Fresh
from a victory over Benedict Arnold and a fledgling American navy
at the Battle of Valcour Island, the British hoped to push through
to Albany before the onset of winter, effectively cutting the
northern colonies in two. But as they approached the heavily armed
fortresses, they realized that they had neither enough men nor
enough cannons to besiege the well-entrenched American garrisons.
With winter coming on, they turned back to Canada. It was an easy,
bloodless victory for the colonists, one that would delay the
British advance for nearly a year.
Soon
after, most of the American soldiers went home to their farms and
shops. Fewer than 3,000 remained to face what would be a grim
winter. As many as seven or eight of them froze to death each
night. Soldiers' journals reveal that conditions at Mount
Independence were just as bad as at Valley Forge-supplies were low
and military provisioning was not yet standardized. The largest
military fortification in the north built specifically for the
American Revolution, Mount Independence was an isolated outpost,
unlike other Revolutionary War forts near major cities like
Philadelphia and Boston where supplies could easily be obtained.
One soldier wrote home complaining that "one-third at least of the
poor Wretches is now barefoot, and in this Condition obliged to do
Duty." The chief engineer at the encampment wrote in his journal:
"I am heartily tired of this Retreating, Raged, Starved, lousey,
thevish, Pockey Army in this unhealthy Country."
With the arrival of spring, a British fleet with a newly formed army of 8,000 British, German, Canadian, and Loyalist soldiers advanced southward from Canada under the command of General John Burgoyne. This time the American forts were ill-prepared to withstand the onslaught. The American command had, however, built a 1,600-foot-long floating bridge across Lake Champlain to improve communications and to block British warships, as well as a hospital to handle anticipated casualties. Congress even sent a new commander General Arthur St. Clair. But no fresh troops were authorized.
In
early July, British and German troops landed on both shores and
began to encircle the forts. At the last moment, St. Clair ordered
his men to abandon their positions. A British advance guard
entered Fort Ticonderoga, then charged across the bridge to the
Vermont shore. Four Americans were left behind with orders to
bombard the British as they crossed. Instead of conducting a
heroic rear-guard action, the four were found "dead drunk by a
cask of Madeira," according to a British officer's
report.
After hearing of Burgoyne's defeat at Saratoga in October, the British garrison burned hundreds of buildings at Mount Independence before retreating to Canada. With the war now over in the northern colonies, the fort was quickly forgotten.
Covered by forest and pasture since its abandonment, Mount
Independence has enjoyed a measure of protection over the years
and remains a pristine archaeological site. Collapsed fireplaces
and chimneys, and the remains of houses, barracks, blockhouses,
shops, lookout posts, and artillery batteries lie everywhere
within the wooded bluff.
For the past several years I have led a team of some 40 students and volunteers from the University of Vermont and, most recently, Castleton State College in exploring Mount Independence. While historical records provide anecdotal evidence of clothing shortages and disease, they do not provide detailed information about buildings, clothing, and food consumption. The mission of our archaeological investigation was to determine the layout of an American camp early in the Revolutionary War, before military procedures and construction methods became more standardized. How well supplied was this frontier outpost, and how did the day-to-day life of the soldiers compare with the dry official records kept in officers' orderly books? Were the men eating salt beef, salt pork, and dried vegetables, or were they eating fresh game, too? Would any of the artifacts demonstrate that women and children were living here? And, could individual soldiers be identified from artifacts found at the site?
While
researching and mapping the camp, we were surprised to learn that
historical maps from the Revolutionary War rarely show cabins,
tents, artisans' shops, or lookout posts. No more than 20 of the
primary fortifications and barracks had ever been drawn on maps of
the 1770s, and these were major buildings and earthworks designed
by military engineers. We focused on the Second Brigade area at
the southwestern corner of Mount Independence, choosing it because
it had been identified on a 1776 map and because the outlines of
cabins were clearly visible on the ground surface. We have exposed
and mapped the remains of nearly 30 cabins and houses, five
lookout posts, several barracks buildings, one blockhouse, a
battery, a large dump, and a storehouse.
The Second Brigade dwellings were small and most lacked windows. All that remains today are low mounds of stones, each about 15 feet across and evenly spaced in long rows. The cabins do not appear to have had foundations, and the remains of stone fireplaces and chimneys have been scattered by tree roots and collectors. Artifacts found in the soil around each building include large numbers of rose-head nails; glass from wine bottles; sherds of unrefined stoneware, tin-glazed earthenware, and creamware; cow, sheep, and pig bones; and the remains of fish caught in Lake Champlain.
While
surviving inventories indicate that the soldiers' standard fare
was salt beef, salt pork, and vegetables, a large number of cow
bones has confirmed that some citizen-soldiers reported for duty
with cattle in tow. The presence of wine bottles came as no
surprise since wine was prescribed for soldiers in cold or wet
climates and alcohol was believed to promote good health. Nor was
it surprising to find many fish bones; written records indicate
that the soldiers were so fond of fishing that they used boats
reserved for scouting duty for angling -- a breach of
discipline.
We also found several regimental buttons, including ones from the British 20th, 40th, and 47th Regiments and the American 5tli, 12th, 22nd, and 25th Regiments. There were also many non-military buttons, indicating that provisioning was far from standardized at this point in the war.
