USA > Connecticut > Connecticut as a colony and as a state; or, One of the original thirteen, Volume II > Part 10
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From an etching by H. B. Hall.
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Americans are enabled to send Washington the 3,000 men with which he fights the battles of Trenton and Princeton.
Meantime an adhesive-fingered subordinate of Allen's re- venges himself for Arnold's hindering his promotion as a looter of baggage, by bringing countercharges of malfeas- ance against him, which are thrown out by the Board of War. Then Congress, on the same principle which to-day operates in dividing patronage, appoints five new major-generals all of whom together are not worth Arnold's little finger, and pass over him, the senior brigadier, because Connecticut has her share of major-generals already. Arnold behaves with excellent temper; asks only to be made ranking officer as before, offers for the present to serve under his juniors, and in Tryon's invasion of Connecticut does such deeds that Con- gress for shame makes him major-general, but still refuses to restore his rank. Meantime his business is going to ruin; he has used and pledged his own means without stint, in Canada and since, to keep the expeditions from entire col- lapse for lack of supplies which could not be got from Con- gress, and asks to have the latter settle his claims; Congress is suspicious and hangs off, Arnold goes to Philadelphia to urge action and restoration of his rank, and finally in despair and disgust asks permission to resign. Just then Burgoyne's invasion looms up; Washington needs Arnold above all other men, and urges Congress to send him against Burgoyne. Arnold forgets resentment at once, hastens north, and by stratagem first and heroism afterwards saves the indepen- dence of the country. St. Leger's supporting expedition is scattered in panic by a decoy, and butchered by its Indian allies; then he defeats Burgoyne's flank movement at Free- man's Farm; and in the final battle on the Hudson called "Saratoga," takes command without official position and
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crushes Burgoyne's army, his leg again shattered in the fight. This victory secures for the United States the alliance of France, and by consequence the surrender of Cornwallis. Finally in 1778 Congress restores to the country's savior his military rank.
Then he is given command at Philadelphia, and marries a girl of loyalist family. Thrown into this society, its argu- ments gradually become irresistible even on patriotic grounds. The cause is so nearly lost that even Washington despairs ; the proposals of the English government are so alluring and guaranteed that many excellent patriots think it simply wicked to prolong this bloodshed and wretchedness, when all that the war has been fought for is to be had without it. Con- gress is so imbecile and factious that many think the coun- try's future under independence promises worse than it could be under English rule. The unpaid and unclothed soldiers are deserting in squads. The influential officers are beset with British tempters, offering not coarse bribes, but influen- tial positions in the new and autonomous colonial government which is to replace the worthless simulacrum at Philadelphia. As fate will have it, the plea falls in a time when his personal grievances make him think the government which inflicts them unfit to exist. Harassed by debts brought on by the desire to make a large social figure in the eyes of Philadel- phians, and at feud with the Pennsylvania magistrates (the responsibility cannot be apportioned now, and perhaps could not be then), he wishes to resign his commission and pass his remaining days as a country gentleman; but in an evil hour the Pennsylvania magnates bring a list of charges against him, of which we can say positively that all which were not false were frivolous. A committee of Congress finds them so and recommends unqualified acquittal, and
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again he purposes to retire; but the officials are full of hatred, will not let him go without some punishment or dis- grace, declare that they have more evidence, and insist on a fresh trial. Congress appoints another committee; but Con- gress is located in Pennsylvania's capital, and dependent on Pennsylvania's good-will almost for the means of existing as a Congress, and the committee dare not affront them-it refers the matter to a court-martial. Arnold welcomes it and urges a speedy trial; the magnates, under pretext of gather- ing fresh evidence, put it off month after month. Finally the court-martial meets and coincides with the Congressional verdict; but as the frivolous charges were technical violations of rule, orders Washington to reprimand him. Washington does so in terms that turn it from a disgrace into a panegyric, and offers Arnold the highest position in the army next to himself. But wrath and contempt turn the scale in his mind, already half gained as others were wholly gained by the Brit- ish arguments and promises. He will play the part of the general who ended the Cromwellian régime and restored to Englishmen their longed-for government; he will crush the rebellion by one dramatic blow, and after the first feeling has passed, be thanked by his countrymen for giving them pros- perity and true liberty. He stoops to the basest treason, if not to the country he did not regard as a country, then to honor and every-day good faith and loyalty to a comrade and superior; he asks to command the chief fortress of the cause, that he may surrender it to the British. How he is foiled and the life of an accomplice is forfeited, we need not detail; nor the awful plunge in his own consciousness, from the military dictator conferring a prosperous future on his countrymen, to a common hired traitor despised by the lowest in the land; nor the despite in which he was held by his English fellow
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officers who would not serve with him,-more for his being a provincial and American than for his being a traitor,- and how it gradually wore out even his powerful frame and broke his heart; and how, shortly before his death on June 14, 1801, he put on his old uniform and asked God to for- give him that ever he had worn another. It is a story for tears, not stoning.
