The Colonists Gather about Boston—The Colonists All for War—Advance of the Green Mountain Boys against Ticonderoga—Dispute between Ethan Allen and Benedict Arnold—How the Fort Was Taken.
The battle of Lexington, as the conflict of April 19, 1775, is called, proved like the touch of a firebrand to gunpowder. All New England was ripe for revolt, and as fast as the news of this event spread, men seized their arms and declared for war. During the night that followed the retreat from Concord, the farmers of Massachusetts streamed on all sides towards Boston. By the 20th the men of the neighboring colonies were in motion. Rhode Island sent its contingent of patriots. John Stark, the New Hampshire veteran, marched south with an ardent band. When the news came to the old soldier, Israel Putnam, at his home in Connecticut, he was engaged building a stone wall on his farm. Flinging off his leather apron, he mounted his horse, and within eighteen hours reached Boston, a hundred miles distant. New England had blazed into war. Before the month was out Boston was besieged by thousands of hardy volunteers.
The tidings sped south with remarkable rapidity for that day, and by the 10th of May they had reached Savannah, Ga., and found the men of that remote colony as earnestly patriotic as those of the actual scene of war. The news crossed the mountains of Carolina to the frontier settlements of Kentucky made by Daniel Boone and his followers. Here it reached a group of hunters encamped in the wilderness. In their patriotic warmth they at once named their camp Lexington, and Lexington the place continues to this day.
The story of the siege of Boston is too familiar to be here repeated. We all know how the battle of Bunker Hill was fought, and how the regulars learned there that the colonists were foes not to be despised. We all know how Washington was appointed commander-in-chief, and spent months in making soldiers out of the farmers that invested Boston, and how he finally drove the British out of that beleaguered town.8
Meanwhile other events were taking place elsewhere. It is with some of these events that we propose in the present paper to deal.
On the divide between Lakes George and Champlain stood a famous fort, which had played its part in the colonial wars,—time-honored Ticonderoga. It was garrisoned by English troops, and well supplied with munitions of war. These munitions the patriots sadly needed, and determined to have. Down from the green hills of Vermont marched at speed a company of lusty mountaineers, large, strong, hardy men, dressed in the homespun of their household looms, but all with rifles in their hands, and all knowing well how to use them. At their head marched a large-framed, keen-eyed frontiersman, Ethan Allen, who for several years had been a leader in the dispute with New York for the separate existence of Vermont. At the first hint of the outbreak of Lexington these men had dropped their axes, left their plows in the furrows, seized their rifles, and hastened south, with Ticonderoga as their goal, and the stalwart Ethan Allen as their captain.
The Green Mountain boys were not the only ones with this object in view. Massachusetts and Connecticut both had their eyes on the old stronghold. Connecticut sent a sum of 300 pounds to Vermont for the aid of Allen and his men. It also sent spies to learn the condition of the fort. One of these, Noah Phelps by name, entered the fort disguised as a countryman, pretending that he wanted to be shaved. He used his eyes and tongue while the barber was wielding his razor, and found that worthy as ready to talk as men of his trade generally. When Phelps left the fort with a clean face, he was fully informed as to the means of its defense.
As Allen hastened to the fort, he sent men out on all the roads to intercept passers, and prevent word of the movement reaching the commandant. By the 8th of May all was ready. Allen, with 140 men, was to march by land directly on the fort. Captain Herrick, with 30 men, was to drop down the lake with boats, and join Allen before the fort. But just as all was ready for the advance, an unexpected difficulty arose. Out of the forest came an officer, alone, except for a single servant, and hurried to the camp. It was Benedict Arnold, of later infamous memory, but long one of the ablest American officers. He had been appointed colonel by the governor of Massachusetts, and commissioned to raise men and proceed against the fort.
Learning what was afoot, Arnold had hastened through the woods to the camp of the mountaineers. It was near nightfall. The advance party of Allen’s men was on the eastern side of the lake, preparing to cross. Arnold crossed with them, but, on reaching the other side, claimed the command by virtue of his commission. A hot dispute followed. Allen had no idea of giving up his command to this stranger, however he might insist. Arnold had the commission, it is true, but Allen had the men, and at that stage of the war, men counted for more than commissions. The debate waxed so hot that the Green Mountain leader quite lost control of his temper, and was on the point of settling the difficulty by ordering Arnold under arrest, when one of his friends suggested a safer plan. Why could not the two officers march side by side and both lead? This compromise was accepted, and the dispute came to an end.
It was now near daybreak. Eighty-three men had landed. The boats had returned for the others. But there was no time to lose if they wished to take the fort by surprise. A farmer’s boy of the vicinity offered to act as guide, and the advance began, Allen as leader, Arnold as a volunteer.
Soon the stockade was reached. All remained quiet. A wicket stood invitingly open, and Allen and his men went through it at a charge. A sentinel posted there pulled trigger, but his piece missed fire, and he ran back shouting the alarm. After him came the leaders, and behind them their men, at a double-quick pace, and before a man of the garrison had appeared, the fort was won. Most of those within the fort were still asleep, but their slumbers were rudely broken by a vigorous Indian warwhoop, from the lusty throats of the mountaineers, the first that had been heard within those walls since the days of Montcalm and his savage allies.
The garrison numbered less than fifty men, and resistance would have been useless with nearly double that force of riflemen on the parade ground of the fort. Allen forced a sentry who had been captured to lead him to the quarters of the commander, Captain De Laplace. Reading in his chamber, the mountaineers called on him loudly to surrender. The captain, half dressed, appeared with an alarmed face at the door.
“By whose authority do you demand surrender?” he asked.
“In the name of the Great Jehovah and the Continental Congress,” thundered the Green Mountain leader.
This demand, backed by a drawn sword and by cheers of triumph outside, could not be resisted, and the fort was surrendered without a blow.
In this easy fashion was taken one of the most important fortresses in America, with its large stores of cannon and ammunition, then sadly needed by the army at Boston. The stores included 120 cannon, with many small arms, all of great value to the patriot cause. The next day Seth Warner, another Green Mountain leader, captured the fort at Crown Point, and added a hundred more cannon to the much-needed supply.