A Hero for Fort Ticonderoga (episode 326)

Automatic Shownotes

Chapters

Transcript

Jake:
[0:06] Welcome to Hub History, where we go far beyond the freedom trail to share our favorite stories from the history of Boston, the Hub of the Universe.

Introduction to Fort Ticonderoga

Jake:
[0:15] This is episode 326. Massachusetts sends a hero to Fort Ticonderoga. Hi, I’m Jake. This week, I’m talking about Fort Ticonderoga. Every Bostonian knows Fort Ticonderoga as the source of the cannons that Henry Knox brought to Boston, secretly hauled to the top of Dorchester Heights in the middle of the night, and used to drive the Redcoats out of Boston forever. We’ll talk about Henry Knox’s story later in our 250th anniversary season, but this week, I want to think about the other end of that chain. Before Henry Knox could bring his noble train of artillery to Boston, somebody had to take those cannons, and the fort they belonged to, from the Redcoats. We usually give the credit for the daring capture of Fort Ticonderoga to Ethan Allen, whose homestead you can visit outside Burlington, Vermont these days. However, the capture is actually at least as much a Boston story as it is a Vermont story, as the orders to capture the fort were issued by our local patriots.

Jake:
[1:21] We often forget about that part of the story because the officer who was chosen to lead the expedition to Fort Ty was one of the greatest heroes of the revolution, right up to the point when he became one of history’s greatest traitors. That’s right, Benedict Arnold.

Jake:
[1:38] But before we talk about Benedict Arnold and the attack on Fort Ty, I just want to pause and say thank you to the Patreon sponsors who make it possible for me to make Hub History. I’m always amazed when other shows offer their sponsors things like extra episodes or early access to content, Week to week, it seems like I can barely get our regular episodes out in the feed on time So I have zero idea where these other podcasters find the time, That’s why I’m extra grateful to everyone who supports Hub History in return for, well, not much more than a hearty thank you Jill is the latest listener to join this group of supporters who chip in as little as $2 or as much as $20 or more each month, for which we say, thank you, Jill. To everybody who’s already supporting the show, thank you, too. And if you’re not yet supporting the show and you’d like to start, it’s easy. Just like Jill, you can go to patreon.com slash hubhistory or visit hubhistory.com and click on the support us link. And thanks again to all our new and returning sponsors.

The Heroic Benedict Arnold

Jake:
[2:45] And now it’s time for this week’s main topic.

Jake:
[2:50] There’s one name in American history that’s become synonymous with treason, even more so than Jefferson Davis or Robert E. Lee, and that is Benedict Arnold. When Arnold’s plan to turn the American stronghold of West Point over to the British was uncovered in 1780, it shocked everyone from supporters of the Patriot cause in every corner of New England, to the soldiers under his command, to George Washington himself, because he had been seen as one of the most aggressive and heroic commanders of the Continental Army, right up until he became its most famous traitor. He’d won honors and accolades from the streets and alleys of Quebec, to the shores of Valcour Island, to the rolling hills of Connecticut, getting wounded in battle three times, and eventually earning the rank of Major General as one of Washington’s most reliable officers. That distinguished military career was launched early in the siege of Boston when Arnold took command of an expedition to Fort Ticonderoga, which is in upstate New York.

Jake:
[3:52] In a profile written for the Army Historical Foundation, Jessica Robertson describes the early life of Benedict Arnold, who was born in Norwich, Connecticut in 1741. During his youth, Arnold hoped to attend Yale, but after three of his siblings died of diphtheria, his plans changed. The deaths of his siblings drove his father to alcoholism, causing him to drink away the Arnold family’s modest fortune, while his mother sought refuge from her grief and religion.

Jake:
[4:21] So instead of attending a prep school or learning the mercantile business at his father’s side, Benedict Arnold entered into a seven-year apprenticeship with his mother’s cousins, who operated an apothecary, basically a drugstore, and dabbled in the merchant trade that drove so much of the New England economy at the time. In a profile of Arnold that was published by the New York State Historical Association in 1903, Grenville Mellon Inglesby described how he came into his own a few years later. At the age of 20 years, he established himself in business, thoroughly equipped as a bookseller and apothecary at New Haven. His venture was a success. His native energy impelled him to wider fields of activity, and he embarked in general trade. He early resented the arrogance of the crown, and in 1770, after the massacre of citizens in Boston by the British soldiery, he was elected captain of an independent military company. He was personally so popular that it soon included the bravest spirits of the vicinity.

