With the annual candlelight ceremony commemorating the Battle of Fort Griswold scheduled for 6 p.m. Sunday, Sept. 3, it seems a most appropriate time to contemplate the tragic event.

The 1781 battle was, of course, a complete and utter failure, resulting in the deaths of 88 men and boys in Fort Griswold. Yet, human nature often yearns to find meaning in such tragedy, or at least the comfort of a shred of solace.

Colonel William Ledyard and his small garrison of rustic militia were completely outnumbered and far inferior in fighting skills to British regulars, yet they somehow held an incredible hope that they might succeed in their defense of Groton.

Even in the face of doom, Ledyard and his officers were adamant, refusing two offers to surrender, praying against all odds that enough reinforcements would arrive in time to level the playing field, which failed to happen.

Perhaps the best attempt to find a glimmer of comprehension in the disaster lies in the Rev. Edward Woolsey Bacon’s sermon in the First Church of Christ in New London at the 100th anniversary of the battle on Sept. 4, 1881. Bacon considered the battle a “faithful failure.”

He turned to Hebrews in the Bible for consolation:

“These all died in faith, not having received the promises, but having seen them and greeted them from afar, and having confessed that they were strangers and pilgrims on the earth. For they that say such things make it manifest that they are seeking after a country of their own.”

The promise the defenders of Fort Griswold sought to receive was freedom, in a new country of their own.

Bacon calls Hebrews “a very galaxy of heroes” to which he suggests the defenders of Fort Griswold belong. He considers them heroes “because they consented to failure when duty called them to it.”

These ordinary farmers, merchants, and artisans were God-fearing men who held their faith in the face of certain doom, finding an extraordinary capacity for heroism against frightening odds.

Bacon preaches that “The lesson most likely to move us, after all, lies in the pathos and exquisiteness of their heroism.”

They were relatively young, yet “They knew, as they went up the steep hill and shut their gate behind them, that they were a forlorn hope; that there should not be many left of a fighting age after they had fallen.”

Perhaps key to finding some meaning in the tragedy, Bacon suggested that “Here Connecticut suffered so that Virginia might rejoice. The heroes of Groton Heights were incidental and necessary to the glories of Yorktown.”

All the colonies “were one in suffering,” and the defenders sacrificed their lives so that “the happy homes of Virginia and the South might at last be delivered from invasion that had so long molested them.”

Bacon continues: “The most divine attainment of our human nature is reached when men become willing to fail, although they are faithful, and would rather be faithful in failure than excuse themselves from failure by the least suspicion of unfaithfulness.”

As the massacre in Groton was underway, the American and French armies were heading to Yorktown, Virginia, and victory.

But they were aware of the tragedy. According to the New England Historical Society and others, when the allies stormed the British redoubts at Yorktown weeks after the Groton massacre, the Marquis de Lafayette inspired his troops with shouts of “Remember Fort Griswold!”

American history books often ignore the misery and blood shed on Fort Griswold, but perhaps our shred of solace lies in the possibility that the defenders did, indeed, die for Virginia, and the American freedom won at Yorktown.

John Steward is a member of the Friends of Fort Griswold and lives in Waterford. He can be reached at tossinglines@gmail.com.