Fragments of wine glass and window glass suggested to us we were digging within officers' houses, in several of which we also discovered ornate cufflinks, but without engraved initials that would have identified the wearer. We did find a broken wine bottle inside an artilleryman's hut that, when reassembled, gave us a name and date: "James Hill 1777."
On the western edge of the Second Brigade area we located a large dump containing burned pieces of bone, wine bottle fragments, and tin-glazed earthenware. The dump even contained a bottle fragment which fit a sherd from a cabin site 500 feet away. Of special interest was a Spanish silver coin minted before 1760. Coins were extremely rare at this outpost, where there was probably little to buy, but British, Spanish, and French coins were all legal tender at the time.
Along
the eastern side of Mount Independence, we located the remains of
some 100 lookout posts presumably manned by American soldiers as
they watched for approaching British forces. Excavations of five
of these small, three-sided structured revealed thousands of wine
bottle fragments along with musket balls and gunflints. We also
excavated a blockhouse, occupied by a British contingent after
they seized the site. Its thick 30-foot-square foundation walls
would have stood two stories in height, with ports for one or more
cannons. While no artifacts of British or German origin were found
within the foundation, we did recover large nails and spikes used
in the building's construction, a gunflint, and a single piece or
cast-iron shot. The presence of building materials, munitions, and
little else suggests that soldiers stood on sentry duty here but
did not actually live in the structure.
Lastly, we studied the remains of a large hospital. Hospitals were rare in America before the 1800s, available only to the urban poor. For everyone else, health care took place at home. The French and Indian War and the American Revolution changed all that. Soldiers, far from home, Sought treatment in impromptu military hospitals that were often crowded and filthy. Lewis Beebe, a doctor who visited small regimental hospitals at Mount Independence in September of 1776, was horrified at how the sick were "crowded into a dirty, Lousy, stinking Hospital, enough to kill well men." Disease was a much more serious problem than battle injuries, and prominent ailments included smallpox, typhus, measles, dysentery, and "the itch," a malady caused by poor hygiene that left sufferers covered with scabs and sores.
At a time when soldiers in the American Revolution could count on receiving care in numerous regimental and mobile hospitals, only three permanent general hospitals were built for the Northern Medical Department. Two were located at Albany and Lake George in New York. The third was built at Mount Independence in anticipation of Burgoyne's attack. Historical sources indicate that it was two stories high, of post-and-beam construction, and large enough to hold 600 men.
During our excavation of the Second Brigade area we searched among the ruined foundations of this massive structure for fireplaces, doorways, and trash pits. We determined that the hospital had had three large stone fireplaces, a shingled roof, and no glass in its windows. Its foundation, 250 feet long and 25 feet wide, consisted of rough field stones laid without mortar. Although army doctors had removed most of the medical supplies when they abandoned the hospital in 1777, a game warden who dug here in the 1950s did find many medicine cups of white salt-glazed stoneware, together with glass medicine bottles, stoppers, and knife blades. Although we were not able to locate bunks, surgery, dining, or doctors' quarters, we too found a few sherds from medicine cups, part of a tin-glazed ointment jar, and a single knife blade. While we were disappointed that collectors had already removed much of the medical evidence from the hospital, we nevertheless did find hundreds of wine-bottle fragments inside the foundation, melted by the fire that destroyed the structure in November of 1777. We also found quantities of cow bones, along with more wine-bottle sherds, suggesting that the hospital served principally as a dining hall for officers and enlisted men during its brief period of use. We know from historical sources that women played a significant role as nurses in the Revolutionary War effort, and officers' orderly books from Mount Independence indicate that women lived at the encampment. Unfortunately, they are invisible in the archaeology.
The site's owners, the State of Vermont and the Fort Ticonderoga Association, are planning an unobtrusive visitors' center that will blend into the hillside at the foot of the Mount. Otherwise there are no plans to build replica structures for fear of detracting from the site's scenic beauty and because no one really knows what the fort's buildings would have looked like anyway. Given only low mounds and scattered fireplaces, it will be difficult for visitors to imagine how the site appeared 206 years ago when it was a bustling encampment. Perhaps creative computer simulations, dioramas, and interpretive exhibits will be effective substitutes.
Ongoing research will contribute to these exhibits by pinpointing the placement of buildings and activities across the Mount, demonstrating how the buildings were constructed and showing how the soldiers lived. We have learned details of the construction of a major military hospital, about different styles of cabins and houses, and of trash disposal methods. Our laboratory analysis is continuing, and we believe that the artifacts will provide insight into status and regional differences among soldiers who came from several northeastern colonies, and will perhaps reveal some of the ways in which they adjusted to life at this difficult northern outpost. Mapping needs to continue because literally hundreds of sites have yet to be identified. We have not verified the location of a star-shaped fort that sat atop Mount Independence, nor have we located any of the earlier regimental hospital's, which should produce more evidence of physical hardship than did the permanent hospital we excavated. The soldiers who camped atop Mount Independence left behind so few detailed journals that archaeology is now the best way to understand the hardships they faced during America's fight for independence.
David R. Starbuck directs the Mount Independence excavations for the Vermont Division for Historic Preservation and for Castleton State College. He is now also excavating one of the main camps of Rogers' Rangers, the near-legendary guerrilla force of the French and Indian War
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