What's you gonna do? Brother? When Jeff Townsend media runs wild on you America Stories? Alright, alright, alright, this is Jeff Townsend. You are get about to experience a new episode of America Stories. Like I said, I'm Jeff Townsend. Joining me are my friends Luke and Jack. It's been a few weeks since we recorded. Guys, how are you doing? You guys have had pneumonia, bird flu, smallpox, ahead, a slip disc and possibly COVID something. It was rough. Is it like a new COVID that like slips the disc in your back? Or yes, it's the extreme expversion that's what do they say? It's uh when it gets stronger and stronger, like it gets uh, what's the word mutate? It's mutated. It's mutated where it just takes out the disk in your back. That is dangerous. Anything that's terrible. Soone actually someone brought it back from Hawaii. Actually that was actually what happened. It sucks. Well, that'll be the slip disc COVID. Besides that, how are you guys doing? Are you guys excited to talk some America Stories to day? Oh? Yeah, we have the website up and going, so I don't think Jack's touched it just yet, but I have. I have looked at it. I have got on there. I just haven't updated the the episodes. Yeah, well, the episode's luckily updated on their own. We just have to get the show notes and all. That is all you're talking about we're talking about. Yeah, yeah, I'm gonna make some blogs and the posts. Yeah, it'll be cool take So hopefully we can do that for some mixture content. Some of the stuff we're talking about, we'll try to get up on the website. So if you were more interested, you can, I don't know, look into it in further detail, I guess, is what I'm saying. What do you guys have in mind for today? So we just got really into the beginning of the Revolutionary war, just really kicked off. There were some locks broke, there were some jaws broke, there were some fires started. I can't wait to hear what happens next. There were some locks fixed as well. That one lock, yep, that erased all of the terrible things that about the transpire yep. Some might argue. So, yeah, so when we left off, the war is officially begun. It's a shooting war now, No longer a war of words. It was at this point that the Continental Army realized that they are kind of outgunned, well tremendously out They needed more cannons, and they all kind of knew that there was a fort in Quebec that had a large number of cannons and the British had barely defended at this point. That was Fort Ticonderoga, and this would be like the first, like night, first military engagement since the war has started. They wanted to make this a quick and small excursion. They sent one man to go and raise a force, and that man, let's Ben Dick to Arnold. Oh, big Ben, Big Ben Dick Arnold, Yeah, hear more about him later. At this point he was given a hundred British pounds and a small amount of gunpowder and told to raise a force to go north and take Techonderoga. At the same time, Thomas Gage, the British military general in the area, knew that they needed us to secure Tychonderoga as well right after the Battle of Flexton and Concord, and so he sent a letter April nineteenth of seventeen seventy five. It would not arrive until over a month later, and by that point the fort will have fallen. Benny dick Arnold just going back to him real quick, Benny dick Arnold, he was really wanting to move up the renks, right, so he was probably pretty exciting. This is actually a pretty big point later on of him trying, trying and getting passed over over and over again for to get up in the ranks and society. So he when he made his way north, he found out that there was another party already planning to take the fort, and this was Ethan Allen and his militia called the Green Mountain Boys from Vermont. They were not part of the colonial war effort. Vermont actually wouldn't even sign the declaration independence later on, they declared independence on their own, separate from the other colonies later so what was in it for them? What did they want? Just the materials or just the materials? They also saw it as a way of starting their own independence, and they're wanting to break free from Britain as well. They weren't wanting to join necessarily with everyone else, but they didn't want to be under Britain's rule either, and so they actually become the Republic of Vermont in seventeen seventy seven, and it's a totally different country at this point, which is kind of interesting because you think that everyone on this you know, in this area would all be together, but it really wasn't. So he finds out that the Ethan Allen is up there, and he doesn't know exactly what he's going to do. So he rides so hard north to get there to try to you know, talk to Ethan Allen and the others. That his horse actually dies when it arrives. How do you think he heard that there was other people trying to do this too. He got passed around because Ethan Allen was