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gargantuan task of creating a single, uniform army from the manpower of thirteen different colonies each with its own militia. Short, pudgy, and bespectacled—“an old granny looking fellow” according to one of his soldiers— Gates’s kindly, conciliatory manner encouraged people to work together, and it was a considerable feat to have secured the collaboration of the colonies before they had agreed on any kind of unified constitutional government. His reputation consequently ranked high. In some people’s opinion, not least his own, it rivaled that of George Washington. Nevertheless, he had never exercised independent command in combat, and his limited military experience meant that he maneuvered through the corridors of power with more confidence than he ever displayed on the battlefield.
    A relationship that was to prove profoundly destructive to both Gates and Wilkinson began formally enough in early July 1776 when Gates sent Arnold with Wilkinson to Crown Point to inspect the increasingly disease-ridden survivors of the Canadian disaster. Of fifty- two hundred men, they found almost half sick with typhoid fever, smallpox, and other illnesses. Gates decided, with Schuyler’s reluctant agreement, to move the stricken army farther south to the great fortress of Ticonderoga, which guarded the entrance to the head of the Hudson Valley. Arnold and Wilkinson were tasked with preparing Ticonderoga for their reception, a duty that fell largely to the junior officer after the general became embroiled in a feud over allegations of looting in Canada.
    During this period when he was reporting directly to Gates, the young captain switched allegiance. It was not that Wilkinson turned against Arnold— he defended his former patron vigorously in the looting quarrel, saying, “[I] have always found Him the intrepid, generous, friendly, upright, Honest man”—rather that Gates could offer more. He was, Wilkinson declared, “a commander whom the entire army loved, feared and respected.”
    Gates made his appreciation known on July 20 by promoting Wilkinson to brigade major, and appointing him to the staff of his own favorite general, Arthur St. Clair. Soon afterward Wilkinson fell sick with typhoid fever himself and was sent back to the army’s headquarters in Albany, where he almost died. Later he used to claim that he came so close to death he could hear the planks being sawed in the yard outside to make his coffin. Fortunately he came under the care of the army’s senior medical officer, who had orders from Gates to keep the young officer alive at any cost.
    By the time he was again fit for duty, St. Clair’s brigade had moved south to join Washington, and so Gates attached Wilkinson to his own staff. When the general marched south in December with four regiments from Albany in response to Washington’s urgent request for reinforcements, Wilkinson went with him. The next tumultuous month altered the course of many careers, not least those of the general and the new major.
    H AVING DRIVEN W ASHINGTON out of New York during the early fall of 1776, General William Howe had unexpectedly followed him into New Jersey instead of going into winter quarters. Taken by surprise, with part of his force under General Charles Lee still in Westchester, New York, and many of his militia anxious to return home at the end of the year, Washington himself was in acute danger of being overwhelmed by pursuing British forces. Unsure where the commander in chief had retreated to, Gates sent his newly recovered aide ahead to find Washington.
    Scouting for clues in the confusion of war, Wilkinson rode through northern New Jersey and eventually learned that Washington and most of his troops had crossed the Delaware River farther south into Pennsylvania. With swarms of British troops roaming the area, he decided to consult General Lee, Washington’s second-in- command, who had moved his headquarters close to Morristown, New Jersey. Lee was a