Jake:
[5:24] This independent company wasn’t young Benedict Arnold’s first military experience. When he was but 16 years old, he took time away from his apprenticeship to enlist in a local militia company in Norwich, Connecticut, and soon found himself marching off toward upstate New York, where Fort William Henry, at the southern tip of Lake George, was under siege from a combined force of French soldiers and their indigenous allies. Mostly from the Wabanaki Confederacy. The fort was garrisoned by a regiment of British regulars and about a half-dozen battalions of provincial forces from around New England, along with hundreds of Haudenosaunee allies.

Jake:
[6:02] Over the course of six days in August 1757, the superior French force landed troops out of range of the fort’s guns, encircled the fort, and pushed progressive rows of entrenchments forward until the wooden fort was within range of their heavy siege mortars. If you’ve seen the final hours of the siege portrayed masterfully in the movie version of Last of the Mohicans, then you’ve also seen the massacre of survivors the French urged their Wabanaki allies to carry out after the garrison had surrendered. When Arnold’s Norwich militia had been on the march for 13 days, word of the surrender and massacre reached them, and their march was over. The volunteers turned back toward Norwich, and Benedict Arnold’s experience of the Seven Years’ War came to an end.

Jake:
[6:48] When I first read about his 1757 militia service, I wondered just how far his unit marched in their 13 days of service. Google Maps tells me that it’s a 180-mile walk from Norwich to the fort, so it’s within the realm of possibility that they at least got close. Fort William Henry sat right in the middle of some of the most strategic country that was contested during that seven years war. And even if his unit didn’t make it to the fort, they might have gotten far enough into the Hudson-Champlain Corridor for its military value to make an impression. An impression that would come immediately to mind when war came again to North America 18 years later. I don’t want to take too much of a detour in our Boston History podcast, but much of the fighting in the Seven Years’ War took place along Lake George and Lake Champlain that lie on the modern border between Vermont and upstate New York. In the mid-1700s, they lay at the frontier between two great European empires and their Native American allies. To the north, the French had laid claim to the St. Lawrence River and all the lands that drained into it, giving them a vast swath of land from the Great Lakes and the Mississippi River to Hudson’s Bay and the Gulf of St. Lawrence, with a great commercial city at Montreal and a military stronghold at Quebec City.

Jake:
[8:06] To the south, the British maintained a foothold along the Atlantic coast. Not to sell Massachusetts short, but the mighty Hudson River gave New York access to the interior of the continent that was the envy of all the other British colonies.

Jake:
[8:21] Ocean-going vessels could sail upriver from Manhattan, almost 150 miles to Albany or Troy, where the river was still tidal. Just outside Albany, the river splits, with the Mohawk turning west and reaching almost to Lake Ontario, giving New York and the British Empire their own entry to the Great Lakes trade. The North Fork of the Hudson flows out of the Adirondacks and, at a bend in the river, comes within 10 miles of Lake George.

Jake:
[8:52] The Hudson flows south into New York Harbor, while Lake George drains gradually to the north, into Lake Champlain through the tiny La Chute River, then north again into Canada, where the Richelieu River flows out of the lakes and into the St. Lawrence between Montreal and Quebec. You couldn’t sail an ocean-going ship up the rapids of the Richelieu in the 1700s, but Lake George and especially Lake Champlain were large enough for locally built vessels that were almost that big to easily navigate.

Jake:
[9:25] This central location made the two lakes a major focus of the war between the two great empires, which I was recently reminded of on a road trip. In March, co-host Emerita Nikki and I drove from Boston up to Burlington, Vermont, and then through the Champlain Islands to the Canadian border. We paralleled the Richelieu River most of the way from the border to Montreal, where Nicky was presenting at a conference. The sweeping vistas of Lake Champlain reminded us that it could carry a nearly unlimited number of commercial and military vessels, in an era where boats were still the best form of transportation. And from the U.S. border north, the mountains that surround the lakes in Vermont and New York suddenly drop away, leaving vast, wide-open plains all the way to Montreal. all. There’s a reason that whenever I joke about declaring an independent New England republic, I’m convinced that the Champlain-Hudson Corridor would have to form our border with the states that we leave behind.

Jake:
[10:24] These lakes were an easy water route between the mighty rivers of the French and British empires, as well as a natural frontier between two great native cultures, with the Wabanaki east of the lakes and the Haudenosaunee to the west. So they were heavily fortified. The British built Fort Edward along the Hudson River where the portage to Lake George began, then built Fort William Henry at the other end of the same portage.

Jake:
[10:51] The French, in turn, built five forts along the Richelieu River from the St. Lawrence to Lake Champlain. When tensions with the British threatened to boil over, they added a fort called St. Frederick in a narrow spot at Lake Champlain that’s now called Crown Point, where the banks of the enormous lake close in on one another enough to allow a highway bridge to cross today. With the outbreak of war, the French built one more strong point, on the shore of Lake Champlain overlooking the Le Chute River and the Portage Trail that connected to Lake George.

