Hvli lirtBi !.:;plt^|^;4Jii-ir!-Jf-;i5!'ri;LlS Class l^y^f,, Book I ^ \^{ GopyrightN^ COPYRIGHT DEPOSITS CENTENNIAL ADDRESS By Joseph Cook Ticonderoga, 1 764- 1 864 An ?J|t0tomal KiivtBB 3n0fpl| Olook ««^ BriinmH at tljr JFtrat (ttrntfnmal AnninnraarH of til* g'pttUmfnt of mtoniitvoQa 3hIH 25, 1864 «^ TiCONDEROGA HISTORICAL SOCIETY Ticonderoga, N. Y. -r-^ r- Copyright 1909 by TiCONDEROGA HISTORICAL SoCIETY A II rights reserved PBESS OF Bbandow Pbinting Company Albant, N. Y. — -—r 1 TABLE OF CONTENTS PAGE Publisher's Note 9 Prefatory Note by Mrs. Joseph Cook il Introduction by Charles William Burrows 15 Centennial Address by Joseph Cook 19 Sub-Titles Looking Backward and Forward 21 Chief Events in Military History of Ticonderoga 26 Champlain's Discovery of the Lake 31 Causes of the French and Indian War 36 Battle of Lake George 44 Building of Fort Ticonderoga 51 Massacre at Fort William Henry 54 Battle of Ticonderoga 59 Montcalm's Preparations for the Attack 63 Abercrombie's Approach 66 Eve of the Battle 75 Day of Battle, July 8, 1758 78 Retreat of Abercrombie's Army 85 Capture of Fort by Amherst, 1759 87 Partition of Ticonderoga Lands 8g Grants of Land issued by George the Third 98 Subsequent Attacks on Fort Ticonderoga 102 Ticonderoga's Part in Battle of Plattsburgh, 1814 105 Ticonderoga in the Civil War 106 ILLUSTRATIONS Lieut.-General Louis Joseph Marquis de Montcalm- GozoN de Saint-Veran Frontispiece '^ Made from copy of the original portrait in the possession of the present Marquis of Montcalm. By courtesy of Mr. Charles William Burrows of the Burrows Brothers Company, of Cleveland, Ohio, Publishers of "Avery's History of the United States, and Its People." Joseph Cook, at nineteen years of age. . . .Opposite page 19 '^ From a daguerreotype made in 1857, when a student at Phillips Academy, Andover, Massachusetts. By courtesy of Mrs. Joseph Cook. Father Isaac Jogues Opposite page 33 / From imaginative portrait by McNab. By courtesy of Mr. Charles William Burrows. Narrows of Lake George Opposite page 44 ^ From "Lake George Poems" by Joseph Cook. Major Robert Rogers, the Ranger Opposite page 53 '^ From portrait loaned by Mr. David Williams, owner of Rogers Rock, and of Joseph Cook's Memorial Acre, on Movmt Defiance, the location of Burgoyne's fortifications on that mountain in 1777 in his investment of Fort Ticonderoga, which compelled the evacua- tion of the Fort. Mr. Cook planned to have located on this moun- tain top a memorial to the military heroes of Ticonderoga. Major Israel Putnam Opposite page 58 / From a pencil copy by Miss Hall of Colonel John Trumbtill's original pencil sketch from life made in 1780, in possession of Putnam Phalanx, Hartford, Connecticut. We give below part of a letter from Benjamin Silliman, Architect, who was a grandson of the Prof. Silliman mentioned therein, written to the Putnam Phalanx: "The pencil portrait of Israel Putnam, purchased by the Putnam Phalanx, at the Trumbull sale in Philadelphia, Dec. 17th., 1896, wasjpart of a collection of Prof. B. Silliman, Jr., of Yale College, who was the executor of the estate of Colonel John Trumbull, the artist who made this sketch from life some time between 1780 and 1785. It was made for the purpose of incorporating the like- ness of Putnam in Trumbull's painting of the Battle of Bunker Hill. "This sketch was never out of the possession of the Silliman family but descended from father to son vintil sold as above." 8 Illustrations Rogers Slide, near which point the detachment of French troops were stationed, which later killed Lord Howe, near Trout Brook Opposite page 6i From "Lake George Poems" by Joseph Cook. George Augustus, Lord Howe Opposite page 68 From a platinum print, in the possession of the Ticonderoga His- torical Society, of an oil painting made by Jennie Brownscomb. Chevalier de Levis Opposite page 80 From private photograph of painting owned by Count L^vis Mirepoix. By courtesy of Mr. Charles William Burrows. General Jeffrey Amherst Opposite page 87 From Collection of Mr. Charles William Burrows. Ruins of Fort Ticonderoga Opposite page 90 From an engraving made from an oil painting by T. Cole, pub- lished February 15, 1831, loaned by Mr. S. H. P. Pell, owner of Fort Ticonderoga. Statue of Ethan Allen demanding the surrender of Fort Ticonderoga of Colonel de La Place "In the Name of the Great Jehovah and the Continental Congress." Opposite page 96 From plate loaned by Mr. Walter D. Gregory, President of Travel Magazine, New York City. General Arthur St, Clair, Commander American Troops, Fort Ticonderoga, at the time of Burgoyne's invest- ment Opposite page 102 From portrait loaned by Mr. Charles William Burrows. General John Burgoyne Opposite page 103 From original portrait, painted by Thomas Hudson in 1759, by courtesy of Mr. Charles William Burrows. The Ruins of Fort Ticonderoga Opposite page 108 September second, nineteen hundred and eight. One of the last photographs made of the old Fortress prior to the beginning of the work of restoration. From original photograph in possession of the Ticonderoga His- torical Society. PUBLISHER'S NOTE IN presenting to the public this Historical Address from a hitherto unpublished manuscript of Joseph Cook, we wish to make acknowledgment of the many courtesies extended our Society in con- nection with this matter, and of our sincere apprecia- tion of them. Our indebtedness to Mrs. Joseph Cook for her gracious permission to publish this gem and her kind- ness in editing the same is especially acknowledged, and our appreciation of the aid of Mrs. Sara E. Kinney, for fourteen years regent Connecticut D. A. R. and now Regent Emeritus for life, in securing from the Putnam Phalanx of Hartford, the favor of per- mitting the publication of Colonel John Trumbull's pencil sketch of Major Israel Putnam. .We would also extend our thanks to Mr. Charles William Burrows for numerous courtesies received at his hands and especially express our sense of deep obligation for his generous aid in helping us to illus- trative material and in writing the introduction to this book. Our thanks are due to Mr. Victor Hugo Paltsits, State Historian, for helpful suggestions and for his review from early proof sheets of this address. lo Publisher's Note We are also indebted to Mr. Horace A. Moses of Mitteneague, for his aid which made possible the character of the paper used herein. We would express our sincere appreciation of the kindness shown our society in the matter of this publication by Mr. David Williams, of Rogers Rock; Mr. Stephen H. P. Pell, of Fort Ticonderoga, Mr. Walter D. Gregory of New York, for portraits loaned, and to the many other friends of our society whose interest, encouragement and aid have been most helpful. The editing of the original draft of this address has been a matter of no small labor and any errors that may have crept into the text of this book may be attributed to the very illegible condition of the manuscript, written so many years ago. Ticonderoga Historical Society^ By William A. E. Cummings, M. D., President. June Fourteenth, Nineteen Hundred and Nine. PREFATORY NOTE WHEN Joseph Cook was nineteen years of age he conceived the idea of a series of Home Sketches of each town in Essex county, N. Y., and this proposition was printed in the North- ern Standard, September 3, 1857. He suggested that some competent person in each of the eighteen towns of the county should " carefully, intelligently, and ably answer " the four questions concerning the particular town under consideration. " i. What is it? 2. What it does? 3. What it enjoys? 4. What it needs?" This Joseph Cook himself proposed to do with his own historic town of Ticonderoga and the little brochure of 136 pages was printed by W. Lansing & Son, Keeseville, N. Y., 1858. The young student, keenly interested and enthusi- astic in the great historic events of the town of his birth, spent a vacation in the summer of 1857 collect- ing data under the four divisions previously mentioned. He searched libraries for historic facts. He ante- dated the newspaper reporter of the present day and became an interviewer of the original settlers. He " canvassed the town with pencil and portfolio, ques- tioned and cross-questioned individuals competent as witnesses, desired every man to speak as though on the stand under oath, took testimonies from parties 12 Prefatory Note interested and uninterested concerning the same facts, recorded personal observations, obtained access to pri- vate papers, letters, notes, deeds, ledgers and other records ; and spared no time or pains to secure for every statement sufficient proof for its confirmation even by the rules of legal evidence." This pamphlet, now out of print and a treasured possession only in the oldest families of the town, is considered an authoritative presentation of the Ticon- deroga of 1858 and has been largely quoted from in more recent publications. Some twenty pages have been incorporated in the pamphlet entitled " Historical Ticonderoga." So much has been said of the local history of 1858 to account for the Centennial Oration of 1864. July 25, 1864, was the hundredth anniversary of the issuing of the first grant of lands in Ticonderoga resulting in permanent settlement. The deed was given by King George III to Lieutenant John Stough- ton, a British officer in the French and Indian War, who settled at Ticonderoga and whose remains lie buried near the east side of the Rapids at the outlet of Lake George. The Centennial celebration took place at the old French lines on the fort grounds and a detailed ac- count of the occasion was published in the Essex County Republican, Keeseville, N. Y., August 11, 1864. The Ticonderoga Sentinel came into existence some years later. Prefatory Note 13 The chief literary exercises were an historical poem by Clayton H. DeLano and the Centennial address by Joseph Cook. It is the full text of this address, found in the author's manuscript, used on that occa- sion, which is now published by the Historical Society of Ticonderoga on this Tercentenary anniversary. When it was prepared, six years after the publica- tion of " Home Sketches," Joseph Cook had intended to publish an enlarged edition of his earlier work which would be enriched by his more elaborate re- searches along historical lines. It must be remem- bered that Parkman's histories had not appeared at that date and the detailed account of the battle between Abercrombie and Montcalm was the result of Mr. Cook's own painstaking investigations. Strenuous life as a student at Yale and Harvard and the German universities, foreign travel and public work gave Mr. Cook no leisure in which to bring out a second edition of the early town history and there- fore, for the first time since these words were uttered in July, 1864 — forty-five years ago — we are permitted to see them in print. The youthful orator and the majority of the eager, alert, enthusiastic audience, gathered to celebrate Ticonderoga's first Centennial on the historic Fort grounds, having joined the great company of those who were the actors in the scenes here described. Georgiana Hemingway Cook. INTRODUCTION "Bells of the Past, whose long-forgotten music Still fills the wide expanse, Tingeing the sober twilight of the Present With color of romance! I hear your call, and see the sun descending On rock and wave and sand." — Francis Bret Harte. CONSTRUCTING the vesture of a thought is a process of importance but uttering thoughts so grand and true that they wear their word- vestments with an air of dignity and comfort is vastly more important The establishment of a civil entity on the shores of Lake Champlain, at Ticonderoga, occurred on July 25, 1764, when a retired British officer was awarded a claim there. This political, as distinguished from military, foundation changed the old, picturesque name of Carillon (Chime of Bells) back to the still earUer Indian title of Ticonderoga. The speaker at the cere- monies attendant upon the one hundredth anniversary of this foundation was a gifted native of the region, Joseph Cook. In those earlier days, when Ticonder- oga was Carillon and beautiful Lake George was Lac Saint Sacrement, a title rendered appropriate by the devoted Jesuit Father Jogues, who passed that way to his martyrdom, the coureur de hois, the fur trader from the lower Saint Lawrence watched with the som- 1 6 Introduction ber Jesuit the struggle for mastery between the French, under their leaders, fresh from the palace of Louis on the one hand, and the rugged riflemen of New England, and the brilliant red-coat soldiers of Old England on the other, for control of this gateway from North to South. And when the Lilies of France were prostrated in the mire by the successes of Wolfe and his associates, even then the strategic im- portance conferred by nature upon this avenue was not lost. It was fortunate for history, therefore, that such a speaker was selected for the occasion referred to as Joseph Cook. Mr. Cook's orations were always of a noble type. So flexible were the movements of his mind amid the grandly accumulated words that made the vestments of his thought-forms that there was a chance of failure to apprehend at first hearing the wonderful breadth and depth of the knowledge that underlay the words in which he clothed his sentences. But a just appre- ciation was never long delayed. So artistically and yet so naturally did he pile phrase upon phrase that the climax, the completed whole of his argument, was sure to reveal itself in symmetry. The moral lessons to be drawn from history were also indicated with not less certainty and definiteness than was evident in his literary picturing. In speaking of another address of his, that on Ultimate America, delivered twenty years later at one of Henry C. Bowen's famous celebrations at Wood- Introduction 17 stock, Connecticut, on the Fourth of July, 1884, a writer says : '' The facile expressions which others have achieved at the expense of greatest pains he seems to have had under natural compulsion." Mr. Cook both knew his subject intimately and in addition was a speaker possessed of inimitable charm. First, he was deeply saturated with the matter of his discourse, then, so fully master of the manner of marshalling his troops of words that an audience was held completely under command by his eloquence and swayed like the leaves on the trees of the noble forests formerly con- stituting the scenic background to the historical picture of Ticonderoga. When I remember all this I feel that it behooves me to ask, " Who am I, a mere publishing hewer ot stone in the quarries of historical granite that consti- tutes the literary mountains of this region, that I should be honored with a request to write this intro- duction ? " I ask you to listen to the inspiring " chimes-of-the bells " which he rang so musically amidst the very ruins which still reverberate with memories of the melody of his voice. May this three hundredth anni- versary of the discovery by Champlain at the North and by Hendrik Hudson at the South of this natural gateway of both warfare and commerce be so su- premely fortunate as to have among the speakers at its various functions at least one orator who can cause the bells of old ''Carillon'' to ring out with as bold i8 Introduction and as free an intonation as that which Joseph Cook made them assume! May our patriotism be set to as high a pitch as was his and may the willing note of reverence for the past and high hope and aspira- tion for a noble future be as deeply inspired once more as they were by his pregnant words. Charles William Burrows, Cleveland. CENTENNIAL ADDRESS By Joseph Cook IF, from the trenches beneath our feet, the forms that fell upon this spot in battle could be startled once more to life, the numbers of this audience would be doubled. Let none of us, therefore, imagine that the visible score of hundreds present to-day are the only persons here. I know not but that, from the eternal spaces above our heads, they who passed from earth in the agony of battle look down upon this scene and recall with us the memory of one hundred years ago. They were earnest men. It becomes us to listen with earnestness to their deeds. Two hundred years Ticonderoga was the theatre of war; for one hundred years it has been gathering to itself the arts of peace. The ceremonies, my friends, with which you greet this day symbolize that long, ripe history. Iroquois, Huron, and Adirondack in the sixteenth century; Abercrombie and Montcalm in 1758; Ethan Allen and La Place in 1775; Burgoyne and St. Clair in 1777; figures that move conspicuous in the former period: John Stoughton, that worthy British Lieutenant, to whom one hundred years ago to-day, was issued the first grant of lands in Ticonderoga ever made to any English Colonist and resulting in permanent settle- 20 Centennial Address ment of the locality; and Samuel Deall, the zealous and liberal minded merchant of New York, his asso- ciate, and the pioneer of improvements here which his life was not prolonged to see, who begin the latter period. The original forest, indeed is not here ; endless virgin boughs upon granite hills, the freshness of the infi- nite woods. On the shore yonder Champlain does not stand with leveled arquebus, beginning, in the first skirmish with the frightened Iroquois, the French career here, by an act of injustice prophetic of its end. No once familiar Canadian boatman's song reaches us from this adja- cent outlet of Lake George; nor sound of French mattocks, of soldiers' jests, from the first rude earth works of Carillon. These bright lakes, flashing virgin once on the un- broken emerald of the northern solitudes, are vexed now by many keels. But in your procession, so far as historical panto- mime can present him, the Iroquois walks again. The flags of France and England are crossed once more, but now in peace, upon the very field to which they once led carnage. The French and English soldier and the American provincial ranger, move here again, erect as if from their graves beneath these hallowed sods, they had been startled to life by the old martial reveille. The pioneer with axe and hound treads his old paths. The riding dress of our grandmothers and TiCONDEROGA 21 the rude conveyance of the pioneer days, contrast with their modern counterparts, and almost bring back the social moods and sunlight of one hundred years ago. In your Industrial Car the productions of past and present industry lock hands, whispering to each other strange reminiscences, and imitations, prophetic and devout of progress breathed through