Fort Ticonderoga has seen its most successful season ever as it depicts the history of the American Revolution with its multi-year Real Time Revolution project. CEO Beth Hill has said, “No other historic site in America is telling the [story of the] Revolution this way, on the very ground where it unfolded, in sequence and in real time.”
Fort Ticonderoga Curator Matthew Keagle tells North Country Bureau Chief Pat Bradley that their Real Time Revolution is the culmination of work they have been pioneering over the past decade.
Matthew Keagle: We have taken the idea that each year that we are open to the general public through our campaign season, we focus on a different year of Fort Ticonderoga's story. Fort Ticonderoga is so unique as an historic site in this country, as a battlefield, as an historic structure, as a landscape. It wasn't the site of a battle that maybe unfolded over a few hours or a few days, but represents almost two-and-a-half decades of constant military occupation by both European and North American military powers. 1774 through 1777, different armies rotate through, different forces rotate through, even soldiers from different states and regions and parts of the world come through. And those are all different stories that we have the opportunity to tell.
Bradley: Well, Matt Keagle, during the Real Time Revolution, over the years that you're presenting this, you also are doing what are called signature events and there's one coming up this weekend: “Hold the Line for Liberty” which portrays how soldiers turned back British troops in October 1776. Can you explain what happened then and why it's still significant?
Matthew Keagle: All of the history is significant and it unfolds across years. But there are moments that stick out including this moment in late October of 1776. This is the culmination of the Battle of Valcour Island on October 11th. The Battle of Valcour Island, as significant as it is, it is not the end of the campaign. And the next move is against Ticonderoga. They have to drive through the Continental Army's post at Ticonderoga and you have close to 13,000 men spread between Ticonderoga, Mount Independence on either side of Lake Champlain. So it's an enormous concentration of soldiers who are there to block the British.
So our event, Hold the Line for Liberty, is portraying the final days of this campaign and historically, on October 28 of 1776, that is the day that the British send their scout boats southwards to test the American lines at Ticonderoga and that's what we're going to be portraying over the course of this weekend.
Visitors who come to the site can witness the alarms all across the American camp as their guard boats come pelting back to Ticonderoga with news of the British advancing with 20 gunboats and a predetermined series of cannons go off across the entire complex to bring the soldiers up to their alarm post, where they are ready and waiting for the British. And what the British find ultimately, and what you know visitors will experience, is that this wasn't the demoralized, defeated, diseased army that the British had kind of swept out of Canada. This is over 10,000 American soldiers dug in in one of the strongest positions in North America, bristling with artillery, waiting for them.
And if you attend this event, you'll see a combination of generals on horseback, soldiers moving on foot, cannon being wheeled into place in their batteries and ships on the lake. And visitors are moved across this landscape to understand that a soldier isn't just in one position. They're often moving around. You're responding to events. And that's exactly what happened in 1776. As the British look like they're going to land on the New York side of the lake at Three Mile Point, they shift regiments from Mount Independence to Ticonderoga to fill and strengthen the lines to prevent what they think might be the final attack on these posts. We want to bring them into the moment, to the drama of these events.
Bradley: Matthew Keagle, this is not going to be the last Real Time event this year. You have another significant event in December. What happened during the Winter Quarters and the Christmas Day Riot back then?
Matthew Keagle: Yes, you're absolutely right. This is not the last Real Time Revolution event. Not only this year, but of course, going into 2027, 1777. And on December 19th, our event Riot is focusing on a story that is still not as well known, perhaps, as it should be. In part because it flies against some of our traditional narratives of the revolution, which is one of Americans coming together to fight the British, and not the fact that within the American forces there was a lot of disagreement. And that disagreement at Ticonderoga, in particular between Pennsylvanians and Massachusetts troops, broke out into physical violence: swords, fists, gunshots between men from different colonies. On Christmas Day of 1776, a host of factors had kind of come to a head on that day that saw a Pennsylvania officer stalk out of his camp on the express mission of assaulting a fellow officer from Massachusetts because of perceived differences in culture and how they conducted themselves. And it reminds us that the Revolution was not only fought with the British but was also this ongoing challenge of wrestling with the complexities in colonial America.
Bradley: Matthew Keagle, the 250th anniversary of the US, a lot of people felt, oh, it's over. Independence Day is done. Has interest from the general public about Fort Ticonderoga and the Revolutionary War history there waned at all?
Matthew Keagle: I don't think so. At least not for us. In part because our story continues. The Revolutionary War did not end on July 5, 1776. In fact, if anything, it intensifies. It drags on for years. You know, the war isn't officially over until 1783. And so it is a much bigger conflict than I think we ought to remember. We are here to tell that story and I think we have seen people continuing to follow this story. And this story continues as we head into the fall and winter of 1776 and then into 1777. And 1777 too is one of the most dramatic and intense years of the Revolution that we get to tell the story of.
That was Matthew Keagle talking with Pat Bradley about Real Time Revolution events at Fort Ticonderoga including this weekend’s Hold the Line for Liberty.
