9/26: Fort Ticonderoga

Today we saw Fort Ticonderoga and Saratoga. They are the places of two important battles in the Revolutionary War.

We saw Fort Ticonderoga first. Ticonderoga means the land between the waters in a Native American language. The people who first built the fort were the French. At first the fort was called Fort Carillon. This place was called a “key to the continent”. In 1758, the Marquis de Montcalm’s force, which was much smaller, 1 French to 5 British soldiers, had built up large walls to protect the fort from British because they didn’t want the British to reach it. Amazingly, the French forces the British forces when they attacked. After the British defeat, they still wanted to take the fort. So, in 1759 General Amherst led an attack on Fort Carillon. The French Forces retreated after blowing up the power magazine. The British were left to clean up and the fort was renamed to be “Fort Ticonderoga.” Three weeks after the battle in Concord, Ethan Allen and his Green Mountain Boys and Benedict Arnold came to attack Fort Ticonderoga. On May 10, 1775 they attacked the fort, taking the men hostage and capturing 59 cannons. The cannons were needed for Boston Siege. With many oxen they moved 59 cannons in the winter in two months. After the fort had lost its importance, after the British abandoned the fort, the settlers who were moving up there for summer homes and needed stone for building fireplaces and other stuff took stones from the fort causing it fall into disrepair. In 1816 Stephen Pell’s grandfather bought the land for a summer home on the Champlain Lake. Then when his grandfather died, he acquired the land and started to rebuild the fort to the state it was earlier. A coincidence that I found interesting was that General Howe, who attacked the fort in 1758 and was killed, and that his little brother General Howe was attacked by the Americans who used the cannons from the fort. Benedict Arnold was a major person in both Saratoga and Fort Ticonderoga.

Saratoga was one of the major battles that the Americans fought. This battle gained the help of the French, who wanted to beat down there old enemy, the British. The point of the British’s campaign was to capture the town of Albany and spilt the southern states from the northern states, thus ending the war. But on the way Gates’es army marched up to stop them. They met at Saratoga. There were a few skirmishes here and there. Then the British were told that they would get reinforcements. So they started building fortifications, but after awhile the British could not wait anymore. The Americans had gotten reinforcements. They attacked the redoubts and captured them. The British was running low on food so, they retreated, on Oct. 8^th. At the end, the Americans made the British surrender. This gained help of the French, letting us win the war with Britain.