The Humdrum Side of War: Researching the Patriot Camp at Fort Ticonderoga’s Liberty Hill

Most of a soldier’s war is not battle. At Fort Ticonderoga in New York, Patriot troops spent more than two years on the everyday business of an army — guard duty, gathering supplies, drilling. A 2023 Preservation Planning Grant of $147,151 from the National Park Service’s American Battlefield Protection Program to the Fort Ticonderoga Association supports research into that camp life.

A 1777 map of Fort Ticonderoga’s defenses. Library of Congress.

Why Ticonderoga mattered

A month after the Battles of Lexington and Concord, the Revolution spread beyond Massachusetts as Patriot forces moved to seize British assets across the colonies. Fort Ticonderoga was a prime target: it held a large stockpile of gunpowder and artillery the ill-supplied Americans badly needed, and it sat between Lake Champlain and the Hudson River Valley, one of the best places to block a British attack from Canada.

The Americans took the fort from the British almost without bloodshed on May 10, 1775. They strengthened its defenses and set up a large militia camp on Liberty Hill, an open hilltop halfway between the fort and its outer entrenchments.

Waiting for an attack that never came

The British never attacked Fort Ticonderoga directly. American readiness and numbers persuaded British generals that an assault would cost too much, and in October 1776 an army under Major General Guy Carleton turned back.

So for more than two years, the men on Liberty Hill lived the monotonous side of soldiering: guard duty, supply gathering and drill on the parade ground.

Training that paid off

That discipline mattered when the fort had to be evacuated during the pivotal Saratoga Campaign of 1777. In a fighting withdrawal that summer, troops from Liberty Hill slowed a second British invasion at Hubbardton, Skenesboro and Fort Anne — engagements that wore down the Crown’s forces before the decisive American victory on Bemis Heights, south of Saratoga, that October.

What the grant will do

The grant funds historical and archeological research on the Revolutionary War camp at Liberty Hill, to build a fuller picture of the daily life of the militia stationed there, and will help guide a future heritage trail at the site.

Preservation Planning Grants are the American Battlefield Protection Program’s broadest grants, supporting the stewardship of battlefields and other sites of armed conflict on American soil. The program also offers land acquisition, restoration and interpretation grants, encouraging communities, states and Tribes to care for these places.

Sources

Based on "The Humdrum Side of War: Investigating Camp Life during the American Revolution," American Battlefield Protection Program, National Park Service; a work of the United States government in the public domain.