1776

It's not all Civil War around here.  This year we're studying American history and literature, and we're currently talking about the Revolutionary War.  We watched a movie of April Morning, adapted from one of my favorite books, which tells the story of the Battles of Lexington and Concord from a young boy's perspective.

The girls are reading biographies of Washington and Jefferson, and I'm reading David McCullough's 1776.  It's a great book, and I love this time period.  (Why doesn't anyone around here re-enact the Revolutionary War?!  My mortally wounded husband could crawl to me and die in my arms on our very doorstep - such drama!)

Do you know about the guns of Ticonderoga?  I guess I had forgotten this little bit of history, but it's very exciting:

In the early winter of 1775, twenty-five year-old Boston bookseller Henry Knox approached General George Washington with a bold proposal.  Washington's ragtag troops had Boston under siege, and they occupied high ground from which they could shell the British.  But the Americans needed big guns, and Henry Knox had an idea about where to get them.

In May 1775 when Ethan Allen's Green Mountain Boys forced the British to surrender Fort Ticonderoga, they had captured 59 pieces of artillery. Henry Knox proposed traveling 300 miles to Ticonderoga in the dead of winter to bring the artillery back to Boston.

Many of Washington's advisors thought the plan was hopeless. The guns would have to be dismantled and loaded onto barges, transported down Lake George before the great 30-mile-long lake froze, then hauled the rest of the way by sledge and oxen over rough trails. Knox would need good luck and better weather — warm days for crossing the lake; cold, snowy nights for the sleds.

He arrived at Ticonderoga and immediately set about disassembling the guns — 43 heavy brass and iron cannon, six cohorns, eight mortars, and two howitzers.  By December 9th, all 59 guns were loaded onto flat-bottomed boats and headed down Lake George.

Until that point, the weather had remained mild, but now the wind picked up and forced Knox's freezing men to row into an icy gale. With heroic effort, they succeeded in getting the last of the cannon to the southern end of the lake just as it began to freeze over.

Knox was ready to carry the guns overland, but he could not move.  A good base of snow was needed for the oxen to drag the heavy sleds. Finally, on Christmas morning, Knox awakened to several feet of fresh snow.

By January 5th, the artillery had reached Albany, but once again, nature did not cooperate. The ice on the Hudson was not deep enough to support the weight of the sleds. During each of the first two attempts at crossing, Knox saw a precious cannon lost to the river.

Six weeks later, however, on the night of March 4th, Washington's gun batteries in Cambridge distracted British troops while several thousand Americans quietly maneuvered the artillery up Dorchester Heights and frantically constructed emplacements. Logs painted to look like cannon made it seem as if they had even more firepower than they did.

The next morning an astonished British General Howe looked up at Dorchester Heights and remarked, "The rebels did more in one night than my whole army would have done in one month." Thanks largely to Henry Knox, the vaunted British Army had little chance of ending the siege of Boston. On March 17th, British troops and Tory sympathizers began the evacuation of Boston.
(adapted from: http://www.massmoments.org/moment.cfm?mid=29)

Isn't that a cool story?  Now I'm up to the part of the story where the British are about to attack New York.  Thrilling stuff.

PS.  Current song favorite: No Sugar Tonight, The Guess Who.  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MfqIl7OZj5g  I had this in my head the other night, got in the car, and it was playing on the radio.  Isn't it weird when that happens?

Autumn