Jake:
[11:23] The French named this last fort Carillion. It was from here that they launched the attack on Fort William Henry that Benedict Arnold’s company was too late to join. And it was this fort that the British renamed Ticonderoga, after wrestling control from the French following two brutal sieges in 1757 and 1759.

Arnold’s Rise and Early Ventures

Jake:
[11:44] By the early 1760s, Arnold had gone into business for himself, and he found a great degree of success as an apothecary or pharmacist and a bookseller. His business expanded by the middle of the decade, with Arnold trading throughout the empire, bringing goods from the West Indies and Quebec to Norwich to sell in his shops. If he hadn’t gotten familiar with Fort Ticonderoga during his 13 days as a militia private, he certainly did as he traded up through the lakes to the newly British territory in Canada. His expanding business gave him an excuse to travel widely within the British Empire, and it gave him a motive to start smuggling when the Sugar Act and the Stamp Act went into effect. Like many merchants and smugglers, Arnold gravitated to the Whig cause as the imperial crisis heated up, as Jessica Robinson explains. Arnold joined the local chapter of the Sons of Liberty. Quickly rising to leader of the chapter, he provided equipment and money for Patriot forces, using the profits from his merchandising expeditions.

Jake:
[12:49] In our last episode, we discussed how militia leaders all over New England dropped everything when they heard about the shot heard around the world and immediately marched toward Boston, from the Nottingham, New Hampshire, regiment who ran the first 27 miles to the Merrimack River crossing, to General Israel Putnam, who abandoned his plow in the middle of his field and rode 100 miles to Cambridge in 18 hours. Benedict Arnold was among the leaders who rushed to the assistance of Boston, as Grinville Inglesby’s 1903 profile details. At noon of the day following the Battle of Lexington, the news reached New Haven. Arnold at once summoned his company and 60 well-drilled soldiers volunteered for service. They were ready to march the next morning. The selectman having refused him ammunition, he demanded that it should be furnished or he would break open the magazine, declaring that none but Almighty God should prevent him from marching. The ammunition was obtained. The men commenced a forced march to Cambridge. At their heads, sturdily strode Benedict Arnold, a well-formed, muscular man of middle height with light eyes, dark hair, and a florid complexion. A man of great endurance, a stranger to fear, brave to temerity, who was to prove himself during the next three years the fighting general of the war.

Jake:
[14:16] While he was marching his company to support the siege of Boston, Arnold met with other Connecticut militia officers, among them Samuel Holden Parsons. Parsons was born in Connecticut, raised in Newburyport, Mass., and educated at Harvard. After he graduated, he moved back to Lyme, Connecticut to study law under an uncle, Matthew. you. By 1775, he was in his late 30s, with his own law practice, a loud voice in radical Whig politics, and he had been voted colonel of the 6th Connecticut Militia Regiment. While Arnold was on his way to Cambridge, Parsons was on his way home. According to an editor’s note in the Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography, introducing their edition of Benedict Arnold’s 1775 regimental memorandum book, Parsons was deeply concerned regarding the defenseless state of the camp at Cambridge and the want of heavy cannon for the siege of Boston. Arnold gave him an account of the state of Ticonderoga and told him that a great number of brass cannon were there. It does not appear from the evidence we have that either party then proposed that an attempt should be made to capture these stores.

Jake:
[15:29] This brief conversation apparently sparked three separate efforts to capture Fort Tye. Thanks to Parsons and other militia officers, the Connecticut Committee of Correspondence agreed to raise funds and recruits to send an expedition from northwestern Connecticut to Lake Champlain. At the same time, members of a guerrilla group under Ethan Allen started organizing for an attack on the fort. Known as the Green Mountain Boys, these guerrillas had claimed land in the New Hampshire Grants, a territory claimed by both New Hampshire and New York that would later be organized into Vermont. These Green Mountain Boys believed that if they seized control of the fort, they’d be able to resist colonial authorities in New York and possibly even start their own breakaway colony. So they started assembling men-in-arms in a town called Castleton, on the east side of the lake about 25 miles from the fort. While at the same time, the Connecticut group was gathering recruits in the fertile valley that ran between Canaan, Connecticut and Pittsfield, Mass.

Jake:
[16:30] Neither the Connecticut militia nor the Green Mountain Boys realized that Benedict Arnold planned to propose a similar expedition to the new Massachusetts Army, just as soon as he could rendezvous with them. In late April and early May, each colony was still commanding its militia companies independently. The Massachusetts Army welcomed reinforcements from abroad, like Arnold’s militia company from Milford, Connecticut, but there was no true Central Command.

