Capture of Fort Ticonderoga

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

For other actions at Fort Ticonderoga, see Battle of Ticonderoga.

Capture of Fort Ticonderoga shows Ethan Allen demanding the surrender of the fort
(Alonzo Chappel, 1858)

Date	May 10, 1775
Location	Ticonderoga, New York
Result	Fort captured by American colonists

Combatants

Vermont
Connecticut

Great Britain

Commanders

Ethan Allen
Benedict Arnold

William Delaplace

Strength

Casualties

None

48 captured

Canadian theater, 1775–1776
Ticonderoga – Crown Point – Longue-Pointe – Fort St. Jean – Quebec – Les Cèdres – Vaudreuil – Trois-Rivières – Valcour Bay – Fort Cumberland

The capture of Fort Ticonderoga was an event early in the American Revolutionary War. On May 10, 1775, Colonels Ethan Allen and Benedict Arnold surprised and captured the small British garrison at Fort Ticonderoga. Cannons captured at the fort were subsequently hauled away and used to fortify Dorchester Heights and break the stalemate at the siege of Boston.

1 Background
2 Campaign
3 Crown Point and Fort St. Johns
4 Aftermath
5 Notes
6 References
7 Further reading
8 External links

[edit] Background

Even before shooting in the American Revolutionary War started, American Revolutionaries were concerned about Fort Ticonderoga. The fort was a valuable asset essentialy for several reasons.First of all, within its walls were a number of cannons and massive artillary, something the Americans had in short supply. And secondly, the fort was situated in the ideal Lake Champlain valley, the route between the rebellious Thirteen Colonies and the British-controlled Canadian provinces. After the war began at the Battle of Lexington and Concord on April 19, 1775, the Americans decided to seize the fort before it could be reinforced by the British, who might then use the fort to stage attacks on the American rear. It is unclear who first proposed capturing the fort: the idea has been credited to John Brown, Benedict Arnold, and Ethan Allen, among others.^[1]

Ticonderoga was not the fortress it had been in 1758, when the French had held it from a British attack. After the 1763 French cession of their North American territories to the British, the fort was no longer on the frontiers of two great empires. It had fallen into disrepair; the garrison consisted of only two officers and forty-six men, many of them "invalids" (soldiers with limited duties because of disability or illness). Twenty-four women and children lived there as well. Because of its former significance, Fort Ticonderoga still had a high reputation as the "gateway to the continent" or the "Gibraltar of America", but in 1775 it was, according to historian Christopher Ward, "more like a backwoods village than a fort."^[2]

[edit] Campaign

Fort Ticonderoga

Two independent expeditions to capture Ticonderoga—one out of Massachusetts and the other from Connecticut—were organized. At Cambridge, Massachusetts, Benedict Arnold told the Massachusetts Committee of Safety about the cannon and other military stores at the lightly defended fort. On May 3, 1775, the Committee gave Arnold a colonel's commission and authorized him to command a secret mission to capture the fort.^[3]

Meanwhile, in Hartford, Connecticut, Silas Deane and others had organized an expedition of their own. Ethan Allen assembled over 100 of his Green Mountain Boys, about 50 men were raised by James Easton at Pittsfield, Massachusetts, and an additional 20 men from Connecticut volunteered. This force of about 170 gathered on May 7 at Castleton, Vermont. Ethan Allen was elected colonel, with Easton and Seth Warner as his lieutenants. Samuel Herrick was sent to Skenesboro and Asa Douglas to Panton with detachments to secure boats. Meanwhile, Captain Noah Phelps reconnoitered the fort disguised as a peddler. He saw that the fort walls were in a dilapidated condition and learned from the garrison commander that the British soldiers' gunpowder was wet. He returned and reported these facts to Ethan Allen.

