to those human interactions with the and in particular, what the sciences, biology, chemistry, ecology, geology what can they help us see? so as you heard in the intro, my, my particular interest to do with energy we all have a table sums all living organisms have metabolisms and we need energy to survive and we can use that concept of metabolism and expand it to human communities like, cities, water nat gas, natural

electricity come into a city, the occupants it and wastes are created so. so that idea of metabolism can be extended to the revolution. armed forces have i would call a military metabolic and to do things that armed forces need to do they need energy and that energy comes from food i think that's the first one. yes. all right. and if you need you need water. okay. anything else to fuel most often in the form of firewood. wood. but coal was involved as well. anything else have pack animals working, animals, armies have to move to do the things that they need to do and animals need food as well all of that energy comes

from the environment. so how did armed and governments and so forth, how did they acquire and use that energy and how did doing that shape the course of the war? so let's look at some of the ways in which british and german military ran hot, how they could not reliably get the fuel or the energy that they needed and how that shaped the battles. saratoga they june 13th, 1777. john burgoyne there on the left, he led a force of about 9500 british and german soldiers, along with support, south from the outskirts of montreal. and i hope those of you in the cheap seats and back can, can, can see the map up towards up

towards the right there traveling mostly over water the force quickly reached this spot fort ticonderoga, and then began surrounding the fort july 2nd to fourth. the battle that was also quick gela major general arthur st clair and the continental army evacuated his men on july 6th and started south. so then burgoyne was faced with the decision about how to pursue the americans. the continental army. he decided to do it overland. i don't have a laser pointer but sort in the middle of that map you might see schemes bureau today it's so burgoyne force was going from fort ticonderoga down

to schemes burrow eventually to the southwest there to fort and and then south to fort edward about, 22 miles. now trek demanded a tremendous expenditure of energy from the troops, hoisting 60 pounds packs on their backs. the men trudged forward. but in places had to stop every or 12 yards because. trees blocked their way now why were trees in the way because major general philip schuyler of the continental army instead looked at his men. you will begin as near fort and possible to fell across the road sort of like a big pile of pickups. you will make obstructions as effectual as possible. take up every bridge and burn

the covering and timber so the continental broke up about 40 bridges, tore a three mile long cause that ran through a swamp, all to delay the progress of burgoyne forces. the british and german could clear some of those obstructions. pretty quickly, but at other times, like to british lieutenant william digby, we were obliged to cut a road through the wood which was attended with great fatigue and labor for our wagons and artillery and the men needed about. 1700 kilos calories day just for their basal just to stay alive, just to keep the heart pumping and this kind of work 60 pounds

packs clearing obstructions that would have required at double, maybe triple the amount of calories day. now, the british and the germans had enough food as of the end of july but then they started to run low. now why? well, they worked they had food here. they occupied fort ticonderoga and they had food farther up the supply line the way up to canada. but their shortage arose in part because they did not have transport vehicles, they did not have enough back to. the bartos are about 30 foot long flat bottomed wooden boats. and i'm going to look at rich i think there is a bateau being reckoned two of them reconstructed over by the

somerville och tour tomorrow. okay. they did not have enough of these bateau and not enough carts now. i couldn't find a good image of a british army cart. so here's one from colonial williamsburg here that is, i think roughly take these carts would get loaded in say fort an 800 pounds of provisions are driven south to edward unloaded and turned right back to fort and to get another load okay the men shuttled these boats and carts back forth, burned extra calories so they had to eat more food and troops wade ing around for these carts and boats to deliver stuff from from farther north were sitting around and they needed eat more food to

maintain their their metabolisms. so it's hard to build up supply a stockpile of provisions so that army could then move forward towards albany. now all of this shuttling back and forth, all of this work a lot from the animals, from from horses. now, i mentioned the carts first i put the cart before the horse because i think it helps explain the workflow these. horses had to bear each each day the breed the canadian horse initially brought to quebec from, france, adult horses were pony sized, 58 inches at the withers, at shoulder, at their shoulder level, and adults weighed about 1,000 pounds. what were their metabolic needs? well, it depended on a variety of factors age, sex weight.

it depended on environmental factors. what kind of surface were they walking on? what was the grade, even? what was what was the design of the yoke, the collar that that that they had from reference works like the nutrient for horses sixth edition. i calculated that a canadian horse under burgoyne command consistently hauling kinds of loads probably. needed 24 mega calories day of digestible energy now for you and me what does 24 mega calories a day? what would that be equivalent to 44 mcdonald's quarter pounders. so i don't know if you had your

