Washington takes command
On July 3, 1775, Washington assumed command of the American forces at Cambridge. Not only did he have to contain the British in Boston, but he also had to recruit a Continental army. During the winter of 1775–76 recruitment lagged so badly that fresh drafts of militia were called up to help maintain the siege.
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The balance shifted in late winter, when Gen. Henry Knox arrived with artillery from Fort Ticonderoga in New York. The British fort, which occupied a strategic point between Lake George and Lake Champlain, had been surprised and taken on May 10, 1775, by the Green Mountain Boys, a Vermont militia group under the command of Col. Ethan Allen. The cannons from Ticonderoga were mounted on Dorchester Heights, above Boston. The guns forced Howe, who had replaced Gage in command in October 1775, to evacuate the city on March 17, 1776. Howe then repaired to Halifax to prepare for an invasion of New York, and Washington moved units southward for its defense.
Meanwhile, action flared in the North. In the fall of 1775 the Americans invaded Canada. One force under Gen. Richard Montgomery captured Montreal on November 13. Another under Benedict Arnold made a remarkable march through the Maine wilderness to Quebec. Unable to take the city, Arnold was joined by Montgomery, many of whose troops had gone home because their enlistments had expired. An attack on the city on the last day of the year failed, Montgomery was killed, and many troops were captured. The Americans maintained a siege of the city but withdrew with the arrival of British reinforcements in the spring.
Pursued by the British and decimated by smallpox, the Americans fell back to Ticonderoga. British Gen. Guy Carleton’s hopes of moving quickly down Lake Champlain, however, were frustrated by Arnold’s construction of a fighting fleet. Forced to build one of his own, Carleton destroyed most of the American fleet in October 1776 but considered the season too advanced to bring Ticonderoga under siege.
As the Americans suffered defeat in Canada, so did the British in the South. North Carolina patriots trounced a body of loyalists at Moore’s Creek Bridge on February 27, 1776. Charleston, South Carolina, was successfully defended against a British assault by sea in June.