TICONDEROGA.
Those ruthless destroyers, time and man, have wrought sad havoc on the
once formidable fortress of Ticonderoga. One wall of solid masonry has
withstood their assaults, and still rears its sharp-cut angles and
massive front, gray with age and scaled with lichens of a century, as
grimly now as in the days of yore, above the broad expanse of fields
that stretch away to the southwest.
Across the neck of the peninsula, in the shadow of great oaks that were
but saplings then, may be seen the well-preserved breastworks against
which the storm of Abercrombie's assault so vainly beat, and within them
green mounds show the position of old outworks. But the fort itself is a
desolate ruin. Ditches choked with brambles and rubbish, grass-grown
ramparts, crumbling bastion, and barrack walls, fallen-in bomb-proof and
magazine, mark the sight of a stronghold once deemed worth the blood and
treasure of nations to hold or gain.
Amherst's useless fort of Crown Point, built with lavish expense, has
not suffered such complete decay. The barracks are in ruin, but the
almost unbroken ramparts rear their walled and grassy steeps high above
the long incline of the shrub-grown glacis, and the hoary walls of the
outworks have stoutly withstood the ravages of almost seven-score years.
The older French fort of St. Frederic; its citadel within whose walls
commandant, priest, and fierce Waubanakee plotted raids on the frontier
hamlets of the heretics, in whose dungeons English captives languished;
its chapel, where masses were said in celebration of savage deeds, while
white-coated soldier of France, rough-clad habitant, and painted Indian
knelt together before the black-robed priest; its water-gate, bastions,
scarps, and counter-scarps,--all have fallen into the desolation of
utter ruin.
The conquest of Canada accomplished, it was no longer of vital
importance that the forts on Lake Champlain should be maintained;
consequently the elaborately planned fortifications of Crown Point were
never completed, and they, with those of Ticonderoga, fell into such
neglect that in September, 1773, the first one was reported by General
Haldimand to be entirely destroyed, and the other in a most ruinous
state. And though it does not appear that they were dismantled or quite
abandoned, for years they were held by garrisons too insignificant to
defend them against any vigorous attack. In such defenseless condition
they continued, as if too remote from the great centres of revolt to be
of consequence to England, while the threatening attitude of her
American colonies daily grew more menacing. But while the appeal to
arms was yet impending, the importance of these posts became apparent to
some active patriots of the New England colonies. In March, 1775, John
Brown of Pittsfield, Massachusetts, who had recently passed through the
New Hampshire Grants on a secret mission to Canada, wrote from Montreal
to Samuel Adams and Dr. Warren, the Committee of Correspondence in
Boston, mentioning one thing to be kept a profound secret. "The fort at
Ticonderoga must be seized as soon as possible, should hostilities be
committed by the king's troops. The people in the New Hampshire Grants
have engaged to do this business, and in my opinion they are the most
proper persons for this job. This will effectually curb this province,
and all the troops that may be sent here." Thus it appears that so early
as February, 1775, the capture of the fort was contemplated by the
leaders of the Green Mountain Boys, and that they were committed to the
enterprise.
Yet, when confronted by the actual outbreak of war, they were sorely
perplexed. Self-interest inclined them to hold aloof from a rupture with
the mother country when king and privy council were considering, with
apparent favor to them, their controversy with New York; while on the
other hand the ties of birth strongly bound them to their brethren of
New England, and every impulse of patriotism impelled them to espouse
the cause of their common country.
Soon after receiving the news of the battle of Lexington, which Ethan
Allen says almost distracted them, the principal officers of the Green
Mountain Boys, and other prominent leaders, met at Bennington, and in
the council chamber of the Catamount Tavern "attempted to explore
futurity;" though they "found it to be unfathomable,"[59] they resolved
to unite with their countrymen, whom they doubted not would, in the
event of a successful issue of the conflict, freely accord to them the
rights which they demanded.
