USA > New Hampshire > New Hampshire and Vermont : an historical study > Part 2
USA > Vermont > New Hampshire and Vermont : an historical study > Part 2
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And what of the future? It is an unworthy fear which has no welcome for the strangers who are flocking in such num- bers to share your heritage. They bring to you, who are " to the manner born," new opportunities and new hopes. It is yours to make the spirit of your heritage so attractive and per- suasive that their children shall be as loyal to it as your chil- dren. They must be made to feel the majestic beneficence of the state so thoroughly, to see so clearly that its freedom is lib- erty under law and not license, that they cannot help bowing down, as you and your fathers have bowed down, before it, and defend her with hearts as loyal and loving as your own.
There came a time, thirty years ago, when the quality of your manhood and your womanhood was tried. Our flag was assailed, and the life of the nation in critical peril. The re- sponse among these New Hampshire hills was hearty. It proved heroism not a lost virtue ; it proved New Hampshire manhood as sterling as it had ever been. Will the future prove, in any similar crisis, that you are doing your work in mould- ing and training the coming generations as faithfully as your fathers? Any such future crisis will hardly come in the same form as in 1862. History does not repeat itself. We hope the time approaches, if it has not already come, when for us, at least,
" The war-drum beats no longer, and the battle-flags are furled In the parliament of men."
But conflicts of arms are far from the highest tests of charac- ter. Conflicts of ideas and opinions, of principles and policy, may reveal more truly of what stuff men are made. And there lie moral contests before us, which will demand as real cour- age as any which faced rebel cannon at Gettysburg.
The New Hampshire of the twentieth century will differ widely from that of the nineteenth, as that differs from the eighteenth. Your problem is to take all these elements com-
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ing to you and shape them to the high purposes of liberty, law, and righteousness. When the process is ended, you will not yourselves be just what you are to-day.
The strangers within your gate have somewhat to give as well as to receive, and you have something to learn as well as to teach. A higher manhood in which their best and yours shall be blended is the goal of your true endeavor. in the attain- ment of which you and they will have common cause to rejoice ; and if this old New Hampshire, yours of the past and theirs as well as yours of to-day, proves, by its laws and insti- tutions, its industries and varied forces, moral and spiritual, equal to this higher development, your children's children will rise up and call you blessed.
Gentlemen of the New Hampshire Historical Society, I con- gratulate you on the good work you have done in the making of the state, and on the greater work before you and those who come after you-the New Hampshire of yesterday enfolded in germ the New Hampshire of to-morrow. It is yours to culti- vate and promote that higher consciousness, in the power of which you and your neighbors may work intelligently to the lofti- est ends which the past has seen, perhaps, but dimly ; to trace effects back to their causes and by the honor which you shall do and secure for good workers in the past, assures faithful men to-day that they in turn shall be remembered. No true man can be uninfluenced by this incentive. It is not the motive of his work, but his best may be made better by the animating assur- ance that the plaudits of coming time shall not be wanting.
Your society had its germ in the mind and the heart of a man who wrought in this spirit, and deserves to be honored as long as New Hampshire has honor to give her most faithful sons. May the spirit of John Farmer abide among you till your work is done.
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F 8:3.41
C
NEW HAMPSHIRE
AND
VERMONT.
ADDRESS
ON
NEW HAMPSHIRE AND
VERMONT:
THEIR UNIONS, SECESSIONS AND DISUNIONS.
DELIVERED BEFORE The New Hampshire Antiquarian Society, JULY 15, 1879.
BY CLARK JILLSON.
G
WORCESTER : PRESS OF CLARK JILLSON. 1882.
ADDRESS.
W E STAND before the hours, crowded to the front and into the future by the lapse of time. The last decade has taken its position behind us, and the generations have thus been carried to a point one hundred years beyond the grand historic period of the Western Empire.
One hundred years ago this very hour, "Mad An- thony Wayne," the hero of Stony Point, was mar- shalling his troops for that memorable assault; and when he was wounded, the thrilling order he gave, "March on; carry me into the fort, and let me die at the head of the column," together with the ac- count of the intrepid manner in which Col. Fleury struck the British standard with his own hand, and the words of Major Posey, "The Fort's our own," ran beyond the lines and through the Colonies like the echoes of inspiration. But the full account of this tragic event has not been preserved by tradition alone. Unlike hundreds of other remarkable occur- rences during the revolutionary period, it found its
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way into written history, and is now known as one of the most daring exploits of the war.