Ethan Allen-born in Litchfield, Jan. 10, 1737-is a less figure, but with that most surely and intimately living of memories, one intertwined with the associations of romance. The "Green Mountain Boys," to the children of two or three generations ago, were part of fairyland in charm, with the advantage of being on solid earth; they should be so still, to all children properly reared and instructed. The great lead- ers of these-Ethan Allen, Seth Warner, and Remember Baker-were Connecticut men; pioneers of that overflow of overcrowded Connecticut which built up Vermont, and would have created a State in Wyoming (dealt with in a former chapter) but for the most frightful of Indian massacres. New Hampshire had been given a stretch of territory west- ward to Lake Champlain, and granted lands to settlers who wished them; then the Duke of York was granted the lands eastward to the Connecticut River, so that Vermont was com- mon to both. Before the dispute was settled in favor of New York, New Hampshire had granted out 128 townships; in violation of the terms of the New York grant, that it was not to interfere with prior settlers, the latter colony proceeded to grant out the lands to new ones; but when the New York surveyors came to plot the grants, the occupants cut green rods and beat them out of the country with smarting backs. The surveyors and grantees came back with deputy sheriffs in their train; the settlers raised armed companies and again
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applied the "beech seal" to claimants, sheriffs, surveyors, and all. Allen, an athletic and adventurous giant, was in his element; he took part in this warfare with a will, and at once became a leader. The settlers make him agent to plead their rights at Albany; the case goes against them and a fresh attempt is made to eject them by force; they raise a regiment of "Green Mountain Boys" and make Allen colonel. Tryon of New York proclaims him an outlaw and offers £150 for his capture : the position is hard to find where Tryon cannot establish a worse record for vanity, violence, and unreason- ableness, not tainted by conspicuous ability or success, than any of his fellows. The Green Mountain Boys protect their own; and Allen uses his pen in vindication of their rights. At the outbreak of the Revolution he collects a force of Green Mountain Boys and makes a bloodless capture of Ticonde- roga : what he said on that memorable occasion was perhaps even more picturesque than what he is reported to have said, but less decorous. They capture other posts which give them a mass of stores and the command of Lake Champlain; Con- gress grants them the pay of Continentals, and recommends the New York Assembly to wipe out old scores and employ them in the army under their own officers. Allen and War- ner go to Albany : a few members of the Assembly wish them excluded from the session as proclaimed felons, the great majority vote to admit them, and later vote to raise a regi- ment of Green Mountain Boys. Allen suggests an invasion of Canada, which is rejected; finally he undertakes one him- self with another officer, who helps him capture a fort, but leaves him in the lurch in an attack on Montreal, and Allen is taken prisoner and sent to England. With their customary kindness to American prisoners, they put him in chains, and a dastardly English officer, beaten in argument, strikes the
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chained prisoner in the mouth. Finally exchanged and sent home, he is made commander of the Vermont militia, and lieutenant-colonel in the regular army. But New York still refuses to give up her claim, and the British have hopes to use the Vermont fears (Vermonters never had fears) to induce the Green Mountain Boys to annex themselves to Canada as a protection against New York: Allen pretends to listen to the arguments and offers, and thus keeps British military action out of his region till the war is ended. After the war he was in Congress, working vigorously to secure Vermont's admission as a State; but New York did not un- clench her fingers till after his death, on Feb. 13, 1789. He deserves his memory, and long may we keep undimmed the richness of such romance as our history affords : romance is the nursery of patriotism.