Without any knowledge of what was already brewing in the Grants, some
gentlemen of Connecticut, who on the 26th of April met Benedict Arnold
on his way to Cambridge with a company of volunteers, learned from him
the defenseless condition of Ticonderoga and the great number of cannon
there, and at once formed a plan for its capture. To carry it out, they
procured L300 from the treasury of Connecticut. This was given to Noah
Phelps and Bernard Romans, who immediately set forward toward the
Grants, where it was thought best most of the men should be raised. Just
after their departure, Captain Mott arrived at Hartford and proposed the
same enterprise, to procure artillery and stores for the people of
Boston, and being apprised of what was already on foot, agreed to join
in the expedition. He set forth next day with five others, and at
Salisbury was joined by eleven more. Arrived at Pittsfield it was
determined, by the advice of Colonel Easton and John Brown, just
returned from his Canadian mission, to raise a number of men before
reaching the Grants, where it was thought the scarcity of provisions and
the poverty of the inhabitants would make it difficult to raise and
equip a sufficient number. Accordingly about forty men were recruited
and made ready to march, in Jericho and Williamstown, by Colonel Easton
and Captain Mott, while the others went on to Bennington. When, after
this service, Easton and Mott were on their way to the same place, they
were met in the evening by an express from their people with the news
that Ticonderoga was reinforced and its garrison alert, and with the
advice that, as it could not be surprised, the men recruited would
better be dismissed. The news was discredited, the advice unheeded, and
the colonel and the captain held forward for Bennington, rejoining their
companions and finding the leading men of the Grants there in conclave.
Captain Mott told his hesitating friends that the "account they had
would not do to go back with and tell in Hartford;" and his friends Mr.
Halsey and Mr. Bull declared they would go back for no story till they
had seen the fort for themselves.[60] It was decided that the attempt to
capture the fort should not be abandoned.
Two agents were dispatched to Albany to purchase and forward provisions
for the troops, and trusty men were sent to waylay all the roads leading
from the Grants to Skenesborough, Lake George, and the Champlain forts,
to prevent any intelligence of the movement from reaching those points.
Then, going on to Castleton, the committee, of which Captain Mott was
chairman, arranged there the plan of operations.
A party of thirty men under Captain Herrick were to go to Skenesborough
and capture Major Skene and his men, and go down the lake in the night
with his boats to Shoreham to transport the men assembled there across
the water; while Captain Douglass was sent to Crown Point to concoct a
scheme with his brother-in-law, who lived there, to hire the king's
boats, on some plausible pretense, to assist in getting the men over to
the New York shore.
Meanwhile Captain Phelps of Connecticut had gone to spy out the
condition of Ticonderoga. In the guise of a simple backwoodsman, he
easily gained admission to the fort on the pretext of getting shaved,
and, after taking careful note of all that could be seen in the place,
returned to Castleton and reported to his friends.
Agreeable to a promise made to the men when engaged that they should be
commanded by their own officers, Colonel Ethan Allen was given the
command of the force which was to attack Ticonderoga. After receiving
his orders from the committee, and dispatching Major Gershom Beach of
Rutland to rally the Green Mountain Boys, he went on to Shoreham, where
they were to assemble.
Major Beach performed the almost incredible feat of making on foot the
journey of sixty miles in twenty-four hours, over rough by-paths marked
only by blazed trees, and along the wretched roads of the new country.
The forest-walled highway led him to the hamlets of Rutland, Pittsford,
Brandon, and Middlebury, whose fighting men were quickly summoned. Along
its course, he turned aside here and there to warn an isolated settler,
to whose betterments he was guided by the songs of the earliest bobolink
rejoicing over the discovery of a new meadow, by the sound of
axe-strokes, by the drift of smoke climbing through the greening
tree-tops from log-heap or potashery. Each man, as summoned, left his
task unfinished,--the chopper his axe struck deep in the half-felled
tree; the grimy logger his smoking pile; the sawyer his silenced mill
with the saw stopped in its half-gnawed course through the great log;
the potash-maker left the fire to smoulder out beneath the big kettles;
and the farmer, though hickory leaves as large as a squirrel's foot
calendared the time of corn-planting, exchanged the hoe for the gun.
Each took his firelock, bullet pouch, and powder horn from their hooks
above the fireplace, and, bidding brief farewell to homefolk, set forth
to the appointed meeting place. In little bands, by threes and twos and
singly, scarred and grizzled veterans who had scouted the Wilderness
with Rogers, Putnam, and Stark, men in their prime who had seen no
service but in raids on the Yorkers, and beardless boys hot with untried
youthful valor, took their way toward the lake. Most of them plodded
the unmistakable course of the muddy highways till they struck Amherst's
road leading to Crown Point; but some, with consummate faith in their
woodcraft, took the shortest ways through the forest, now breasting the
eastern slope of ledges whose dun incline of last year's leaves was
dappled thick with the white bloom of moose-flowers and green tufts of
fresh forest verdure, now scrambling down the sheer western wall of
diluvian shores, now wading the mire of a gloomy morass, and now
thridding the intricate tangle of a windfall.
On the evening of the 9th of May, 1775, they had come to the appointed
place of meeting, a little cove about two miles north of Ticonderoga,
where the mustering force was quite hidden from the observation of
voyagers along the lake, and where the camp-fires might blaze behind the
wide screen of newly leafing woods unseen by the garrisons of the two
forts. Here the Green Mountain Boys were met by their adored leader, and
awaited the arrival of the boats and their comrades coming from the
southward.
