Ticonderoga

The Citadel of Revolution: Ticonderoga and the War That Made a Nation

Few places in America can claim to have shaped the Revolutionary War as decisively and repeatedly as the small community perched on the western shore of Lake Champlain in upstate New York. Ticonderoga — its name derived from the Iroquois word tekontaró:ken, meaning "it is at the junction of two waterways" — was not merely a backdrop for a single dramatic event. It was a strategic fulcrum upon which the fortunes of the entire war pivoted, again and again, between 1775 and 1777. The fort that stood there, originally built by the French in 1755 as Fort Carillon, commanded the narrow corridor linking Canada to the Hudson River Valley, and whoever controlled it controlled the most vital military highway on the continent. During the 1758 Battle of Carillon, just 4,000 French defenders had repelled an assault by 16,000 British troops — an astonishing feat that earned the place its legendary reputation as the "Gibraltar of North America." In the span of just two and a half years, Fort Ticonderoga was seized by rebel militia in a surprise dawn raid, stripped of its cannons for use in a nearly impossible winter journey to Boston, used as the staging ground for America's first naval campaign, recaptured by a massive British invasion force, and then abandoned in a desperate nighttime evacuation. No other location in the Revolution witnessed such a concentrated cascade of consequential events, and no serious understanding of how American independence was won can afford to overlook what happened here.

The story begins in the pre-dawn darkness of May 10, 1775 — less than three weeks after the shots at Lexington and Concord. Ethan Allen, the towering, profane, and charismatic leader of the Green Mountain Boys, had been planning an assault on the lightly garrisoned British fort for weeks. His motivation was partly patriotic and partly personal: the Green Mountain Boys were a militia formed to defend the land claims of settlers in the New Hampshire Grants (present-day Vermont) against the colony of New York, and Allen saw an opportunity to strike a blow that would serve both causes at once. The fort at that time was garrisoned by a small detachment of the 26th Regiment of Foot under the command of Captain William Delaplace — just two officers and forty-six soldiers, many of them classified as "invalids" (troops on limited duty because of disability or illness), along with some twenty-four women and children who lived within the crumbling walls. The French had blown up the fort's powder magazine when they abandoned it years before, and the place had fallen further into disrepair; historian Christopher Ward would later describe it as "more like a backwoods village than a fort."

But as Allen gathered his men on the eastern shore of the lake at Hand's Cove, a complication arrived in the form of Benedict Arnold, then a captain in the Connecticut militia, who carried a commission from the Massachusetts Committee of Safety authorizing him to raise troops and seize the fort. Arnold demanded command of the expedition, but the Green Mountain Boys flatly refused to serve under anyone but Allen. The two men eventually reached a tense compromise: they would lead the assault side by side at the front of the column. On the morning of May 10, fewer than a hundred militiamen — Green Mountain Boys, along with small contingents from Massachusetts and Connecticut — crossed Lake Champlain at dawn and overwhelmed the garrison without a pitched fight. Only one shot was reportedly fired, and only one American was wounded by a bayonet. Allen famously demanded that Delaplace surrender "in the name of the Great Jehovah and the Continental Congress!" The capture was the first American offensive victory of the Revolutionary War, and the morale boost it delivered to the fledgling rebel cause was immense. In the days that followed, Arnold took command of the Ticonderoga garrison, a post he held until he was relieved in June 1775.

The captured fort held a treasure that would prove even more consequential than the victory itself: a vast store of artillery. In the fall of 1775, with the Continental Army locked in a frustrating stalemate outside British-held Boston, a bold young officer proposed a seemingly impossible solution. Colonel Henry Knox — just twenty-five years old, a former Boston bookseller who had taught himself military science from the volumes in his own shop — convinced General George Washington that the cannons sitting idle at Ticonderoga could break the siege. Washington dispatched Knox on November 16, 1775, and he arrived at the fort on December 5. Over five days at Ticonderoga, Knox selected fifty-nine cannon, mortars, and howitzers, along with gunflints and lead, totaling nearly sixty tons. The journey that followed, later celebrated as the "Noble Train of Artillery," was an extraordinary feat of logistics and endurance. Knox and his men hauled the weapons by boat down Lake George, then loaded them onto ox-drawn sleds and wagons for the grueling overland trek — crossing the frozen Hudson River and the snow-covered Berkshire Mountains in the dead of winter, a distance of some three hundred miles. Towns along the route supplied men, oxen, and provisions, making the mission a cooperative effort between soldiers and local communities. Among the guns was a massive 24-pounder cannon nicknamed "Old Sow," which weighed more than 5,000 pounds. Knox's artillery train arrived outside Boston in late January 1776, and Washington quickly ordered the guns emplaced on Dorchester Heights. On March 17, 1776, faced with the prospect of devastating bombardment, the British evacuated Boston without a fight — the first major strategic triumph of the war, made possible by the weapons seized at Ticonderoga months before.

But the fort's role in the Revolution was far from over. After the failed American invasion of Canada in early 1776, battered Continental forces retreated south and regrouped at Ticonderoga. General Philip Schuyler, commander of the Northern Department, ordered a massive expansion of the defensive works. On the Vermont side of the lake, a rocky peninsula known as Rattlesnake Hill — or simply East Point — was heavily fortified under the direction of chief engineer Colonel Jeduthan Baldwin, with assistance from the Polish military engineer Thaddeus Kościuszko. When the text of the Declaration of Independence was read to the assembled troops on July 28, 1776, the soldiers jubilantly rechristened the promontory "Mount Independence." A quarter-mile-long floating bridge was constructed across the narrows of Lake Champlain to connect Mount Independence to Fort Ticonderoga, and batteries, redoubts, and barracks sprouted across the landscape. By October 1776, the fort and its surrounding defenses were home to approximately 13,000 Continental soldiers — a force rivaling some of the largest cities in the colonies.

That same autumn witnessed another act of daring centered on Ticonderoga's strategic orbit. Benedict Arnold, now a brigadier general, commanded a hastily built American fleet on Lake Champlain — an ad hoc navy of galleys and gundalows crewed largely by soldiers-turned-sailors. On October 11, 1776, Arnold positioned his small fleet in the narrow channel between Valcour Island and the western shore of the lake, forcing the superior British fleet under Sir Guy Carleton to attack piecemeal. The Battle of Valcour Island was a tactical defeat — most of Arnold's ships were captured or destroyed — but it was a strategic masterstroke. The engagement delayed the British advance long enough that Carleton, seeing the formidable American defenses at Ticonderoga and Mount Independence and facing the onset of winter, chose to withdraw his forces back to Canada rather than attempt an assault. The newly independent nation had survived its first year.

The reprieve was brief. In the spring of 1777, Kościuszko — now assigned as engineer for the Northern Army — arrived at Ticonderoga and conducted a fresh inspection of the defenses. He urged American commanders to fortify Sugar Loaf Hill, the high ground that overlooked both the fort and Mount Independence