October 2012

War and Peace

America was born at this pinch point of Lake Champlain. But today’s Fort Ticonderoga is far more than blood and battles

Scaling an Adirondack peak, standing in the clouds and taking in the scene from the rise of ancient rock beneath your boots—it’s a perspective to marvel at, a landscape to appreciate. There’s another place in the park that’ll move you too, one that’s so historically important and heart-wrenchingly dramatic, it’ll stir your soul. Go to Fort Ticonderoga’s Carillon Battleﬁeld, leave your car on the side of the road and walk to the French Lines, a striking heave of earth. More than two and a half centuries ago this was a frantically built half-mile-long wall of felled timber. On July 8, 1758, some 2,000 men died here during a six-hour battle to capture the nearby French Fort Carillon. An army of 17,000 British and Colonial troops charged the 3,700 French soldiers in waves. As the summer afternoon wore on and bodies piled up, the Scottish 42nd Regiment of Foot, or Black Watch, made a ﬁnal rush to the French barricade, swords swinging, hearts pounding. Almost all of them were killed. Most of the soldiers’ bodies from that bloody day remain beneath this grass—men with lives and loves, ﬁghting for empires across an ocean. Now, along this bucolic lane on a still autumn afternoon, only scattered monuments and those ripples in the ground remind you to respect this place, to fathom just what went down here.

The Battle of Carillon, which happened three years after the French began building a fort on the portage between Lakes George and Champlain, was a critical ﬁght in the French and Indian War. It was the French’s greatest triumph on North American turf and it delayed Great Britain’s victory a year, pushing that superpower deep into debt; consequently, the Crown imposed heavy taxes on its colonies, one of the catalysts for the American Revolution.

And that’s not even where the story of Fort Ticonderoga—as the British later named it—ends. Most historical landmarks claim one pivotal moment, maybe two, but this Champlain Valley corridor that linked Britain’s American colonies with France’s Canadian territory was theater for many: The British siege of 1759; the Green Mountain Boys’ 1775 capture of the fort; Colonel Knox’s 1776 clandestine transport of the fort’s cannon to Boston; General Burgoyne’s 1777 British takeover of the stronghold. In fact, at one point the fort and its surrounding settlement had the third-largest urban concentration of people in North America. Today Ti is a nice town with an iconic tourist attraction, a paper company and a year-round population of about 5,200. Because you can bypass the village on the Northway, you’ve got to go out of your way to visit it.

Post-Revolution, when the fort was a pile of rubble—the Brits toppled it after their defeat at the Battle of Saratoga—plenty of people came here: Veterans made pilgrimages to the site of their glory days. Artists, such as Hudson River School painter Thomas Cole and photographer Seneca Ray Stoddard, recorded and romanticized the scene. The ﬁrst generation of heritage tourists visited, perhaps, to better understand the foundations of America. By 1822, William Ferris Pell, a wealthy New York City merchant who had purchased more than 500 acres of the fort’s grounds from Union and Columbia Colleges, had put up his vacation home, the Pavilion (the crumbling structure beside today’s King’s Garden), which later became a hotel. Preservation of the fort itself began in 1907 under the direction of Pell’s grandson Stephen and his wife, Sarah. Later, the nonproﬁt Fort Ticonderoga Association continued the work. The organization’s fortiﬁcation, its acquisition of artifacts and its dedication to preserving a hallowed hunk of history—some 50 years before Gettysburg’s battleﬁeld got the same attention—is our nation’s ﬁrst project of its kind.

George Washington, Benjamin Franklin, Henry Knox, Benedict Arnold, Thaddeus Kosciuszko, Seth Warner and Robert Rogers are among the who’s who of Revolutionary heroes at Ti, memorialized by a bronze plaque at the fort’s front gate. On it an inscription reads, “You who tread in their footsteps remember their glory.”

These are words the nonproﬁt’s new director Beth Hill takes seriously. “It’s a huge responsibility to make sure we have a future for this place,” she says.

Hill speaks the language of a corporate executive, with phrases like “product development,” “strategic growth” and “short- and long-term initiatives.” But under her leadership, and after a very public debacle—even The New York Times covered the museum’s near­–ﬁnancial ruin in 2008 following a squabble between the fort’s former director and philanthropist Deborah Mars—exciting things are happening at Fort Ticonderoga.

“The heart of everything we do is the learning-campus model,” explains Hill. That means year-round workshops, symposia and a climate-controlled gallery in the new Deborah Clarke Mars Education Center. An interpretive program covers the 2,000-acre property, including horticulture in the King’s Garden and, during special events, staff on horseback on Carillon Battleﬁeld. An expanded trail network—Mounts Deﬁance and Independence are some of the most picturesque and undeveloped lands in and around the park—is in the planning stage. And bateaux on the LaChute River will allow visitors to see the fortress just as approaching soldiers would have. Exhibits are being redesigned and a vast collection of manuscripts, rare books, paintings, prints, clothing and other artifacts is growing. Art of War: Ticonderoga as Experienced through the Eyes of America’s Great Artists, an exhibition of more than 50 works from the museum’s collection—featuring Thomas Cole’s 1826 Gelyna, or a View Near Ticonderoga—was so popular it was extended another season. The recently installed Bullets and Blades: The Weapons of America’s Colonial Wars and Revolution displays more than 150 original pieces, some newly acquired—you can see a pistol and basket-hilted swords carried by Scottish Highland troops.