kind of a braggart. He liked to talk what his plans were, and so you know, while he's making his way north, he had heard that it had come down south that you know, he was heading that way to take the fort. Paul Revere probably heard it told everybody. He probably did. There's another person who who had heard about it just from carrying correspondences around, and so I wager that that person and several others like him, we're probably passing the infiration around. The person I'm speaking of. Luke's gonna bring up here in a minute has got a quite the name. I'm excited. Actually I was. He was the regular, say war spy John Brown, not not the John Brown, just a John This is a little ahead of John Brown's time, right to be fair, Yeah, yeah, they were John Brown. But I'm glad that another one. I'm king hero for sure in his own way. I guess this John Brown actually was. However, later on in the war is the man who actually points out that Begarold's gonna betrayed the the cause their fates are intertwined from the beginning. Spoiler as fuar as I exposed that later, but now you know, okay, move on, there's a there's a bit of a grace period right on. After a certain period of time, you can give value with spoilers. But yeah, John Brown was one of the first people to tell everyone how many people were stationed there and how many guns were there, and so that was what made it appear to be uh something that the value at this point. They only detachment that was there was two officers and forty six men, and most of them were invalids. They that was what they called them. Their soldiers was limited duties. They had disability or illness and There was also twenty five women and children at the fort, so it was like like even the British knew the name was woefully unprepared and they needed to get warm in there, but it did. It took too long to get the word that there was even a war going on. Half they got most of the country didn't even know there was a war. At this point, Bennish Garold got up there and he finally met up with Ethan Allen. He spoke with him and he said, Hey, I'm supposed to be here on behalf of the you know, Virginia and Boston and all the rest of the colonies to take the fort. He knew that Ethan Allen wanted to just mostly wanted to take it, just to say that he could take it, yeah, And so he agreed to let him come along, but he was not Bennis Garold was not allowed to command a single one of the soldiers, and there were one or one hundred of the Green Mountain boys. Every time he tried to tell them what to do, they basically threatened to kill Bennish Arnold, so he had to just stay away for the rest of the soldiers, and he was real ambitious. Guys I'm sure that was kind of hard on him to Yeah. He actually he did talk out that at length in one of his biographies later. Yeah, I imagine that you were pretty upset about something. If you you read it, you'd write a whole book. It's like the old ways of like the old day's way of like just making like a comment on instead of tweeting whole Twitter or something. You're saying, you'd write a whole book or this guy take a long time, but you'll hear all about it. Yeah, And that's kind of how it was. Uh, and so he when he got there, though, Oh, Ethan Allen's Green Mountain guys, they should probably talk about them a little bit. It was essentially a private militia. It was ran entirely by his family, and so it was him, his brothers and cousins and all of them. They ran this militia however they saw fit technically with their own standing army. It wasn't a huge but they had total control over it, and the people under him were loyal to like a cult like degree. Didn't it help the fact that Ethan Allen was like six three or six four when the average height was five six trace Adkins height. Yeah, he was an absolute uh you know, massive man, and so everyone was like, you know, respect to them and saw him it's like this almost demigod. So they got there and they decided they were going to attack during the night. They also needed way more money than Arnold was given. Arlod's, like I said, was given one hundred British pounds. He ended up spending a thousand of his own money on top of that to finance everything. And he brings this up later, right like this is like the like a compound effective things that happened to him. Yes, yeah, there's one of his many grievances that he lists a series of letters to the American people. Was what they they're called after he had betrayed the cause. Anyway, he did have two captains underneath him. One of them, though this is not a joke, what their names was John Brown, the good name. Put that on T shirt. He had two John Browns and and one that's incredible. So so John Brown was a green boy or he was with a Benedict garm. He was one of Arnold's men, I mean men did that. He already had a couple of guys with him. The rest were all Ethan's man, and there was a hundred of them. Gang Green Boys. It's such