happy? - Aug 30 (1st US pitched battle)

Subject: happy? - Aug 30 (1st US pitched battle)
From: GUEST
Date: 30 Aug 05 - 09:25 AM

August 30, 1775: - The 1st US actual pitched-battle victory- Ben Arnold with Ethan Allen & The Green Mountain (Vermont) Boys beat up on the Other Guys. (No bar bets on this one. I can't quite figger out where the battle was. It isn't Fort Ticonderoga, which was the 1st US victory at all on 5/10/1775. Lex/Concord had been 4/19/1775.) Anyway, I haven't found a song directly about it yet but it seems the Brits were still smarting about it nearly 40 years later & had the notion in 1814 that they'd make up for the loss...   There's a song about that deal.

                  We've as choice a British army as ever crossed the seas,
                  We'll burn both town and city, and with smoke becloud the skies,
                  We'll subdue the old green mountain boys, their Washington is gone,
                  And we'll play them Yankee Doodle, as the Yankees did Burgoyne.
  
                          "Noble Lads Of Canada," The Forget Me Not Songster, 1835 edition.

Copyright © 2005, Abby Sale - all rights reserved
What are Happy's all about? See Clicky

Subject: RE: happy? - Aug 30 (1st US pitched battle)
From: Q (Frank Staplin)
Date: 30 Aug 05 - 10:52 PM

From the Quibble and Harrumpf Encyclopedia and all that-

Until the Declaration of Independence was signed at the second 'Continental Congress', July 4, 1776, no battles could be said to have been won or lost by the 'united colonies' let alone by the United States. The Continental Congresses of 1875-1776 were the legislature of the thirteen colonies, not the United States.

A bunch of insurgents AKA Green Mountain Boys from Vermont took Fort Ticonderoga.
The battle at Saratoga in 1777 the first official U. S. victory?

Something I was never told in grade school- The city-state of Dubrovnik was the first country to recognize the United States!

Subject: RE: happy? - Aug 30 (1st US pitched battle)
From: Le Scaramouche
Date: 31 Aug 05 - 04:50 AM

Which, incidentally, was one of the pirate centres of Southern Europe and the Eastern Medditeranean.

Subject: RE: happy? - Aug 30 (1st US pitched battle)
From: Abby Sale
Date: 31 Aug 05 - 09:21 AM

No, the happy? reference is to the first pitched battle victory. The first victory, per se, was Ticonderoga. But it was largely the same cast of characters.

Subject: RE: happy? - Aug 30 (1st US pitched battle)
From: GUEST,Lighter
Date: 31 Aug 05 - 09:45 AM

Interesting about Dubrovnik (alias the Republic of Ragusa). It also abolished the slave trade - in 1418 !

Subject: RE: happy? - Aug 30 (1st US pitched battle)
From: curmudgeon
Date: 31 Aug 05 - 09:54 AM

The first battle in the War of Independence was fought on 14 December, 1774 when a band (mob) of colonists stormed Fort William and Mary in New Castle NH.

"The opinion of Rev. Alonzo H. Quint, D.D., in regard to the capture of Fort William and Mary, is often well quoted in the words:

"The daring character of this assault cannot be overestimated. It was an organized investment of a royal fortress, where the king's flag was flying, and where the king's garrison met them with muskets and artillery. It was four months before Lexington, and Lexington was resistance to attack, while this was a deliberate assault. When the king heard of this capture it so embittered him that all hope of concessions was at an end. It made war inevitablele.

Subject: RE: happy? - Aug 30 (1st US pitched battle)
From: Le Scaramouche
Date: 31 Aug 05 - 03:51 PM

Though Dubrovnik and Ragusa continued to hold a slave market, well into the 1800s.