Jake:
[17:00] Congress would not order the creation of a Continental Army until June, and George Washington would not take over command in Cambridge until July. In the meantime, the records of the Massachusetts Committee of Safety indicate that Arnold and his company arrived in Cambridge on April 29th. Captain Benedict Arnold, with a company being arrived here from Connecticut, ordered that the commissary general be directed to provide suitable quarters for said company. Now, I don’t mean to give the impression that the British were completely blind to the strategic importance of Fort Ticonderoga, while all three of these competing colonial militias were scheming over how to attack it. The fort had sunk in importance from mighty citadel of the Northwest to basically backwoods, backwater outposts, as the British took control of all of North America, and they no longer needed a buffer against the French Empire on Lake Champlain. The fort was still garrisoned by a skeleton crew of about 50 British soldiers and officers, along with their families, but since it wasn’t seen as a likely theater of war, many of the troops were invalids who weren’t up to the physical demands of other postings. They were there to fly the flag and to facilitate the movement of messages, supplies, and troops back and forth between Quebec and New England.

The Strategic Importance of Ticonderoga

Jake:
[18:22] However, with the new outbreak of war, the fort suddenly took on renewed importance. General Thomas Gage, the commander of British troops in Boston, recognized that the fort would be an important launching point for a potential attack on the American rear, and he realized that the arsenal of cannons that was half-forgotten behind the walls of the fort would be an attractive target for the Americans, too. Days after the battles at Lexington conquered Monotomy, Gage sent a letter to General Guy Carlton, who commanded British forces in Canada, ordering him to send reinforcements to Ticonderoga and the nearby fort at Crown Point to dig in and get them ready to repel an invasion. Fortunately for the American cause, those orders arrived too late. I’m not sure whether the Massachusetts Committee of Safety already knew about Arnold’s knowledge of the state of affairs at Ticonderoga and invited him to report to them, or if he volunteered.

Jake:
[19:21] Either way, he was already pushing for an expedition the day after he arrived in the provincial camp at Cambridge, writing to Joseph Warren and the Committee of Safety, Cambridge, April 30th, 1775. Gentlemen, you have desired me to state the number of cannon etc. at Ticonderoga. I have certain information that there are at Ticonderoga 80 pieces of heavy cannon, 20 brass guns from 4 to 18 pounders, and 10 to 12 large mortars. The fort is in a ruinous condition and has not more than 50 men at the most. There are large numbers of small arms in considerable stores, and a sloop of 70 or 80 tons on the lake. The place could not hold out an hour against a vigorous onset. Your most obedient servant, Benedict Arnold.

Jake:
[20:14] I can practically feel Joseph Warren salivating at the prospect of a hundred heavy guns that could help blast the British out of Boston.

Orders for the Expedition

Jake:
[20:23] On May 2nd, the Committee of Safety made Warren the head of a subcommittee that was to consider Arnold’s proposed expedition to attack Fort Ticonderoga. The other members were Artemis Ward, the general in charge of logistics for the Americans, Colonel Thomas Gardner of Cambridge, who later died of wounds, suffered at Bunker Hill, and Colonel Joseph Palmer, who ran the glassworks in Quincy that we discussed in episode 279. By the end of the day, the subcommittee had approved the project. The full Committee of Safety voted that Colonel Arnold, appointed to a secret service, be desired to appoint two field officers, captains, etc., to be allowed the same pay during their continuance in service, as is established for officers and privates of the same rank. Were ordered by the Congress of Massachusetts Bay to be raised for the defense of the rights and liberties of America, the officers and privates to be dismissed by Colonel Arnold or the Committee of Safety whenever they shall think proper. The next day, Dr. Benjamin Church issued formal orders to Arnold on behalf of the Committee of Safety. To Benedict Arnold, Esquire, commander of a body of troops on an expedition to reduce and take possession of the Fort of Ticonderoga.

Jake:
[21:44] Sir, confiding in your judgment, fidelity, and valor, we do, by these presents, constitute and appoint you, colonel and commander-in-chief, over a body of men not exceeding 400, to proceed with all expedition to the western parts of this and the neighboring colonies, where you are directed to enlist those men, and with them forthwith to march to the fort at Ticonderoga and use your best endeavors to reduce the same, taking possession of the cannon, mortars, stores, etc. upon the lake. You are to bring back with you such of the cannon, mortars, stores, etc. As you shall judge may be serviceable to the army here, leaving behind what may be necessary to secure that post with a sufficient garrison. You are to procure suitable provisions and stores for the army, and draw upon the committee of safety for the amount thereof, and to act in every exigence according to your best skill and discretion for the public interest, for which this shall be your sufficient warrant. Benjamin Church, Jr., for the Committee of Safety. By order of William Cooper, Secretary. Cambridge, May 3, 1775.