a name that doesn't roll off the tongue. Green Mountain Boys. Yeah, where did that? Where do they they? There's a like green mountains around, Like is that a Vermont? I don't I don't get it. Yeah, yeah, the Vermont has the Green Mountains and they're just yeah gang green. Uh. In fact, the Green Mountain Boys militia flag is still the flag of the nationally, the state guard there and uh in in Vermont. So they decided to attack at night. They were having issues with the boats. They didn't have enough to get across, and so of the hundred, they had eighty guys to make it across that channel that they were sneaking across. When it got up there, there was one single guard awake and his gun misfired when he saw them. Because of that, no alarm was raised. He ran off immediately after misfiring that gun. It was screaming or anything or no, he just left. And because of that, they captured every single person in the fort while they were asleep. Not a single person on either side was killed. Truly an amazing event that thanks to that guys must get going off. Not a single person died. Alan decided that he wanted to take the glory of it, though, and he was the one that rushed up to capture the officer on duty there. He asked, so, well, who was it that he was supposed to surrender to? And this is actually a little bit of when no one's know for sure, because this is all from Ethan Allen's biography, which Ben and Charold did not back up in his biography. But he said was that they were to surrender to the name of the Great Jehovah and the Continental Congress. And then he claimed the guy came out with his pants off and surrendered with this a sword. Well, you can't skip overs, you can't skip over something like that. Let's he was asleep, so he was sleep with his pants you know. Was he wilding an actual order or is there some slang talk you're doing right now? No, it's yeah, I'm sabor, you know, he said, to be sure. So it was just optional. It was like any undergarments, honor. See, this is where there's this isn't like me joking around. There is some debate on what he was wearing because Bendi Charland said he was there, and he said he came out fully dressed and like his officers unifor him, but Ethan Ellen May it seemed like he had nothing on. He was disheveled, and ye know, scared the thing. Allan was known to be a little bit of stretching the truth a lot, and he kind of made himself look more intimidate. You know, he was a big guy. He always made himself look indestructible, and there was eyes and somebody being naked makes you look that much more powerful, right, like, yeah, because it was it was considered to be, like, what's the work for a cowardly thing to surrender naked? What if he was sleeping naked? You, I guess you're suspected. You're expected to put on your clothes before you surrender in the hold on a minute, damn pant, I want my pants? So uh. Afterwards, the Green Mountain Boys and everyone ransacked all the storehouses of the fort for liquor and food and began having a rowdy party. About that point, the rest of Ethan Allen's men showed up, including more that weren't with him originally, so a total of four hundred Green Mountain Boys were having a giant drunken revelry at the fort, and Ben Dgarald got really concerned that they were going to start destroying the guns and stuff, so he decided to catalog everything that was in the place, and he kept on getting shooting them away from the guns. One guy challenged him to a duel, but then didn't go through with it, and Ben Dgarald ended up kicking him and get him away from the guns and stuff. It was crazy. He sent a word to the Massachusetts Congress and asked for men to be set up to help him hold the place in case the Green Mountain Boys decided to take it for them in Vermont basically may so that him and Ethan Allen for the point kept on writing terribly about each other. How long were they there? Like to send for help? Had to take a little while, like calm ground was his party happening? Oh, it lasted a good few weeks, I believe, and did they had canceled for some of it. Tell me there's some expiracy there too. Huh, that's a long time there. So they just literally like set up shop there after they took over and partied for weeks. Yeah, And as at this point, that you know, Arnold was, you know, trying to keep everything and getting destroyed. He also took over the we was called the Enterprise, which was the largest ship in Lake Champlain that they had docked nearby, and he began retrofitting it to be his like personal command vessel for when he assumed he would be taking over the Green Mountain Boys. Eventually they dispersed and left when all the alcohol was gone. And that's literally why they they left when they ran out of boost. So Connecticut and the rest of the Continental Congress and everyone finally sent a thousand men up to Ticonderoga, and they were underneath a colonel named Benjamin Hinman, and he came