struggle by the battle of Lexington on the 19th of April, eight days after the votes of the convention, rendered any petition to the king inexpedient, and the organization of a new government altogether impracticable. That the formation of such new province had been actually ordered by the crown, was long believed by many, and it was thought that, but for the war, full proof of such an order could have been obtained. The existence of such supposed new government, was afterwards earnestly urged in behalf of the inhabitants of the New Hampshire Grants, in opposition to the claim of New York to their territory, the king, it was alleged, having thereby annulled the title of that province.1

1

1 Doc. Hist. N. Y., vol. 4, p. 903-916. Journal of N. Y. Assembly, March 23, 30, 31. Brattleboro Eagle, Dec. 6, 1849. Slade, p. 60. Am. Arch. 1775, p. 315. In relation to Gov. Skene, see Ira Allen's Vt., p. 53–55. Watson's Champlain Valley, p. 44, 45. Williams's Vt., p. 224. Dr. Fitch's in Transactions of N. Y. Agricultural Society for 1848, p. 964-968. Jour. Cont. Con., June 8, 1775, and Jan. 5, 1776. Sparkes's Washington, vol. 3, p. 296, 524.

CHAPTER XVIII.

THE CAPTURE OF TICONDEROGA.

1775.

Political situation of the New Hampshire Grants at the breaking out of the revolutionary war- Capture of Ticonderoga and Crown Point by men under Ethan Allen and Seth Warner Arrogance of Arnold- New Yorkers decline to aid in or approve of the capture- Their strong tory and conservative tendencies- Strange resolve of the Continental congress to abandon those posts and substitute one at the south end of Lake George-Alarm and remonstrance of the New Hampshire Grants and New England-The resolve not executed-A regiment from Connecticut arrives under Col. Hinman and relieves the captors of Ticonderoga and Crown Point- Insubordination of Arnold -- He is discharged from service by a committee of the Massachusetts congress.

THE

HE opening of the revolutionary war found the people of the New Hampshire Grants nominally under the jurisdiction of New York, but substantially independent, obeying only the orders and decrees of committees and conventions, and of their cherished town meetings. This had for sometime been their situation on the west side of the Green mountain, and the recent proceedings at Westminster had overthrown the New York jurisdiction on the opposite side, at least for the time being. The people, in general, had been prepared to enter actively into the contest for American liberty, by their natural hostility, as a free people, to the arbitrary measures of the British crown and parliament, by sympathy with their friends in Massachusetts and the other New New England colonies whence they had emigrated; by deep distrust of a monarch who had suffered his greedy servants to grant, in his name, lands a second time, and to dispossess his first grantees, and to prosecute them as felons and outlaws; by the hesitating and tardy manner in which the province of New York, to which they had been unwillingly annexed, had seconded the patriotie measures of the other colonies, and finally by the massacre by the king's New York officers of two of their number at Westminster.

his

The approaching struggle with the mother country had for sometime been foreseen, and the provincial congress of Massachusetts on the 15th of February, 1775, to guard against an apprehended attempt of the emissaries of the British ministry to engage the Canadians and Indians in hostilities against the colonies, directed the

committee of the town of Boston to open a correspondence with the province of Quebec in such manner as they should think proper. That committee appointed John Brown, Esq., a young lawyer of spirit and intelligence of Pittsfield, to repair to Canada, to obtain information of the state of the province and to endeavor to counteract any unfriendly efforts of their enemies. At Bennington Mr. Brown had a consultation with "the grand committee" of the New Hampshire Grants, and was furnished by them with a guide and assistant, who was an old hunter and familiar with the route and with the Indians on the border. He was no less a personage than Peleg Sunderland, one of the eight outlaws then under the ban of the New York government, with a price set upon his life. After a tedious, as well as dangerous journey of over two weeks, partly by water on the lake, amidst floating ice, they reached Montreal. In a letter written from that place by Mr. Brown to Samuel Adams and Joseph Warren of the Boston committee, dated March 29, 1775, after giving a rather favorable account of the state of feeling among the Canadians and Indians, he speaks of the importance of the fortress of Ticonderoga and of his consultation with the committee at Bennington, as follows: "One thing I must mention to be kept a profound secret. The fort at Ticonderoga must be seized as soon as possible should hostilities be committed by the king's troops. The people on the New Hampshire Grants have engaged to do the business, and in my opinion are the most proper persons for this job. This will effectually curb this province and all the troops that may be sent here." When, therefore, a few days after the battle of Lexington, messengers arrived at Bennington from Connecticut, accompanied by Brown, for the purpose of collecting a force to attack that fortress, they found the leaders of the people with their minds already prepared for the undertaking.1

The importance, in the then approaching struggle, of securing Ticonderoga, must have been obvious to others besides Mr. Brown

Jour.

