The Revolutionary leaders never intended to create an original and peculiar indigenous culture. Despite all their talk of American exceptionalism and American virtue in contrast with European corruption, they were seeking not to cut themselves off from Europe’s cultural heritage but to embrace it and in fact to fulfill it. It is a mistake to view America’s post-Revolutionary emulation of Europe as a legacy of helpless dependence passed on from colonial days. Americans imitated European styles and forms not because in their naïveté they could nothing else but because they wanted to.... Their revolution was very much an international affair, an attempt to fulfill the cosmopolitan dreams of the Enlightenment.
Allen, Ethan
Ticonderoga, NY — Built by the French 1755—59 as Fort Carillon, it was taken by the British in 1759 and renamed. During the war the fort went from British to American to British and to American again. Reconstruction began in 1908.
Empire of Liberty: A History of the Early Republic, 1789–1815 (2009)