Allen had just left Castleton when Benedict Arnold arrived there, and
demanded the command of the expedition by authority of a colonel's
commission just received from the Massachusetts Committee of Safety,
with orders to raise 400 men for the reduction of Ticonderoga. The
committee in charge of the enterprise, in consideration of the
conditions under which the men had engaged, refused to give him the
command. But he persisted in demanding it, and at once set forward to
overtake Allen, whom he found no more disposed to yield to his demand
than the committee had been, nor would his men consent to follow another
leader. Upon this, Arnold joined the force as a volunteer.
By the evening of the 9th, 270 men, all but forty of whom were Green
Mountain Boys, had assembled on the shore of the little creek in
Shoreham now known as Hand's Cove, which is in summer a level expanse of
sedgy marsh threaded by a narrow sluggish channel, but during the spring
floods is a broad cove of the lake, its waters over-running the roots of
the trees that grow upon the banks. Here the force anxiously awaited
transportation, for the seemingly well-laid plans for securing boats had
not proved successful. It was not till near morning that the watchers,
often deceived by the cries of strange waterfowl, the sudden plunge of
the muskrat, or his long wake gleaming in the light of the camp-fires,
at last heard the unmistakable splash of oars, and saw the boats coming
in among buttressed trunks of the great elms and water-maples that stood
ankle-deep in the spring flood. When scows, skiffs, dugouts, and yawls
had crushed through the drift of dead waterweeds and made a landing, it
was found that there were not enough of the motley craft collected to
transport half the force.
Allen, Easton, Arnold, and eighty others at once embarked, and,
crossing the lake, landed a little north of Willow Point, on the New
York shore, when the boats returned to bring over those who, under
Warner, remained at the cove. Day was now dawning, the rugged horizon
line of forest and mountain becoming each moment more distinct against
the eastern sky, and it became evident that, if the attack was much
longer delayed, there would be no chance of surprising the garrison.
Allen, therefore, determined to move forward at once, without waiting to
be joined by those who remained on the other shore. Briefly addressing
his men, who were drawn up in three ranks, he called on those who would
voluntarily follow him to poise their firelocks. Every musket was
poised, the order was given to right face, and Allen placed himself at
the head of the centre file; but when he gave the order to march, Arnold
again asserted his right to take command, and swore that he would be
first to enter the fort. Allen as stoutly maintained his right, and,
when the dispute waxed hotter, turned to one of his officers and asked,
"What shall I do with the damned rascal? Shall I put him under guard?"
The officer, Amos Callender of Shoreham, advised them to compromise the
untimely dispute by agreeing to enter the fort side by side, to which
they both assented, and the little column at once moved forward in
silence, guided by a youth named Beeman, who, living near by, and having
spent many of his idle hours in the fort, was well acquainted with the
entrances and all the interior appointments.
Captain Delaplace and his little garrison of a lieutenant and forty-two
uncommissioned officers and privates[61] were sleeping in careless
security, not dreaming of an enemy near, while two or three sentinels
kept listless guard. The drowsy sentry at the sallyport, now come upon
so suddenly by the attacking party that he forgot to challenge or give
an alarm, aimed his musket at the leader and pulled trigger. The piece
missed fire, and, Allen running toward him with raised sword, the
soldier retreated into the parade, when he gave a loud halloo and ran
under a bomb-proof. The Green Mountain Boys now swiftly entered the
fort, and, forming in the parade in two ranks facing the east and west
rows of barracks, gave three lusty cheers. A sentry made a thrust with
his bayonet at one of the officers, and Allen dealt him a sword cut on
the head that would have killed him, had not the force of the blow been
broken by a comb which kept his hair in place.[62]
He threw down his gun and asked for quarter. Allen demanded to be shown
the apartment of the commandant, and was directed to a flight of stairs
leading to the second story of the west row of barracks. Mounting to the
door at their head, Allen ordered Captain Delaplace to "come forth
instantly, or he would sacrifice the whole garrison." The bewildered
commandant came to the door with his breeches in his hand, when Allen
demanded the immediate surrender of the fort, "By whose authority do you
demand it?" asked Delaplace, and Allen answered, "In the name of the
great Jehovah and the Continental Congress." Delaplace attempted to
parley, but Allen cut him short, and, with his drawn sword over his
head, again demanded an immediate surrender. Having no choice but to
comply, Captain Delaplace at once ordered his men to parade without
arms, and Ticonderoga with all its cannon and military stores was
surrendered to the Green Mountain Boys.
