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Illustrated Episode · Volume IV, chapter 4 · 10 May 1775

Poise your firelocks

At gray dawn on a lake shore a tall man in a hunting frock flings out an arm before long ranks of countrymen, who hold their guns upright in answer, with an officer in a scarlet coat beside him and empty boats behind.
Lake Champlain, May 10, 1775. On the shore below Fort Ticonderoga, before dawn, Ethan Allen tells eighty-three men that he will lead them through the gate himself and will not force anyone to follow. Those who are willing, he says, should poise their firelocks, and every man does. Rothbard reads the bloodless capture that followed as guerrilla warfare at its best. Chapter 4 of Conceived in Liberty.

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Adapted from Murray N. Rothbard, Conceived in Liberty (Mises Institute, 2011), CC BY 3.0.

What happened

Fort Ticonderoga sat at the narrows of Lake Champlain, the gateway to Canada and home to the largest store of cannon in the colonies. A few days after Lexington, Ethan Allen proposed to take it, and about a hundred Green Mountain Boys and sixty-five men from Connecticut and western Massachusetts gathered at Bennington on May 9 and chose him commander. Benedict Arnold, a New Haven merchant, had a Massachusetts colonel's commission for the same job and rode in to claim command. Allen's men would not take orders from a commission, and Arnold was allowed to march at the head of the column beside him, though everyone but Arnold knew who led. The boats came late and were too few, so only eighty-three men crossed in the first trip. On the landing, Allen later wrote, he told them he would conduct them through the wicket-gate in person, that it was a desperate attempt, and that he urged it on no man against his will. Those who would go were to poise their firelocks, and every man did. They marched to the gate, and the fort fell without a shot, its small garrison roused from their beds. Crown Point fell to Seth Warner the next day. To Rothbard that was guerrilla war at its best: volunteers, surprise and speed, and a leader who asked rather than ordered. Congress, horrified by so offensive an act, ordered the forts given up. The captured cannon later moved to the heights above Boston.

Sources

  1. Murray N. Rothbard, Conceived in Liberty (Auburn, Ala.: Mises Institute, 2011 single-volume ed.), vol. IV, ch. 4, 'The Seizure of Fort Ticonderoga', pp. 1140-1143. CC BY 3.0. Rothbard
  2. Ethan Allen, A Narrative of Colonel Ethan Allen's Captivity (Philadelphia, 1779), the opening account of the capture of Ticonderoga: the address 'You that will undertake voluntarily poise your firelocks', the men 'drawn up in three ranks', 83 landed near the garrison. Read as quoted in the Project Gutenberg text of a Ticonderoga history (ebook 55561) and in search-result excerpts; Allen is the only eyewitness narrator, writing four years later. Primary source
  3. 'Capture of Fort Ticonderoga', Wikipedia (accessed 2026-10-02): Hand's Cove at 11:30 pm on 9 May, boats at 1:30 am, 83 in the first crossing, garrison of two officers and forty-six men, Allen's reports to the Albany committee, Feltham's 'drawn sword'. Secondary source
  4. Fort Ticonderoga, 'Seeing Red' (accessed 2026-10-02): it is most likely that Arnold wore the scarlet coat faced buff of the Governor's Second Company of Foot Guards. Secondary source
  5. 'How Tall Was Benedict Arnold?', Boston 1775 blog (accessed 2026-10-02): Downing, Henry and Leake on Arnold's looks. Secondary source