The Glorious Cause: The American Revolution, 1763-1789 (62 page)

Benedict Arnold lacked Allen's size of body but exceeded him in power of mind and in ambition. He was thirty-four years old in 1775, athletic, graceful, and charming. Arnold came from good stock; the family had made its name and fortune in Rhode Island business and he had prospered as a merchant in New Haven, Connecticut.

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Shortly after the battle of Lexington, a small group of Connecticut Valley businessmen and landowners approached Allen with a plan to seize Ticonderoga. Allen was only too willing, and in early May he took his Green Mountain Boys and a small number of irregular troops gathered by his Connecticut backers to Hand's Cove, two miles below Ticonderoga. Arnold, meanwhile, had nominated himself to capture the fort and persuaded the Massachusetts committee of safety to sponsor him. That he had no troops did not prevent him from going to Hand's Cove on May 10, where he found Allen and about two hundred followers. Arnold claimed command of this force, a claim Allen refused to honor. The two men squabbled, but their argument did not deter them from moving as many men as they could aboard the few boats available for a dawn attack.

What followed was comedy -- and victory. The garrison was literally surprised in their beds; the high point of the farce occurred when Allen demanded of Lieutenant Jocelyn Feltham, standing sleepily in his bedroom with his breeches in hand, "Come out of there, you damned old rat" -- some accounts say "skunk" and others "bastard" -- and upon being asked by what authority he was acting answered "In the name of the Great Jehovah and the Continental Congress" -- presumably equal powers in the theology of deism.
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Crown Point fell two days later; its garrison numbered less than a dozen. No one was seriously hurt in these actions. Over the next few days Arnold took St. Johns, a post on the Richelieu River, and then abandoned it. But Allen thought this post should be held and therefore occupied it, only to be driven off by a party of redcoats from down the river. By the end of May, Connecticut had decided to retain Forts Ticonderoga and Crown Point, but with neither Arnold nor Allen in charge. New York, in whose territory Ticonderoga lay, looked on uneasily. Within the year the importance of Ticonderoga was recognized to be its heavy artillery, not its site or its fortifications.

The capture of Ticonderoga occurred on May 10, the day that the second Continental Congress met in Philadelphia. Its members arrived in circumstances reminiscent of the glory which cheered the departure of the first Congress. They were accompanied by military escorts along the roads to Philadelphia, and again were praised and petted by everyone -- or at least everyone seemed to admire them.
John Adams pretended

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to complain of "the unnecessary Parade that was made about us," but be loved every minute of it, even when his mare bolted and his sulky was dashed to pieces on rocks in the roadway.
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Most members of the first Congress returned though there were several notable new faces -- Benjamin Franklin and James Wilson from Pennsylvania, John Hancock from Massachusetts, and in late June, Thomas Jefferson arrived to replace Peyton Randolph, who returned home. The greatest change took place in the delegation from New York, which now added five members, among them George Clinton, Robert R. Livingston, and Philip Schuyler. Only Georgia remained unrepresented, though St. John's Parish sent Lyman Hall.

These men convened when enthusiasm for war raged through the colonies. Voluntary militia companies formed in every colony, arms were collected, and in New England, at least, men shed their blood. The delegates could not remain unaffected and had no wish to; many indeed held commissions in their colonies' militia. As if to remind the Congress of the nature of the problems the colonies faced, George Washington wore his uniform to its meetings. Washington, of course, also reminded the Congress of his own experience in war, and they soon were calling upon him for advice about military affairs. John Adams, combative spirit that he was, was not in the least martial but yearned to join the army: "Oh that I was a Soldier! -- I will be. -- I am reading military Books. -Every Body must and will, and shall be a soldier."
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If everybody did not become a soldier, or desire to, everybody in the Congress agreed that soldiers were needed and that force must be used nowtbat fighting had occurred along the road to Concord. Agreement did not exist, however, on the purpose of the war, whether there should be reconciliation or independence. Perhaps the most prominent delegate hoping for reconciliation was John Dickinson, renowned for his
Letters from a Farmer in Pennsylvania
. Like many others, Dickinson favored reconciliation if it could be obtained along with security of constitutional rights. He does not seem to have regarded this prospect with optimism; rather, his mood was gloomy. Firm ground upon which to reconcile did not seem to exist; the British, after all, had begun the war with "the butchery of unarmed Americans." And, he asked, "what topics of reconciliation are now left for men who think as I do, to address our countrymen?
To recommend reverence for the monarch,

