Colonists Seize Fort Ticonderoga: Revolution Ignites

Ethan Allen pounded on the door of the officers' quarters at Fort Ticonderoga before dawn on May 10, 1775, and demanded the garrison's surrender "in the name of the Great Jehovah and the Continental Congress." The British commander, Captain William Delaplace, stumbled out in his nightclothes to find 83 armed colonists already inside the walls. The fort fell without a shot fired, giving the American rebels their first offensive victory and a critical stockpile of artillery that would help win the siege of Boston. Fort Ticonderoga controlled the southern end of Lake Champlain, the water highway connecting New York to Canada. The French had built it as Fort Carillon in 1755 during the Seven Years' War, and the British captured it in 1759. By 1775, the garrison had dwindled to fewer than 50 soldiers, and the fortifications had deteriorated badly. The British considered it a minor frontier post, not a strategic position. The attack was organized independently by two groups who converged awkwardly. Allen led the Green Mountain Boys, a militia from the New Hampshire Grants (later Vermont) that had been fighting New York's land claims for years. Benedict Arnold arrived from Massachusetts carrying a commission from the Massachusetts Committee of Safety to capture the fort. Both men claimed command. Allen's men, who knew and trusted him, refused to serve under Arnold. The two leaders crossed Lake Champlain together in the predawn assault, arguing about authority. The capture was bloodless. A single British sentry fired his musket, which misfired, before the colonists overwhelmed the sleeping garrison. Allen's men also seized the nearby fort at Crown Point the following day. The combined haul included 78 serviceable cannons, six mortars, three howitzers, and large stores of ammunition. Those cannons changed the war. Henry Knox, a 25-year-old Boston bookseller turned artillery officer, transported 60 tons of captured ordnance on ox-drawn sleds across 300 miles of frozen terrain during the winter of 1775-76. When the guns appeared on Dorchester Heights overlooking Boston Harbor in March 1776, the British evacuated the city. The cannon that forced the British out of Boston had been captured by a militia leader in his nightshirt demanding surrender before breakfast.