Revolution, Ethan Allen and his Green Mountain Boys, along with a prickly but very talented general— not quite a general at that point named Benedict Arnold— captured Ticonderoga and, more importantly, British cannon. After Lexington and Concord, it ' s realized that those cannon are needed to drive away the British who have been encircled and can ' t get out of Boston except by sea. If we were to mount some cannon on hills surrounding Boston, they would be forced to leave. That job fell to a bookseller named Henry Knox, whom Washington took a liking to. And Knox went all the way to Ticonderoga and moved the cannon overland to the top of the Lake George, floated it down, and then got sleds with oxen and took them over the Berkshires and got them all the way to Cambridge, which was one of those amazing feats of engineering.
George Washington and 3,000 men got them up on top of a hill, and the British suddenly realized they were
out of there and left Boston for good. It’ s one of the great, great stories. The Capital Region is central to this. The Hudson is one of the great highways of the Revolution. The Revolution is basically fought on or next to water. There were a lot of important posts, of course— West Point is where Benedict Arnold will try to surrender to the British and sabotage as a traitor. More importantly— probably the single most important victory of the Revolution by the Patriots besides the surrender at Yorktown which ends the war— takes place at Saratoga. It ' s this huge defeat; an entire British Army surrenders. It ' s the thing that convinces the French to get involved on our side, to not just surreptitiously send us material, but to form two treaties— one a kind of commercial treaty and the other is a military alliance, which will prove the difference, offering their navy and their army to our services in our Revolution. And it’ s the Battle of Saratoga [ on September 19, 1777 ] and the drama that takes place. And then, of course, to the west, there is a lot going on in Native American territories, where settlers are invading. The tensions within and between Indian tribes is a huge part of the Revolution that most people don ' t represent. Some of it is quite tragic, and all of it is just unbelievably interesting.
Stanmeyer: We were talking to the Freemasons here in the Berkshires, and they ' re creating a cannon as we speak. Henry Knox was a Freemason, and they ' re going to follow that trail themselves this summer. It ' s interesting how other organizations also are taking that path for the 250th.
Burns: It ' s so important that we reclaim our history, not just from our own inattention or distractions or the fact that history isn ' t as emphasized as I believe it should be in schools, but because the American Revolution is such a central event in world history. I
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