Warner presently arrived with the remainder of the force, and after some
convivial celebration of the almost bloodless conquest was dispatched by
Allen, with about one hundred men, to take possession of Crown Point,
which was held by a sergeant and twelve men, and on the 12th Warner and
Peleg Sunderland reported its capture on the previous day to the
governor and council of Connecticut. Captain Remember Baker, who had
received orders to come with his company from the Winooski and join the
force, after meeting and capturing two small boats on their way to St.
John's with the alarming news of the surrender, arrived at Crown Point
nearly at the same time with Colonel Warner.[63] Skenesborough was taken
possession of by Captain Herrick, Major Skene made prisoner, and his
schooner seized. Callender was sent with a small party to seize the fort
at the head of Lake George, an exploit easily accomplished, as its sole
occupants were a man and woman.
Thus, by no heroic feat of arms, but by well-laid plans so secretly and
promptly executed that they remained unsuspected till their purpose was
accomplished, the two strongholds that guarded the passage to the head
of the lake fell into the hands of the Americans, with 200 cannon, some
mortars and swivels, and a quantity of military stores, all of which
were of incalculable value to the ill-supplied patriot army.
Allen at once sent a report of the capture of Ticonderoga to the Albany
committee, and asked that provisions and a reinforcement of 500 men
might be sent to the fort, as he was apprehensive that General Carleton
would immediately attempt its recapture. He also reported the capture to
the Massachusetts government, and on the 12th sent the prisoners under
guard to Connecticut, at the same time apprising Governor Trumbull of
the preparations being made to take a British armed sloop then lying at
St. John's.
Ticonderoga had not been many hours in possession of its captors when
Arnold again attempted to assume command, as no other officer had
orders to show. But the soldiers refused to serve under him, declaring
that they would go home rather than do so. To settle the question of
authority, the committee issued a written order to Colonel Allen
directing him to keep the command of said garrison for the use of the
American colonies till further orders from the colony of Connecticut or
from the Continental Congress.
The capture of the English sloop was now undertaken. Arnold, in command
of the schooner taken at Skenesborough and now armed with a few light
guns, and Allen of a batteau, set forth on this enterprise, favored by a
brisk south wind, more propitious to Arnold than to his coadjutor, for
it wafted his schooner so much more swiftly onward that he reached St.
John's, made an easy capture of the larger and more heavily armed sloop,
made prisoners of a sergeant and twelve men, and still favored by the
wind, which now shifted to the north, was well on his way up the lake
with his prize when he met Allen's sluggish craft, some distance south
of St. John's, and saluted him with a discharge of cannon. After
responding with a rattling volley of small arms, Allen and his party
went on board the sloop, and further celebrated the successful issue of
the expedition by toasting Congress and the cause of the colonies in
bumpers furnished forth from the ample stores of his Majesty's navy. The
vessels then pursued their way up the lake, past unfamiliar headlands
and islands whose fringe of dark cedars was now half veiled in the
misty green of the opening deciduous leaves, now sailing in mid-channel
with low shores on either hand, on this La Motte and Grand Isle, on that
the pine-clad plains and Valcour, the scene of Arnold's future desperate
naval fight, and now, when the Isles of the Four Winds and solitary
Wajahose, far astern, hung between lake and sky, they hugged the cleft
promontory of Sobapsqua[64] and the rugged walls of the western shore,
till Bullwagga Bay was opened and the battlements of Crown Point arose
before them and their present voyage ended.
The Americans now had complete control of the lake, the only armed
vessels afloat upon its waters, and all the forts except St. John's. Yet
for a time a greater value seemed to be attached to the cannon and
stores received than to the military importance of the forts taken.
After the capture of Ticonderoga and Crown Point, more than a month
passed in a wrangle of the commanders for the supremacy, and
dissatisfaction and insubordination of the men, before the garrisons
were effectively strengthened by a force of a thousand men under Colonel
Hinman, who was put in command of the posts by the government of
Connecticut, to which, in the division of affairs, this quarter had been
relegated.
FOOTNOTES:
[59] Ethan Allen.
[60] Mott's Journal in Chittenden's _Capture of Ticonderoga_.
[61] Allen's own accounts of the number do not agree. In his report to
the Albany committee he gives the number of prisoners taken as one
captain and a lieutenant and forty-two men, while in his _Narrative_ it
"consisted of the said commander, a lieutenant, Feltham, a conductor of
artillery, a gunner, two sergeants, and forty-four rank and file." The
first number, given in the report made on the day following the capture,
is probably the correct one.
[62] Goodhue's _Hist. of Shoreham_.
[63] Ira Allen's _History of Vermont_.
[64] "Pass through the Rock," Split Rock.