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or affection for the mother country? . . . No. While we revere and love our mother country, her sword is opening our veins."
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The bitterness in this statement was deeply felt, but it was no stronger than Dickinson's revulsion from independence. The revulsion undoubtedly had hidden and surely nonrational sources, most notably a lingering affection for traditional ties. But it rose also from fear -- fear for a new nation isolated and vulnerable. With France and Spain lurking off-stage, eager to enter to smash Britain and, apparently, to seize her possessions, the independent colonies would play in a precarious world.

These possibilities were not discussed openly in the Congress, as the group that favored a complete break from Britain did not admit that independence was their objective. But they did not disguise their skepticism about the likelihood of reconciliation. The Adamses and the Lees, the Lee-Adams Junto, spoke for this group but quietly and with care. For the old suspicion of Massachusetts still lingered, and this new alliance saw that the Congress could not move faster than its slower members if unity was to be obtained. John Adams likened the Congress to "a Coach and six -- the swiftest Horses must be slackened and the slowest quickened, that all may keep an even pace."
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Congress rarely attained an even pace during the war, and in the first six months it moved by rushes, pell mell through an accumulating pile of business, or by fits and starts. As soon as it convened, it received depositions and letters from Massachusetts telling of the events at Lexington and Concord. These accounts were read and then Congress ordered them published. Next it received a letter from Joseph Warren, president of the Massachusetts Provincial Congress, beseeching "direction and assistance" and recommending the creation of a "powerful Army" under the aegis of the Continental Congress. This request raised the painful questions most members preferred to duck -- especially whether the colonies were going to organize themselves so as to be able to fight as a union. Congress was obviously unprepared to answer this question and referred Warren's letter to the committee of the whole, a resting place which it believed could be made safe, secure, and inactive.
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Events soon forced Congress's hand. First, it had to reply to New York's question about an appropriate response to British troops daily expected to arrive in the colony. On May 15, Congress urged that New York remain on the "defensive" so long as the troops behaved "peaceably

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and quietly." But if the troops erected fortifications, invaded property, or cut the city's communications to the outside, then New York should "repel force by force."
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Two days later word arrived that Ethan Allen and Benedict Arnold had seized Ticonderoga, an act that no one could call defensive. Congress felt uneasy not just because the capture of Ticonderoga might outrage the British, but also because it brought into the open once more the conflicting claims of New York and New Hampshire to the New Hampshire Grants. Equally embarrassing was the inescapable fact that Connecticut troops and Green Mountain Boys had taken a fort within the borders of New York without bothering to tell New York officials about it.

Congress ignored as many of these conflicts as it decently could and recommended that the cannon and the military stores taken at Ticonderoga be removed to the south end of Lake George, where they should be inventoried "in order that they may be safely returned when the restoration of the former harmony between Great' Britain and these colonies so ardently wished for by the latter shall render it prudent and consistent with the overruling law of self-preservation."
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The clumsiness of the Congressional style cannot be explained strictly in terms of the rigidity that eventually overcomes all official bodies. In this case it reflects the prudence born of internal divisions recognized by all concerned. Arnold and Allen, who cared nothing for the problems Congress had within itself, protested against any withdrawal. Congress then changed its mind and a few days later sent a letter to "the oppressed Inhabitants of Canada" calculated to persuade them to join the struggle for a "common liberty." Since the French and Indian War, the Congress wrote, the Americans had regarded the Canadians as "fellow-subjects," but since the passage of the Quebec Act which made the Canadians "slaves," the Americans considered them "fellow-sufferers." And to demonstrate its good faith the Congress on June 1 forbade the invasion of Canada by any colonial forces. Not quite a month later, on June 27, it would reverse itself and authorize General Philip Schuyler, recently appointed head of the northern department, to invade and hold Canada.
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This reversal of policy was not accompanied by a declaration of independence; the Congress, of course, would not bring itself to such a step for another year. Yet while it shrank from committing itself clearly to either independence or reconciliation, it was beginning to act as if

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