Allen and Arnold take Ticonderoga; not a shot is fired
Before dawn on May 10, 1775, 83 men crossed Lake Champlain in borrowed boats and walked into a crumbling British fort that barely knew there was a war on. Ethan Allen, leading the Green Mountain Boys alongside a fuming Colonel Benedict Arnold — who held a Massachusetts commission the men refused to honor — demanded surrender of the garrison. Lieutenant Jocelyn Feltham stalled for time; Allen reportedly answered that he acted "In the name of the Great Jehovah and the Continental Congress." Captain William Delaplace surrendered without a shot fired, handing the Americans a stockpile of heavy artillery that would, months later, force the British out of Boston.
The cannons at Ticonderoga solved a problem Washington could not otherwise solve. Colonel Henry Knox hauled them three hundred miles through winter wilderness to Dorchester Heights, where they overlooked Boston Harbor and made the British position untenable — producing the first major American strategic victory of the war. The fort's capture also severed overland communications between British forces in Quebec and those on the Atlantic coast, a fracture in command that contributed directly to Burgoyne's catastrophe at Saratoga two years later.
QWhy did Allen and Arnold attack with only 83 men when they had far more waiting to cross the lake?
The boats they had managed to procure could not carry the full force, and by the time 83 men had crossed from Hand's Cove, dawn was approaching and Allen and Arnold feared losing the element of surprise. Major Asa Douglas rowed back to collect the rest, but the two commanders decided they could not wait. The gamble worked entirely because the fort's lone sentry had a musket that misfired and ran rather than raise an alarm. Had the garrison been alert, 83 exhausted men in a ruined fort could have been a catastrophe. As it was, the remaining men arrived hours later to join a celebration already underway — including the plundering of Captain Delaplace's personal liquor stores.
QWhat happened to the British order to refortify Ticonderoga before the Americans arrived?
General Thomas Gage, writing from besieged Boston after Lexington and Concord, sent orders to Quebec Governor Guy Carleton to rehabilitate and refortify both Ticonderoga and Crown Point. The letter did not reach Carleton until May 19 — nine days after the fort had already fallen. It was one of the cleaner examples of how British command suffered from the lag of trans-Atlantic and inter-colonial communication throughout the war. Carleton, upon receiving it, immediately dispatched Major Charles Preston and 140 men to Fort Saint-Jean, which Arnold had already raided. The order to fortify Ticonderoga was, by that point, a letter to no one.
QHow did Allen and Arnold's rivalry over credit for the capture play out in the historical record?
It turned into a small war of documents. Arnold, unable to control Allen's men, began keeping a detailed diary highly critical of Allen's conduct, describing the Green Mountain Boys as 'governing by whim and caprice.' Allen meanwhile worked on a memoir of the events that, when published years later, omits Arnold entirely. The situation was compounded when Allen's ally James Easton allegedly lost Arnold's account on the way to the Massachusetts committee, ensuring Allen's glorified version received official attention. The rivalry that began at Ticonderoga prefigured the broader arc of Arnold's career: a man who felt credit was perpetually taken from him, and who kept meticulous score.
