Volume 22 Number 019 America s Revolution (106) Ticonderoga - III Lead: In the 1700s the United States broke from England. No colony in history had done that before. This series examines America s Revolution. Intro: A Moment in Time with Dan Roberts Content: In spring 1775 perceptive minds all over New England and the middle states were focused on Fort Ticonderoga, a frontier fortress built between Lake Champlain and
Lake George in the upper Hudson River Valley of New York. Capturing that fort could thwart attempts by the British to cut off New England from the lower colonies by taking the Valley. The colonial capture of that fort introduced two fascinating characters in the Revolutionary drama, Ethan Allen and Benedict Arnold. Allen was born in Connecticut but migrated to that part of New Hampshire that eventually became Vermont. He was a physically imposing frontier ruffian who led a rag-tag militia group known as the Green Mountain Boys, but also lived a life of the mind. A deist, he read widely and even wrote an essay extolling his personal philosophy. Arnold was from a prominent and wealthy Rhode Island family and had made his own fortune as a merchant in New Haven. He was an ambitious, athletic, and
charming actor in the coming Ticonderoga campaign. Commissioned by the Massachusetts Committee of Safety to take the fort, he arrived with no men on May 10 th, at the scene already occupied by the large personality of Ethan Allen. Not surprisingly, they clashed as to who would lead this ill-conceived crusade, but arrived at enough unity to get their men into boats for an early morning attack on a fort poorly defended by a tiny garrison. Allen s famous demand that Lieutenant Feltham, Ticonderoga s commander, come out of there you damned old rat or skunk or bastard depending on the account. On what authority do you make this demand, Feltham inquired. Allen: In the name of the Great Jehovah and the Continental Congress. The hopelessly outnumbered British surrendered.
The strategic location of Ticonderoga proved to be less important than the guns mounted on its ramparts. Within a few months, Henry Knox proved his worth to the new American commander of the Continental Army, George Washington, by fetching the fort s heavy artillery in the dead of winter across Massachusetts to be used in the successful siege of Boston. At the University of Richmond s School of Professional and Continuing Studies, I m Dan Roberts.
Resources Brooke, John. King George III. New York: Constable Publishing, 1972. Brown, Wallace. An Englishman Views the American Revolution: The Letters of Henry Hulton, 1769-1776. Huntington Library Quarterly. 36 (1972). Christie, Ian and Benjamin W. Labaree. Empire of Independence, 1760-1776, A British-American Dialogue on the Coming of the American Revolution. Oxford: Phaidon Press, 1976. Donoughue, Bernard. British Politics and the American Revolution: The Path to War, 1773-1775. London: Macmillan, 1964. Higgenbotham, Don. The War of American Independence. Bloomington, Indiana: Indiana University Press, 1971. Jellison, Charles A. Ethan Allen: Frontier Rebel. Syracuse, New York: Syracuse University Press, 1969. Jensen, Merrill, ed. English Historical Documents, Vol. IX: American Colonial Documents to 1776. London: Eyre and Spottiswoode, 1964. Jensen, Merrill. Founding of the American Nation: A History of the American Revolution, 1763-1776. New York: Oxford University Press, 1968. Knollenberg, Bernhard. Origin of the American Revolution. New York: Macmillan, 1960. Middlekauff, Robert. The Glorious Cause: The American Revolution, 1763-1789. New York: Oxford University Press, 2005. Wallace, Willard. Traitorous Hero: The Life and Fortunes of Benedict Arnold. New York: Harper, 1954. Watson, J. Steven. The Reign of George III, 1760-1815. New York: Oxford University Press, 1960. Copyright 2018 Dan Roberts Enterprises, Inc.