Jake:
[22:55] With the benefit of historical hindsight, these orders are remarkable. Five years later, Benedict Arnold would become the most famous traitor in American history. Dr. Benjamin Church, while not as famous as Arnold, was only weeks away from his own betrayal of the Patriot cause when he issued those orders.

Jake:
[23:17] Initially a very vocal supporter of the cause, the skilled surgeon was an early member of the Sons of Liberty. He delivered an oration commemorating the Boston Massacre, and he served in the Massachusetts Provincial Congress and on the Committee of Safety. His apparent commitment to the cause and his leadership in the cause led to his appointment as the first Director General of the Continental Army’s Medical Department, making him basically our first Surgeon General. However, while he was publicly aligned with the revolutionaries, Church was secretly communicating with the British, providing General Thomas Gage with sensitive information about the Patriot forces. His duplicity was exposed in July 1775, when an intercepted coded letter revealed his betrayal, which we’ll likely explore in another episode later this summer. At the time, though, one revolutionary hero issued orders to another revolutionary hero for a mission basically save the American cause. And today, we remember both of them as traitors.

Supplies and Preparations

Jake:
[24:26] Nobody knew yet that either betrayal was to come, when the Committee of Safety asked the Massachusetts Committee of Supplies to outfit Benedict Arnold with a hundred pounds in cold, hard cash and all the gear he would need for the march to Fort Ty and the battle that was expected to follow. Resolved, that the within request of the Committee of Safety be granted, and that the Committee of Supplies be, and hereby are, directed to furnish Colonel Benedict Arnold with 10 horses, 200 pounds of gunpowder, 200 pounds of lead ball, and 1,000 flints at the expense of the colony, and that said committee draw upon Henry Gardner Esquire, Receiver General, for 100 pounds in favor of said Arnold, and take his receipt for the whole. Said Arnold to be accountable, therefore, to this or some other Congress or future House of Representatives. With orders issued and supplies arranged for, Benedict Arnold chose his captains and set them to work recruiting the 400 men that he’d been authorized to command, while the newly minted colonel himself started riding toward the lakes before the ink on his orders was even dry. On the morning of his third day on the road, Arnold reached the border between western Massachusetts and the contested territory that would later become Vermont.

Competing Plans to Capture the Fort

Jake:
[25:49] Grenville Inglesby’s 1903 profile reveals that this is when Arnold learned that there were two competing plans to attack Fort Tye, and that they had since joined forces.

Jake:
[26:01] He reached Stockbridge on May 6th. There he learned that his communication in Connecticut had resulted in an expedition of 16 men from that colony, who’d been furnished with arms at Pittsfield, where the number was increased to 50. That they had been joined at Bennington by Ethan Allen and a party of Green Mountain Boys and had proceeded to Castleton. Arnold pressed forward and overtook Allen on the 9th. He showed his commission and claimed the command, but was very naturally refused. Arnold was entitled to the leadership, but he yielded, and he entered the ranks as a volunteer. year. This act so appealed to the Green Mountain Boys that he was recognized as a kindred spirit, and upon further conference was constituted commander jointly with Allen. As an independent guerrilla force that was, at least at first, more interested in resting control of the New Hampshire grants from New York than they were in fighting for independence, the Green Mountain Boys didn’t care at all about Benedict Arnold, his Colonel’s Commission, or the orders he carried from a committee in faraway Cambridge.

Jake:
[27:12] Allen was only interested in his own goals, and his men wouldn’t accept orders from anyone but him. While the profile I read from refers diplomatically to Arnold entering the ranks as a volunteer and being constituted as co-commander, the truth isn’t fully known.

Jake:
[27:32] After a series of heated private conversations between Arnold and Allen, the two agreed to march together at the head of the column when they attacked the fort. The details of their arrangement are lost to history, but from the outside, it looks like Ethan Allen led the advance, while Benedict Arnold marched at his side and kept his mouth shut. Whatever the actual arrangement, the combined force of Green Mountain guerrillas and Massachusetts and Connecticut recruits raised by Samuel Parsons didn’t wait for Benedict Arnold’s promised 400 recruits from Massachusetts.

The Attack on Fort Ticonderoga

Jake:
[28:09] On May 10th, one week after Arnold received his orders in commission, the attack on the fort commenced. If you’re picturing another protracted siege like the one in the last of the Mohicans, you’re going to be disappointed. The day after the assault, Colonel Arnold sent a long letter back to the Massachusetts Committee of Safety, reporting that, Arriving in the vicinity of this place, I found 150 men collected at the instance of some gentlemen from Connecticut, designed on the same errand on which I came, headed by Ethan Allen. I joined them, not thinking it proper to await the arrival of the troops I had engaged on the road, but to attempt the fort by surprise. Though we had taken the fort at 4 o’clock yesterday morning without opposition, and it made prisoners one captain, one lieutenant, and 40-odd privates and subalterns, and that we found the fort in a most ruinous condition, and not worth repairing.