with papers saying that he was the one to be in charge of the fort, not ben Nickcarnold's, and that he would be under him. Nobody had ever told Arnold that he wasn't going to be in charge. He was quite upset over this, and finally he just was like, all right, I resign, I'm going back home, and so he did. He left his command and Hindman took over. And he never got recompense for his u money in the effort to capture the fort, and he spent his own money. Yeah, yeah, thousand pounds and then that was quite the sum. Back then he was given a hundred just to do it. I mean, it's an outlandish amount to not be paid back and then to also have your command stripped away. Eventually, news that if Fort Tyke Controga fell reached England and Lord Dartmouth, who was like there, you know, chief, like military guy. He didn't have much to say. He just said it was very unfortunate, but the foe fell well, so he wasn't surprise, is what you're telling me. This is just starts a part of a long line of things that happened to Ben Iccarnold. This slowly change how he feels about everything. He gets screwed over pretty consistently. And when I was reading about this, the story, the story, and then help some other stuff I had read here recently about him, you don't really justify his actions later, but you understand why he made some choices he made later. And you know, had the war gone a different way, you know, he would be like a hero, right because he would have been the one that kept the United States under British crew rule. Yeah, that's what he wanted to Yeah, it's interesting, ye know about much like the start of the Revolutionary war itself, which was a series of avoidable acts that caused a war. This was a series of avoidable things that anyone at any point could have give him ben Cdonoald his due and he would have not eventually turned trader. Possibly we actually there are some more interesting things, but been in general, it will come up later that might also show some influences. It seems like he definitely, I mean, I know there was a lot of people that wanted to like gain social power for doing this seat I move up the total poll as one would say. He definitely seemed like that was the most That's how history writes him a lot of the times that was most most important to him, it was he was definitely very important. Yeah, he's not the only one, I'm sure, but right, Yeah, And I wanted to kind of talk about one thing, and we may have gone over. But when they first learned when they should attack the fort was because of some like recon efforts from Captain Phelps. And the way he got the information was to be to dress as a peddler to get access inside the fort, and he asked he said he was looking for a shade, and so they're like, so let's they just let him in. I mean forts for a kind of use for you know, in between in travel and things like that. Anyways, but once he got inside, he just kind of started asking questions and started looking around, and he gathered all the information just from being aside. I thought it was interesting that, you know, it's almost like as as to me from looking back, it's almost as as absurd as uh, you know, the the giant horse for Troy, you know, when they were like, you know, invading or whatever, or this one guy just wanted to shave. If your neighbor came by and wanted to come in, or like not of your neighbor. Okay, somebody didn't know was walk up to your neighborhood and they wanted to come in for a shave. What would your response be, don't say go away? Then I don't do that. There's a couple warrants. If all he's about Captain Phelps with kat brush Show or well Jack you know, imagined he got in there, he found out, you know, that they could take it. One of the has he actually saw was that their gunpowder was wet, and that was what led to that misfire that allowed her wanted to be captured. But Phelps was a member of a committee and this is one of those committees that is the most explicitly named committee I have ever heard, and it was Committee of War for the Expedition against Taykonderoga and Crown Point. Oh wow, pretty story. Uh So my question, I have a question what was next for the Green Again Green Green Mountain Boys after this? Well, mostly from there they just went back to Vermont and were holding in Vermont throughout their time. So there's no other like stories of them just randomly going out other places. No, not really, I mean, they just basically were defending Vermont from that point out. Ethan Ala was near retirement age at this point and so after that taking ty Condroga, that was like his last hurrah and he kind of wrote his books after that talking about how great he was at taking the fort. And that's also what he explicitly wrote out any contribution that Benny Diculated Arnold had on the siture. Yeah, they didn't really do much for the rest of the war. They actually were completely disbanded in the seventeen seventy nine, but they