A lesser-known action during Gen. John Burgoyne’s 1777 campaign occurred at Ticonderoga and Mount Independence in the days surrounding the first battle at Saratoga in mid-September. What became known as “Brown’s Raid” has commonly been interpreted as playing a key role in the defeat of Burgoyne’s invasion. Such is not necessarily the case and, as […]
On the third day of November 1775, Brig. Gen. Richard Montgomery and his Continental army triumphantly concluded a taxing two-month siege with the surrender of British Fort St. Johns and its 600-man garrison. Their invasion of Canada had finally gained momentum. A week later, the Continentals assembled on the south shore of the St. Lawrence, ready […]
The day following the legendary taking of Fort Ticonderoga on May 10, 1775, Lt. Col. Ethan Allen reported the successful mission to New York’s Albany County Committee of Safety, as well as plead for their immediate assistance: I have the inexpressible satisfaction to acquaint you that at day-break of the tenth instant, pursuant to my […]
BOOK REVIEW: Dark Voyage: An American Privateer’s War on Britain’s African Slave Trade by Christian McBurney (Yardley, PA: Westholme, 2022) In Dark Voyage: An American Privateer’s War on Britain’s African Slave Trade, author Christian McBurney recounts the voyage of a Rhode Island merchant’s privateer ship Marlborough to the West Coast of Africa to attack and disrupt British […]
Throughout the churning tides of 1776 and 1777, John Brown, a prominent a prominent merchant from Providence, Rhode Island, amassed a fortune by investing in privateers. Through reviewing a comprehensive list of his privateers and their values, along with a list of the captures made by some of his privateers, and the values of the […]
This story begins five weeks after Gen. John Burgoyne’s army forced the Americans to abandon positions on Lake Champlain in July 1777. On August 12, Gen. Benjamin Lincoln wrote to Washington telling him, “I am to return with the militia . . . to the northward, with a design to fall into the rear of […]
Discussions about the American evacuation of Mount Independence and Fort Ticonderoga on the night of July 5, 1777 frequently address the question: could shot from artillery on Mount Defiance (commonly called Sugar Hill in the eighteenth century) reach Mount Independence and Ticonderoga? Those who believe it could use that potential as support for the decision […]
When Ethan Allen described his defeat and capture outside Montreal at Longue Pointe on September 25, 1775, he observed that “it was a motley parcel of soldiery which composed both parties.” The enemy included Canadian Loyalists, British regulars, Indian Department officers, and a few Native warriors. In the autobiographical A Narrative of Colonel Ethan Allen’s […]
On September 25, 1775, three weeks into the American invasion of Canada, the legendary Ethan Allen fought a fierce battle outside Montreal with about one hundred Canadians and Continental soldiers at his side. The result was bitter defeat at the hands of a larger British-Canadian force that had sortied from the city to confront them […]
As the Revolutionary War was coming to an end, financial problems came to the forefront: to name a few, the country’s debts to France, Spain, and Holland, the payment of war reparations, the establishment of public credit, the states’ inability to meet their financial requisitions, and the most immanent, back pay to the disbanding Continental […]
