America's Hidden History: Untold Tales of the First Pilgrims, Fighting Women, and Forgotten Founders Who Shaped a Nation Paperback (21 page)

It was an excellent question. Still intent on finding the British com-mandant, Ethan Allen shouted, “Come out of there, you damned old British rat,” according to the accounts of his men. But in the oft-quoted—and most likely apocryphal—post-Revolutionary version of events, Allen, who favored the cadences of an Old Testament prophet, | 171 \

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is said to have replied, “In the name of the great Jehovah and the Continental Congress.”

A noble sentiment, to be sure. But history can’t confirm whether Ethan Allen actually made that bold statement at this astonishing moment when a disorganized, ragtag band of ill-disciplined backwoodsmen captured one of the most important British fortifications in North America. Nor can Jehovah’s purported instructions to Allen be verified. The latter claim, however, was certainly untrue. The second Continental Congress was not yet in session and wouldn’t formally place the colonies in a state of defense for another five days. George Washington would not be named commander for more than a month.

And independence was more than a year away. The orders to carry out this assault on a British fort, before hostilities had been formally declared by anyone on either side, had actually come from two separate sources. Neither of them possessed any authority to issue such orders, which was part of a problem of command that would soon worsen.

Colonel Ethan Allen and his men were operating under a directive that had come by way of Connecticut’s militia, even though Fort Ticonderoga was in New York’s territory, and most of Allen’s men were from the rugged Green Mountain wilderness that eventually became Vermont. Born in Litchfield, Connecticut, and bound for Yale when his father died suddenly, Ethan Allen and his Green Mountain Boys were freelancers with an agenda very much their own. For five years, this self-appointed militia force had been trying to wrest the disputed territory known as the New Hampshire Grants from the control of New Hampshire and New York, which both laid claim to the area. If taking Fort Ticonderoga fit that agenda, it suited Allen. If not, as his life would later prove, he would follow his own path. In the words of Michael A. Bellesiles, a generally admiring modern biographer, Ethan | 172 \

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Allen was “a scoundrel, a charismatic charlatan of enormous strength and courage, and a braggart of almost mythical proportions. In short, Allen was the ideal of the frontier redneck, Davy Crockett in a tri-corne.”5

Allen’s co-commander carried orders issued in Cambridge and written by Dr. Benjamin Church, whose treachery to the patriot cause had not yet been revealed. The Massachusetts Committee of Safety, which also lacked any standing on which to send forces against a British fort in the neighboring colony of New York, was behind those orders. They had secretly elevated Connecticut militia captain Benedict Arnold to the rank of colonel, and he had ridden out of Cambridge with a satchel of cash, a handful of men, and the assignment to gather more troops to capture Fort Ticonderoga and its artillery. With a few dozen men recruited from western Massachusetts, Arnold had linked up with Allen’s force. It proved to be an uneasy alliance.

With the fort in their control, Benedict Arnold listened as Ethan Allen issued a blustering threat that any resistance would mean the deaths of all of the British men, women, and children in the fort.

Still resplendent in the scarlet uniform of Connecticut’s Second Foot Guard, Colonel Arnold interceded, acting very much the gentleman-soldier. According to a British account of the incident, Arnold formally and more politely requested that Fort Ticonderoga’s comman-dant, Captain Delaplace, surrender Ticonderoga. Left with no other choice, Delaplace gave up the fort, along with his sword and pistols.

The British prisoners would later be sent on to Connecticut.

While those prisoners were collected in the fort’s parade ground, more of Ethan Allen’s Vermonters poured into the compound, ultimately reaching about four hundred in number. One of their first discoveries was the cellar beneath the officer’s quarters, where they found | 173 \

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ninety gallons of rum. Instead of stripping the fort of its cannons, the Vermonters soon got drunk and began to loot the barracks.

In his initial report on the capture of Fort Ticonderoga, Benedict Arnold wrote back to the Massachusetts Committee of Safety, “On and before our taking possession here I agreed with Colonel Allen to issue further orders jointly, until I could raise a sufficient number of men to relieve his people, on which plan we proceeded . . . since, which, Colonel Allen, finding he had the ascendancy over his people, posi-tively insisted I should have no command, as I had forbid the soldiers plundering and destroying private property. The power is now taken out of my hands and I am no longer consulted.”6 Allen had relieved Arnold of his joint command at gunpoint.