“The fort is a different place than it was if you visited as a child,” says curator of collections Chris Fox, who’s worked here since the mid-1990s. “It’s not just standard musket-ﬁring and marching, but really gets into the daily lives of soldiers—the real story. We’re creating an experience that you’d be hard-pressed to ﬁnd elsewhere.”

Interpreters demonstrate drills, weap­onry and trades such as clothing- and shoe-making, and offer workshops geared to­ward reenactors who wish to make their own period-appropriate breeches or cartridge belts. Interpretive program director Stuart Lilie and his staff painstakingly research every detail to translate what was described in soldiers’ diaries or depicted in 18th-century artwork into something the public can see and understand. Though part of Lilie’s job description—galloping on horses, paddling bateaux, ﬁring weapons and leading battleﬁeld skirmishes—sounds like child’s play, this is scholarly business. He says he appreciates his access to rare relics, such as his favorite in the fort’s collection, American soldier Benjamin Warner’s backpack and the instructions inside.

Warner, who marched through Ticonderoga with Colonel Wooster’s 1st Connecticut Regiment in September 1775, wrote, “This napsack I cary’d through the war of the Revolution to achieve American independence. I transmit it to my olest sone Benjamin Warner Jr. with directions to keep it and transmit it to his oldest sone and so on to the latest posterity and whilst one shred of it shall remane never surrender your libertys to a foren envador or an aspiring demegog.”

Thousands of these knapsacks were produced as standard issue for a Continental Army soldier, explains Lilie, “but this one survived. It’s an incredible piece that tells us a lot about a guy who isn’t too different from other soldiers.”

Warner’s message to his son is universal—that the struggles of our fathers and their fathers before them shall not be in vain. That’s another reason Fort Ticonderoga is so special. What happened at this place shaped our region, our nation and our world.

“We think about the thousands of soldiers who were here that gave the ultimate sacriﬁce in the name of empire and liberty,” says Beth Hill. “That’s something that’s heavy on my heart every day.

“History is life,” she adds. “It’s alive.”

TICONDEROGA TIMELINE

The French and Indian War

1755: The French begin constructing Fort Carillon and continue for the next four years.

1756: French and Canadian troops develop le Jardin du Roi to feed the summer garrison building Carillon.

1758: General Abercromby leads an army of 17,000 British and Colonial troops against a French force of 3,700 at Fort Carillon. Abercromby loses the battle and nearly 2,000 men.

1759: General Amherst attacks Fort Carillon. The French abandon the fort after blowing up the powder magazine. Amherst re­pairs the fort and renames it Ticonderoga.

1773: A fire at the new British fort at Crown Point makes the dilapidated Fort Ticonderoga again the center of British operations on Lake Champlain.

The American Revolution

1775: Ethan Allen, Benedict Arnold and the Green Mountain Boys capture Fort Ticonderoga from the British on May 10, three weeks after Lexington and Concord. This is America’s first victory in the Revolution.

1775­­–1776: Colonel Knox transports more than 60 tons of military supplies, including 59 artillery pieces from Fort Ticonderoga, to Boston. The threat of these guns on Dorchester Heights forces the British to evacuate Boston on March 17, 1776, and the Continental Army enters the city the next day.

1776: After the British defeat of the American navy at the Battle of Valcour, the Americans further strengthen their position at Ti by fortifying Mount Independence, on Lake Champlain.

1777: General Burgoyne’s troops haul cannon up Mount Defiance, forcing the Americans to abandon Fort Ti and Mount Independence. Two months later, Colonel Brown captures British outposts surrounding Ticonderoga in a surprise raid that coincides with the first battle at Saratoga, where Burgoyne is defeated.

BEHIND THE LINES

Fort Ticonderoga is open 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. daily, through October 18, but check www.fortticonderoga.org or call (518) 585-2821 for information about its year-round events. The following are among Fort Ti’s fall offerings. Call ahead to register and verify dates and times.

September 1­–2: Living History Weekend. Colonel Warner’s Regiment of the Green Mountain Boys prepare themselves to join the Continental Army’s new Northern Department in its invasion of Canada.

September 5: Edible Flowers from Garden to Table in the King’s Garden with local herbalist and cook Nancy Scarzello.

September 7–9: British 1777 Campaign March. The elite advanced guard soldiers of General Burgoyne’s troops march into Fort Ticonderoga to rest and refit.

September 29: Heritage Harvest and Horse Festival. A celebration of the 19th-century history and rural heritage of the Champlain Valley.

October 12–13: Chocolate Covered History Symposium. Explore the origins and role of chocolate in the military in the 18th century.

October 19–20 & 26–27: Flashlight Nights. A rare opportunity to discover history at night in the fort, on the landscape and in the corn maze.

Tags: American Revolution, Black Watch, Deborah Clarke Mars Education Center, Fort Carillon, Fort Ticonderoga, The Battle of Carillon, William Ferris Pell