them and through the world. Honored age and happy youth gather side by side. A broad throng of middle-aged, of neighbors and friends and of welcome guests poured out from villages and hillsides, from farms and headlands, re- call by the very mosaic of our actual life, the past of which the present is but the effect, and so greet in the opening of the new century the whole course and the present fruitage of the old. And yet, my friends, in all this generous burden of reminiscences, in all this natural and lawful outgush of festive feeling, we do not find the deepest thought of the hour, a thought that must not lie unuttered. It is a day of welcome. It is a day of devout exultation and jubilee. Let that feeling have full course; let it sway us as a wave of the unseen spiritual sea, meeting us here and lifting us to both gladness and strength. LOOKING BACKWARD AND FORWARD But, to-day, with the whole history of the last hun- dred years gathered here visibly, as it were, in the air and moving, echoing and resounding through these 22 Centennial Address mountain passes; the sights and sounds of a century returned to memory and imagination all at once, — Champlain's boat coasting warily among the water lilies in 1609; Iroquois crouching in ambush with poisoned arrow drawn ; Adirondack or Huron girdled with scalps from the traditional battle ground of Cheonderoga ; Montcalm, writing brilliant despatches ; Howe falling, virtuous, young and brave, upon the forest leaves on the ridge beyond the outlet of Trout Brook; Abercrombie at the Saw Mills ordering his men forward at the distant French Lines ; Allen in the grey morning twilight with drawn sword at La Place's door; Burgoyne's Cross of St. George among the pines of Mount Defiance astonishing the American garrison; St. Clair moving in the July midnight, in retreat over the bridge across Champlain, his store house burning on Mount Independence ; barges unload- ing at the commencement of the old camping place between the lakes ; cattle lowing, landed in forest soli- tudes unaccustomed to the sound ; pioneers with rifle and axe seeking sites for dwellings ; trees falling before the stroke of brown arms, the sunlight let in upon the earth ; hunters signalling to their hounds on the deer ways ; fallows smoking with the clearing day, or bur- dened with their first crops ; log cabins in small garden patches in summer or in winter banked with snow and topped with curling smoke; flaxen heads at rude schools ; the lumberman at his rattling log-chains before dawn ; hamlets gathering streets about mill sites TiCONDEROGA 23 engulfed in lumber ; forest openings edging across the valleys and up the mountain sides; sprucer schools, first cottages, gathering villages, young manufactories, present spires ; and with the whole history of the next hundred years standing to the eye of inference and prophecy in shadowy forms beyond, farms blushing with the bloom of a richer culture ; mines deepened but not exhausted; factories in stories and in streets; schools rich in cabinets and libraries and endowments ; social circles more cultivated ; spires above larger con- gregations of a more fervent and redemptive spiritual life; society saturated in all its pores with the added experience of one hundred years with all these Pres- ences crowding upon our memory, there is one over- awing and irrepressible thought deserving more atten- tion than them all. One hundred years ago we were not, or were not here; one hundred years hence we shall not be here, yet we shall be. As not the oldest person here saw the town one hun- dred years ago, so, not the youngest here, in all human probability, will see it one hundred years hence. It is the serene and solemn thought of centennials that they who see one shall not see another. This whole audi- ence that, in the last century, has come up from cradles, in another will have melted into the unseen. Not, I know well, as we now look upon the town, shall we look upon it one hundred years hence from the other world. Then the chief end of its existence 24 Centennial Address will appear to us to be not trade, not manufactures, not social intercourse, not even art or civil fame. Its history will then have significance for us only as it ministers to ends infinitely more elevated and compre- hensive. Then in the great view, there will appear to be a Plan which the Infinite has had on the history of the town from the beginning; not a rock of its hills will be seen to have been laid at random; not a slope of its water courses will seem to have been created without a purpose ; not a breath of air will have swept it by chance ; but every portion of its history will be tributary to one purpose and that the only adequate one, the one transcendent. We shall see in the town a place for the trial of souls ; one small thread in that infinite network of motives and events which separates the wheat from the chaflf ; a place of conflict, of storms, of thought beating upon immortal germs ; one small vase set in the wind of the universe for immaturities to bud in, and in that view, however small its portion of immensity in proportion to the whole, to be es- teemed, precious and sacred. Not doubting, my friends, that we have consciously or unconsciously, formed part of an Infinite Plan, I have suggested this as the point of view from which we must study the course of events, we are now to notice before we can apprehend any part of the true vitality of the history of our town. It will be true that we must so study the history before we understand it, whether we contemplate the town as it was in its TiCONDEROGA 25 first period, when famed to the ends of the civiHzed earth as the foam on the crest made by the meeting of the two great historic waves of the last century. France and England, Catholicism and Protestantism, Absolutism and Liberty ; or, in the second period, spreading out its farms, deepening its mines, beginning to spin its wheels and to erect its spires. For historical research has dignity and worth, let us be assured, only as it seeks reverently to interpret the Divine Plan and speech in the world, and knows not as a figure of speech, but as a matter of fact that there is no history which is insignificant because none that is profane. It is difficult, standing here on this justly celebrated promontory at whose feet our two lakes meet, not to cast a glance at the outset, at the configuration of the surface of the country which in drawing hither the confluence of two water courses drew also the tide of events. That portion of the continent which lies east of the Hudson and Lake Champlain, lacks of being an island only by the small portage between the upper navigable waters of the Hudson and Lake George. Fire, seas, vapor, attraction, in the geological ages, so wrought that a pathway of water should here be given to man through a wilderness that was to sepa- rate two nations. The geological history cannot be studied with too inquisitive or reverent a spirit. First, were the hills ; the mountains thrown up, and in their metallic veins the forethought of future forge-fires; the soil ground by the glaciers for the plow; bowls 26 Centennial Address scooped for lakes, beds for rivers ; a pure air, the sun. Here was not one random event. It is something which even the half thoughtless cannot pass over, the work beyond comment and antedating all history done here for us and for those who come after us by Him from whose fingers we came. To look upon His work is enough ; we may meditate upon this matter in devout silence. But in the Work was the Plan, of which the end is not yet. CHIEF EVENTS IN MILITARY HISTORY OF TICONDEROGA I purpose to notice first the Military History and secondly the Civil History of Ticonderoga, giving the more of detail in the bolder portions of each. Let me say, in advance, that in the account of the former, I wish to call especial attention to The Aboriginal Possession; The Battle of Champlain with the Iroquois in 1609 ; The Causes of the French and Indian War; The Importance of Ticonderoga in the struggle be- tween the French and English Governments and Ideas for supremacy on this Continent; The Building of Fort Ticonderoga in 1756; The Defeat of Abercrombie by Montcalm in 1758; The Capture of Ticonderoga by Amherst in 1759; The Capture by Ethan Allen in 1775; The Capture by Burgoyne in 1777. In the Civil History I wish to obtain your consider- ation of TiCONDEROGA 2J The obstacles to early settlement; The Conflict between the English and French Grants ; The narrow escape of the town from becoming a French lordship; The proof that the town was substantially settled as early as 1764; The nature of the first improvements made ; The character of the early settlers as the germ of that developed in the town, and then briefly : The progress, since 1800, of Agriculture, Manufac- tures, Trade, Education, Religion and finally, The History of the town in the War of the Rebellion. No History of Ticonderoga can be complete without a preliminary notice of the Iroquois Indians who played so conspicuous a part in that great contest, the French and Indian war, of which Ticonderoga was the most conspicuous theatre. The town was originally a part of the Iroquois do- minion. The confederacy, it is well known, con- sisted of five nations, the Mohawks, the Oneidas, On- ondagas, the Cayugas, and the Senecas, with a few subordinate tribes. The Mohawks had their chief villages on the Mohawk river, the Oneidas on Oneida lake, and the others on the lakes in north- ern New York which yet bear their names. At the time of the French and English conflict, this confed- eracy, according to the authority of Sir William John- son, could number about 2,000 warriors. The Gov- 28 Centennial Address ernment was democratic. It had a war chief and a civil chief, the custom of deHberative representative assembHes which met around the celebrated Oneida Stone, yet to be seen in Stockbridge, N. Y. For years before the American Revolution, the ora- tors of the Iroquois had held up their Union to the imitation of the Colonists. The date of this confederation is uncertain, the best authority fix it at about 1550. One documentary au- thority is the testimony of a Dutch missionary at Fort Hunter who wrote in 1746, that according to the best information he could obtain among the Mohawks, the alliance took place, " one age or a man's life, before the white people came into this country." This was in 1609. The im.mediate dominion of the Iroquois seems to have been bounded eastward by the Green Mountains, north by the St. Lawrence and Ontario, west by Niagara river and Lake Erie, and south, by the lands lying along the sources of the Delaware and Susquehanna. Upper Canada was their hunting ground by right of conquest. Their indirect jurisdic- tion seems to have extended over all the vast region south of the great lakes, between the Ohio and Missis- sippi. But their military activity carried their con- quests far and wide. Smith met their warriors in Vir- ginia. The New England Indians and Colonists were not unacquainted with the terror of their name. The Delawares had been subdued by them. They were met by La Salle on the Mississippi. Traversing the TiCONDEROGA 29 whole length of the vast Appalachian Chain their bands had descended on the tribes of Florida. Pass- ing Lakes George and Champlain in canoes, or in the winter on snow shoes, they raised their war cry at Montreal, and once defeated the Hurons below the walls of Quebec under the eyes of the French. They included in the Union as many as twelve or fourteen nations, but the original five tribes continued to give the general designation to the confederacy. The Tuscaroras, a nation that had emigrated south and then been driven back, united with the confeder- acy, which was afterwards called the Six Nations, as well as the Five Nations. No Nation was more re- nowned for its orators. The tribes seemed to have emigrated from the west. There are vague tales of supernatural origin but the substantial part of their tradition places their earliest recollected history in the Mississippi or the Rocky Mountains. Overcoming a more cultivated race in the Mississippi Valley, they came eastward and began, only after long internecine struggles, to see the necessity of Union. One of their severe wars was with the Adirondacks, a tribe of Indians whose name yet rests on the moun- tains of our county and town. Ticonderoga was the battle-field of the Indians as well as the whites. There is positive evidence that the Aboriginal pioneers of the soil had few dwellings between Lakes George and Champlain. It was the place where the two great waves of Indian warfare met, struggled, sank, and left 30 Centennial Address their ruins. Upon these rugged mountain peaks, through arching forests, rocky paths and dark ravines, was spread the terror of civil butchery, of wily hate and of bloody revenge. In Vermont, on the west of the Green Mountains, the Iroquois are known to have had villages and corn fields, but not along the eastern shore of Essex county. They named Lake Champlain significantly Caniaderi-Garunte (the Lake that is gate to the Country). "These parts, though agreeable," writes Samuel Champlain, in his Journal of 1609, as he glided along the eastern shore of our county, " are not inhabited by any Indians on account of their wars." One story of the Adirondacks belongs to Ticonder- oga as the chief theatre of the old Northern conquest of the Iroquois. The Adirondacks had been subdued. Piskaret, their chief, with four associates, resolved to wipe out the disgrace of defeat. Passing through Champlain and up the Sorel they suddenly fell in with five boat loads of the enemy. The Adirondacks im- mediately set up their death song as though escape were impossible and resistance useless. As the Iro- quois came nearer, " a sudden discharge from the Adirondack muskets, which were loaded with small chain shot," burst rents through the frail sides of the Iroquois canoes so that they promptly filled with water. The Iroquois were then easily tomahawked as they floundered in the waves, except as many as could be safely secured, which were taken home to be tor- TiCONDEROGA 3I tured at leisure. Piskaret's four companions were satisfied with the glory of this exploit and preferred to enjoy their well-earned reputation to risking it, at his entreaty, in a new enterprise. Piskaret proceeded, therefore, alone to a principal village of the Iroquois, and using every stratagem known to the Indian for concealment, succeeded in entering, on two successive nights, two cabins and scalping the inmates. The third night the Iroquois set a guard at every door. Piskaret, stealthily approach- ing one of the sentinels, killed him by a blow on the head, and fled, pursued hotly by a party of the Iro- quois. The whole day passed in the chase. Piskaret was swifter than any Indian of his tribe and kept just enough in advance to incite the zeal of his pursuers. At night the Iroquois stopped to rest, and fatigued, fell asleep, seeing which, Piskaret silently stole upon and silently tomahawked every man of them, carrying home their scalps in horrid triumph. champlain's discovery of the lake It was to a party of Hurons and Algonquins, In- dians of Canada, who were proceeding against the Iroquois, that Samuel de Champlain joined himself in that bold and characteristic expedition in which he, first of white men, saw the lake which now bears his name. He was a French officer, of scientific and liter- ary acquirements, of a bold and persevering spirit, afterward Governor of Canada and founder of Quebec. 32 Centennial Address It was in July, 1609, that his expedition in Lake Champlain was undertaken. In 1607 Jamestown had been founded. The Mayflower had not yet landed in New England. In September, 1609, Henry Hudson, in the Half Moon, sailed up the river that now bears his name, the two parts of the great inland pathway of water being discovered thus in the same year. Champlain had but one white companion. The memorable incident of his voyage was a battle with the Iroquois when the Indians first heard the shot of firearms. The echoes of the arquebus were heard far and long. They gave the Iroquois from the first a suspicion of the white man. They did much to seal their oppo- sition to the French. Perhaps they decided where the Indian makeweight should be placed in the French and Indian war, strengthened the English, drove the French power out of Canada, and established Protes- tantism in America. The place where the battle was fought, without much doubt, was on the soil of Ticon- deroga where Carillon was afterward built. The promontory or Cape is there; there is a Cape at Crown Point which might answer the description, but the latitude of Ticonderoga is the same with that given in Champlain's narrative ; the designation of the place on Champlain's map seems to fix the locality near Ticonderoga; moreover Champlain describes a " water-fall " which he " afterward saw," apparently when in the pursuit of the Iroquois, and which must TiCONDEROGA 33 have been the fall of the outlet of Lake George. Writ- ers generally agree in placing the scene of this first conquest on the bold promontory for which the French afterwards so unsuccessfully contended. Champlain's battle with the Iroquois in 1609 makes this region older to history than Plymouth Rock. The opening quarter of the 17th century is crowded with dates of extraor- dinary importance to the English-speaking world. Queen Elizabeth died in 1603 ; John Milton was born in 1608; Champlain's battle with the Iroquois was fought in 1609, and in the same year Hudson discov- ered the river which bears his name; the authorized version of the English translation of the Bible, com- monly known as the King James version, first appeared in 161 1, • Shakespeare died in 1616; the Pilgrim Fathers landed in 1620; Charles I came to his throne in 1625. This region was known to history seven years before Shakespeare died and eleven years before the May- flower sailed. A silence continues in the history until 1646. Then another white man passes through the gateway. It is Father Jogues, the first Jesuit missionary among the Iroquois. He arrived at Lake Andiatarocte, as Lake George was then called, on the evening of the festival of the Holy Sacrament or Corpus Christi, and hence gave the lake its French name, St. Sacrement. The silence goes on through the latter half of this century in the history. Europe was swarming with 34 Centennial Address great events but there is no clear record of what was transpiring here. There