The attack on Fort Ticonderoga under Ethan Allen and Benedict Arnold had been a misadventure of dueling orders, competing agendas and two considerable, conflicting egos. In short, it was entirely typical of the American effort in the earliest days of the Revolution, when nobody was actually in charge, there was not yet any thought of a grand strategy, and free spirits such as Ethan Allen sometimes reigned. Benedict Arnold’s report to Dr. Joseph Warren about the capture of Fort Ticonderoga barely revealed the convoluted twists the New Haven merchant-turned-soldier had taken in carrying out the plan.

Dispatched by Warren and the Massachusetts Committee, Arnold carried orders that seemed to hold some legitimacy. What he didn’t know was that while he had made the case for this attack to Warren, men back in Connecticut with whom Arnold had discussed Fort Ticonderoga and its easy pickings of cannons and powder, had moved to do the same thing. They sent sixteen Connecticut militiamen to meet up with Ethan Allen, in command of a group of irregulars who | 174 \

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were, at that moment, wanted by the authorities in New York. In their efforts to liberate the future Vermont, Ethan Allen and his Green Mountain Boys had rankled the New York authorities, and there was a price of £100 on Ethan Allen’s head. In the eyes of the “Yorkers,”

Allen’s men were little more than backwoods banditti.

When Benedict Arnold first arrived in the town of Bennington and met some of the Green Mountain Boys in the Catamount Tavern, which they had proclaimed the “capital of Vermont,” these backwoodsmen nearly shot the Connecticut dandy. First of all, Arnold wore a uniform that looked suspiciously like that of a British officer. He also possessed the haughty air of a gentleman that these backwoodsmen despised. When Arnold later met up with Ethan Allen, the leader of the Green Mountain Boys grudgingly deferred to Arnold and his orders from Massachusetts. But Allen’s men refused to obey Arnold and threatened mutiny, so the two officers had agreed upon a joint command. Allen even gave Arnold an antiquated blunderbuss, since he was carrying only a saber and pistols. Mutual suspicion and the desire to take charge of the expedition colored every move they both made. But in spite of all the misadventures, the capture of Fort Ticonderoga would soon have enormous reverberations. When Dr. Joseph Warren received Allen’s report a week later, he wrote, “Thus a War has begun.”7

While Arnold chafed at what he considered the undisciplined ban-ditry of the Vermonters under Ethan Allen, the cannons he had come to collect were left sitting. Some of them were actually under water, as the lake had risen from the snowmelt and spring rains. Arnold was also unaware that Ethan Allen—in collusion with some of the Connecticut militiamen who had axes to grind against the New Haven merchant Arnold—was already undermining Arnold’s role in the cap-

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ture of the fort. Dispatches critical of Arnold and placing Ethan Allen and other Connecticut men in the central role at Ticonderoga had made their way back to Connecticut. This sort of backstabbing, which diminished his accomplishments and authority, would torment Benedict Arnold throughout the war’s early years.

Often it has been said—particularly when it comes to warfare— that while success has a hundred fathers, failure is an orphan. In the case of Fort Ticonderoga, there were many fathers. In truth, the idea of taking Fort Ticonderoga seems so obvious as to make the question of credit fairly meaningless. The fort’s tactical value, its recent history, and the stores of munitions it held were all well known. But most immediate versions and the later legendary account of the Ticonderoga victory virtually ignored—or certainly diminished—the role of the man who played a key part in the attack’s success, largely because he would become the most vilified man in American history. Like some Soviet general whose image was removed from photographs after a Stalinist purge, Benedict Arnold and his leadership at Fort Ticonderoga, along with his other accomplishments, were deliberately erased from history. 8

Despite Arnold’s broken reputation, much of that history is clear.