15 quarter pounders for breakfast but i know lunchtime the box lunch did not contain another 15 quarter pounders. okay. so these horses is got a daily ration as close as i could figure an official daily ration of 12 pounds of hay and eight pounds of oats. right. and you calculate out the calories, 16.6 mega calorie a day, only 7% of the requirement that these working horses really and by mid august the british could not come anywhere near to supplying each day this of the ration that was officially on the books and unfortunately the horses there was not enough for edge not enough grass around the

road from schemes bureau to fort and to fort edward and on for them to make up this 30% deficit. so these horses were and therefore they moved ever more slowly and then eventually broke completely. and further slowed the progress of burgoyne army towards albany. now these metabolic demands from humans and horses shaped the decisions and military decisions that burgoyne he stayed in place for while. so that provision could laboriously be brought forward or so his could scour nearby for food and forage. here's that map again he skat he stayed near scheme sparrow from july nine to july 27th as the

men who. might my my to i was wondering where you were while the soldiers cleared the route to fort and the army arrived at fort edward? yes on july 30th and stayed there for over six weeks, in part a raid in mid-august to acquire cattle and forage and more horses near bennington, vermont, which is to the east that raid ended in disaster by mid-september after weeks of contests and toil, the army finally had accumulated about five week supply of provisions and so burgoyne saw okay, i can cut the supply line back north and head off to albany.

so on september 13th the british germans packed their tents, crossed the hudson river and headed south. now all of these delays, however, the slow movement and being place in one place for a while gave the continental army local militia time to get to the saratoga brega area. time to assemble in overwhelming. so the two sides clashed as you. september 19th and october 7th. you know the results the german british forces did not because of one reason insufficient and horses and histories to complex to be reduced to a single but i think in environmental history and the perspective of military metabolisms helps us understand

burgoyne decisions why the army moved so slowly and it ultimately put it at such a fatal disadvantage. now me turn to the results. one result of these battles, a particular byproduct of military metabolisms, and that's waste in particular. i'm interested in hazardous waste. the soldiers shot musket balls and no one went to ground afterwards up these musket. no one remediated the battlefield. and we all know that led the environment is a bad thing okay bad in what ways is neuro. yeah lot of lead poisoning, lot of problems with the nervous system, the brain and all that. so how much lead was deposited

saratoga. so here are my armchair armchair calculations. okay. first we got to start with a number soldiers who were engaged in battle each side had. more soldiers, but only a subset actually fought on on those two days. then got to think about ammunition. each side fired led musket balls, each 175 caliber weighing ounce americans added three or four buckshot in their muzzles call that 0.2 of an ounce. and then how many cartridges each side carry? 30 rounds for americans, 64 british and germans in their cartridge boxes. now, i started by assuming that every soldier fired his full supply of ammunition that's

possible possible because numerous accounts describe fighting as intense and continuous lasting almost 4 hours on september 19. and at least three and a half hours on october 7th. so you take the number of soldiers and how much of how how much how many musket balls they you multiply it all and you get 45,000 pounds of lead or over 22 tons of heavy fighting. indeed. now, modern medical and scientific studies look at cancer integrations. mgs two kg or parts per. so i have to put this weight of musket balls into a quantity of soil on the battlefield in order

to get a concentration. so here are some more estimates size of the battlefield 253 acres that's initial that's my initial rough estimate i to fine tune this much more and the soil in this part of upstate new york is and rhinebeck salt loam you take a cubic foot of it weighs hundred and five pounds okay now you take i a imagined i took a a four inch slice of a of that battlefield like a énorme mist 253 acres sheet cake. okay and i four inches because a musket ball probably wouldn't penetrate farther than inches. at least that's suggested by

modern studies of at firing ranges at ranges. so you take this huge sheet cake, 253 acres, four inches thick of hudson rind back silt loam and it weighs 380 plus million right. you i looked at the natural concentration of lead in this soil 15 to 40 milligram arms, two kg or two parts per million. so i took the weight of, the the lead, the weight, the soil, converted everything into metric hit the calculate to hit the calculator twice and i got to concentrate of a 119 milligram is two kg or 3 to 8 fold in crease in the natural concentration of the left but

maybe i should have made a more conservative calculation. maybe not every soldier fired his weapon or used up all his ammunition. how could that be. yeah, right. maybe he got killed. it musket ball number five and still had 25 or 55 more cartridges in his box. okay so i arbitrarily cut 25% from the total and that leads to 2080 9.3 milligrams two kg parts per million to two six fold increase in the natural concentration. this is bad, isn't it? it's bad if particles of lead into your body, through your skin or you inhale it or you drink contaminated ground water.

okay, well was my original thinking, but the environmental side of environmental history pushed further. how do those lead particles get formed? mostly by the lead breaking down when a lead musket ball gets stuck in the soil, it slowly gets transformed into compounds. so russ site hydro cirrus site and lead sulfate now in acidic these compounds dissolve fairly rapidly and the little bits of lead get out there and can get in the groundwater. okay but this the acidity of these hudson and rhinebeck silt loans is only little bit acidic. 6.1 to 6.5. so the musket balls would have been fairly stable and the compounds would ha