Tradition is too fickle for practical use, always taking from or adding to the real fact; and what we thus gather in relation to any past event is only worthy to be called a story, unless it can be traced to some well authenticated record, made at or about the time it occurred. The nearer worthless we can make tradition in its application to the future, the more complete will be the knowledge of coming generations in relation to what is now transpiring; and among the many duties we are under obliga- tions to perform, that of making and preserving authentic history is one of the most important and imperative. The neglect of such duty by one man, may, in time to come, involve a nation in doubt, and make future generations busy with unsatisfacto- ry research for hundreds of years. Against such omissions the world has been struggling through all the historic past; and while I speak to-day there are hundreds of men in New England engaged in experimental labor upon which they are employing the best mental efforts of their life's prime, uncon- scious of the fact that they are spending their time on the hundredth edition of the same work.
More than half of our inventors are now studying upon what has been or will be rejected matter, for the reason that they have no adequate facilities for finding out what other minds have accomplished, hence the same thing will be invented over and over
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again without any perceptible change, even of form.
It has been claimed by some that too much is already being written and printed; and when the recent proposition for an enlargement of the rooms containing the Congressional Library at Washington was being discussed, a certain newspaper in Massa- chusetts advocated burning the books in preference to furnishing more room! It is true that worthless books, so called, are not extremely rare, and yet it requires a sublime stupidity to make a book of no present or future value. The solitary fact that a book has been printed is worthy of preservation. If it contains but a single word bearing a new rela- tion to any other, it ought to be preserved ; and the man who advocates the burning of books would be inconsistent in opposing his own cremation.
Things of little apparent consequence to-day are liable to become famous to-morrow, and after it is too late comes the struggle for a knowledge of their early history.
When Christopher Columbus was wandering over the countries of Europe, begging for royal patronage to assist in carrying forward an enterprise that ex- isted only in his own brain, in the form of a vision, there appeared no friendly hand to record his plead- ings. It was considered enough for posterity to know that he had been refused and placed on the beggar's list. When he finally succeeded in present- ing his claim to the Court of Spain, it was referred to a commission who reported after a delay of about
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seven years, that the project of Columbus was "vain and impossible." Had all his plans been thus de- feated, the discovery of the new world might have been delayed for a century. It was then that the destinies of America hung in a balance.
The manner in which Columbus presented his cause to the commissioners is unknown. The his- tory of their deliberations within the decorated walls and under the frescoed arches of the Alhambra, where the future of a great Republic was dimly out- lined four hundred years ago, has not been written. The original plan of his then intended voyage to- ward the setting sun has been lost. The words he uttered to the Queen on his return to Granada, in obedience to her summons, after he had been refused a further hearing by Ferdinand, at which time she pledged to him the jewels of her own crown of Cas- tile, were known only to her and to him, and con- sidered unworthy of record; but the corner stone of an empire, now one of the great powers of earth, was then and there laid.
Doctor Franklin, with all his sagacity and fore- sight, did not comprehend the importance of his own rude experiments with electricity, nor even dream that the thread connecting his door key with a kite, was in the least degree suggestive of the iron cord yet to span the globe from continent to conti- nent, passing under the sea, transmitting its pulsa- tions of thought around the world.
When Capt. Samuel Morey was experimenting
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with his newly invented Steamboat upon the waters of New Hampshire and Vermont, in 1792, he evi- dently did not comprehend that the culmination of his thought, wrought out and perfected by other hands, would at some future time revolutionize the commerce of all the nations on the earth.
Those three young men who assembled in the town of Hopkinton, N. H., on the 19th day of Nov., 1859, and organized themselves into the Philo- mathic Club, which they resolved should never contain more than seven members, nor cease to ex- ist except by the unanimous consent of the last one living, may well be reminded that
"Tall oaks from little acorns grow,"
and that the creed of a modern prophet needs fre- quent revision. Out of that humble beginning has sprung your Society, with its rare and valuable library, its extensive collection of relics and curiosi- ties. Through its influence persons of similar tastes have been brought together, and their efforts com- bined in a common cause for the public good ; and you are now making history from year to year about which there will be no dispute or misunder- standing in the future. You have been so fortunate as to preserve a record of your early work, and pos- terity will thank you for handing it down to them.
I have thus called your attention to these several cases for the purpose of intimating that any impor- tant historical event, growing out of a multitude of
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minor unrecorded occurrences, cannot easily be traced to any well defined cause.
Nearly all historical matter relating to the early settlement of New England is of such a general character as to make it next to impossible to give a connected account of any important event without taxing the imagination to supply some of its details. The little incidents that go to make up a symmetrical statement have generally been lost by reason of the failure to make their record at the time they occur- red, and the whole transaction, presented in general terms, is often vague, uninteresting, and not easily comprehended.
The controversy between New York and New Hampshire in relation to the territory now known as Vermont, covering a period of about forty years, has come down to us in a great measure through the uncertain channels of tradition; but there has been enough preserved and authenticated from which to present a general view of the main trans- actions during that eventful period. The lesser de- tails constituting the cause of this long and bitter contest, were evidently so numerous and obscure, passing so rapidly without being recorded, as to make the statement of an aggregate made up from them exceedingly difficult, and render conclusions drawn therefrom vague and uncertain. Upon look- ing over the field with some care, I am obliged to conclude that each and every person who makes an investigation of this subject will be obliged to attri-
7
bute the result to such causes as his judgment shall dictate, from the few facts that have been preserved in history.