Jake:
[29:10] When it became clear to the French that they would have to surrender their Fort Carillion to the British in 1759, they blew up as much of the fort as they could before withdrawing. Time and elements continued the work of destruction on the renamed Fort Ticonderoga over the next decade and a half, with summer rains and freezing winters taking their toll. When it was completed in 1758, the fort sat high above the lake, with 18-foot-high bastions bristling with cannons commanding the land and water approaches to the fort, and several layers of 14-foot-thick walls protecting the barracks and powder magazines within. In the show notes this week, I’ll include some historic images of the fort, as well as some photos that I took of the restored walls to illustrate just how impressive it was.

Jake:
[30:00] Before the fort ever saw action, the French dug miles of trenches and earthworks and built a series of outposts to cover the main fort from the land side. The resulting fortress easily withstood a frontal assault from a massively superior British force in 1758, which earned the fort a reputation as an impregnable citadel. The next year, however, it fell to its perennial Achilles’ heel, three nearby hills where cannons could fire down into the vulnerable fort below. By 1775, the walls of this impregnable citadel had largely collapsed, and its gates were defended by indifferent guards.

Jake:
[30:46] Before dawn on May 10th, Arnold Allen and about 80 of Allen’s partisans rode across the lake to the landing place that the fort had been originally built to defend. While a major took the boats back across the water to pick up the remaining roughly 75 irregulars, Ethan Allen and Benedict Arnold led the first wave up the undefended outer walls of the fort to the gate that led through the massive walls to the barracks inside. The lone sentry at the south gate tried to take a shot at him, but he panicked and fled after his musket misfired, allowing the Americans to push their way into the fort unopposed. The privates stole into the barracks, woke up the sleeping redcoats at gunpoint, and seized their weapons. Benedict Arnold and Ethan Allen went straight to the officers’ quarters on the upper level of the barracks. Startled awake by the noise, a lieutenant demanded to know who was at the door, thus buying a little time while the fort’s commanding officer, Captain William Delaplace, got dressed. Early portrayals of this moment show Allen banging on the door and demanding surrender, while Arnold stands demurely to the side. When the lieutenant asked whose authority they were acting on, accounts say that Benedict Arnold stood silent, while Ethan Allen responded, in the name of the Great Jehovah and the Continental Congress.

Jake:
[32:15] With Arnold’s massive ego and freshly minted colonel’s commission, I have a hard time believing this version of events. But it behooved later generations of Americans to recall the traitor Arnold as a side character, and the terrorist Ethan Allen, with his reputation rehabilitated as the founding father of Vermont, as the hero of the day. All told, 113 men were involved on both the attacking and defending side, but the defending British were outnumbered and taken completely by surprise, so the captain had no choice but to surrender his sword. One of the attackers was slightly wounded by a British bayonet, but otherwise the takeover of a fort with a reputation for invincibility was remarkably bloodless.

The Bloodless Capture

Jake:
[33:03] Knowing as we do that the guns of Ticonderoga secure an American victory in Boston, it’s hard to imagine a more lopsided victory. The next day, a party of Americans rode up the lake and took over the fort at Crown Point just as easily.

Jake:
[33:21] We know what would become of the fort’s guns, but neither Benedict Arnold nor his commanders back in Cambridge had that knowledge yet. In a postscript to his letter to the Committee of Safety on May 11th, when he reported the capture of the fort two nights before, Arnold announced that he could not yet give an inventory of the artillery they had taken there. It is impossible to advise you how many cannon are here in a crown point, as many of them are buried in the ruins. There is a large number of iron and some brass and mortars, etc., lying on the edge of the lake, which, as the lake is high, are covered with water. The confusion we have been in has prevented my getting proper information, further than that there are many cannon, shells, mortars, etc., which may be very serviceable to our army at Cambridge.

Jake:
[34:14] With a few days to dig through the rubble and get organized, Arnold was able to give a better account. In a letter to the Committee of Safety on May 19th, Colonel Arnold took stock of the artillery that was captured at both forts. He counted 111 total guns taken from Crown Point, of which 47 were in such rough shape that they were deemed useless. 86 more were inventoried at Ticonderoga, and 29 were ruled unusable. Of the 121 cannons that were in a serviceable state, Arnold noted that, I shall send to Cambridge the 24-pounders, 12- and 6-pounders, howitzers, etc., as directed by Colonel Gridley. There are about 50 total cannons in the battery that Arnold was setting aside for the use of the army at Cambridge.

