“ A blanket of inconsistencies …”: The Battle of Ticonderoga, 2008

Abstract

“A blanket of inconsistencies…”The Battle of Ticonderoga, 2008 Ian Macpherson McCulloch (bio) The circumstances of this British defeat are shrouded in a blanket of inconsistencies, omissions and differing versions of events. R. F. Kingsley & H. J. Alexander, “The Failure of Abercromby’s Attack on Fort Carillon, July 1758, and the Scapegoating of Matthew Clerk,” Journal of Military History, January 2008. This epigram, selected from the recent offering by Messrs Alexander and Kingsley in the January 2008 JMH, aptly sums up the contribution their article has made to the historiography of this watershed battle of the Seven Years War fought at the junction of the southern end of Lake Champlain and the northern egress of Lake George. In this, the 250th Anniversary of the battle of Ticonderoga, 1758, my real concern stems from their enthusiastic belief (and lack of professional courtesy) that they are presenting original ideas and information to the JMH readership, which is clearly not the case, and, as I will conclusively demonstrate, a matter of public record. I submit that the current scholarship and consensus regarding Matthew Clerk’s whereabouts and activities leading up to and on the day of battle are primarily [End Page 889] the hard detective work and extensive scholarship of Nicholas Westbrook, the Executive Director of the Fort Ticonderoga Museum, and myself, conducted jointly from 1995 to 2000 utilizing thorough ground reconnaissances based on contemporary maps (of which more later), as well as extensive complementary research in the National Archives of Canada, the Scottish National Archives and Fort Ticonderoga’s Thompson-Pell Research Centre. The theories and ideas of Nick Westbrook (who’s far too polite to bring all this up) on Clerk’s role at Fort Ticonderoga are clearly enunciated in his Fort Ticonderoga Bulletin article, “Like Roaring Lions,” Vol. XVI, no. 1 (1998) - an article, I strongly submit, that is clearly more than just “a useful collection of documents” as stated in the subject JMH article. It also happens to be a masterly and definitive analysis of all available primary source evidence related to the battle, including Matthew Clerk’s scapegoating. I might also point out that Messrs Alexander’s and Kingsley’s claim in their Introduction that Matthew Clerk’s letters appear for the “first time” in their JMH article is patently false as one of the two letters to his mother was printed for the first time in Nick Westbrook’s 1998 article (also with the permission of Sir John Clerk of Penicuik). In addition, Messrs Alexander’s and Kingsley’s heavy reliance on the scholarship of Mr John Cardwell, whose abbreviated 1990 M.A. thesis appeared as the 1992 article “Mismanagement: The 1758 Expedition Against Carillon” in The Bulletin of The Fort Ticonderoga Museum, Vol. 15, No. 4, is most disturbing. Here again, I might point out that this article by Cardwell owes much to the judicious and deft editing by the Bulletin’s sagacious editor, Nicholas Westbrook. The discussion of Clerk’s “scapegoating” and the minimalization of his efforts at Carillon has been ongoing since 1990 and, again, is a matter of public record. For the information of the readership, I personally presented the collective research findings of Nick Westbrook and myself on Clerk and Abercromby’s whereabouts on the day of battle at Wilfred Laurier University’s annual Military History Colloquium held in Kitchener/Waterloo, Ontario, Canada in Spring 1999, as well as at the 6th Annual Seven Years War College held at Fort Ticonderoga the same month.1 In 1999, after attending the latter conference, Seven Years War author and College presenter Timothy J. Todish wrote a two part article for the MUZZLELOADER, the pre-eminent magazine in North America for re-enactors and [End Page 890] black-powder enthusiasts (a publication with which I’m sure Mr Alexander, a self-professed re-enactor, is well-acquainted) in which he stated: Nicholas Westbrook and Lt. Col Ian McCulloch have recently discovered some exciting new information about the Abercromby expedition.… With their kind permission, much of this new information has been included in a last minute update of this article. The two most significant revisions are: 1. Abercromby did not remain back at his headquarters at...