Part four of “250 Years: Looking Back & Looking Ahead,” a four-part lecture series at Norman Williams Public Library co-hosted by Woodstock History Center in collaboration with the Vermont Humanities Council.

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The surrender at Saratoga of a British army under John Burgoyne, now almost 250 years ago, has long been called the decisive battle of the American Revolution. But perhaps Burgoyne was doomed after the Battle of Bennington, a bloody day of fighting along the Vermont border that happened two months before Saratoga? Historian Howard Coffin discusses the history-changing Burgoyne campaign, focusing on the dramatic battle of “Great Bennington,” which was a Vermont battle as well as a New York battle. He also reviews heroes John Stark and Seth Warner, and the Vermont Constitution, itself about to turn 250 years old.

A seventh-generation Vermonter, Howard Coffin is a former press secretary to U.S. Senator Jim Jeffords. He is the author of four books on the Civil War: Something Abides: Discovering the Civil War in Today’s Vermont; Full Duty: Vermonters in the Civil War; Nine Months to Gettysburg; and The Battered Stars, as well as Guns Over the Champlain Valley, a book on military sites along the Champlain Corridor.