An Unnecessary Evil

Written by Becky Akers

Thursday, 29 May 2008 12:28

A small band of volunteers captured a famous fort 233 years ago this month when the governments of New Hampshire and New York tried to cheat them.

A decrepit fort, a blustering backwoods giant, and a military genius without troops — as a few rebellious colonists were swelling into the American Revolution 233 years ago, Fort Ticonderoga, Ethan Allen, and Benedict Arnold gave us one of the war’s earliest, most anarchic episodes, and one of its most successful.

On "the eighteenth of April, in Seventy-five," British Redcoats marched out of Boston to seize the military cache the colonists had collected at Concord. It supposedly included a couple of cannons. Reports conflict as to whether the British found them, but in any case, the "embattled farmers" needed more artillery if they hoped to stand against the world’s most powerful army, let alone defeat it. Fortunately, an old fort on one of the continent’s most strategic waterways held about 100 big guns. Unfortunately, Ft. Ticonderoga was in British hands. But with no enemy poised to attack after the French and Indian War, the British had allowed the place to deteriorate. By 1775, Ticonderoga's main gates were so warped they wouldn't close, and just 45 Redcoats patrolled the place, most of them crippled from old wounds. Their officers described them as "old, wore out, & unserviceable."

Ticonderoga guarded the Hudson River-Lake George-Lake Champlain-Richelieu River waterway stretching from New York City into Canada. Water was always the preferred route in the 18th century, especially in a land of dense forests and few roads. That became doubly true during war, when troops and armaments joined the goods for sail. The Hudson-Richelieu chain was as vital as any interstate highway now, perhaps even more so: there were no alternate routes in colonial America. No wonder so many forts protected it.

Ticonderoga was the star of those forts, not only figuratively but literally, too, since it was shaped like one for better defense. It guarded a spot where Lake Champlain narrows until less than 500 yards of water separate its shores. Anyone navigating there could do so only by permission of whoever controlled Ti's guns. Maybe that’s why several Patriots independently but simultaneously came up with ideas on capturing it. Among them were Benedict Arnold and Ethan Allen.

Arnold seems to have been born with more military insight than most mortals ever learn. The Massachusetts Committee of Safety had the good sense to recognize that when he approached the Committee with plans for taking Ti in May 1775. It commissioned him to gain "possession of the cannons, mortars, stores, &c, upon the lake” and authorized him to recruit "a body of men not exceeding four hundred" — a process the new colonel left to his officers when he learned that Ethan Allen was also eyeing Ti. Arnold shot north to coordinate with him.

Ethan Allen’s motives weren’t the purest. He and his Green Mountain Boys had homesteaded in the Hampshire Grants, now Vermont, after buying their land from New Hampshire's governor, Benning Wentworth. Wentworth had no authority to sell unclaimed land beyond the boundaries of his province, but the commission he paid himself on each sale encouraged him to ignore such niceties.

New York’s government wanted a slice of Wentworth’s pie, so it eventually challenged his racket. Allen and other settlers had bought their land from Wentworth in good faith, only to have New York claim the territory and decree that the settlers fork over their money again. Understandably, this outraged Allen and the Boys. Now here came sweet revenge: a raid into New York, to capture its most famous fort. They could then use Ti as leverage in the argument over title to their homesteads.

When Arnold confronted Allen, he had to fight for the command. Though some attribute this to Arnold’s lust for personal power, it likely sprang from nobler impulses. Had Allen been permitted to take Ti hostage, the Revolution might have ended before it began, with the colonies fighting each other rather than the British government. Arnold’s challenge prevented this.

He presented his commission from the Committee, but Allen simply laughed. Colonel Arnold, somewhere between 5'4" and 5'9" tall, genteel and citified in his militia uniform, indomitable, and alone but for one orderly, insisted on it to the frontier Goliath towering over him. Allen played to the Boys cheering him as he cussed the brave little intruder. Allen held all the cards: his Boys would march under him and no one else. They proved this by stacking their arms when Allen announced that Arnold wanted the command. But Arnold persevered and eventually wrested an agreement from Allen: they would lead the assault on Ti together, issuing commands jointly.

Allen settled the score four years later when he published a memoir that included an account of taking Ti. He portrayed himself as its conqueror without even mentioning Arnold.

And take the fort they did. With 83 Boys, they surprised the sleeping Redcoats one May dawning. Allen claims that when he ordered the British "to deliver to me the fort instantly," the commander "asked me by what authority I demanded it; I answered, 'In the name of the great Jehovah, and the Continental Congress.'" Not only did he give American history one of its most quoted lines, but Ticonderoga with its hundred cannons passed from British hands. In another six months, Col. Henry Knox would drag those guns back to Boston and intimidate the Redcoats into leaving his beloved city.

Unlike most warriors, the American Revolutionaries fought primarily for an ideal: that men should live free of government’s coercion, not in thralldom to it. The State is immoral with its taxation and such tricks as Gov. Wentworth’s chicanery, but it’s also superfluous. Arnold, Allen, and their volunteers captured the most redoubtable fort in America on their own, with little of the government’s "help" beyond a cosmetic commission from a powerless Committee.

Thomas Paine thought, "government even in its best state is but a necessary evil." Ticonderoga lets us question the "necessary."