is one bright spot. It is probably certain that had there been white men to observe, in 1689 there would have been seen, tramping over the old Mohawk road in Trout Brook valley, landing from canoes at the portage of the falls, and passing on down Champlain a band of twelve hundred Iroquois warriors in their battle paint. The occasion of their passage illustrates some of the motives that afterwards had great influence in shaping events that occurred at Ticonderoga. The French and the Iro- quois had long been mercilessly at war. The com- batants being worn out, a treaty of peace at last was about to be signed. Adario, or the Rat, an Indian chief belonging to the tribe of Hurons, the enemies of the Iroquois, resolved to prevent by strategy the declaration of peace. Adario was scandalized that the French should enter into a treaty with the Iroquois without consulting the Hurons who had been the allies of the French in the war. Gathering a party he laid in ambush for the ambassadors of the Iroquois at a spot just above the Cascades about thirty miles above Montreal, where he knew they would be obliged to land. Several of the ambassadors were killed and the rest taken prisoners. Decanisora, the celebrated orator of the Iroquois was among the latter. Astonished beyond expression the survivors ex- plained that they were on a mission of peace. Adario on hearing this, at once put on an appearance of sur- TiCONDEROGA 35 prise and indignation; says he waylaid them by the express order of the French Governor of Canada, who assured him that they were a band come to plunder the Canadian villages. He instantly liberates the whole number that survived, except one whom he detained in place of one of his warriors that had fallen, and tells the other to go home, and rouse their confed- eracy to avenge the treachery that they had experi- enced. Taking the hostage to Michillimackinac, he tells such a story to the French Commandant, that the Iroquois is put to death by torture, in presence of another Iroquois, an aged man. This witness Adario next liberates telling him to go and tell his confederacy that the warrior, Piskaret had adopted, had been wrenched from him by the French Commandant, and, notwithstanding Piskaret's utmost efforts, cruelly put to death. This half satanic piece of denunciation worked its designed effect. The Iroquois, instead of appearing to sign the treaty of peace, passed through Lakes George and Champlain, landed with twelve hundred warriors on the Island of Montreal, killed one thousand of its inhabitants, devastated the whole island and finally embarked in their canoes, having lost the aston- ishingly small number of only thirty of their warriors. The name of Black Kattle, the principal chief, was thereafter a terror to the French colonists. Thus closes the century with the wilderness yet un- broken on the Lakes. Greater events were preparing. 36 Centennial Address causes of the french and indian war As History is but series of logical connections, it is necessary to give a slight sketch of the causes and outlines of the French and Indian war, to understand that portion of it connected with Champlain valley, and especially with Lake George and Ticonderoga, which two latter spots were its chief field. In the eighteenth century Romanism and Protestant- ism, Absolutism and Liberty, the Reformation and the Middle Ages, were in conflict in Europe. Frederick of Prussia stood in the center of the continent and hurled the four million of his subjects against the allied Catholic sovereigns. He preferred, as was be- lieved, destruction to the desertion of the cause of free government and of Protestantism. It was an age when men's minds were alive with the new thought that the Reformation of Luther had thrown into the world. The power of the papal chain at Rome over Kings had not been shaken by the great political and religious events that were about to occur. England was the ally of Prussia. America was a new field. It was a part of the plan of Providence that these progressive and conservative forces should struggle for this new continent as well as for the old. It is certain that motives connected with the love of empire and the love of wealth prompted the efforts of both the French and English in the contest. The fur trade was remunerative TiCONDEROGA 37 and a few statesmen saw tHe future political importance of the western empire. But it is also certain that religious motives added intensity, weight, and dignity to the struggle for the continent. Catholicism and Protestantism contended for the predominant influence over the savages and over the young settlements of America. The question was whether the vast wilds of the new world should grow up under Romanism and the ideas of Absolutism in government with which it was allied, or under Protestantism and the ideas of Liberty which it had naturally espoused. The activity, daring and devotion of the Jesuit Missionary is one of the most noble pages of the history of the continent and illustrates the religious spirit of the colonial era. The French government gave them every facility for influence. They came in great numbers in proportion to the settlers. When Quebec had but twenty settlers, there arrived four priests to take care of the Indians seven years before the first white child was born. They had high privileges given them in fur compa- nies. No important enterprise was undertaken without their council. They pushed far on into the frontiers. A Missionary led to the discovery of the Mississippi, a Missionary discovered Lake George. Following the wounded in battle, they administered the sacrament to the dying at the cost of their own lives. Meanwhile in New England, Protestant ideas were directing affairs. The Puritans held before their gaze the solemn vision of a Theocracy which had begun to 38 Centennial Address organize at home and wished it to extend over the new continent. The people of Protestant England were deeply interested in the religious aspect of events. The King made avowals of his fidelity to the Protestant cause in the popular portion of his speeches to Parlia- ment. Keeping in view this background of political and religious motives a better apprehension will be gained of the particular grounds upon which France and England legally based their respective claims to territory, the conflict of which threatened so much in the future. The right of possession went with the fact of discovery. John and Sebastian Cabot, Venetian navigators in the employment of the English King, had discovered the continent. Columbus had seen but one of the West Indian Islands in 1492. In 1497 the Cabots had discovered Labrador and explored the coast southward as far as Albemarle Sound. They took possession in the name of the English King. In 1584, Queen Elizabeth gave a patent to Sir .Walter Raleigh of vast regions in Virginia and South Carolina. In 1606, a charter, the first colonial one ever given, granted to certain parties all the soil from Cape Fear to Halifax. The other Colonial parties granted to New England, New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and Maryland, gave jurisdiction indefinitely to the west, some of them as far as the " South Sea," as the undis- covered Pacific was then called. On these discoveries the EngHsh claim was based. Now the two great rivers of North America had been discovered by TiCONDEROGA 39 Frenchmen. In 1535, Jacques Cartier, having in the previous year discovered the gulf of St. Lawrence, in a second voyage entered the river itself, discovered the Island of Orleans, passed up to Hochelaga and changed its name to Montreal. In 1609 Champlain had discov- ered the Lake that now bears his name. In 1673 Mar- quette, a French Missionary, had walked from Green Bay, followed the Fox River, across the Wisconsin, gone down it; discovered the Mississippi and floated down its channel beyond the mouth of the Arkansas. In 1689 La Salle, the French Governor of Frontenac, aroused by the report of Joliet, Marquette's compan- ion, sailed down the Mississippi till he reached its mouth. Upon these discoveries France based her claim. Thus were the parties situated with regard to original jurisdiction. France had the better claim. But each nation repelled the advances of the other. France, in further support of her position, rested upon an article in the Treaty of Ryswick. That agreement had been signed in 1697. By it all lands on any river in America the mouth of which was held by either nation, was guaranteed to that nation as high as the first sources of the stream. Under this clause France made her vast claim to all the lands traversed by waters flowing into the Great Lakes, the St. Lawrence and the Mississippi. England impetuously asserted that such a sense of this article was never intended. So William Keith, Governor of Virginia, in his report to the Commissioners of Trade and Plantations, says, in 40 Centennial Address 17 1 8, that such interpretation was inconsistent with grants from the Crown and with the very existence of the Colonies. But France had the right of discovery and the words of the Treaty, and was rapidly pushing actual occupation of the country on her side. Her plan was bold and magnificent as her statesmen were ambitious and far-seeing. Her purpose was distinctly confessed. It was no less than to shut the English up on the Atlantic slope of the Alleghanies. She pro- jected a grand cordon of Fortresses to extend from the mouth of the St. Lawrence, along that river, Lake Ontario, the Ohio and the Mississippi, to Louisiana. She built forts at Frontenac, now Kingston, Niagara, Erie, Venango, DuOuesne, at the Junction of the Monongahela and Alleghany, Detroit, Kaskaskia, Mouth of the Wabash, Black Islands on the Ohio, and four between the last point and New Orleans. This was the wall to shut in the English and shelter the French traders in furs. Besides these she had seve- ral forts in the far Northwest and on the northern borders of New England and Acadia. Violating the obligations of a professed peace, a French Armament in 1 73 1, seized upon the promontory opposite Crown Point and soon after upon the peninsula itself, and erected there Fort St. Frederick, now Fort Crown Point. Several of these forts, particularly the one at Crown Point, were within the lands of the Iroquois. But by the Treaty of Utrecht of 1713, France had recognized TiCONDEROGA 4 1 the paramount sovereignty of Great Britain over these tribes. The words of the Fifteenth Article of this Treaty speak expressly of the Five Nations, as Quinqiic Nationes Sine Cantones Indorum Maquae Brittaniae Imperio Suhjectas. Their dependence upon England the Iroquois had repeatedly acknowledged, once in a Treaty of 1683; again at Albany in 1701 ; and again in 1726. Great Britain had guaranteed to the Iroquois the protection of all their rights of soil. By the Treaty of Utrecht the lands of the Iroquois were to remain, " Inviolate by any occupation or en- croachment of France." The cloud was thus gather- ing and the first bolt falls on the Ohio. A tract of six hundred thousand acres on this river had been granted to some gentlemen of England and Virginia associated under the name of the Ohio Com- pany. Its object was to push the trade in furs with the Indians and to effect settlement. The French, con- sidering the posts of this Company as infringing upon their exclusive rights, attacked the traders and carried some of them prisoners to Canada. Governor Din- widdle of Virginia resolves to demand in the name of the King that the French desist from operations that were deemed violation of existing treaties. One of the most interesting passages of American history is the account of the journey of the young man then only twenty-two years of age, who was appointed to traverse the wilderness of the Alleghanies, obtain information of the French Posts and deliver this message. That 42 Centennial Address young man's name was George Washington. St. Pierre, the Commandant of the Fort, with French suavity referred the matter to his superiors, saying that he had acted only according to orders. Washing- ton returns, having been absent three weeks and, ap- pointed Colonel, is sent in 1754 to drive out the French from Fort DuQuesne. This was built at the junction of the Alleghany and Monongahela rivers, on a spot at which Washington himself had recommended that a fort should be built. Washington has a skirmish with dejumonville, who falls ; he is then partially sur- prised at Fort Necessity, by the French from Fort DuQuesne, resists gallantly, is overpowered, surren- ders with the honors of war, and goes home from his first campaign. Britain now proposes to the Colonies the plan of Union for the purpose of resisting the French. A Convention in 1754 meets at Albany to conciliate the Iroquois and mature this plan of confederation. Frank- lin draws the paper, including the ideas of a President General and a General Congress, but the King thought the latter had too much power and the Colonists that the former had too much, and so the plan, that however contained the seed of the American Union, was not adopted in full. Franklin presents this plan July 4th, just twenty-two years before he signs the Declaration of American Independence. General Braddock is now sent over to take command of the Armies. He calls a Convention of Colonial TiCONDEROGA 43 Governors to meet in Virginia and the plan of the Campaign of 1755 is now laid out. Four expeditions are decided upon, one against Nova Scotia, another against Fort DuQuesne, a third against Niagara, and a fourth against Crown Point. The first succeeded. It brought under the English sway the whole island of Cape Breton. The second against Fort DuQuesne failed in the defeat of General Braddock (surprised while ascending a slope gashed on each side by ravines near Fort DuQuesne), was cut to pieces by a double flanked fire, and not understanding Indian warfare and too haughty to receive instructions from Colonial offi- cers, would have lost his entire army but for the bravery of Colonel Washington. The third against Niagara failed. Governor Shirley of Massachusetts, who commanded it, did not arrive at Oswego, from which the attack was to be made, until August 21, and delayed until the season prevented the attack. The one against Crown Point brings us near our own soil, and needs to be treated a little more in detail, now that its connection with the rest of the campaign can be seen. It was commanded by Generals Johnson and Lyman. At the place where the village of Fort Edward now stands, but where Colonel Lydius was then the only settler, they built a Fort calling it Fort Lyman, a name a few years after changed to Fort Edward, in honor of Edward, Duke of York. Leaving a small portion of his men here and nearly all his pro- visions, General Johnson pushes on to the head of Lake 44 Centennial Address George, cutting a road nearly where the present road runs, and builds almost on the spot where the hotel of the name now stands, Fort William Henry. '' No house has ever been built here," writes General Johnson, and not an acre of ground had been cleared at the date when he began the Fort. BATTLE OF LAKE GEORGE It is impossible to leave out a notice of the battle of Lake George in 1755 and of the massacre at Fort William Henry in 1757, from the history of Ticon- deroga, because the fate of the French arms in the former battle caused the building of Fort Carillon, the French expedition under whose eye the massacre took place started from this town and the tragedy itself was prominent among the causes that brought Abercrom- bie's armies to Ticonderoga in the following year. Dieskau, the French Commander at Crown Point, who had been, against his preference, diverted from an attack on Oswego by the French Governor's fear of seeing the English at Montreal, received news of the English advance to the head of Lake George and of the building of Fort Edward. He resolved to attack the latter Fort. His plan was to capture General Johnson's provisions, cut off his communication with Albany and then defeat his detachment at Lake George. He hoped also to surprise Albany and Schenectady, take possession of the Mohawk River and so cut off the English communication with Oswego. Dieskau TiCONDEROGA 45 was a French officer who had served with distinction under Alarshall Saxe. As this plan of his attack on Fort Edward has been often criticized it is necessary to notice his position. It is said that he took too few men with him. His own reply to this is that he intended to make but a raid of a few days, and that his provisions were scanty. He had food enough to subsist a small de- tachment but not enough to subsist his whole army on a march as far as Fort Edward. Besides in passing where bridges have to be made of a single log at times, a small army could be moved with greater celerity. His motto, too, was '' Boldness wins ! " Although he had three thousand men at Crown Point he took but fifteen hundred of them, six hundred Indians, six hun- dred Canadians, and three hundred Regulars. The savages, who were conquerors of the French in Canada, had shown some unwillingness to fight against the Iroquois of New York. Passing from Crown Point up Champlain, a part of the remaining fifteen hundred is left as a rear guard on the promontory afterwards occupied by Fort Ticon- deroga. This is the first French military occupation of this ground known in history. Fifteen miles further up Champlain he leaves another detachment at the Two Rocks, now called the Narrows. Rowing up South Bay, he leaves the canoes and bateaux in charge of a small guard and with the remainder of his army plunges across the forest toward Fort Edward. 