did come back during the War of eighteen twelve and the Civil War. They actually came back again during the Vietnam War and Afghanistan and Iraq War. Well there's basically just the Vermont National Guard now, but the name kept coming back and they keep being called the Green Mountain Boys. But yeah, from this point and then until War eighteen twelve, they actually don't see a whole lot more action. The Vermont Republic didn't see a whole combat overall, I'd imagine not It certainly had a reputation after this as well. I'm sure how did the founding fathers view how this whole situation played out, how it was handled. For the most part, it was kind of seen as just a means to an end, Like they knew they needed the guns, but it wasn't like the war didn't one hundred percent hinge on it. This was just like, well, we need these guns now, let's try and get them. When in terms of like we all what were they saying and in Congress no one was really talking about too much. It was just was just a military action taking place by a few people, and that's why he got so little money to go do it. In fact, it was just kind of like his snap decision, we need these guns, let's go try and get them. If Ethan Allen not been trying to make a name for himself to say, y'all talk big to people by taking this fort, that he might have actually not be able to take it at all because he didn't have time to raise an army. It kind of dislike goes to show you that it was free for all at this point in time with everything, Yeah, we have very much. Yeah, it's one of those things that really different about this war because how spread out everyone is, how slow communication is. Like I said, a lot of the country didn't realize there wasn't war at this point, so he was kind of different and people were just trying to catch up quick. What do you think, Jacket Dick Arnold, Well, I think I find more interesting about taking on the rogues. It's still like one of those places you could go to and take a look at, and yeah, it still exists. Clicks on the keyboard, are you like, oh pull fixtures like kind of like it's got like a star like pattern. It's near like this near the water's edge area. It's a really interesting looking place and I kind of want to go there. One of these days and just kind of look around and just see what see what was would have been the essentially the battle front of a place like that that luckily lucky, you're gonna wear paints and you die there, but you're gonna shave shade. I will shave there. But you mentioned how historically significant that would be to just to go there and just start shaving, because some guy got a shave there and started this comment, this guy, we need you know who this guy is. He's a hero, Captain Noah Phelps, because he was and you talked about this. They were doing a lot of the kind of spy work really kicked off around then. So that was his name, he said, Noah felt. Yeah, Captain Noah Phelps and then John Brown were the two spies that do a lot of the work around there. Yeah, and Captain the NFLPS was a part of that committee, the explicitly named committee explicitly the committee to get shaved at at check on. I think my favorite part of this was so well besides the John Brown's and that is how you kept saying at night, like what other like wouln't that be the best time to do it? Like can't really sneak up on the day, right, I mean yeah, yeah, it wasn't well, it was considered ungentible. I mean, okay, so it was really you don't Yeah, you don't attack during the night, that's what. So you have to be like sandwiches, tell them you're coming so they can, like you guys can light up and do all your all their combat. So this is more like American renegade warfare here. Yeah, this was. This was you know, breaking the lock and fixing it the next day kind of fighting. They fixed it all right, Oh this is super cool, though, I guess I didn't. I need to look up more on the Green Mountain Boys. These guys are intriguing to me. It's like a bunch of wholigans, like like a soccer team. Who they are that's basically where they're like soccer who against I like saying to agree it's growing on. Just a lot of T shirts and come out of these episodes. Yeah, it's like some Green Mountain Boys looking like soccer who agains getting drunk with no pants. I'm gonna assume there are just no pants allowed at this four at all, So there's no there's much debate of who actually wore pants. You know, it's weird that he was such a topic of contention, right that, well or not this guy st of a bitch sacrifice himself without pants? He surrendered. Yeah, I guess fire surrender. I got him that. You have two people who hated each other at this point talking about it, like, you know, one guy said, no, he was wearing pants. Wasn't he wasn't pants less. It's just funny that this was something that they would argue about. Came out waging waving the white flag, and he wasn't waving out with his