On May 9, Benedict Arnold arrived in Castleton and insisted that he was taking command of the operation, based on his orders and commission from the Massachusetts Committee of Safety. Many of the Green Mountain Boys objected, insisting that they would go home rather than serve under anyone but Ethan Allen. Arnold and Allen worked out an agreement, but no documented evidence exists about what the terms of the agreement were. According to Arnold, he was given joint command of the operation. Some historians have supported Arnold's contention, while others suggest he was merely given the right to march next to Allen.^[4]

By 2 a.m., they had assembled at Hand's Cove and were ready to cross the lake, but they had only two boats secured by Douglas. Eighty-three of the Green Mountain boys piled in with Arnold and Allen and crossed the lake. Douglas went back for the rest. But as dawn approached, fearful of losing the element of surprise, they attacked. The only sentry on duty at the south gate fled his post after his musket misfired, and they rushed into the fort. Allen and Arnold charged up the stairs to the door of the officer's quarters, roused the garrison commander from bed, and demanded surrender. Only one shot was fired by a guard who tried to stop the invaders, and there were no injuries on either side.

[edit] Crown Point and Fort St. Johns

Seth Warner marched a detachment up the lake shore and captured nearby Fort Crown Point, garrisoned by only nine men. On May 12, Allen sent the prisoners to Connecticut's Governor Jonathan Trumbull noting that "I make you a present of a Major, a Captain, and two Lieutenants of the regular Establishment of George the Third."

Arnold took a small schooner and several bateaux from Skenesboro north with 50 volunteers. On May 18, they seized another garrison at Fort St. Johns along with the Enterprise, a seventy ton sloop. Aware that several companies were stationed twelve miles (19 km) down river at Chambly, they loaded the more valuable captured supplies and cannon, burned the boats they could not take and returned to Crown Point.

Ethan Allen and his men returned home. Benedict Arnold remained with some Connecticut replacements in command at Ticonderoga. At first the Continental Congress wanted the men and forts returned to the British, but on May 31 they bowed to pressure from Massachusetts and Connecticut and agreed to keep them. Connecticut sent a regiment under Colonel Benjamin Hinman to hold Ticonderoga. When Arnold learned that he was second to Hinman, he resigned his Connecticut commission and went home.

[edit] Aftermath

1955 U.S. postage stamp depicting Ethan Allen and Fort Ticonderoga

Although Fort Ticonderoga was no longer an important military post, its capture had several important results. Because rebel control of the area meant that overland communications and supply lines between British forces in Quebec and Boston were severed, British war planners in London made an adjustment to their command structure. Command of British forces in North America, previously under a single commander, was divided into two commands. Sir Guy Carleton was given independent command of forces in Quebec, while General William Howe was appointed Commander-in-Chief of forces along the Atlantic coast, an arrangement that had worked well between Generals Wolfe and Amherst in the Seven Years' War.^[5] In this war, however, cooperation between the two forces would prove to be problematic and would play a role in the failure of the Saratoga campaign in 1777.

More immediately, in the winter of 1775–76, Henry Knox moved the guns of Ticonderoga to Boston to support the siege. The guns were placed upon Dorchester Heights of Boston Harbor, and the British ships, causing the British to evacuate Boston. The ships captured during the Ticonderoga expediton were used by Benedict Arnold in the 1776 battle of Valcour Island to thwart Britain's attempt to recapture the fort.

[edit] Notes

^ Fear of British attack in rear: Christopher Ward, The War of the Revolution, 1:64. Unclear who first had the idea: Mark Boatner, Encyclopedia of the American Revolution, p. 1101.
^ Ward, 1:69.
^ Ward, 1:65.
^ No documentary evidence: John Pell, Ethan Allen, p. 81. Boatner (p. 1101–02) notes that while Ward believes Arnold merely had the right to march next to Allen, Allen French argues otherwise in The Taking of Ticonderoga in 1775.
^ Piers Mackesy, The War for America: 1775–1783, p. 40.

[edit] References

Boatner, Mark Mayo, III. Encyclopedia of the American Revolution. New York: McKay, 1966; revised 1974. ISBN 0-8117-0578-1.
Mackesy, Piers. The War for America: 1775–1783. London, 1964. Reprinted University of Nebraska Press, 1993, ISBN 0-8032-8192-7.
Pell, John. Ethan Allen. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1929.
Ward, Christopher. The War of the Revolution. 2 volumes. New York: Macmillan, 1952.

[edit] Further reading

Chittenden, Lucius E. The Capture Of Ticonderoga. Rutland, Vermont: Tuttle & Co., 1872.
French, Allen. The Taking of Ticonderoga in 1775: The British Story; A Study of Captors and Captives. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1928.