46 Centennial Address Almost within a few hours' march of it, about the middle of the afternoon, a courier, seen galloping on horseback from the direction of Fort William Henry, is stopped by the Indians and a letter is found on his person from Johnson warning the Commandant at Fort Edward that a French detachment was about to attack his Fort to be on his guard and protect the provisions. At this point the Indians refused to go further. It is commonly stated that they feared the cannon of Fort Edward. This reason is given in Johnson's report. But in Dieskau's account, the Indians are said to have refused to go further because they would not fight against a Fort which was on soil not belonging to the French. They would fight against Fort William Henry, not against Fort Ed- ward. The reason of this distinction may have been in the French claim to all lands traversed by waters flowing into Lake Champlain, which they discovered, Fort William Henry on Lake George, standing on such grounds but Fort Edward on the Hudson not being so situated. Dieskau resolves to proceed without the Indians, as they refuse to even take part by setting up their war- whoop, even if the French did all the fighting. The savages, as soon as they saw the General's determina- tion, advance to the forest and take the lead as if to show their zeal. Dieskau follows them, and at night- fall finds himself led considerably out of the way and unable to attack the Fort as soon as he expected. This TiCONDEROGA 47 was the beginning of the Indian treachery. A council is held and a resolution taken, as Fort Edward was reported to be more nearly finished than it had been before stated to be, to attack the camp at Lake George. Dieskau has been criticized for taking this course. His reply is that the Indians agreed to fight with him there, but would not fight against Fort Edward. On the march toward Lake George, the French scouts come in and announce a body of English troops, appar- ently starting or on the march for Fort Edward. This was the bloody morning scout, sent out by Johnson under command of Colonel Ephraim Williams. Dies- kau forms his men so as to take the English in a cid de sac. The Indians are placed in ambush on one side of the road, the Canadians on the other, while the Regulars close the road at the further end of the gauntlet. The Indians and Canadians had orders to lie close on the ground and not to stir until the French column had fired. Into this trap the English were advancing. " Unfortunately for me," writes Dieskau, in his representation in a dialogue published in France describing the afifair, " some Indians more curious than others rose up and, perceiving the Indians had a party of Mohawks with them, notified the rest of this cir- cumstance, whereupon all the Iroquois rose and fired in the air as a warning that there was an ambuscade. Seeing that my net was discovered I ordered the French and Canadians to attack the enemies; the Indians did likewise, except the Iroquois, who did 48 Centennial Address not budge. The English were doubled up like a pack of cards and fled pell-mell to their entrenchment, which then was only a short league or thereabouts, off." Williams' detachment had contained about one thou- sand men. King Hendrick, the famous Indian Chief- tain, corpulent in person and aged, was mounted on a horse, and fell almost at the first fire, himself alone a host. Colonel Williams, who had substantially founded Williams College on his way to join Johnson at Albany, while standing on a rock to reconnoitre the field and ordering his men to go further up the hill to the right, was shot dead near the spot where his monument now stands. Perceiving that they were nearly surrounded, the English, admirably led by Lieut. Col. yV^hitcomb of New Haven, retreat to their entrenchments. Dieskau pursued closely, hoping to rush into the camp with the retreating provincials. But, as soon as the English cannon, of which there were a few in Johnson's camp, open, the Indians halt and the Canadians intimidated, take to the trees. Dies- kau, with his regulars, halts a moment hoping probably that the Canadians and Indians would rally and rush on the flank while the regulars engaged the center. But, not being properly supported, the Regulars ad- vance to storm the English breastworks, " which," Dieskau says in the dialogue quoted above, " was nothing but a sort of barricade of very trifling height." The cannon of the English decide the fortunes of the day. Nearly the whole afternoon the French Regulars TiCONDEROGA 49 brave the storm, most of them perched before the entrenchment. Dieskau himself, wounded in the legs, falls behind a tree. He orders his vest and overcoat to be brought to him, and apparently resolves to be taken prisoner rather than try the chances of a retreat with his wounds. Montreuil, the second in command, strives to induce him to be carried from the field but in vain. He is ordered to conduct the retreat, which he does with skill. " Shortly afterward," writes Dieskau in the French dialogue already quoted, " came two Canadians from him, one of whom was killed outright and fell on my legs, to my great embarrassment, and, as the other could not remove me by himself, I told him to bring me some men, but, soon after I heard the retreat beaten without seeing anything, being seated on ground somewhat low, with my back leaning against a tree; having remained in that situation about half an hour, I saw one of the enemy's soldiers within ten or twelve paces of me, taking aim at me behind a tree. I made signs at him with my hands not to fire, but he did not fail to do so ; the shot traversed both my hips ; leaping on me at the same time, he said (in very good French), * Surrender ! ' I said to him ' You rascal, why did you fire at me? you see a man lying on the ground bathed in his blood and you fire, eh ? ' He answered, ' How did I know but you had a pistol? I prefer to kill the devil than that the devil kill me.' ' You are a French- 50 Centennial Address man, then ? ' I asked. * Yes,' he replied. ' It is more than ten years since I left Canada,' whereupon divers others fell upon me and stripped me. I told them to carry me to their General, which they did. On learn- ing who I was he had me laid on his bed and sent for surgeons to dress my wounds, and though wounded himself he refused all attendance until mine were dressed." The Indians were mourning the loss of Hendrick and terribly clamorous for the life of Dieskau for revenge. Johnson kept him closely guarded in his tent. " I ob- served," says Dieskau in the dialogue, ** that, as he was wounded himself I was afraid I incommoded him, and requested him to have me removed elsewhere. ' I dare not,' he answered, ' for were I to do so the Indians would massacre you. They must have time to sleep.' Toward eleven o'clock at night I was removed under an escort of a captain and fifty men, to the tent of a Colonel where I passed the night. The guard had orders not to suffer any Indian to approach me. Nevertheless, one of them came next morning near the tent and the sentinel, seeing that he was not armed, allowed him to enter, but the moment he was in, he drew a naked sword from under a sort of cloak he wore, and approached to stab me, whereupon the Colonel, in whose tent I was, threw himself between us, disarmed the Indian and put him out." Dieskau remained nine days at the English camp and every attention was heaped upon him by Johnson. TiCONDEROGA 5 I He was finally sent to Albany, then to New York, and at last went to England, where in spite of his wounds healing very slowly, he recovered. He does not seem to have been afterwards engaged in the French army. Montreuil conducted the broken French army, half- starved and greatly disheartened, back to the promon- tory of Ticonderoga where they formed a camp. This was July 10, 1755. The defeat was on the 8th. Had General Johnson advanced he probably might have taken Ticonderoga and Crown Point, but he feared to have his connection with Albany cut off, and he wasted the summer in building Fort William Henry on the scene of his exploit. This Fort was of wood and earthworks, as was also Fort Edward, wood pens filled in with earth. The defeat of the French in the battle of Lake George and the evident danger that the Eng- lish, in proceeding against Fort St. Frederick, would seize first upon Carillon, were the reasons that led to the fortification of the latter Fort. Hitherto a wilder- ness, this promontory, in the fall of 1755, becomes alive with the work of axe, hammer, spade and saw. A storehouse was put up at the landing and a saw mill on the north side of the Lower Falls, at the same time with the Fort on the hill. BUILDING OF FORT TICONDEROGA During the season of 1756 upwards of 2,000 French were constantly engaged upon the Fort. The name Carillon (Chime of Bells) was applied to the promon- 52 Centennial Address tory, perhaps to the whole locality of the outlet, before the Fort was built. The Fort must not be thought of as built, in its present form, by the French alone. It was at first but a stockade, its walls formed of beams of timber in pens with traverses and the space filled in with earth. Amherst repaired the Fort and made additions of masonry on a scale of great magnificence in 1759. The Americans in the Revolution made im- portant additions, especially to the walls on Mount Independence. But the earliest notice of the Fort that I have found is the following extract from a letter of Governor Vaudreuil of Canada to M. de Machault. It is dated Sept. 25, 1755. " Had Monsieur M. de Dieskau returned victorious the army would have marched with a right good will " against Choueguen (the name by which Oswego was called at the time. I must, therefore, my lord, turn my attention to the security of the Colony and postpone the Choueguen expedition. I have been obliged at the same time to anticipate the enemy's progress in the direction of the Fort St. Frederick and Niagara. " I have despatched M. de Lotbiniere, the engineer, to Fort St. Frederick and, agreeably to my orders he has been to the outlet, of Lake St. Sacrement. He has reported to me that the situation of Carillon, is one of the best adapted for the construction of works capable of checking the enemy; that the suitable place for a fortification is a rock which crowns all the environs whence guns could command both the river which TiCONDEROGA 53 runs from Lake St. Sacrement and that leading to the Grand Marais (Lake Champlain above Ticonderoga) and Wood Creek. I see no work more pressing and more useful than this fortification, because it will enable me to maintain a garrison to stop the enemy in their march from Lake St. Sacrement, the imme- diate outlet of which is not more than a league and a quarter from that Fort ; and I will be able to harass and fire on them pretty often, within pistol range for more than three-quarters of a league in a river, both on this and on the other side of the Carrying Place." The foremost scouts of Sir William Johnson, were Majors Rogers and Putnam. They roamed about the two French Forts, burning bateaux, destroying cattle, and taking now and then a scalp. Captain Putnam, once taken prisoner, was tied to an oak, yet pointed out in Crown Point, and, according to tradition, the fires were kindled around him by the Indians, when he was rescued by a French officer. The band of Major Rogers was composed chiefly of old hunters, of un- erring aim and accustomed to the Indian style of war- fare. Tradition has preserved the outlines of the event of a battle in which his force was cut to pieces and he barely escaped with his life. Emboldened by the tardi- ness and inefficiency of the English provincial and home government, Montcalm, leaving a proper force at Carillon, returns in person to Montreal, descends upon Oswego and takes it in 1756. This event threw great joy over New France, as this port had been the 54 Centennial Address rendezvous of the English power in northwestern New York. MASSACRE AT FORT WILLIAM HENRY One morning in the winter of 1757 the garrison of Fort William Henry was disturbed by a light appearing on the ice far down Lake George. Montcalm had not been idle. The disturbance was from a party of French and Indians who had passed through Lakes Champlain and George on snow shoes, and sleeping behind sails, they fell upon Fort William Henry, and though they did not take it, they burned its outbuildings and in- flicted so much damage that the English campaign for a year was retarded. But the summer of 1757 was to witness at once the summit of French power and of Indian cruelty on the continent ; Montcalm, instead ot waiting for Johnson to attack Ticonderoga resolved to attack Fort William Henry. An army was gathered at the Fort. Cannon and stones with immense labor were carted to the landing place on Lake George. The Indian Chiefs were somewhat uncertain material and consultations were held with them again and again. A part of the Army started by land to cover the land- ing of bateaux from the water. De Levis commanded this division. It marched through Trout Brook valley, " Back of Bald Mountain," cutting a road by the way of Bolton through to Caldwell. The main portion of the army encamped on the Lake in bateaux. The Indians left a complete set of clothes suspended at the TiCONDEROGA 55 carrying place as an offering to the Manitou to pro- pitiate success. The chief part of them went by land on the east side of the Lake for a few miles and were then taken on board the bateaux. Montcalm landed his cannon in Artillery cove just out of reach of the guns of Fort William Henry on the west side of the Lake. Colonel Monroe was Commandant, General Webb was at Fort Edward but refused reinforcements on the ground that he dared not weaken his fort so to leave Albany exposed. His conduct previously had been craven. Montcalm opened his trench. The bat- teries are covered nearer and nearer. The Indians are in glee at the execution done by the cannon and at being permitted occasionally to aim a piece themselves. A portion of the French army is stationed on the road to Fort Edward, and another back of the English and French Camp, which was on the west of the Fort. One or two alarms announcing that English reinforce- ments are at hand prove groundless, but a letter from Webb is intercepted declining to send any, and advis- ing Monroe to surrender. Montcalm sends an officer of his staff to Monroe with this letter. Monroe replies that he means to make stout resistance. On the day of the cannonade the Fort runs up the white flag. Montcalm grants honorable terms of capitulation in view of the vigorous defense. The English are to march out and with one cannon, they are to be es- corted to Fort Edward on the next morning by a French guard. Montcalm distinctly tells the English 56 Centennial Address official with whom the business of the capitulation was done that he cannot give his word of honor that it will be observed until he has seen his Indian Chiefs. These are called in, and, in presence of the English official, hear the terms of the surrender and promise to observe them and to keep their young men from plunder. Bougainville, one of Montcalm's aides, then has orders which he executes, to spill the liquor casks in the French camps. But the Indians begin in the very evening of the surrender to plunder the case- mates of the Fort, to demand the clothes of the sick and to murder the wounded. The chief part of the English are in the intrenched camp on the hill where Fort George afterwards stood. The scenes that occur on the following morning are a tragedy over which one almost wishes to draw the veil. " We have just learned, my lord," writes Bougainville, Montcalm's aide-de-camp, in a postscript giving an account of the victory and dated " Montreal, 19th August, 1757," " the news of the outrages committed by the Indians on the morning of the tenth. The English, who entertain an inconceivable fear of them, being impatient to get at a distance from them, wished to march before our escort was collected and in order. Some of the soldiers in spite of all the warnings that had been giY.en on that point, had given them some rum to drink and who in the world could restrain two thousand Indians of thirty-two different Nations when they have drunk liquor? The disorder commenced by the Abenakis of TiCONDEROGA cy Panaouaniske in Acadia who pretended to have experi- enced some ill treatment at the hands of the English. Their example operated on others; they flung them- selves on the garrison, which instead of showing fight were panic stricken. This emboldened the Indians who pillaged them, killed some twenty soldiers and carried off five or six hundred. All the officers ran thither on the report of this disorder, made the greatest efforts to put a stop to it, so that some grenadiers of our escort were wounded by the Indians. The English themselves state publicly that the Marquis de Montcalm, Messrs. de Levis, de Bourlamaque and many others, ran the risk of their lives in order to save theirs, for in such cases the Indians have no respect for persons. At length the latter were quieted and M. de Mont- calm released immediately about four hundred of those that had been taken, whom he caused to be clothed and sent back to Fort Edward under an escort, after the Indians had departed. Those whom the Indians had brought to Montreal have been ransomed out of their hands by M. de Vaudreuil, at a great cost and at the King's expense, and they will be immediately for- warded to Halifax by a vessel sent as an express. The M. de Montcalm has written two letters; one to Gen- eral Webb, the other to Lord Loudon to notify them that this disorder, which was involuntary on the part of the French, ought not to afford the English a pre- text of disregarding the capitulation and that he would 58 Centennial Address expect from their honor that they would observe it in all its points." In three things Montcalm cannot be excused, i, The number of the French guard was evidently insuffi- cient to keep down such an attack of the Indians as Montcalm says he himself expected ; 2, Montcalm was at an unsafe distance himself from the scene of danger ; 3, He evidently allowed at Oswego, in the preceding year, pillage and cruelty by the Indians. By his own account he seems to have made very little effort to prevent the disorder at Oswego. In five things some palliation of his crime may be found. I, He distinctly told the English official that he could not be responsible for the keeping of the capitulation unless his Indians consented to keep it; 2, He caused the liquor in his army to be spilled ; 3, He perilled his own life and those of his officers, by English account, to stop the massacre ; 4, The English gave rum to the Indians, against express orders, and manifested a craven spirit when attacked ; 5, Mont- calm rescued about four hundred of the captives on the spot and treated them with every attention and the French Government bought others at an exorbitant ransom at Montreal and sent them back to Halifax. Montcalm undoubtedly is convicted of a degree of carelessness and perhaps of indifference to the fate of his prisoners which stain his reputation. Major Put- nam was sent from Fort Edward to see what was the condition of affairs after the French had gone back to -ife. J**' .