hands. No. All jokes aside, this really does show the pattern of like how like more modern warfare was becoming. I guess some of the spy work, some of like the nighttime sneaking across on the ships, on the boats. Excuse me, the spy works a big thing. That seemed like George Washington, a lot of those guys are really big into putting in a lot of prep work and doing a lot of research where they just went out and because like the Civil War, we really just like pushed through Uliss Grant a lot of the times there at the end, and there was a lot of ups and downs at a lot of deaths. Sometimes it worked out, sometimes it didn't. But we kind of we kind of wanted numbers, but here we didn't have numbers, so we had to really be creative on our approach. And also it's interesting too, like this is early war, so you know, this is the very beginning and they're already are traveling all the way across country to fight a different apart. You know, they went from Boston area way up to Quebec, Canada to take this fort. And it's a really kind of interesting of like how this is already a pretty big space or fighting over, but it's the first two weeks of the war. Yeah, more to come, for sure, you guys have anything else to contribute to this, I mean, if not, we'll wrap it up. But this is another interesting conversation on what it becomes greater and greater. The majority of the story of Fort Ta Conderoga from there, they just held it almost indefinitely the entire war. I don't believe there was ever a point where the British I ever tried to take it back. Probably there was no alcohol left that didn't help, Yeah, but so don't I don't know. It makes you wonder how valuable this place really was. It kind of seemed like the British weren't that worried about it, just like, yeah, well, even know, we should get somebody there. Well I'm not surprised. Yeah, the letter arrived nine days after they took it. Yeah. I was just gonna say that it was like a in between like a supply type of fort where they would drop off and move around. So it was kind of like not super important. But at the same time, you can see how that like the supply chain kind of blocking the supply line and stuff. Right, they lost one of the forks. That's slow some things down. I think, as we mentioned, the main thing was and to get voked. So these the Benny Dick Enterprise, so it was kind of like the enterprise those. It was kind of like just like a nice tactic to get some extra extra slies. But yeah, it's a whole fort, you know, so there's there's some benefits of that as well. But even though it was kind of an older fort. But yeah, that's kind of how these things tend to start, is the kind of ramps up one thing. I'm sure this has been another cool America story. I'm excited about moving the needle further down the story here, what do you guys think this wars? This war is really good going here? You said it's like a couple of weeks in, so man, we got a lot more to go. The makes just to hear more of the spy John getting into action. We're definitely going to get a John Brown T shirt at Jeff t Shirts dot com. I'll work on that as we get off. I don't think at this point in time there's anything. We're all just making a T shirt, says John Brown. I think after the stories we've shared three different individuals, I think it's needed. Yeah. Absolutely. Now this has been America Stories, and we really hope you're enjoying these short stories. We're trying to keep a lighthearted yet educational and fun and really just hanging out, kind of doing it the way we'd want to listen to. Honestly, this is kind of our sense of humor and our spin on things, but yet it's educational experience. Go to America's Stories dot was it dot com? Do we get America America Stories dot com is out? It was Jack America's Stories dot us. That's what it was, America Stories. That's a help in the main pickup that I got there. Every episode is there. It also has links to the podcast and all the podcast players. We are on YouTube on Jeff Toowns and Media. We don't have the video forma up there, but the audios on there. So if you want to check it out, on you to leave us with something inspirational before I send us out here with my Indian phrase, with John Brown's guidance, you can do anything that's right. You heard of it, John Brown's guidance. You could do anything with or without pants. Until next time. I'm Jeff Pounce with her, Luke and Jack. Keep being you and keep being great. Got the kind of face everybody knows. Run around the fluent school going to your dam and you like you did you do? It's wrong? People got a bank bull, the dangers side inside to the best of us. Take you what they all like you said. Some of us do the best weekend. Some of us do Jeff Townsend Media, Seegia good night. And the question is do I stay here? Will you be back? Are you gonna come back? Will you be back? Are you coming back
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