Inventory of Cannons and Supplies

Jake:
[35:09] When Henry Knox finally arrived at Fort Ty that December, he picked 59 cannons for his noble train that provided Boston’s salvation. So Arnold’s initial survey wasn’t too far off base. While he was busy sorting through the cannons that might be usable, Arnold also took stock of the fort itself. While both General Gage and his American opponents recognized the strategic value of the portage between the lakes as the best way to move troops between Quebec and New England, the ruinous state of the fort was worse than Arnold or the Americans had been led to believe. In his May 19th letter, Benedict Arnold bemoaned this state of affairs.

Jake:
[35:53] I should be extremely glad to be superseded in my command here, as I find it next to impossible to repair the old fort at Ticonderoga, and I’m not qualified to direct in building a new one. I am really of the opinion that it will be necessary to employ 1,000 or 1,500 men here this summer. I am making all possible provision for wheel carriages to carry such cannon etc. to Albany as can be spared here and will be serviceable to our army at Cambridge.

Jake:
[36:25] His line about relinquishing command at Fort Ty obscures the truth that Benedict Arnold was commander in name only.

Jake:
[36:34] Ethan Allen and his men would not take orders from Arnold, despite his colonel’s commission from a province that neither of them belonged to and that had no claim of authority over the fort that they had captured. In another letter, Arnold complained that Allen was doing nothing to enforce military discipline and that the Gorilla Green Mountain Boys had become a mob, writing, There is here at present near 100 men who are in the greatest confusion in the anarchy, destroying and plundering private property, committing every enormity, and paying no attention to public service. Colonel Allen is a proper man to head his own wild people, but entirely unacquainted with military service. As I am the only person who has been legally authorized to take possession of this place, I am determined to insist on my right, and I think it my duty to remain here against all opposition until I have further orders. I should be extremely glad to be honorably acquitted of my commission, and that a proper person—subtext, not Ethan Allen—might be appointed in my room. But as I have, in consequence of my orders from you gentlemen, been the first person who entered and took possession of the fort, I shall keep it at every hazard until I have further advice and orders from you.

Jake:
[37:58] On the same day that Colonel Arnold wrote to the Massachusetts Committee of Safety with an inventory of the guns at Ticonderoga, a Connecticut general wrote to the Massachusetts Provincial Congress suggesting that Massachusetts take command of Fort Ty, as we had the most disciplined militia, the closest lines of supplies, and because Connecticut believed in sharing the burdens of the war. We consider all the colonies, and the New England colonies especially, as brethren, united together in one joint interest and pursuing the same general design, and that whatever expedition and furtherance of the grand designs may be undertaken by any one of the colonies, or any body of men in either of them, ought to be considered as undertaken for the joint benefit of the whole Confederate colonies, and the expenses of the enterprise, and cost of maintaining and defending the same, is to be borne by all in proportion to their abilities.

Jake:
[38:57] In the days after the assault on the fort, the troops who had been raised by the captains that Arnold had left behind in his rush to the fort finally began to arrive. This put the two officers on more equal footing, after a flurry of complaints about each other had been sent to the governments of Connecticut and Massachusetts and anyone else they thought might pay attention. On May 10th, the Connecticut militia who had joined with Ethan Allen complained, Arnold refuses to give up his command, which causes much difficulty. Said Arnold, not having enlisted one man, neither do we know that he has or could do it, and as said committee have raised the men and are still raising supplies for the purpose of repairing said forts, taking the armed sloop, and defending this country in said forts, we think that said Arnold’s farther procedure in this matter is highly inexpedient, both in regards to expense and defense.

Jake:
[39:56] Now that Arnold’s own troops were at hand, he led raids that took over British positions from Fort George, at the foot of the eponymous lake, up to St. John’s along the Richelieu River, well into today’s Canada. At the same time, he captured or sank every boat that he could find along the lakes, including capturing a British sloop of war, which put Benedict Arnold in command of a significant navy on Lake Champlain.

Jake:
[40:25] With no orders and no particular loyalty keeping them at the lake, Ethan Allen and the Green Mountain Boys soon wandered away, leaving Benedict Arnold in sole command of Fort Ticonderoga and the American defense of the lakes. With Massachusetts and Connecticut both authorizing raids on the fort independently, they spent most of the month of May trading passive-aggressive notes that claimed ownership of the fort and its spoils. With his abrasive personality and a massive ego, Benedict Arnold was a big part of the problem.

