Washington also had a problem with Gates. The decisive victory over the British at Saratoga inflated Gates’s ego and put him in a position to challenge Washington’s authority as commander in chief. While Gates’s celebrity was on the rise after he turned the tables on the British, Washington was on the run after losing the Battles of Brandywine and Germantown. When the Redcoats attacked Philadelphia, Congress fled west and set up shop in York, Pennsylvania. Washington was the scapegoat. Driven from their capital, several New England delegates believed that the commander in chief should be
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