In a document dated April 30, 1775, which he prepared for Dr. Warren and the Safety Committee in Cambridge, Arnold had specifically laid out the number of cannons and other guns at Fort Ticonderoga. He accurately noted that “Fort Ticonderoga is in a ruinous condition and has not more than fifty men at most.” In addition, he pointed out, a British sloop was on the lake. Familiar with the lake from his travels to Canada as a merchant, Benedict Arnold was also an experienced sea captain capable of commanding and sailing a sloop. In other words, Arnold was uniquely qualified for the assignment of taking Ticond-

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eroga and securing Lake Champlain. Perhaps others had the same idea at the same time, but Benedict Arnold had the information and abilities to carry out this mission. The question of credit for success— or blame for defeat—would weigh heavily in his saga of patriotism falling prey to pride, power grabs, ambition, and ego. It ended as a tale of a heroic, if deeply flawed, character gone terribly wrong in the American Revolution.

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F o r m o r e t h a n t wo c e n t u r i e s , the name of Benedict Arnold has been synonymous with treachery. Arnold’s modern biographies typically begin with the fact that he was the would-be betrayer of West Point, the crucial fortifications controlling the Hudson River just north of New York City. In most tellings, Arnold is dismissed as a turncoat who ruthlessly brought down havoc and destruction on several American towns. But Benedict Arnold had begun the war as an idealistic patriot. His military successes, including numerous instances of conspicuous bravery, were so remarkable that he had earned the respect, friendship, and committed patronage of George Washington.

James Thomas Flexner, one of George Washington’s greatest biographers and a man not usually given to hyperbole, wrote of him: “[A]

genius in leading men and at fighting, Benedict Arnold was, in fact, the greatest combat general in the war on either side.”9

In pre-Revolutionary Connecticut, Benedict Arnold had lived a childhood and young manhood that reads like a Dickensian invention. A fourth-generation American, Benedict Arnold was born into an influential New England family in Norwich, Connecticut. The first Arnold in America, William, arrived with the great Puritan migration. Chafing at the constraints of Puritan Massachusetts, William | 177 \

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Arnold and his son, the first Benedict Arnold, had moved to more tolerant Rhode Island. Benedict Arnold succeeded Roger Williams as the colony’s governor and served several terms, all the while amassing a considerable fortune in land. At his death, his Rhode Island holdings were split among several sons, and Benedict II inherited one piece, also later split among his sons. By the time Benedict IV received a portion of the Arnold inheritance, the great fortune had been considerably whittled down by being spread among so many heirs. In spite of his illustrious ancestry, Benedict Arnold IV was forced to seek work in neighboring Connecticut. Landing in the bustling port of Norwich on Connecticut’s Thames River, he found a job as a cooper, building barrels for merchant and trader Absalom King.

Enterprising and industrious in that fashion commonly described as the “Puritan work ethic,” Benedict Arnold rose from making barrels to command one of King’s trading ships, plying the waters of Long Island Sound, carrying timber, salt pork, and beef from Connecticut to the Caribbean in the 1730s, returning with molasses and rum. Eventually he became Absalom King’s partner and, when the merchant died, Benedict Arnold IV married his widow, Hannah, member of an old and prosperous Norwich family. He now controlled King’s ships, wharfs, and houses and the widow’s fortune. Arnold built the town’s grandest home and began a family. A son, named Benedict V, was born, but died in infancy.

On January 14, 1741, when the second Benedict Arnold V was born, his father was one of the most prosperous and admired men in Norwich, frequently elected to local offices. Wealthy, esteemed in the local Congregational church, and connected to the town’s original settlers through his wife, Captain Arnold had achieved Puritan Connecticut’s trifecta of social standing: money, godliness, or at least its ap-

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pearance, and a connection to old blood. During the War of Jenkins’

Ear—the same war in which George Washington’s older brother had served—New England’s shipping business boomed, and Arnold sup-plemented his trading income by outfitting his vessels with cannons and attacking French and Spanish ships as a privateer.

When young Benedict was four years old, the on-again, off-again war with France came to New England. During what was called King George’s War in the colonies, the French and their Indian allies stepped up attacks on settlements throughout the Northeast. After Connecticut militiamen joined in the capture of the French fortress at Louisbourg in Nova Scotia in 1745, New Englanders remained constantly on alert for French or Indian attacks.