^ TiCONDEROGA 59 Ticonderoga. Many fled into the woods. For days the guns at Fort Edward were fired to give the right direction to the fugitives. Here, too, the Plan was advancing, not less in cloud than in sunshine. BATTLE OF TICONDEROGA I have now arrived at a point when I must ask the undivided attention of you all. I am about to describe that desperate battle, the most important and san- guinary that ever occurred in northern New York which took place upon the very ground upon which you are now seated. I am anxious that if this day should leave nothing else upon the mind of this audience, the details of this battle should be clearly impressed there and its memory held sacred, since it hallows every step that can be taken through the busiest part of our town all the way from these lines of agony to the waters of Lake George. I intend in no case, to draw on my imagination for facts. On the Frontier of Canada which, by the French claim, ran along the St. Lawrence, Champlain and the Ohio to the Mississippi, no Fort was of greater importance, at the time, than Ticonderoga. None, too, needed more vigilance for its defense. Bourlamaque, who had commanded at Carillon since the loth of June had received " information certain that the Eng- lish were concentrating an army of twenty-five thou- sand men between Fort Lydius " — that is Fort Edward — " and Fort George : that they had made an immense 6o Centennial Address collection of arms and ammunition ; that they had con- siderable train of artillery and whatever is necessary for a vast enterprise." But the Marquis de Vaudreuil, who, if Montcalm's complaints are to be taken as well grounded, was rather an inefficient and even unintelligent Governor of Can- ada, had been prevented during the whole spring and early summer, by the want of provisions from sending succor to Bourlamaque at Ticonderoga. The winter of 1757 and 1758 was one of unusual scarcity of pro- visions. Butter was worth thirty-five sous per pound. Beef, which had been all the winter fifteen sous, sold in June for twenty-five. Pork, which in 1756 was worth seven sous, was thirty sous per pound. It was not, therefore, until, " from the 20th to the 30th of June " that the French troops proceeded from Mon- treal to Ticonderoga. Even then, rather to Montcalm's dissatisfaction, Vaudreuil thought best to divide his forces, and retained at Montreal Chevalier de Levis with a considerable body of troops who were to be sent on certain negotiations among the Five Nations and then on a secret expedition against Schenectady, then called Corlac. Montcalm himself arrived at Ti- conderoga on Tuesday, June 30th. Sieur Volfst, a French officer, had been recently sent with a detach- ment to carry dispatches to the English General at the head of Lake George. The time for him to return had more than arrived. His detention confirmed the ac- counts of the prisoners of the presence near the head TiCONDEROGA 6l of Lake George, of a large body of English troops. Montcalm immediately set about making preparations for the approaching conflict. To form a clear idea of the topography of the battle of Ticonderoga nothing is required of the historical student, unacquainted with locality, but to imagine, laid out before him on the ground a gigantic printed capital Y. The body of the Y, below the forking, is Lake Champlain running a little west of north. The left branch of the Y is the part of Champlain between Ticonderoga and South Bay near which Whitehall now stands. A shallow reedbound, muddy river for all the upper part of its course, and having, about two-thirds of the way to South Bay, a narrow point called the Two Rocks where an engineer had proposed to the French authori- ties, to erect an outpost of Carillon. The right branch of the Y is Lake George, lying thirty-three miles long in a bowl of grand mountains, — the highest of which on the Champlain side is twenty-two hundred feet in elevation, — and contracted, four miles before it reaches Champlain, into an outlet which falls, principally in two places one mile and a half apart, two hundred and twenty feet before reaching the sister Lake. Two miles above the lower end of the Lake is Bald Moun- tain, now called Rogers Rock, one side of which is a sloping face of granite, about four hundred feet high. The portage between the Lakes began at the Lower Falls, about one mile and a half from the Fort, and ran on the east side of the stream, to a point above 62 Centennial Address the Upper Falls, called the Head of the Portage, or simply the Portage. On the north bank near the Lower Falls is a rocky height called afterwards Mount Hope. At the north end of the Lower Falls is the French Saw Mill, under the heights of Mount Hope, then some times called the *' Mill Heights." Just above this Mill is a bridge across the outlet. Between the branches of the Y at the extreme inner apex of the angle formed by them, is Mount Defiance, seven hun- dred feet high and commanding Fort Ticonderoga. Immediately opposite, within a thousand paces of the extreme point of the inner apex of the angle formed by the right branch and body of the Y, that is by the outlet of Lake George and Lake Champlain, stands the Fort. In front of the Fort, at a distance of thirteen hundred paces, and crossing all the higher part of the triangle, or of the promontory on which the Fort stands, are the French Lines. Before these occurred the Battle of Ticonderoga. The battle is now near at hand. It is necessary to notice dates and topography with exactness and it is fortunate that the Reports of Abercrombie and Montcalm, and the French printed account of the battle, when all taken together and com- pared, are clear upon three points. My account de- pends upon these reports throughout and upon other documents of equal trustworthiness. The whole terri- tory of the town of Ticonderoga, except a clearing near the Fort, a place for the Mill on the north side of the Lower Falls, and the roads for the Portage, is TiCONDEROGA 63 covered with its primeval woods. The pines are yet unhewn on the mountains, the oaks in the valleys. Except for roads, and military posts, the whole Champlain valley in its lower part, has not heard the sound of an axe. Montcalm's preparations for the attack Montcalm arrived at Fort Ticonderoga, as has been stated, Tuesday, June 30. On Wednesday morning, July i, at daybreak he despatches M. Bourlamaque with the regiments of La Reine, Guienne and Beam, to occupy the head of the outlet. There seems to have been a camp on both sides of the stream, the principal one, however, on the east. Mont- calm himself, with the regiments of La Sarre, R. Rousillon, Languedoc and the second battalion of Beam, proceeds to the Lower Falls and encamps on both sides of it, his right wing resting on the heights of Mount Hope. The third Battalion of Berry was left to guard and serve the Fort. At the same time orders were given to Sieurs Pontleroy and Desandrouin, engineers, to reconnoitre the site of an entrenched camp which should cover the Fort. The troops carried their bag- gage and established their quarters at the new camps. "At 7 o'clock in the evening," writes an eyewitness in his journal, ** a detachment of 30 men was embarked on board two barges to cruise on the Lake." 64 Centennial Address Thursday morning (July 2) at five o'clock two mus- ket shots were heard at the camp probably on the east of the head of the outlet. The regiment rushes to arms. Word, however, is sent in by the Captain of the guard that M. de Masdac, his Lieutenant had been attacked by a single Indian and that this was the sole cause of the disturbance. M. de Masdac had lost his hunting knife, and, while sent out with a picket of six men, being in search of this knife, he discovered an Indian's feather. Suspicious of the sign he promptly retired behind a tree, a movement which saved him from a shot fired at him that instant by an Indian scout " who was ready to pounce upon him tomahawk in hand." M. de Masdac returned the fire. The Indian escaped by falling on the ground and fled. M. de Masdac, having meanwhile called out " Help, volunteers " and thus gave the Indian some hint that there was a camp, or, at least, some aid at hand. M. de Bourlamaque in person went to reconnoitre the mountains on the left flank of the Camp. Ammunition is carted from the Fort to the Portage and two compa- nies of volunteers formed. Friday little occurs. The scouting barge returns but had discovered nothing. In the night the troops went to the Fort for provisions. " Timber and planks were collected for a bake house ; " Bourlamaque encamps twenty Indians in advance; a drunken Abenaki kills a comrade and flies. Saturday the waiting for the enemy continues. A scouting party is sent out that returns without having seen any trace TiCONDEROGA 65 of the enemy. The record of Adjutant Malaetie says : '' Worked at an entrenchment at the head of the bridge which is over the Httle rapids. The M. de Montcahn came to visit the camp and went back in an hour after. M. de Raymond joined us with a detachment and was posted on the border of the rapids. At seven o'clock in the evening M. de Langy embarked with one hun- dred and seventy-eight volunteers to reconnoitre the enemy's movements." Sabbath is spent in waiting while preparations go on. The artillery furniture is transported ; baking is begun in the three ovens. At two o'clock in the afternon a white flag is seen hoisted on the mountain on the left of the Beam Camp, which is the signal agreed upon to denote that the guards, stationed on the look-out, discover some barges, or bateaux, on the Lake. One hour afterwards a party of M. de Langy's detachment returns to report " that, having started in the morning from the Bay of Ganaouske, he had been seen from Fort George, whence sixty barges were sent in pursuit, which followed pretty closely for a while and then fell of¥ and that Messrs. de Langy and La Roche had remained with their canoe three leagues from the Beam Camp, to watch them." Captain Trepezec, of the Beam regi- ments, " with three pickets of fifty-one men each, some volunteers and some militia, the whole numbering three hundred," are sent in consequence of this report, imme- diately by M. Bourlamaque, to a position near the Bald Mountain, as Rogers Rock was then called, " to 66 Centennial Address observe the enemy's movements and oppose their land- ing." Another company is sent out at five o'clock to take a post between the western mountains and the Lake in order to support Trepezec's advance guard and " prevent the enemy establishing themselves there." Montcalm orders the troops of all the camps at the head of the outlet and at the Lower Falls to run to arms and to bivouac through the night. Dupeat's vol- unteers are sent to take up a position at Berney River (as Trout Brook was then called), " a stream," writes Montcalm, " which descends between the mountains wherewith this country is covered. The enemy might take us by the rear of these mountains," that is through Trout Brook valley, " and it was essential to be noti- fied thereof." All the troops are on the alert with orders to be ready at the first call. Thus France watches while England approaches over the Lake. abercrombie's approach Leaving Montcalm thus on guard at Ticonderoga, it is necessary now to turn to the English camp at the head of Lake George and to go back to Saturday even- ing. All the day of Saturday, July 4th, Abercrombie occupies, in finishing his preparation for embarking with his army. Sabbath morning, July 5th, the em- barkation takes place. The virgin waters of the Lake have never borne such a fleet; the unmolested forests of the mountains have never looked upon such an TiCONDEROGA (fj army. There are 367 regulars, officers, light Infantry, and rangers included, and 9,024 provincials, including officers and bateaux men. These are embarked in about 900 bateaux, and 135 whale boats. Huge trees had been felled and formed into rafts, and on these the horses and artillery were placed. The embarkation of the first brigade took place at daybreak ; of the last, at seven o'clock. There are some indications in the documents written by eye witnesses of the scene, that the morning was a beautiful one. The echoing of the bugles, the steady flash of the oars, the social jests of the men, among the beautiful islands, the crystal depths of the Lake, the grandeur of the mountains, the dewy green of the summer foliage, the bluecoats of the pro- vincials, the red of the regulars, the gleaming of bay- onets, the tossing of plumes, the nearly exact order of one thousand boats being rowed by fifteen thousand men, and the importance of the enterprise, made the scene one the most imposing of military spectacles. Outnumbering the enemy at least two to one and spurred on by the memory of the tragedy at Fort William Henry and by the hopes of the colonies and the pride of England, it is certain that officers and soldiers were not less elate with hope than inspired with determination. The flower of the young men of the early settlements was there. The sturdy veterans of the English army, rather haughtily looking down on the provincial troops, felt themselves the protectors of the honor of the King, for whom, two years pre- 68 Centennial Address vious, General Johnson had named the Lake. There were regiments from Boston there ; Putnam with his tried band of old hunters called Rangers ; the Gover- nors of Massachusetts and New York had exerted themselves strenuously to raise their provincial force. Lord Howe, though second in rank, was really first in command, having been designated to be " the soul of the enterprise." The boats flash on all the forenoon, pass cove after cove, island after island, the crystal second atmosphere beneath them, the mountains around, hope and danger before. *'At five in the evening," writes Abercrombie, " we reached Sabbath Day Point, twenty-five miles down the Lake, where we halted till ten, then got under way again." The spot was famous for the defeat there, the year before, of Colonel Parker, who, out of a detach- ment of three hundred and fifty, lost three hundred. *' We beheld its melancholy remains," writes an eye witness, " both in the water and on the shore." It is probable that the bones of the unburied slain, birds and storms had scarcely yet made completely white. The halt had been made to wait for the three brigades and the artillery, which were in the rear. The whole came up about ten o'clock, according to one account, or at about eleven, according to another, and the thou- sand bateaux move on again, now under cover of the darkness. There are only about sixteen miles to pass before reaching the shores near the outlet. It is day- break of the short summer night when the boats are TiCONDEROGA 69 within four miles of the French advance post. A New York regiment and a party of the Jerseys cau- tiously rowed toward the east shore to a point near the French camp. The first brigade and the principal portion of the fleet row toward the little cove, not far above the present steamboat landing from Lake George at Ticonderoga, just west of Prisoners Island, and now called Howe's Landing. Every moment they expect a shot from an ambuscade. The boats ground in the shallow water, the troops of the first brigade disem- bark and wade ashore. It is eight o'clock. Not a solitary man opposes and the whole brigade is landed. On the east shore the French troops discover the Jersey and New York regiments tardily and fire on them, but at a distance of six hundred paces and, therefore, without effect. The French at this Camp leave the greater part of their baggage, tents, and pro- visions. The Provincial boys dispose of these at their mercy. Thus Abercrombie disembarks without use for his covering artillery. There appear to have been two roads from the landing places to the Fort, one on the west and one on the east side of the outlet. The one on the east was, of course, the principal one as it was the shorter and as the ground was broken by ravines. The one on the west, if it existed at all, appears to have been a very rude affair, and cut through a forest, in which it is repeatedly said by eye witnesses, no one could make his way even from the landing to the Fort without guides. The forest along yo Centennial Address the outlet must have been enormously dense and the thickets in the ravines nearly impenetrable. Even if there were a road, it was of course inadmissible for the whole army to be placed in it, for its slow length, dragged out to a distance of a mile or two, would offer a ruinous exposure to a flank attack. After the first brigade is landed, a reconnoitering party is sent out, the way found clear, and the whole army landed. " The troops," says Abercrombie, " were formed in four columns, regulars in the center, and provincials on the flanks." The columns, of course, moved lengthwise through the woods. " The right center column " was commanded by Howe. This young nobleman was the idol of the army. Inde- pendent of fashion, he had accommodated himself and regiment to the nature of the service they had to undergo by cutting off his hair and fashioning his clothes for activity. " Keep back," said Putnam to Howe, who wished to be at the head of the Rangers, as they neared the place of expected conflict ; '' keep back, my lord ; you are the idol and soul of the army and my life is worth but little." " Putnam," was Howe's answer, " your life is as dear to you as mine is to me. I am determined to go." This was but an instance of the bravery and generosity which, with his rank and talents, had given him almost unlimited influence with the soldiers. The four columns meet first a French advance guard on the west side of the outlet. " This," Abercrombie writes, " was composed TiCONDEROGA 7I of one battalion, posted in a logged camp which, upon our approach, they deserted, first setting a fire to their tents and destroying every thing they could; but as their retreat was very precipitate, they left several things behind which they had not time either to burn or to carry off. In this camp we likewise found one prisoner and a dead man." The first object of the advance was to take possession of what was then called the " Mill Heights," and now called Mount Hope on the north side of the Lower Falls. " The army in the foregoing order," says Abercrom- bie, " continued their march through the wood, on the west side, with a design to invest Ticonderoga; the woods being very thick, impassable with regularity to such a body of men, and the guides unskilful, the troops were bewildered and the columns broke falling in one upon another." It was a hot July day of buzzing flies and sweltering leaves. The columns which started from Howe's Landing at two o'clock had progressed but slowly through the dense forest, and at four o'clock had come to a hill, which an eye witness described as " half way between the landing place and the Mill " at the Lower Falls. On this spot, which must be near the ridge immediately southwest of the point where Trout Brook empties into the outlet of Lake George, they meet three hundred and fifty French soldiers. These were Trepezec's detachment returning from their post near Bald mountain. They had seen the fleet of boats pass, had counted 72 Centennial Address seven hundred bateaux or the first two brigades at sight of which they attempted to return to oppose the landing of the English but had gone astray and, at the moment when Abercrombie's Rangers were firing upon them, were still unable to discover where they were. '*At the first volley they fired," says a letter written by a member of Abercrombie's Army, and preserved in the Pennsylvania Archives, " They killed Lord Howe and Lieut. Cumberfort. Lord Howe was at the head of the Rangers notwithstanding all the remonstrances made him; the moment the fire was received in front panic seized our soldiers ; entire regiments flung them- selves one atop of the other and even the General narrowly escaped being dragged off in the confusion by the fugitives. In vain did the ofiicers cry out and offer opposition ; nothing could stop them ; mean- while our brave Rangers defended themselves, two hundred against three hundred and fifty of the enemy, up to the time they were reinforced. The enemy was surrounded and one Captain, three Lieutenants, with one hundred and seventy soldiers were taken pris- oners ; some officers attempted to save themselves in the river by swimming, but they were killed so that it is believed not one escaped. We lost Lord Howe, Lieut. Cumberfort, and eight men, six wounded. I am certain, had the enemy had three or four hundred Indians with them at the beginning of this reconnoitre, they would have beaten us and driven us to our bateaux. 