Ethan Allen

Ethan Allen took Fort Ticonderoga before dawn on May 10, 1775, with the Green Mountain Boys and Benedict Arnold beside him. The garrison was small. The guns were not. Those cannon later traveled to Boston and helped push the British out of the city.

Allen was a Connecticut-born land speculator who had already fought New York's claims in the New Hampshire Grants. The Revolution gave his local war a larger flag. He was captured that September on a rash attempt at Montreal, shipped to England as a prisoner, and returned in 1778 in an exchange. He wrote a narrative of the captivity that sold because it was angry and readable.

Vermont, which was not yet a state, remained his real country. He spent the later war years arguing borders and authority more than he spent them in Washington's camps. That does not cancel Ticonderoga. The first American offensive success of the war had his name on it.

He died in Burlington on February 12, 1789. The Green Mountains kept the story of a loud, useful, imperfect patriot who knew a lock could be talked open if you arrived with enough men in the dark.