Competing Motives, Competing Stories: The Capture of Ticonderoga According to James Easton

Posted on July 1, 2025

Competing Motives, Competing Stories: The Capture of Ticonderoga According to James Easton

After the capture of Fort Ticonderoga, accounts of the event by members of the expedition began to spread, first to the Massachusetts and Connecticut governments and then throughout the Atlantic world. Each story differed as tellers with their own political and personal motives misremembered details, exaggerated their deeds, or omitted the actions of their rivals.

An Edinburgh Evening Courant issue published 250 years ago today—July 1, 1775—contained an article on the capture of Ticonderoga. The article, originally published on May 18 in the New England Chronicle, was based on a report by a participant in the capture, Colonel James Easton. Easton “arrived at the Provincial Congress in Watertown” on May 17. He brought the Congress a letter from Captain Edward Mott, the first news of the capture to reach them, but also told his own version of the story.

Easton’s account of American interactions with Ticonderoga’s British officers diverges significantly from others. According to Easton, the job of demanding the garrison’s surrender fell not to co-commanders Ethan Allen or Benedict Arnold, but to Easton himself. “The commanding officer soon came forth; Col. Easton clapped him upon the shoulder, told him he was his prisoner, and demanded, IN THE NAME OF AMERICA, an instant surrender of the fort…to the American forces”.

Easton’s fabrication likely sprang from his feud with Arnold, whom he had declared “an announced intention to injure” before leaving Ticonderoga. He was not the only member of the expedition looking to write his rivals out of history. Allen’s descriptions of the event vary widely across his letters, with some mentioning Arnold entering the fort side by side with him and some omitting Arnold entirely. Easton’s efforts were not as successful as Allen’s in the long run, but during his first days in Watertown, he spread his story to the Congress and beyond. Scottish readers opening their newspapers on the evening of July 1, and anyone they shared the news with, heard Easton’s first draft of history.

Learn more about the Courant issue (MS.7007) on the Ticonderoga Online Collections database here.