'Tis a singular case that three hundred and TiCONDEROGA 73 fifty men drove and threw into considerable confusion about eleven thousand." A stranger fact had oc- curred the year before at Braddock's defeat. It was the Indian mode of warfare, mastered apparently by Trepezec's division, startling the inexperience of the English regulars accustomed to fight behind breast- works or in the open field and not behind trees. " This small success," writes Abercrombic, in noticing the afifair, " cost us very dear, not as to the loss of numbers, for we had only two officers killed, but as to the consequence, Lord Howe being the first man that fell in this skirmish ; and, as he was very de- servedly beloved and respected throughout tne whole army, it is easy to conceive the grief and consterna- tion his untimely fall occasioned; for my part, I cannot help owning, that I felt it most heavily and lament him as sincerely." Thus passed from earth George Augustus Howe, Lord Viscount in the peerage of England, a man of whom some historical student has said walking past the spot where he fell, that had he lived his great popularity at home and in the colonies might have brought about a settlement of grievances so that but for what occurred on this little ridge of the old French and Indian war ground there might have been no Revolution. This speculation is undoubtedly extravagant ; " yet in him, the soul of the army seemed to expire." Massachusetts, at an expense of some eleven hundred dollars, erected a monument to his 74 Centennial Address memory in .Westminster Abbey and Ticonderoga has yet to rear one on the spot where he fell.* He was only thirty-four years of age. Sunday night the English soldiers had been on the water and had little sleep. Monday they had been constantly on foot. Monday night they were under arms. They had left their provisions at the landing place in beginning Monday's march in order to make more easily the passage through the woods. They had been confused by the afternoon skirmish. Above all they were overcome with grief and consternation at the death of Howe. For all these reasons Aber- crombie commits the first of the faults of his attack on Ticonderoga by ordering a return of the troops to *In 1878 Joseph Cook himself erected a marble tablet where Trout Brook flows into the outlet of Lake George. Dean Stanley of Westminster Abbey made a historic pilgrimage to this spot on his last visit to America, The monument was dedicated August 29, 1878, with speeches and appropriate ceremonies in the presence of five hundred persons. The inscription is as follows : " Near this Spot Fell July 6th. 1758, In a skirmish preceding Abercrombie's Defeat i By Montcalm Lord George Augustus Howe Aged 34. Massachusetts erected a monument to him in Westminster Abbey. Ticonderoga places here this Memorial." TiCONDEROGA 75 the landing place. They arrive there at eight o'clock Tuesday morning and remain unemployed, with the exception of a few companies, the whole day. "About eleven in the forenoon," writes Abercrombie, " I sent off Lieut. Col. Bradstreet — with the 44th Regiment, six companies of the first battalion of Royal Ameri- cans, the bateaux men and a body of Rangers and Provincials, to take possession of the Saw Mill, within two miles of Ticonderf^ga, which he soon effected, as the enemy who were posted there, after destroying the Mill and breaking down their bridge had retired some time before. Lieut. Col. Bradstreet, having laid another bridge across, and having sent me notice of his being in possession of that ground, I accordingly marched thither with the troops and we took up our quarters there that night." Thus Abercrombie writes. It is Tuesday night. He is at Mount Hope. On the morrow comes the battle. EVE OF THE BATTLE It is necessary now to trace the action of Montcalm from the point where it was left. On Sabbath night, at one o'clock in the morning, a dozen shots had been heard in the direction of the French advance post. The brigade immediately ran to arms but word was soon brought in that the shots were only from a corporal guard which the English had corralled and endeavored to make prisoners but who had freed them- selves with the bayonet. At daylight the signal of the 76 Centennial Address flag hoisted and lowered at the lookout on the moun- tain is frequent, " many barges were seen crossing from the west to the east side of the Lake in search apparently of a fit place for a landing." The scout- ing barge returns and reports that it has seen fifteen hundred bateaux approaching. The news of the pres- ence of the enemy had been sent to Montcalm and he immediately orders the engineers, Sieurs Pontle- roy and Desandrouin, to trace out on the height of ground in front of Carillon the entrenchment en abattis for which they had already reconnoitered. The third battalion of Berry which had been left at the Fort, is ordered to work at this entrenchment under its colors. Bourlamaque at the Portage strikes his tents and gives orders for the baggage to be removed. At eight o'clock his brigades commence their retreat. He remains behind with a rear guard to receive news of M. de Trepezec but hears none, and orders some shots to be fired on the approaching barges and then follows on the retreat. Montcalm awaits him with the Royal Rousillon and first battalion of Berry drawn up in order of Battle on the high ground on the right bank of the outlet at the Lower Falls near where the eastern part of the lower village now stands. The five battalions unite, cross the outlet, destroy the bridges, one of which was just above the Lower Falls, and with the battalions of La Sarre and Languedoc occupy the height of Mount Hope. Bateaux are sent for to Carillon to carry the baggage which was em- TiCONDEROGA 77 barrassing the soldiers. At four o'clock shots are heard in the direction of Trout Brook which are thought to be fired at M. Trepezec's division. Fifteen minutes of suspense elapse. Some soldiers are seen wading in the river which prove to be those of Trepe- zec's division. M. de Trepezec himself soon arrives " Mortally wounded." He reports " that he had lost his way through the fault of his guide and that wishing to reach the Falls he had got into the midst of a con- siderable party of the enemy; that after having de- fended himself for some time, fifty or sixty men escaped but the remainder were killed, taken or drowned." He had retired to Mount Hope by Monday afternoon. At six o'clock in the evening M. Dupeat comes with intelligence that the enemy was approach- ing Berney River — Trout Brook — with the apparent intention of throwing a bridge across it. Montcalm orders him to retreat, and himself soon after six o'clock begins retiring toward the heights immediately in front of the Fort. The retreat is made across the gorges and the plains on the north side of the creek between Mount Hope and the old French Lines. A halt is made every fifty paces. At sundown, or about seven o'clock, the army arrives at the entrance of the clearing in front of Carillon and encamp in order of battle. The night is passed in bivouac. It is Monday. Tuesday morning, at daybreak, the drum beats la generale. Three brigades post themselves at the entrance of the woods, and work under their colors 78 Centennial Address all day, upon an abattis composed of felled trees, their branches sharpened and pointing upwards. Some pickets are placed in front of the workmen and these exchange shots all the day with the pickets of Aber- crombie. At five o'clock in the afternoon the ground, covered by the entrenchment, is divided exactly between each wheelbarrow and makes 127 paces each. Tents are erected behind the abattis and soup boiled. Orders are given to the troops to sleep in bivouac; and the guards are directed to line the abattis, patrol fre- quently outside and keep the fires burning. Between six and seven o'clock the worn battalions and their anxious commander are gratified with an event they had long desired. The detachment designed for the expedition against Schenectady arrives, and during the night Chevalier de Levis himself comes in. DAY OF BATTLE JULY 8, 1 758 Wednesday morning, July 8, the drum beats, the generale long before day. This is the day of the battle. It is necessary now to notice accurately the dispo- sition of the French entrenchment and forces. The entrenchment laid out by Pontleroy and Desandrouin is 1300 paces from the Fort. Its left rests on an escarpment 120 paces from the left bank of the outlet, and perhaps 60 or 80 feet above the surface of the stream. The center follows the sinuosities of the ground keeping on the highest part of the land across the whole elevated part of the promontory. It is TiCONDEROGA 79 constructed full of angles, so that its several parts skilfully flank each other. The abattis, already men- tioned, extends about 60 paces in front of the entrench- ment. It is too commonly supposed that these fatal lines when the French fought here were, as now, of earth. On the contrary the entrenchment itself is composed of trees laid one on the other lengthwise with the ends locked together, and pierced with two rows of loop holes. On the top are placed bags of earth, and between each two of these, is a space which is used as a loop hole. Arrangement is thus made for a triple fire, thrice as effective as that from an ordinary breastwork. On the left in front of an open- ing, there was an abattis, and behind it, six pieces of cannon to batter it and the outlet of the Lake. The right bends about so as to flank the center, and itself rests on an acclivity, only a little less steep than the one on the left. Between this height and the Lake is a plain covered with a forest then almost untouched though the woods had been cleared up to a space near to this part of the field. Here a flank entrench- ment is made, which it was intended to support by four pieces of cannon, but this latter arrangement is not completed till after the action. Along the whole entrenchment all the Battalions, but the second of Berry, are placed. This Battalion is to guard the Fort and bring up ammunition during the action. Bernard and Dupeat's volunteers guard the opening toward the river of the Falls. On the left are the 8o Centennial Address Battalions of La Sarre and Languedoc and the two pickets which had arrived the preceding evening. The first Battahon of Berry, the Royal Rousillon, and the remainder of the pickets of Chevalier de Levis occu- pied the center. La Reign, Beam, and Guienne defend the right. The Canadian and Colonial troops are posted on the plain between the right and the Lake. A company of Grenadiers, pickets and reserve, was posted behind each Battalion. Chevalier de Levis commanded the right. Bourlamaque the left. Mont- calm the center. The cannon of the Fort are turned toward the plain to meet any attack the enemy may make there and toward the outlet to oppose their landing. Thus disposed the French army awaits the English, vigorously working nevertheless, to the last moment to perfect its abattis. It is Wednesday morning. We return now to Aber- crombie's camp at Mount Hope. At an early hour Abercrombie sends Mr. Clerk, the engineer, across the outlet to reconnoitre the enemy's position from the heights, since called, Mount Defiance. It is one of the ways in which the action of Providence is displayed in human affairs that almost never has a great battle taken place the result of which did not depend upon some little circumstance unforeseen and uncontrolled by mortal skill. A little boy in a forest of Germany pointing to the shorter of two roads to Bliicher, hastening to aid Wellington, defeats Bonaparte. An engineer, in the early morning, standing among the TiCONDEROGA 8l pines of Mount Defiance and having the French abat- tis hid from his view by the distance and the trees, reports that the French works are pregnable and de- termines the result of Abercrombie's enterprise. Mr. Clerk reports that the French works if attacked before their finish, can be carried, and Abercrombie imme- diately sets his army in motion. The prominent reason for Abercrombie's despatch, is the report of the prisoners that Montcalm daily expected a reen- forcement of several thousand men under Chevalier de Levis. The Rangers, Light Infantry, and the right wing of the Provincials were to post themselves in a line out of cannon shot of the entrenchment and ex- tending across the whole promontory to Lake Cham- plain. The regular troops, destined for the attack on the entrenchments, were to form on their rear. The attack was to be begun on the pickets : these were to be sustained by the Grenadiers, and they by the Battalions. " The whole were ordered," writes Aber- crombie, *' to march up briskly, rush upon the enemy's fire, and not to give theirs until they were within the enemy's breastwork." The French from their entrenchments, at nine o'clock discover a body of troops on the heights across the outlet and receive a few shots from them which the distance renders inefifective and to which they do not reply. There is now an almost awful pause for nearly four hours, the silence which precedes a battle being more 82 Centennial Address terrible than the thunders which accompany it. The French work at their abattis, and the silence of arms continues. At half past twelve the storm is let loose. The battle begins. As the regiments of La Reine and Beam were about to construct epaulments on the French left to protect their entrenchments from the opposite heights of Mount Defiance, a heavy firing is heard on the left, " a moment after at the center and next at the right." The French Grenadiers, Vol- unteers and advanced guards, fall back in good order, without losing a man, and reenter the Hues. The dis- charge of a cannon from the Fort, a signal agreed upon to announce the arrival of the enemy, brings every soldier to his post. The English defile against the entrenchment in four columns. The left was first attacked by two columns. One of these endeavoring to take the entrenchment found itself under the fire of the Battalion of La Sarre. The other directed its efforts against an angle between Languedoc and Berry. The center column, where the Royal Rousillon was posted, was attacked almost at the same time by a third column, whilst a fourth attacked the right be- tween Beam and La Reine. The different columns were intermixed with their Light Infantry and best marksmen, who under cover of the two, directed upon the French a most murderous fire. Abercrombie had not entirely forgotten his artillery. Two rafts had been constructed in the morning at the Lower Falls which received, each, two six pounders. At one TiCONDEROGA 83 o'clock, when the roar of musketry on the height announced that the French were engaged, these rafts proceed down the outlet for the purpose of flanking the entrenchment and exposing it to an enfilading fire. As soon as the rafts were in the proper position, the Fort opens upon them with cannon. Bernard and Dupeat's Volunteers open upon them at the same time, from the height. One raft is sunk, and the other retreats back to the Falls. Meanwhile, Abercrombie's generals, finding the troops thrown into confusion by the abattis and the entrenchment impregnable, send word to him, an hour after the engagement commenced, that the best that can be done is to withdraw from before the lines. Abercrombie is at the Saw Mill at the Lower Falls. He returns no posi- tive answer, but orders the troops to advance. They are led to the charge but in vain. The French, at the port holes of their wooden breastworks, were invisible ; *' Nothing was to be seen of them but a small bit of their caps. Every man," writes an officer of Abercrombie's army, " who wished to approach nearer than fifteen paces was irreparably dead." The old leaves are plowed up; young saplings are bent and cut, soldiers reel, ranks open ; death snatches one here and there and the ranks close again. On the wooden walls of the entrenchment partially hid in a cloud of smoke, English bullets almost harmlessly rain. Out of that entrenchment, springs a thrice sheeted 84 Centennial Address tongue of fire and leaden hail. Each drop on either side hums its minstrelsy of blood, a stinging piercing sound heard above the thunders of the war cloud. Exposed, not only to a galling fire in front but a flank fire on the side from the Canadians on the plain, the English left, screaming with rage, leap among the branches and rave and hack and hew with their broad swords. " That column," says Montcalm, " consist- ing of English Grenadiers and Scotch