Geography? Did We Go To School Together?

Years and years ago, I toured Maine with a friend. Up around East Port—right across a narrow waterway from Canada, we stopped to sit next to some rocks and admire the coastal view. As we sat, high in the sky above us two vapor trails appeared.
“Why are those planes up there?” asked my friend. I looked up and watched the planes paralleling the American border.
“Because that’s the frontier,” I answered. “Just beyond us is a foreign nation. They are patrolling our boundary.”
She seemed startled. “Oh. I never thought of that.” She like most civilian Americans had never thought of us as having a border—that there was a place somewhere out there that wasn’t American territory.
She was smart—an I.Q. equal to Einstein’s. Her dad had fought in Europe during WWII. He had returned home eventually to head a major government bureau in Washington. After his death, her mom had even briefly dated a former CIA assassin.
So she knew her way around in many spheres. But she had never had to think geographically about this country. We’ve all heard the very funny stories about people from New Mexico applying to Harvard and being informed that, since they lived in a foreign country, they would need a different application. Or more tragic stories—like that of the American campaign in Italy.
The British wanted to land north of Monte Cassino. They knew Italian geography. Americans (FDR, Marshall, Eisenhower) did not. Monte Cassino dominated the one pass that led north to Rome—but the American high command wanted closer air support from Sicily.
So we landed way south of the pass. The Germans were prepared to retreat all the way to the Alps if we had landed north of Cassino. When we hit south, the amazed and pleased Germans dug in and it took us a full year to fight our way to the Alps.
That was a case where a lot of Americans died because we didn’t know the importance of geography in war. (It was this same pass that allowed Pompey to get behind Spartacus and destroy him two thousand years before.) We haven’t had to.
The last people who had to think strategically about American geography were our generals in the Civil War back in the 1860s. They had to understand the importance of the Mississippi, New Orleans, Atlanta and the Atlantic seaports. Most of us haven’t had to think of it since.
We are so big, so powerful and have so few natural enemies on this continent, that it is doubtful there is a single school child who could explain the military importance of places like Guantanamo, San Diego, Seattle, the Hudson River or Vicksburg.
(We identified Guantanamo [and Cuba] almost immediately after our purchase of Louisiana in 1803 as crucial to the defense of our east coast/gulf coast shipping. The British tried to get us to agree not to take Cuba unilaterally; we countered with the Monroe Doctrine which said we’d grab Cuba whenever we could. And Texas, too.
We identified San Diego and Seattle [as well as San Francisco] in 1790 as essential to our dream of controlling the Pacific. The Hudson River cuts our east coast in half. Vicksburg, like the Bohemian Basin (or Sudetenland] in Europe dominates the middle of our continent.)
I couldn’t help but think of my friend of long ago when I took my trip this summer. We started at Albany and then we went north, following an ancient water highway over which French and then British forces from Canada have invaded us time and time again—and over which we have invaded Canada at least twice.
Today there’s a super highway (87) that rushes you from Albany to Montreal. I suspect Amherst, Montgomery, Montcalm, Arnold and Burgoyne would have given an arm or a leg to have such a road in their time.
In those days you went by water. You started from Canada on the Richelieu River and sailed or paddled south into 110 mile long Lake Champlain, cutting like a knife between Vermont and upper New York. Control the lake and you have a lot to say about what happens in both states. Besides that, you are in a position to cut off anyone trying to reach Lake Ontario.
About fifteen miles from the south end of the lake, you pass the once significant Fort St. Frederic at Crown Point. It changed hands several times between the colonies and the British during the Revolutionary War. When you come to the end of Champlain, you have a stretch of land and water between it and 32 mile long Lake George. Here you portage a bit.
Between the lakes, on the north end of Lake George, you encounter the massive fortification of Ticonderoga. (The cannon there today are not the originals. Those were hauled by sled to Boston where they drove out the British in 1776 and ended the Revolutionary War in New England.)
The next few miles south are bloody ground. Here the French and British—and their Indian allies—fought four major wars between 1689 and 1760. Back and forth, push and shove. Battle and massacre. It went on until 1759 when Jeffrey Amherst pushed up Lake Champlain to assist Wolfe in his successful attack on Quebec.
Then it became the turn of the Americans and British to go back and forth up the chain of lakes. Richard Montgomery marched up the lakes, using Ticonderoga (which Ethan Allen had captured the previous spring) as his base, and captured Montreal in fall of 1775.
Back and forth, push and shove. Burgoyne came down the water highway two years later, only to surrender to Gates and Benedict Arnold at Saratoga. He had gotten through half of the sixty miles between the bottom of Lake George and Albany.
Had he reached Albany, he would have effectively been able to cut New England (the most pro-war part of the colonies) off from the rest of the colonies. It would have been catastrophic—a strategic disaster.
In the War of 1812, again the British and Americans went up and down this vital water highway shooting at each other. Both sides built fleets on Lake Champlain. We won—thereby maintaining our claim to border the Great Lakes.
Today, the water highway is tourist country. Full of vacationers, campers, hikers and trucks hauling merchandise between Canada and the US. I doubt that any of the drivers ever reflect that they are on a highway that controls the destiny of the entire east coast of their nation. Of both nations.
We don’t have to. Now, there is a true blessing.
But it wouldn’t hurt to learn about it.