1Brown's letter in American Archives, 4th Series, vol. 2, p. 243, Mass. Cong., Feb. 13 and 15, 1775. Petition of Peleg Sunderland to the Vermont Assembly Feb. 26, 1787, and the Report of a Committee thereon of March 7, 1787. Sunderland in his petition says, that "in the month of March, 1775, he was called upon by the Grand committee of Bennington to go to Canada to pilot Major John Brown who was sent by the Provincial congress as a delegate to treat with the Indians respecting the then approaching war," and that he was out in that service twenty-nine days, which the committee of the Assembly reported to be true. It also appears from Mr. Brown's letter that his guide was of essential service in his negotiation with the Indians,

and the committee of the Green Mountain Boys, and must, indeed, have been the subject of common conversation among the intelligent whigs of New England. Capt. Benedict Arnold, then of New Haven, appears to have spoken to Samuel H. Parsons, of the Connecticut Assembly of the importance and feasibility of its capture and of his desire to attempt it. But the honor of devising and putting in motion the first expedition to seize it, belongs to some influential gentlemen at Hartford, acting on their individual responbility, of whom Mr. Parsons was one. The orignal parties to the project appear to have been Mr. Parsons, Samuel Wylis, and Silas Deane, who associated with them Christopher Leffingwell, Thomas Mumford and Adam Babcock. Those six gentlemen, for the sake of secrecy and dispatch, without communicating their intention to the assembly then sitting, obtained from the colony treasury on their personal obligations, the sum of three hundred pounds to be used in the undertaking. This was on Friday the 28th of April, and the same day Capt. Noah Phelps and Bernard Romans were dispatched with the money to the northward to obtain men and supplies, and the next day they were followed by Capt. Edward Mott, Epaphras Bull, and four others, and overtaken at Salisbury. Mott, Bull, Phelps and Romans appear to have been intrusted with the disbursement of the money, and with the general conduct of the expedition, they, with such others as they afterwards associated with them in authority, styling themselves "the committee of war." 1 At Pittsfield the party was joined by Col. James Easton and John Brown, Esq., and messengers were sent to Bennington to engage Col. Ethan Allen and his associates on the New Hampshire Grants, in the expedition; who proceeded to raise men with all possible dispatch.

1This account of the origin of the expedition seems to be well established by contemporaneous documents published in the collections of the Connecticut Historical Society, vol. 1, p. 163–188. In "a letter from a gentleman in Pittsfield to an officer in Cambridge, dated May 4, 1775." (Thursday) it is stated that "the plan was concerted at Hartford last Saturday" (the 29th) by the governor and council, Col. Hancock and Mr. Adams and others from our province being present." This statement has been followed by several historians, but of its correctness there is room for much doubt. John Hancock and Samuel Adams on their way to the congress at Philadelphia did not leave Worcester till the 27th and were not likely to have arrived at Hartford until after the advance party had set out for Ticonderoga. The money was obtained from the treasurer on Friday the 28th, as the receipts show, and the same day Phelps and Romans started for Ticonderoga. It was on the next day, Saturday the 29th, that the Pittsfield letter states "the plan was concocted by the governor and council," etc. Gov. Trumbull in his letter to the Massachusetts congress of May 25, 1775, apparently

On Wednesday the 3d of May, the men from Connecticut, sixteen in number, and forty-one raised by Col. Easton in Jericho (now Hancock), and Williamstown, reached Bennington, where it was agreed that the chief command should be assigned to Col. Allen, and that Castleton, about ten miles from Skenesborough, (now Whitehall), twenty miles from Ticonderoga, should be the place of general rendezvous. Proper measures were taken to prevent a knowledge of the contemplated attack from reaching the fort, and also for procuring information of its condition and means of defense. On Sunday evening the 7th of May the whole party were together at Castleton, and on Monday a council of the committe of war, of which Capt. Mott was chairman, was held to decide upon future operations. It was agreed that a party of thirty men under Capt. Samuel Herrick, of the New Hampshire Grants, should the next day in the afternoon, take into custody Maj. Skene and his party at Skenesborough, and that the residue of the men about one hundred and seventy in number, under the immediate command of Col. Allen should proceed to the lake shore opposite Ticonderoga, cross over in boats and attack the fort. Col. James Easton was second in command to Allen and Capt. Seth Warner, the third, they ranking according to the number of men they had respectively raised.

On the evening of Monday the 8th of May, after the plan of operations had all been settled, the men assigned to their respective duties, and ready to march, Col. Benedict Arnold arrived with a single servant and claimed the chief command, by virtue of a commission which he exibited from the committee of safety of Massachusetts, appointing him "colonel of a body of men not exceeding four hundred," which he was "directed to enlist," and with them to

* *

disclaims all participation in the origin of the expedition by declaring that it was an advantage gained by the United councils and enterprise of a number of private gentlemen * without public authority to our knowledge." That information of the expedition was, soon after it had been set in motion communicated to Hancock and Adams and to others, in confidence, is doubtless true. Mr. Adams alludes to it in a letter to the president of the Massachusetts congress, dated at Hartford, May 2, four days after the expedition had started, in language as follows: "certain military movements of great importance and with the utmost secrecy, have been set on foot in this colony of Connecticut, while I dare not explain, but refer you to Cols. Foster, Danielson and Bliss." See Mott's Journal and letter of Parsons, and notes of J. H. Trumbull in Conn. Hist. Collections above referred to also Am. Archives, vol. 2, 4th series, 507, 706. Jour. Mass. Cong., 527 note. Wells's Life of Samuel Adams, vol. 2, p. 297-8. New York Rev. and Atheneum Magazine, Feb. 1826, p. 219–220.