Allen's companions are eclipsed by the greater individu- ality of his name; but they deserve remembrance, not alone as Connecticut representatives, but for their native qualities. Seth Warner was a chevalier: more than a six footer, like Allen, gallant, frank, and of noble bearing, a mighty hunter and a practical man of affairs, a man to be followed and loved. Born in Roxbury (Connecticut), May 17, 1743, at twenty he removes to Bennington with his father; with Allen he is outlawed by New York, or rather by its fire-eating governor; he is second in command at Ticonderoga, and cap- tures Crown Point with its garrison and 113 cannon, an exploit which earns him a colonel's commission from Con- gress, against which the New York legislature repeatedly protests. He follows Montgomery to Canada; defeats Sir Guy Carleton at St. John's, New Brunswick; after Mont- gomery's death raises a body of troops and makes an attempt on Quebec. He commands the rear-guard in the retreat from
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Ticonderoga during Burgoyne's invasion; at Bennington with his command he comes up and nearly destroys Breymann's reinforcing battalion. His health worn out in Revolutionary service, he returns with his family to his birthplace and shortly after dies there, Dec. 26, 1784, at only forty-one. Baker died a violent death still earlier and younger. Born in Woodbury about 1740, and while still a boy taking part in the French and Indian War,-notably in the bloody assault on Ticonderoga in 1758,-he removed in 1764 to the New Hampshire Grants, and shared in the work and the use- fulness of Allen and Warner; he too was outlawed, and was actually captured, and though rescued the same day, had been brutally maimed. He shared in the capture of Ticonderoga with Allen, and in that of Crown Point with Warner; but in August of that year (1775), while scouting on Richelieu River, the outlet of Lake Champlain, he was met by Indians and murdered. At Ticonderoga too was Col. James Easton, of Hartford birth, then a builder at Litchfield, then in 1763 removing to Pittsfield, Mass. He was leader of the minute- men there, raised a Berkshire regiment at the outbreak of the war, took part at Ticonderoga, and was the first to acquaint the Provincial Congress with the news; urged the invasion of Canada, and commanded a regiment under Mont- gomery. He gained Arnold's ill-will, and had to retire from the army, dying poor on account of his sacrifices for the country.
Two brilliant careers were cut short within a single week in Thomas Knowlton and Nathan Hale, both in the same corps. Knowlton, like Putnam, was not of Connecticut birth, but was reared there, won it honor, and deserves its remem- brance. From West Oxford, Massachusetts, where he was born Nov. 30, 1740, his father took him to Ashford in
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early boyhood. Like Baker, of about the same age, he took part in the French and Indian War when but half grown, and served in it during six campaigns; crowning the service in 1762 by a share in the capture of Havana, whence so many New England citizens did not return. Then, like Putnam, he became a farmer again in Ashford, till the Revolution broke out. Made captain of the company of Ashford militia after Lexington, it was he with his company and 200 other Connecticut men who held the rail fence at Bunker Hill. He became a major; early in 1776 he raided Charlestown. At New York in that year he commanded the advance guard of the army, a regiment of light infantry; then was appointed lieutenant-colonel of a regiment of Connecticut rangers called "Congress' Own." At Bloomingdale, N. Y., on the morning of the battle of Harlem Heights, Sept. 16, 1776, he was killed while leading on his men against a body of Hessians and Highlanders; and Washington said of him in his Gen- eral Orders that he would have been an honor to any country.
