Fort Ticonderoga, The Last Campaigns: The War in the North, 1777–1783

by Mark Edward Lender

During the War for Independence, Fort Ticonderoga’s guns, sited critically between Lakes Champlain and George, dominated north-south communications in upstate New York that were vital to both the British and American war efforts. In the public mind Ticonderoga was the “American Gibraltar” or the “Key to the Continent,” and patriots considered holding the fort essential to the success of the Revolutionary cause. Ticonderoga was a primary target in British Lieutenant General John Burgoyne’s 1777 campaign to crush American resistance in the north and end the rebellion in a decisive stroke. American efforts to defend the fort in June against overwhelming odds entailed political and military intrigue, bungling, heroism, and ultimately a narrow escape for the Continental and provincial forces under Major General Arthur St. Clair. The loss of Ticonderoga stunned patriot morale and ignited one of the greatest political firestorms of the war. But the fortunes of war turned. Two months later, the rebels mounted a sensational—if little known—counter-attack on Ticonderoga that had major implications for Burgoyne’s eventual defeat at Saratoga in October. Yet Saratoga brought no peace, and Ticonderoga would be central to additional military and political maneuverings—many of them known only to specialist historians—that would keep the region on edge until the end of the war in 1783. 

Based on new archival research and taking advantage of the latest scholarship, Fort Ticonderoga, The Last Campaigns: The War in the North, 1777-1783 by distinguished historian Mark Edward Lender highlights the strategic importance of the fort as British, American, and regional forces (including those of an independent Vermont Republic) fought for control of the northern front at a critical point in the war. The book tells the Ticonderoga story in all of its complexity and drama, correcting misconceptions embedded in many previous accounts, and sheds vital new light on this key chapter in America’s struggle for independence. 

248 pages, Hardcover

First published April 28, 2022

Reviews

[Lloyd · Rating 4 out of 5]

This work of nonfiction covers the last useful (from a military standpoint) life of Fort Ticonderoga. This was the time period of the American Revolutionary War. The year 1777 saw the British invade the American colonies from Canada in the north. The British had been using the Lake Champlain corridor from Canada in an attempt to capture Albany, New York and thus cutoff the New England states from the middle and southern colonies. The British hoped that isolating the New England colonies would greatly weaken the rebellion. Fort Ticonderoga had been situated at the southern end of Lake Champlain to control that natural corridor to the interior if America. This book clearly explains how the British were able to recapture Fort Ticonderoga from the Americans and thus threaten Albany. They were stopped at Saratoga, New York by an American army. While this book doesn’t provide much detail about the battle of Saratoga, it does explain how the Americans threatened the recapture of Fort Ticonderoga, which made a British retreat from Saratoga so difficult that the entire British army had to surrender to the Americans. That’s how Saratoga became a truly decisive victory for the Americans in the Revolutionary War. The book then details how the fort figured into incursions by the British from Canada again in the last few years of the American Revolutionary War. These incursions were primarily raids, rather than full scaled invasions. But an important component of these incursions was an attempt by the British to negotiate with the people of the then independent Republic of Vermont to switch sides from the American rebels back to the British. That is a relatively little know aspect of the American Revolution and several previously heralded American patriots played roles in those negotiations.