Highlanders, continued charging for three hours without retreating or breaking and several were killed within fifty paces of our abattis." Combined movements are made and column aids column. ''About five o'clock," says Mont- calm, " the column that vigorously attacked Royal Rousillon, fell on the angle defended by Guienne and on the left of Beam ; the column which had attacked the right flung itself also against the same point, so that the danger became imminent there. Chevalier de Levis repaired thither with some troops from the right where the enemy was no longer seriously firing ; Mont- calm ran thither also with some of the rescued, and the enemy experienced a resistance which finally abated their ardor." The hot afternoon sun of July sinks in the heavens, the war cloud partially shutting out its heat from the combatants. At four o'clock Bourlamaque is dan- gerously wounded, but the attention of Montcalm and of Messrs. de Senezergues and Prevot, Lieutenant Colonels of La Sarre and Languedoc, supply his place. TiCONDEROGA 85 After the failure of the combined attack on the angle defended by Guienne and Beam, the EngHsh fire for a little slackened. Abercrombie, secure in his retreat at the Saw Mill, orders another advance. It is made about six o'clock. The green bark of the freshly fallen trees of the abattis grows red with blood. Scores are mowed down at every discharge from the triple row of French muskets. The dying and wounded, borne far to the rear, lie bleeding under shadows of the forest. Blood oozes from two thousand dying and mangled forms till it forms a rill. The outlet of the Lake has its lilies turned strangely purple ; the sensitive yellow leaves of the corolla are blotched and stained. It is blood from the battle field. '' The justice is due them," writes Montcalm, '' to say that they have attacked us with a most determined obstinacy. It is not usual that such would be the case with entrenchments for seven consecutive hours." RETREAT OF ABERCROMBIE's ARMY At last the bugle sounds. Refrain. The sun is setting. It is seven o'clock. The best marksmen are put in the English rear to cover the retreat till night- fall shall arrive. The French cease firing. The wounded groan as they are taken up to be borne back to their morning camp. Many are deserted at the entrenchment, some of whom offer opposition next morning to the French patrolers and are killed by them. '' We are sure," writes Dorel, " of two thousand 86 Centennial Address corpses in front of our abattis." The French state that the EngUsh loss was between four and five thou- sand. Abercrombie reports that 551 were killed, 1356 wounded. Montcalm admits a loss of 450 killed and wounded together, 38 of whom were officers. Stained and sore and panic struck, the retreating columns move on in the light of the fading day. In stranger contrast with the human woe, nature was clear as ever. Trout Brook valley rolled full of foliage of beech and maple, odorous pine and song of birds, all undisturbed by the terror of that day. The deer drank at the laughing rivulets, or standing on the mountain crags snuffed the sulphurous taint of battle in the pure air of the valley cooled by the twilight breeze. But the scene was solemn forever as one from which in one day two thousand souls had passed to the judgment. But the English army feel as if pursued. Tramp, tramp, go the heavy regiments, loaded with defeated and dying comrades along the banks of the Sounding Waters. They abandon wounded, provisions, ammu- nition, and burn three boats at the lower camp. The way from the lines to the Lake is literally strewn with corpses. "A detachment which went out on the loth," says Doreil, " discovered all these on the road, and nearly five hundred dead bodies pushed on one side and another." " The darkness of the night, the ex- haustion and small number of our troops ; the enemy's forces, which, despite their defeat, were still infinitely TiCONDEROGA 87 superior to ours; the nature of these woods in which it was impossible without Indians, to engage an army, that had four or five hundred of them; several en- trenchments thrown up en echelons from the field of battle to their camp ; such," says Montcalm, " were the obstacles which prevented us pursuing the enemy on their retreat." The defeated army having rushed to its landing, hastily embarks with the few prisoners and the many wounded. Groans now for bugle notes ; disappoint- ment and disaster now in place of anticipations of victory. A recoil of surprise and horror now for the English Colonies, people and government instead of a burst of joy. Marbles in Westminster Abbey now and crape and mourning, instead of glory from the fatal Ticonderoga lines. Not as they came indeed, did that proud armament return. Providence intended to train yet further the Colonial Army for the war of Independence, and the plan of history was advanc- ing. Such was the battle of Ticonderoga, July 8th, 1758. CAPTURE OF FORT BY AMHERST, 1 759 General Amherst took the Fort next year. He was not Abercrombie. He invested it employing starva- tion as his weapon. On the fourth day Bourlamaque who was in charge, Montcalm having gone to meet Wolfe at Quebec, abandoned the Fort leaving its woodworks on fire. He retreated to Crown Point 88 Centennial Address and afterwards to Canada. Thus the grey promontory was won by skill without the loss of a man. Am- herst built boats at Ticonderoga and at Crown Point for invading the region of Montreal. After a delay of three months the little fleet proceeded northward, but was forced back by an autumnal tem- pest. The main body of the army remained at Ticon- deroga, while a portion of the boats attacked the French fleet near Plattsburgh. This first naval con- flict on Lake Champlain was with gun boats built at Ticonderoga and Crown Point. At the latter place a new fort was erected at the expense of ten thousand dollars and that at Ticonderoga was improved on an imposing scale. Soon from Quebec came the news of Wolfe's suc- cess, and with it New France was doomed. The plan had been for Amherst and Prideaux to meet at Mon- treal, take it and proceed to aid Wolfe, but the latter had not needed their aid. In the next year Montreal capitulated and the last hope of French power is lost. The treaty gave to England all that France had or ought to have possessed, east of the Mississippi. French political influence was substantially driven from the New World. One can but pause over the down- fall of the schemes of the French in admiration of their splendor and of the activity which pushed their discoveries and Forts across the habitable length of the Continent. The overthrow of so much devotion and energy is contemplated with an irresistible mournful- TiCONDEROGA 89 ness. But the Plan of Providence was advancing. When the French flag went down at Quebec, on every frontier the common schools stood firmer and every Bible more easily unloosed its clasps. The words *' They fly, they fly " were not uttered of the French alone ; unconsciously they were spoken of spirits in the air of Powers and Principalities that contended for the Continent, but then fluttered in wind, shaken off, ready to depart for a season. The providential pur- pose of the French and Indian war, was to place an open Bible in the hands of the young Continent. PARTITION OF TICONDEROGA LANDS The land in the vicinity of Ticonderoga had attracted, by its richness, the attention of the soldiers and ofiicers who were interested in the formation of new settlements, and the Duke of Richmond was offi- cially recommended to settle near the place. It seems to be not generally known that Ticonderoga narrowly escaped being organized as a French Lordship. There is a section of the Documentary History of the State containing papers relating to French seigniories on Lake Champlain. From these it appears that a large portion of the south part of the present town of Crown Point and nearly the whole of what is now the town of Ticonderoga had been granted by Gover- nor Vaudreuil in 1758 to M. Michel Cartier de Lotbiniere as a Lordship. This is the same Lotbiniere who laid out the French Fort of Carillon. There is 90 Centennial Address a map accompanying the papers which shows the French grants on Lake Champlain. That of Lotbiniere is laid down clearly. The boundary begins near the present steamboat Landing from Lake George and runs nearly due west fifteen miles, then due north nearly twelve miles, then east fifteen miles, and reaches Lake Champlain just north of Putnam's Creek. This tract was called the seigniory or Lordship of Allain- ville. He obtained another seigniory on the Vermont shore just opposite Fort Crown Point, embrac- ing the present towns of Panton, Addison, and Bridport, in Addison county, Vermont and which was named Hocquart. When the Treaty of Peace was made in 1763, it was, of course, stipulated that the Canadian subjects who had held grants under the French King, should retain all their rights and privileges under the English King, wherever the lands granted were not properly within the dominion which had rightfully belonged to the English. The fate of the French seigniories on Lake Champlain gave to their grantees not a little anxiety. It turned upon the essential termination of what were the northern bounds of the Iroquois nation. Over all the lands of this confederacy France had acknowl- edged the protectorate of England. There was much correspondence between the Governor of New York and the Board of Trade upon this point. The question was between the French claimants and the reduced officers and soldiers to whom the lands on both sides TiCONDEROGA 9I of Champlain had begun to be granted, immediately after the peace, by the State of New York. These claims overlapped. If the English veterans of the French and Indian war were to be ejected, many of them would be impoverished. If, on the other hand, the French claimants were to be driven out of all their grants south of the St. Lawrence, it was possible that discontent might arise in Canada prejudicial to the King's interest. Lotbiniere early pressed his claim. He went to London for the purpose and per- sonally appeared before the Board of Trade. Other claimants under the French Grants appeared with him. Lord Dartmouth was unwilling to take the ground that the dominions of the Iroquois had ex- tended to the St. Lawrence. Governor Tryon of New York, replied by forwarding documents to England in proof that such really was their extent at least that the whole province of New York was in their former terri- tory. All the country to the southward of the river St. Lawrence," he writes in a letter to Lord Dartmouth, dated at New York, January 5, 1773, "originally belonged to the Five Nations or Iroquois and, as such, it is described in the above-mentioned and other ancient maps and particularly Lake Champlain is there called * Mere des Iroquois,' Sorel River which leads from the Lake into the River St. Lawrence, 'River des Iroquois,' and the tract on the east side of the Lake Giocoisia." The question commanded the atten- tion of some of the best talent of the times. It is a 92 Centennial Address part of the historical treasure of the inhabitants of Champlain valley to know that no less a man than Edmund Burke was employed to defend these early grants, and that the beginning of pioneer civilization here thus owes something to his ability and learning. That the lands of the Iroquois extended northward at least as far as Crown Point seems never to have been doubted. An Instruction was given as early as July 5th, 1769, to the Governor of New York from the King, to grant no lands to the northward of that Fort, of lands claimed under Grants, until the petition for such Grants had been forwarded to one of the principal British Secretaries of State and the Royal approbation thereof had been signified. But Lord Dartmouth finally was induced to admit Governor Tryon's claim that the dominion of the Iroquois had embraced the whole of Lake Champlain or, at least, of the province of New York as bounded at the time by about the latitude of 45 degrees. Lotbiniere's claim was fully considered. He advocated it per- sistently and with ability. It was finally rejected. May 25, 1775. The reasons for this step were three. First, the land lay *' south of Crown Point," and hence was plainly within the territory of the Iroquois which France had no right to grant ; second, it was '' stated to have been granted to him at a time, that is in 1758, when his Majesty's armies had penetrated into and occasionally possessed themselves of the country between Lake George and Crown Point ; " third, there TiCONDEROGA 93 was '' no evidence of the Grants having been ratified by the Crown of France, or registered within the Colony." Thus Ticonderoga escaped becoming a French Lordship. For the Seigniory of Hocquart, which had been largely granted to reduced British soldiers, it was recommended that M. Lotbiniere upon condition of relinquishing it, be compensated by the Grant of the same amount of land, of equivalent value, in the Province of Quebec. It is sometimes doubted whether there was not a French settlement at Ticonderoga previous to the close of the French and Indian war in 1763. It has been suggested that possibly the Centennial of the town should come earlier than in 1864. Upon this point the papers concerning the French seigniories on Lake Champlain in the first volume of the documen- tary history of New York, the reports of Sir William Johnson's scouts in the first volume, afford definite information. There was some settlement near the Fort at Crown Point previous to the close of the war in 1763, though it appears to have existed almost purely for military purposes. But the terror of the English army disturbed even this settlement at Crown Point. " The English," writes Governor Vaudreuil, as early as July 4, 1755, *' appear always to have de- sign on Fort Frederick, and to make arrangements with that view at Orange (Albany). Their move- ments have so frightened the settlers whose lands are without the Fort, that they have abandoned them." 94 Centennial Address The chief portion, however, of these settlements here were on the opposite of the Lake at Chimney Point. Professor Kahii, a Swedish traveler, who visited the region in 1749 mentions a small church and orchard at Chimney Point. But Putnam mentions in 1766 a " small village about half a mile from the Fort to the southward." He slept on one occasion near some houses on the Lake in a barn well filled with wheat. On another he killed all the cattle, hogs and horses belonging to the "small village, about fifty in number" and set it on fire. In his reports to Johnson he several times speaks of this " village " at Crown Point. There are, moreover, ruins there yet or were recently visible, of an old French settlement south of the Fort. But Putnam, who scouted from the head of Lake George about Ticonderoga as much as about Crown Point never mentions a village or settlement as existing as near the former place. He once speaks of a barn, but the connection renders it unnecessary to suppose this more than an outhouse of the Fort. On the minute map of the battle of Ticonderoga in 1758 given by Mante in his history and which includes the whole field of the buildings of that year near the Lower Falls, there are no outhouses except immediately near the Fort. There is a garden laid down east of the Fort and close under its wall, but nothing more. In the reports of the battle there is no mention of any build- ings in the tract of the march, as there would probably have been had any existed, as they would have been TiCONDEROGA 95 used as points of support for the army. No ruins of French settlement have been found. No tradition comes down of the existence of a single French cabin. There was, indeed, a Saw Mill on the north side of the Lower Falls, in 1758, as is well known from its being repeatedly mentioned as a point of rest for Montcalm's and Abercrombie's armies. Its purpose was purely military. The lines of Forts, St. Frederick, Carillon, and the French advance posts at the head of the Lake George outlet as well as their bateaux and flotilla on both Lakes, depended largely on it for construction and repairs. Lotbiniere, indeed, makes a claim that his seigniories of Allainville, embracing Ticonderoga and granted in 1758, were " settled." Probably he states the circumstances so that they appear as strongly in his favor as the case would permit. As an engineer at Fort Ticonderoga he could speak too from personal observation. But all he says is, to put his two seigni- ories together, the seigniory of Hocquart and that of Allainville, and make, concerning them both this statement : "As to the validity of my titles at the time of the reduction of the country, let but a single glance be direced to these two seigniories ; the frequent clear- ances to be seen there which cannot yet have disap- peared ; the various settlements, the wrecks of which cannot have been swept away by the misfortunes in- separable from a period of war ; these will prove incon- testably that nothing can oppose their entire effect." No one doubts that there were " clearances " and 96 Centennial Address " settlements " that might be barely worthy of the title on the seigniory Hocquart. Kalm saw them. But the language is indefinite. From the very misfortunes of war, to which he alludes, no French settlements in Ticonderoga could be permanent. The seigniory of Allainville was granted in 1758. In that very year Abercrombie cooped Montcalm up to the promontory behind the French lines, holding for the time previous to his own defeat all the rest of the town. No mention is made of any French settlements being ravaged or burned. The very next year Amherst drove the French out entirely. This very consideration, that Allainville was granted so late, and that the English armies were, at the time, penetrating into the territory occupied by it, was one of the reasons given by the Board of Trade for disallowing the French claim. Finally, there is the testimony of the early English Grantees on the point. It was a matter to which attention was closely directed. But the conclusive evidence against the theory of a French settlement in Ticonderoga previous to the close of the French and Indian war is found in a letter of Governor Tryon of New York to Lord Dartmouth and the Board of Trade dated January 5, 1773. The language is unusually explicit. It is as follows : '* I have frequently been informed by those on whom I could depend, that when the French on the approach of Sir Jeffrey Amherst in 1759, abandoned Crown Point, there were found no ancient possessions, nor any improvements worthy of . consideration, on TiCONDEROGA 97 either side of the Lake. The chief were in the envi- rons of the Fort and seemed intended merely for the accommodation of the Garrisons, and I have reason to believe that even at this day, there are very few, if any, to the southward of the latitude 45°" — the present northern boundary of the State of New York — " ex- cept what has been made since the peace, by British subjects under the Grants of this Colony. I had the honor of transmitting to the Earle of Hillsborough a paper on this subject, drawn up by Council here, at the request of the reduced officers, to whom and the disbanded soldiers, a very considerable part of the country on the east side of Lake Champlain, hath been granted in obedience to His Majesty's royal proclama- tion. The proof of several material facts have in- fluenced my opinion are these stated, and to which I beg leave to refer your Lords." That the Centennial of the town is not properly a celebration of a French settlement is proved, it is believed, by the extract. But let it be stated, that the first attempt to settle Ticonderoga was made by the French engineer who built Fort Carillon, M. Michel Chartier de Lotbiniere, a man of scientific and literary acquirements. His attempt was unsuccessful. The town was destined to begin its civil life not through French but through English occupation. 