Most emphatically is this true concerning Nathan Hale. He died too young, and had had too little opportunity to play a conspicuous part, for certainty of prophecy : yet enough is certain to make us assured that no commonplace life was cut short when the Martyr Spy regretted that he had but one to lose for his country, and gladly resigned that one in its service; that he was no mere food for powder, more useful in death than he could have been in life; that his memory is justly honored, not alone because he gave to his country all he had, but because that all was the promise of fame, power, and usefulness beyond the common. He had the blood of a family of genius, of which the most famous are his grand- nephew the creator of the Man Without a Country, and his grandniece the creatrix of the Peterkins, but which has shown
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much other intellectual gift; and there is good reason to think that in a different line he would have previously made it illustrious. With a tall, stalwart, and athletic frame, a robust, manly, lovable and beloved personality, a strong mind, a lofty spirit, and a generous and chivalric nature, he lacked nothing to fit him for and almost guarantee him a dis- tinguished career. Born in Coventry, June 6, 1755, he pre- luded with a feeble childhood a youth of such bodily strength that a Coventry tradition credits him with being able to sit in a barrel and lift himself out with his hands. A Yale grad- uate of 1773, a thorough Latin scholar and superior debater, he became a teacher in New London; Lexington starts the village into a blaze, and Hale urges immediate arming for independence, volunteers, is made a lieutenant, takes part in the siege of Boston, and becomes a captain; goes to New York, and in September 1776 with a few companions cap- tures at midnight a supply transport under the guns of a British man-of-war; then commands a company in Knowl- ton's Connecticut Rangers. Washington calls for some vol- unteer to risk his life by passing within the British lines as a spy, and bringing back intelligence of their fortifications and positions. Hale offers himself, is dissuaded because his life is too valuable so to risk, insists, and goes as a loyalist school- master, making drawings without secrecy; is captured while returning, condemned on the evidence of the plans secreted in his shoes, turned over to the provost, and condemned to be hanged the next morning at sunrise. Thus far, it was only the "fate of war"; but the brutal ruffian (Cunningham) chosen by the British for that post makes death bitterer by every indignity-a striking contrast to the generous brother- liness extended to André by the Americans. A Bible and a chaplain are refused him; his letters to his sisters and his
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betrothed wife are torn up before his eyes; and when he attempts to speak from the scaffold, the drums are beaten to drown his voice. It has not been drowned for posterity : the monument in his native town preserves his dying utterance, not nobler than the nature which prompted it; and one of the finest of American lyrics is devoted to his martyr death.
Samuel Holden Parsons is a historical problem, absolutely insoluble except on inferential grounds; but the very abso- luteness of the contradiction between the facts of his life and the record of his seeming treason lead us irresistibly to the almost certain truth. Had he been really a traitor, he would be as far below Arnold as Arnold is below Washington : without a particle of temptation, a possibility of self-decep- tion, or even the excuse of despairing of his country; a venal scoundrel selling that country in cold blood almost at the moment of its triumph, and he a long-time public represen- tative and leading military officer, utterly trusted in the high- est positions by his State and his commander. There is noth- ing remotely parallel to it in American history, or indeed any other history; human nature is not capable of such vileness ; any other explanation is more credible. Let us glance at his career and his action. Born at Lyme, May 14, 1737, nephew of Matthew Griswold, he graduates at Yale, becomes a law- yer, and for many years represents his native town in the Assembly; settles Connecticut's boundary conflict with Penn- sylvania; and in 1773 is one of the standing committee of inquiry, the precursor of the Continental Congress. Remov- ing to New London in 1774, he is appointed King's attorney. He plans the capture of Ticonderoga, and its prisoners are sent to Connecticut in recognition of this; is colonel of the Sixth at Roxbury near Boston, then sent to New York; serves at the battle of Long Island in August, is made brigadier-
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general, takes part at Harlem Heights and White Plains, is assigned to protect the line of the Hudson, then is with Washington in New Jersey. In 1778-9 he is again on the highlands of the Hudson, and given charge of constructing the works at West Point. He harasses the British at Nor- walk; is one of the board which tries André; in 1780 he is made major-general, and succeeds Putnam in command of the Connecticut line. He had received steady promotion ; he had no grievance against Congress, no quarrel over being unrecog- nized, none of the bitter injustices that drove general after general out of the service. He did not show himself aflame with avarice or pushing ambition, to sell himself for money or place. And at what time do we find him writing letters to a confederate in the State Assembly to be shown to the British ? Was it at the time when Arnold betrayed his trust, when suc- cess not only seemed hopeless, but even if won, the inau- guration of worse evils even than failure could bring? No: it was in July 1781, three months before Yorktown; long after King's Mountain and Cowpens, after Greene's cam- paigns had ruined Cornwallis' position and loosed his hold on the Carolinas, when hope was vivid and the French fleet in active co-operation. And what is the nature of his commu- nications to the British? Vague, stale, worthless "news" which they knew already as well as he, which professed to keep them in touch with important facts and told them not a jot. What is the conclusion from all this? Simply that Parsons was playing the part which Harvey Birch plays in Cooper's "Spy," of an ostensible spy for the enemy in order to be an actual one for his country; a part taken by more than one Harvey Birch in real life; essentially the part which Ethan Allen played, and which was known to Washington, who received the information obtained by these double spies.