Command and Conflict at the Fort

Jake:
[41:02] In a letter to the Connecticut Assembly on May 17th, representatives from the Massachusetts Provincial Congress attempted to settle the feud by giving Arnold the artillery and keeping him away from the overall command of the lakes.

Jake:
[41:17] As we suppose that there is no necessity for keeping all the cannon there, we should be extremely glad if all the battery cannon, especially brass cannon which can be spared, may be forwarded this way with all possible expedition. As we have here to contend with an army furnished with as fine a train of artillery as ever was seen in America, and we are an extreme want of a sufficient number of cannon to fortify those important passes, without which we can neither annoy General Gage if it should become necessary nor defend ourselves against him. We therefore must most earnestly recommend this very important matter to your immediate consideration and we would suggest it as our opinion that appointing Colonel Arnold to take charge of them and bring them down with all possible haste may be a means of settling any disputes which may have arisen between him and some other officers, which we are always desirous to avoid.

Jake:
[42:17] After a month of trading notes, at the end of May, New York entered the chat, basically demanding an explanation as to why two completely different provinces had ordered an attack on a fort within their borders, and without so much as a heads-up. In response, the Massachusetts Provincial Congress, in a letter to the Continental Congress on May 29th, essentially apologizing for leaving New York out of the planning, but still asserting ownership of the cannons. It seems that the step Colonel Arnold is taking in transporting into this colony part of the ordinance taken at Lake Champlain is in consequence of directions given him in the haste and confusion of war. And if this Congress had considered the proposal in a calmer season, perhaps they might have thought it would have been proper previously to have consulted our brethren in the colony of New York. Certain it is that this colony is in the most pressing need of the ordinance which Colonel Arnold is transporting hither.

Jake:
[43:19] In response to Arnold’s early letter saying that a thousand men were needed to rebuild the decrepit fort, Connecticut sent a colonel and ten companies to make his request a reality. Denied the command that he believed he had earned, Benedict Arnold resigned his commission in protest. This can be seen as the first domino to fall that eventually led to a 1780 betrayal of the American cause. When the invasion of Quebec was authorized in the summer of 1775, Arnold was passed over for command. So he came back to Cambridge and he launched a separate invasion through Maine, while the Maine column launched from Lake Champlain. The retreat from Quebec City across the lakes a year later proved Arnold’s tactical brilliance and personal heroism. Yet he found himself passed over yet again for officers whom he considered lesser. This pattern would be repeated again and again and again, at least in Arnold’s mind, leaving him disillusioned with the American cause and desperate for recognition.

The Legacy of Benedict Arnold

Jake:
[44:26] Five years after Massachusetts made him a colonel, the British made him a traitor, offering the then-general the equivalent of millions of dollars in a British officer’s commission for handing West Point to the enemy.

Jake:
[44:41] Six months after Benedict Arnold left Ticonderoga, Henry Knox took his place. Knox was also a newly commissioned Massachusetts colonel, but his commission was issued under the authority of the Continental Army. And Knox did what nobody else could. He figured out how to actually move the best heavy guns from the ruins of Fort Ty, across Cross Lake George, the Hudson River, the Berkshire Mountains, and finally to the heights of Dorchester, where they drove the British out of Boston forever.

The Aftermath and Future Tales

Jake:
[45:15] But that’s a different story for a future episode. To learn more about Benedict Arnold at Fort Ticonderoga, check out this week’s show notes at hubhistory.com slash 326. I’ll have a link to the records of the Massachusetts Provincial Congress, where many of the documents relating to our involvement in the expedition to Fort Ty reside. I’ll also link to orders and individual letters from other sources, as well as the books and journal articles I used in writing this week’s episode. I’ll make sure to include some period maps that show the layout and importance of the fort, plus a 19th-century painting showing the ruins of the fort before its modern restoration that might indicate what it looked like when the Americans arrived in 1775.

Jake:
[46:06] I’ll also include some photos that I took when I visited the fort for a reenactment in 2021 plus a picture that my dad took of me posing at the fort as a preteen.

Jake:
[46:19] If you’d like to get in touch with us, you can email podcast at hubhistory.com. I still maintain profiles for Hub History on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram, but if you’re looking to interact with me, Blue Sky is the way to go. You can find me over there by searching for hubhistory.com. I’m never as active on Mastodon as I intend to be, but if you’re on Mastodon, you can find me as at hubhistory at better.boston. If you’re lucky enough to have kicked the social media habit, just go to hubhistory.com and click on the Contact Us link. While you’re on the site, hit the subscribe link, and be sure that you never miss an episode. If you subscribe on Apple Podcasts, please consider writing us a brief review. If you do, drop me a line, and I’ll send you a Hub History sticker as a token of appreciation. That’s all for now. Stay safe out there, listeners.