98 Centennial Address grants of land issued by george the third October 7, 1763, George the Third issued a procla- mation authorizing the Colonial Governors to issue Grants of lands on either side of Lake Champlain. Just one hundred years to-day, or on July 25, 1764, a worn subaltern officer who had expended fortune and strength in the Canadian campaigns had received at the Fort in the city of New York a Grant of two thousand acres of land in Ticonderoga. The name of that soldier was Lieut. John Stoughton. His tract, as has been stated, was the first land ever granted to an English Colonist in Ticonderoga. The first passage of lands from foreign, into colonial and private pos- session, when the conditions of the deed and the manner in which they were fulfilled are considered, may be regarded as the commencement of our civil history. The Grant was a valuable one. It was of the best lands in town. It included the outlet of Lake George, and thus all the sites of the water powers and future manufacturies. Its four corners may be roughly stated as the old Block house on Mount Defiance, the White Rocks near Mr. Gustavus Wicker's, Mr. E. Stones' fence, above the steamboat landing on Lake George, and Bugby's Point across the Lake. It lay thus in the general form of a trapezium wedged be- tween the mountains, the butt north and extending from the Lower Falls to Lake George on both sides of the outlet. The conditions of the Grant were important TiCONDEROGA 99 and definite. No pine trees fit for masts of the growth " of twenty-four inches diameter and upwards at twelve inches from the earth " were to be cut down. All mines of gold and silver were reserved. Ten years the land was to be held without rent, but after that there was to be paid annually at Nev/ York on Lady Day, a rent of two shilling, six pence for every hun- dred acres of it. The deed was to be registered at the secretary's ofiice and docketed at the auditor's office in New York. But there were other more important conditions. The Grantee was obliged " to settle as many families on the tract of land as shall amount to one family for every thousand acres thereof," and " to plant and effectually cultivate at least three acres for every fifty acres of such of the treaty granted lands as are capable of cultivation." He was required to do this within three years of the date of the Grant. If any of these conditions were unfulfilled, the deed was annulled. In the spring of 1767, the last of three years given to him in which to settle his families, Lieut. Stoughton came to Ticonderoga in person. There were at least two females in the company, " Mrs. Stoughton and a young lady." They took up their dwelling at the Lake George landing. There was a Block house there. They brought with them sheep and cattle. Lieut. Stoughton was not alone in his enterprise. He had a partner, Samuel Deall — a merchant of New York of whom it is well to say at once that he was substantially 100 Centennial Address the founder of trade, manufactures and agriculture in Ticonderoga. William Gilliland, a merchant of New York city, founded the first settlement at the mouth of the Boquet. Samuel Deall, a merchant of the same city, was the chief founder of the settlement of Ticon- deroga. Within a fortnight after Stoughton's patent had been granted two other Grants of land in Ticon- deroga were given to Richard Kellet and John Ken- nedy, also reduced British officers. Kellet's land embraced a broad flank of the plateau between Lake Champlain and the outlet of Lake George. Kennedy's lay on the equally rich land just back of this on the same plateau. I hold in my hand the parchment deeds granted to each of these officers, — interesting relics, browned, blackened, and mouldy with moisture, ink and time, and bearing the enormous pendent seal of the province of New York, stamped with the arms of Great Britain and figures of Aborigines kneeling to the King with furs and game, symbols of the early trade.* They bear date August 7, 1764. Stoughton's deed was probably in the same form though I have not been able to recover the original, but I found the apparently authenticated copy at the office of the Secretary of State at Albany, bearing date July 5, 1764. Kennedy's land embraced perhaps two and a quarter square miles. It was of the best land in town for agricultural purposes. At his death the property * These Parchment deeds are now in the possession of the Ticonderoga Historical Society. TiCONDEROGA lOI came into the hands of " Henry Kennedy, Surgeon, the oldest brother of John Kennedy, gentlemen de- ceased." This brother sold it September 26, 1765, for one hundred and fifty pounds sterling to Abraham P. Lott and Peter Theobaldus Curtenius, " Merchants of the City of New York." Of these, Samuel Deall pur- chased it, December 10, 1767. He paid but one hun- dred and eighty pounds or about nine hundred dollars for the whole. Mr. Deall also owned a broad strip running up the land on the Wicker Brook. He had a patent, too, on the best land on the lower part of Trout Brook, embracing about a mile square. The lines of these and other early patents may be seen in Mr. French's map of Essex County published in 1858. Samuel Deall's mills were destroyed by a battalion of Burgoyne's army. Near the opening of the Revo- lution Samuel Deall died at his post of duty in New York and his family returned to England to remain during the war, leaving their property in the wilds of Ticonderoga to the ravages of armies and the dilapida- tions of time. Samuel Deall was a violent loyalist, very outspoken against the course of the American rebels, but to the aged man, with his fixed and cautious opinions, large property and otherwise noble aims, this can be pardoned. If every man, following him in Ticonderoga, had labored with his enthusiasm, sagacity and unselfish devotion to the public good, what would have been our commercial, social and moral advance- ment now? I02 Centennial Address SUBSEQUENT ATTACKS ON FORT TICONDEROGA The capture of the Fort by Ethan Allen May lo, 1775, is so well known that I will not enlarge on it, except to say that the one hundred and twenty cannon taken by Ethan Allen at Ticonderoga were taken in winter over the Green Mountains and placed by George Washington on Dorchester Heights at Boston, and helped essentially in driving the British out of Boston. General Carleton attacked and defeated the American fleet on Lake Champlain under Arnold September 11, 1775, and appears to have intended to attack Ticon- deroga but was repelled by the vigorous preparations made by General Gates and by the lateness of the season. A journal report by Surgeon James Thatcher, who was in the army at the Fort during this battle and the following winter and summer, describes the defenses and life in the barracks and speaks with enthusiasm of the scenery of Ticonderoga. The garrison at the Fort, though guarding an im- portant frontier, led an easy life, a merry life, a well- fed, happy life while Washington was retreating in gloom across the Jerseys, and while his troops had received courage for the American cause by the vic- tories at Trenton and at Princeton. Burgoyne named Mount Hope awd Mount Defiance. When his officers on the latter height witnessed the flight of the American general, St. Clair, up the Lake TiCONDEROGA I03 and by land southward, England was justified in her hope of dividing the rebellious colonies by Burgoyne's march southward, meeting Clinton's advance from New York up the Hudson. The strategy was much like Sherman's march to the sea, by which we cut the rebellious slave Confed- eracy in two. It came near succeeding. Burgoyne had been ordered by his home government to go southward through Lake George. His success at Mount Defiance gave him such overwhelming confidence in his for- tune that he disregarded these orders and allowed him- self to be persuaded by the wily tory, Col. Skene of Skenesboro, now Whitehall, to cut a road through the marshes southward to Fort Edward. This work delayed him greatly and gave the Ameri- cans opportunity to rally an army at Saratoga which defeated him. This victory gave us the French Alliance, and that gave us our independence. Burgoyne was a pompous and vain man, but of much ability as a general, and his name cannot be omitted in the list of those whose deeds have made Ticonderoga historic ground. It is a curious coincidence that Burgoyne's engi- neers dragged cannon to the top of Mount Defiance on the night of July 4th, and that St. Clair evacuated the fort on the night of the 5th, and Burgoyne's army entered it on the morning of the 6th, the anniversary of Lord Howe's death in the Battle of Ticonderoga nineteen years before. I04 Centennial Address Washington, the first distinguished tourist on Lake George, visited Ticonderoga and Crown Point while his army was at Newburgh-on-the-Hudson, and made a keen, military inspection of these famous fortresses. Benjamin Franklin, in his 70th year, on a mission to our army in Canada passed through Lake George on April 20, 1776, in a flat-bottomed boat 36 feet long, 8 feet wide and i foot deep, with blankets ar- ranged for a sail and awnings. This bateau was placed on wheels and drawn, by six yoke of oxen on the old Portage road, across the land to Lake Champlain. In September, 1802, Timothy D wight, President of Yale College from 1795 to the time of his death in 1817, came through Lake George in a boat which was built for the use and under the direction of General Schuyler. He says : " No vehicle could be lighter or more convenient. It was built in the form of a bateau ; was 30 feet in length and about 8 or 9 feet in breadth. Over the middle half a canopy of painted canvas, with curtains of the same material descending from it, sheltered passengers from the sun, wind and rain. This room was neatly floored and furnished with seats and other accommodations, perfectly fitted for ease and pleasure." President Dwight visited Lake Champlain and Fort Ticonderoga. He speaks of the abattis being four feet high when he saw the ruins. TiCONDEROGA I05 In the war of 181 2, the British Commanders who attacked Plattsburgh by the land and by the sea and were so gloriously repelled there, announced that they intended to annex all northern New York as far southward as Ticonderoga. Our American Captain McDonough set his ships in order at the mouth of Plattsburgh Harbor and knelt on his ship's deck and commended his forces to the aid of the God of Battles. No fiercer conflict on the water is known to naval history. Not a mast on a ship on either side was left fit to carry sail. But this thunderbolt had been hurled at the whole lake region as far southward as Ticon- deroga. Plattsburgh caught it in her victorious right hand and returned it whence it came. ticonderoga's part in battle of plattsburgh 1814 The action of Ticonderoga in the war of 1812 had its chief interest in its relation to the battle of Platts- burgh. General Izard had been stationed all the summer at that village, with sixteen or eighteen thou- sand men. He was ordered to Sacketts Harbor. General Provost with an army partly composed of Wellington's Veterans marched upon the place from Canada. His plan of the campaign it was well known, was to secure Crown Point and Ticonderoga while another army invaded New York or Connecticut from the south. The two forces hoped to mset at Albany. The purpose was to separate New England from the io6 Centennial Address rest of the Union. The Militia at Essex County were called out by General Mooers. The news of the call was received at Ticonderoga on Thursday preceding the first skirmish on the 26. of September at Beekman- town, a village a few miles north of Plattsburgh. By nine o'clock on the following Friday morning two companies were beginning to march. The companies were not full ; it is thought that Ticonderoga had about one hundred engaged in the battle, beside the vessel named after the town in the fleet. The officers, among the land volunteers, were Captains Beers Tomlinson and Silas Sagus. The former took the place of Captain Justice Bailey, who was disabled at the time. I have made an attempt to obtain the names of all the soldiers, but the list need not be rehearsed here. Prevost, retreating as soon as Commodore Downie had been defeated on the Lake by McDonough, not one of the volunteers of Ticonderoga under Mc- Comb was wounded. An interesting item of the his- tory of the town at the time, was the organization of a company of old men from fifty to sixty years of age under the name of Silver Greys. The company was extemporized on the morning that the volunteer militia left Ticonderoga and all the officers and some fifteen of the men were in the battle. TICONDEROGA IN THE CIVIL WAR But the theme which fills all our hearts remains yet to be touched upon. Ticonderoga, in the present war, TiCONDEROGA I07 has believed her struggle to be for Freedom against Slavery, for Democracy against Aristocracy, and this not for the Union alone but for the Continent. In the Rebellion she has seen an attempt at the reduction of the greater portion of the laborers of the north to the condition of the poor whites of the south, the overthrow of republican institutions. Her zeal for the utter aboli- tion of the cause of the war has, like that of other towns, grown with events, but was high and strong, though not loudly uttered, at first. The vote of the town has been in Presidential elections steadily Whig or Republican for more than a quarter of a century. At a reception given on the Fort grounds to Company H of Crown Point, in which most of the Volunteers of Ticonderoga enlisted, and held as early as May, 1861, the most thorough determination to stand by the Union was taken by the speakers. " The best speech to be made to-day and for some time to come," was one sentence, " will not be from human but from iron lips." The controlling sentiment of the town has been a desire to support the Union, to respect the laws, and to overturn the cause of the war. A town of twenty- six hundred inhabitants, with a taxable property valued in 1863 at four hundred and ten thousand dollars, Ticonderoga in all, up to the present time has raised two hundred and fifty volunteers and voted forty-seven thousand, seven hundred and fifty dollars in money for the war. It is no more than just that it should be said that when the Draft Riots occurred in New York io8 Centennial Address there was not the slightest disturbance in Ticonderoga and, whatever any may have felt in their hearts, not more than six or ten misinformed or ignorant persons were known to be malcontents by their conversation. " I am drafted ; it is all right ; " one soMier was heard to say ; " it is a fair, straightforward business ; if I had not been some one else would have been; I am going." The town paid under the next draft nineteen thous- and six hundred dollars for bounty to thirty-nine volunteers. This is the largest sum it has yet raised. The volunteers came forward and were accepted by the surgeons. The soldiers of Ticonderoga were chiefly under Major Hammond. To the memory of those that have fallen in battle too much honor cannot be paid. In imitation of the custom of other towns, Ticonderoga should erect a monument to her fallen heroes to be inscribed with their names. It may not be improper here to urge that this be surely done and the memorial placed upon some of the historic grounds of this town. So ends the history of three hundred years. I have no comment to make on it, but to look backward and say to those who have preceded, Honor; to look forward, and say to the coming generation, Welcome and Benediction ; to look upward and say, Laus Deo ! The Plan of History, of which we are a part moves on. Solemn, eternal, without pause, is the progress of that infinite concourse of motives by which the TiCONDEROGA lOQ thread of our lives is woven into the universal web of Providence, at an infinite distance from the end, and also at an infinite distance from the beginning. The sublimity and solemnity of immortality are spoken by the lapse of a century. We who see this Centennial shall see the next one from the eternal spaces. We are profoundly moved as we look forward to those who are to come after us, and endeavor to measure their destiny and our own. The history of the town like all history proves that there is a Right and a Left. We profoundly believe that Paul was not a dupe, that the evidences of Christianity are decisive. The host of the coming generations we would take in our arms and place in God's arms, penetrating it with that Faith until the town is transformed into a radiant new creation for the service of truth. It is a solemn day. It is no time for trifling words. We shall be here one hundred years hence but our speech will not be that of mortals. We shall see those who shall come after us and who shall stand here on that day. We say to them in advance that we will turn to our graves with longing to beseech them to be less unwise, if they do not so act that their history may minister to the History of Redemption. LlbHMnT *^r ^wi^>--' " 014 221 100 2