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Probably the Connecticut magistrates were in the secret also. Had the treason been actual, it must have been blown on the wind which always exposes such secrets, or at least made Par- sons suspected; whereas he remained trusted to the uttermost by those around and above him. After the Revolution he became a lawyer in Middletown, member of the convention of 1787 which framed the Constitution, first judge of the Northwest Territory, and in 1789 removed to Marietta, Ohio; was a commissioner to settle a treaty for Connecticut with the Indians, to quiet their title; and was drowned in the Big Beaver, on a journey connected with this, Nov. 17, 1789.
Eastern Connecticut was prolific in Continental officers. Two Norwich Huntingtons deserve mention. Jedediah was born Aug. 4, 1743; he became a West India trader with his father Jabez, and in the times before the Revolution was an active Son of Liberty, and on the committees of correspon- dence. At once after Lexington he joined the army at Cam- bridge; in 1777 was made brigadier-general; was on Charles Lee's court-martial and the court which examined André ; was brevetted major-general; and after the war was a delegate to the Constitutional Convention and for twenty-six years col- lector of customs at New London, dying Sept. 25, 1818. He aided in drafting the constitution of the Society of the Cin- cinnati. Ebenezer, born Dec. 26, 1754, left his studies in Yale at the opening of the Revolution, but was granted his diploma ; became lieutenant, captain, brigade major, deputy adjutant-general; and had command of a battalion at Yorktown. He was reputed one of the best disciplin- arians in the army. Later, he long commanded the Connecticut militia; was repeatedly a member of the Assem- bly, and twice a member of Congress; and died in his native town, June 17, 1834.
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David Wooster closed a long and distinguished career as a professional soldier-so far as colonial life permitted it- with a hero's death. Born in Stratford, March 2, 1710, and graduating from Yale in 1738, the next year he engaged in the Spanish "War of Jenkins' Ear," which left so many of the flower of New England's manhood in the plague-stricken marshes of Cuba; at first lieutenant, then captain of a naval vessel for the colony's defense. In 1745 he took part in the Louisbourg expedition under Pepperrell; in the French and Indian War beginning 1755 he was first colonel of the Connecticut Third, then brigadier-general, and served till the peace in 1763. The Ticonderoga expedition owed much to him; he was a member of the Assembly; and was made third of the original eight brigadier-generals in the Continental Army. He took part in the Canadian expedition, and was commander-in-chief there after Montgomery's death; resign- ing and returning to Connecticut, he was appointed major- general of the State militia. We find him in command at Danbury when Tryon attacks and burns it; assailing the rear of the retreating British, and heartening his men to disregard the random shots of the foe, he is pierced by a musket ball, and dies a few days after, May 2, 1777.
The name of Return Jonathan Meigs has a halo of tender and smiling poetry around it, from the pretty incident to which he owed his mother and his appellation. His father courts a fair Quakeress, who is sure of her conquest and per- haps not sure of her heart; she respects him greatly but can- not marry him-a remark not then heard for the first or the last time. Coming again and again, he finally tells her it is for the last asking, receives the same reply, and mounts his horse-perhaps not with too much alacrity-to depart. Then the girl knows that her happiness is going with him; standing
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in the doorway, she calls to him, "Return, Jonathan !" That he did return, the existence of our hero would sufficiently avouch; more than this, he gave their boy-born at Middle- town, Dec. 17, 1734-these, "the sweetest words he had ever heard," for a name, and it was perpetuated through several generations. In middle age the son is thrilled by the news of Lexington, and heads a body of volunteers for a march to Cambridge; accompanies Arnold to Quebec as major; is captured and exchanged, and raises a regiment and becomes its colonel in 1777. By a brilliant attack on Sag Harbor with 170 men, he captures ninety prisoners and destroys twelve vessels and a store of forage without loss to his command; at the storming of Stony Point he commands a regiment under Wayne. Serving through the war, he after- wards became one of the earliest settlers in Ohio, at Marietta ; was identified with the Western frontier, and from his thor- ough knowledge of the Indians and the trust they reposed in him, was appointed government Indian Agent in 1801, resi- dent among the Cherokees in Georgia; spent the rest of his life at the agency, and there more than twenty years later he died, Jan. 28, 1823, at the age of eighty-eight.
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