G. The Capture of Ticonderoga, 1775.—It is in dispute who planned and who conducted the capture of Ticonderoga. On Feb. 21, 1775, Col. John Brown had suggested it to Warren (Force's Archives). Arnold made a statement of the post's defenceless condition to the Committee of Safety in Cambridge, April 30, 1775 (Mass. Archives, cxlvi. p. 30; Amer. Bibliopolist, 1873, p. 79). On the 2d of May he was given a money credit and munitions, and on the 3d he was definitely instructed to organize his party (Mass. Archives, cxlvi. p. 39). It is claimed that some purpose of acting on the suggestion of Brown prompted in part, at least, the Massachusetts provincial congress to appoint early in April a committee to proceed to Connecticut and the other New England colonies. Whether it was by their instigation, by certain movements in Connecticut, or by the direct agency of Arnold that the plan was formed, it is difficult to say. It is also claimed that the plan grew out of a conference with the Massachusetts delegates to the Philadelphia Congress, when, on their way, they stopped at Hartford and held a session with Governor Trumbull and his council (Force's Archives, ii. 507; Wells's Sam. Adams, ii. 298). Bancroft and the Connecticut antiquaries find the beginning rather in the impulses of one Parsons, who had just returned from Massachusetts, and had got from Benedict Arnold, whom he met on the way, a statement of the plunder to be obtained there, and, without any formal consent of the governor and council, proceeded in the organization of a committee in Connecticut (Bancroft, orig. ed., vii. 338; final revision, iv. 182). Official sanction was first evoked when Massachusetts, a few days later, commissioned Arnold (Mass. Archives, cxlvi. 130, 139; American Bibliopolist, 1873, p. 79; N. Y. Hist. Soc. Proc., 1844, p. 14). The Connecticut antiquaries have mainly set forth the claims of their colony for leadership of the affair in the papers which constitute vol. i. (pp. 163-185) of the Conn. Hist. Soc. Collections, in which is the journal of Edward Mott,[625] the chairman of the Connecticut committee, edited by J. H. Trumbull.[626]
The part taken in the movement in Western Massachusetts arose from confidence reposed in Brown and others of Pittsfield, by the Connecticut men who passed through that town on their way to the New Hampshire Grants.[627] Brown had, during the previous winter, notified the Massachusetts committee that Ticonderoga would receive the attention of Ethan Allen and Green Mountain boys as soon as the outbreak came. The credit which attaches to this commander is complicated by the relations which Arnold bore to the final capture, and has in turn given rise to controversy. The most comprehensive examination of the question on the Vermont side is L. E. Chittenden's Addresses before the Vermont Historical Society, Oct., 1872 (published at Rutland by the society), and at the unveiling of Allen's statue at Burlington, July 4, 1873. We have Allen's own statements in his Narrative of his captivity, etc.[628]
Dawson thinks that the merit of originating the active measures cannot be taken from Benedict Arnold, and in his chapter (Battles of the United States, i. ch. 2) on the subject traces minutely the sources of each step in the progress of events, and in his Appendix (p. 38) prints the protest (May 10th, p. 38) of the Connecticut committee against Arnold's interference and Arnold's report (May 11th, p. 38) to the Massachusetts Congress.[629] There are some of the current reports preserved in Moore's Diary of the Amer. Revolution (i. pp. 78-80), and the account, which ignores Arnold, of the Worcester Spy (May 16th) is given in the Amer. Bibliopolist (1871, p. 491). There are other contemporary accounts in the American Archives (vols. ii. and iii.); a journal by Elmer is in the New Jersey Hist. Soc. Proc., vols. ii. and iii.; a Tory account in Jones's New York during the Revolutionary War (vol. i. pp. 47, 546), with a letter of May 14th.[630] Narratives by Caldwell and Beaman are in the Historical Magazine, August, 1867, and May, 1868, respectively.[631]
H. The Canada Campaign, 1775-1776.—Washington in New York, June 25th, entrusted to Schuyler the command in the North (Lossing's Schuyler, i. 330; Jones's N. Y. during the Rev. War, 58), and Congress issued (May 29, 1775) an address to the Canadians (Journal of Congress; Pitkin's United States, i. App. 19). In August it was reported that this address was left at the door of every house in Canada. Schuyler reached Ticonderoga July 18th (Lossing's Schuyler, i. ch. 21; Palmer's Lake Champlain, ch. 6; Irving's Washington, ii.), and pushed on to the foot of Lake Champlain in September (Lossing, i. ch. 23).
Among the early reports, inducing the project of invading Canada, were the letters of Maj. John Brown (Aug. 14, 1775) and Ethan Allen (Sept. 14th) respecting the condition of the Canadians (Sparks's Corresp. of the Rev., i. 461, 464). There are other letters on the state of Canada at this time in the N. H. Prov. Papers, vii. 515, 547, 561-62, 569. The Schuyler Papers, with the letters which they contain of Montgomery, Arnold, Wooster, and Sullivan, are a main source of information respecting the whole campaign.[632]
FROM THE ATLAS OF WILKINSON'S MEMOIRS.
A modern eclectic map is given in Carrington's Battles, 171. The most considerable contemporary map for the illustration of the movements during the Revolution in Canada is one published by Jefferys, in 1776, of the Province of Quebec, from the French Surveys and those made by Capt. Carver and others after the War, with much detail of names, plan of Quebec and heights of Abraham, Montreal and isles of Montreal (27 x 19 inches). On Feb. 16, 1776, Sayer and Bennett published in London A new map of the Province of Quebec according to the royal proclamation of 7 Oct., 1763, from the French surveys, corrected with those made after the war by Captain Carver and other officers in his majesty's service. There was a French reproduction of it in Paris in 1777, included in the Atlas Ameriquain (1778), called Nouvelle Carte de la Province de Quebec selon l'édit du Roi d'Angleterre du 7 8{bre}, 1763, par le Capitaine Carver, traduites de l'Anglois, à Paris chez le Rouge, 1777.
Jefferys also issued in 1775 An exact Chart of the River St. Lawrence from Fort Frontenac to Anticosti (37 X 24 inches), which is usually accompanied by a Chart of the Golf of St. Lawrence, 1775(24 X 20 inches). North Amer. Pilot, nos. 11, 20, 21, 22. There is in the Geschichte der Kriege in und ausser Europa [Nuremberg], 1776, a "Karte von der Insel Montreal und den Gegenden umher", following a plan by Bellin.