05/22/2026
251 years ago today: Colonel Benedict Arnold, Ethan Allen, and members of the Green Mountain Boys cross Lake Champlain in the early morning hours and capture Fort Ticonderoga in 1775.
Following the battles at Lexington and Concord in April, American military leaders began to look for other British-held targets, and recognized the importance of the fortification's location on Lake Champlain. Massachusetts leaders tasked Arnold with gathering troops for such an attack, while at the same time, Connecticut officials did the same with Allen.
When Arnold arrived in the area on May 9th, he found that Allen had already assembled nearly 150 men. The two men didn't get along: Arnold insisted that he had the authority to lead the attack, while Allen's men refused to follow anyone but him.
With only a couple of boats at their disposal, Allen and Arnold shuttled 83 of their total force of 230 soldiers across the lake. Allen later wrote that a single sentry tried to fire upon them, only to have their gun to fail. Once in the fort, he confronted Lieutenant Jocelyn Feltham (the garrison's recently-arrived second-in-command), and demanded his surrender. They did, with no casualties on either side.
A day later, Allen's second-in-command, Seth Warner, crossed Champlain at Crown Point to the north and captured the tiny garrison at the fort there, while an additional unit of Green Mountain Boys attacked and captured Skenesborough, home to British officer Philip Skene.
The attack was a pivotal moment in the early days of the American revolution. Capture of the forts on Lake Champlain also helped to secure vital waterways deep into colonial territory, and as the American's first offensive victory in the burgeoning conflict, it was both a morale boost and brought in vital artillery pieces that would eventually be used to protect Boston.