In treating the subject under consideration, I am obliged to omit any detailed statement relating to the condition of New Hampshire in early times.
The civil and ecclesiastical difficulties of the three governments of Dover, Exeter and Portsmouth- their union with Massachusetts in 1642-their sepa- ration in 1680, and their organization as a govern- ment with John Cutt for President-the subsequent administrations of Walter Barefoot and Edward Cranfield-their reunion with Massachusetts in 1686 under the presidency of Joseph Dudley, of Edmund Andros in 1687, of Simon Bradstreet in 1689-their return to a separate government in 1692, in which position they remained for a period of ten years, under Usher, Partridge and Allen-the re-appoint- ment of Dudley, and their third union with Massa- chusetts in 1702, and from that time up to the ad- vent of Benning Wentworth in 1741-must be passed over without further remark.
On the third day of July, 1741, Benning Went- worth was made Governor of the Province of New Hampshire, the southern boundary of which was by a line running paralel with the Merrimack River, three miles north thereof, till it reached a point due north of Pawtucket Falls; thence by a straight line due west "until it meets with his majesty's other governments." This language was construed by
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Governor Wentworth to mean that the southerly line of New Hampshire extended as far west as that of the two Charter governments, Connecticut and Massachusetts Bay, each of which had exercised jurisdiction to within twenty miles of Hudson's River. By this appointment the union between New Hampshire and Massachusetts was again dis- solved, and each Colony was left under the shadow of its own destiny.
On the 17th day of November, 1749, Governor Wentworth addressed a letter to Governor Clinton of New York, for the purpose of giving notice that he proposed to issue grants covering territory west of the Connecticut River; and also asking his ex- cellency to state how far north of Albany the Gov- ernment of New York extended by his Majesty's commissions, and how many miles to the eastward of Hudson's River. This letter was presented by Governor Clinton to the Council of New York, and thereupon the following order was adopted :
In Council New York 3d April 1750.
Ordered, That his Excellency do acquaint Governor Went- worth that this Province is bounded eastward by Connecticut River, the Letters Patent from King Charles the second to the Duke of York expressly granting all the lands from the west side of Connecticut River to the east side of Delaware Bay.
Before a copy of this order reached Governor Wentworth he had granted one township, six miles square, twenty-four miles easterly from Albany, and six miles north of Massachusetts line, presuming
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that New Hampshire was bounded by the same north and south line as Connecticut and Massachu- setts Bay.
It will be seen that here was ample room for strife, as the Governor of New Hampshire had put the seal of his jurisdiction upon territory 40 miles west of where the Council of New York had declared the line between the two governments to be; and he had also paid deference to his own name by calling the newly granted township Bennington.
After some correspondence the two governors agreed to make a representation of the whole mat- ter in dispute to his Majesty, which agreement was confirmed by his Majesty's Councils on the part of both governments. Richard Bradley Esq., Attor- ney General of New York, to whom the matter had been referred, gave an elaborate written opinion, wherein he recited the provisions of the Charter of Massachusetts Bay, and concluded by affirming that Connecticut River was the eastern boundary of the Colony of New York. Whoever throws away time enough to read the Attorney General's statement will surely discover in it a few weak points. The Surveyor General came to the rescue, and made certain suggestions which he thought proper to have added to the Attorney General's report. The Soli- citor General made some discoveries, claiming that 10,000 acres of land, situated on the west side of Connecticut River which had been purchased by private persons from the government of Connecticut,
10
the same being lands laid out by the government of Massachusetts Bay and exchanged for other lands held by Connecticut, had become a part of New Hampshire.
On the 28th day of December, 1763, Lieut. Gov. Colden issued a proclamation in accordance with the Attorney General's report, wherein he enjoined the High Sheriff of the county of Albany to return to him the names of all persons holding possession of any lands west of Connecticut River, under the grants of the government of New Hampshire, so that they might be proceeded against according to law. On the 13th day of March, 1764, Gov. Wentworth issued a proclamation in answer to that of Lieut. Gov. Colden, wherein he claimed that the Patent to the Duke of York was obsolete, and commanded all civil officers within his province, and all the inhabi- tants thereof to exercise jurisdiction as far westward as his grants had been made, and to deal with all persons who might presume to interrupt, "as law and justice doth appertain, notwithstanding the pre- tended right of jurisdiction mentioned in the procla- mation" of Lieut. Gov. Colden.
The inhabitants occupying the territory over which Gov. Wentworth proposed to exercise juris- diction were not of one opinion in relation to the rights claimed by New York and New Hampshire respectively ; and there was considerable feeling manifest on both sides. The decision of this matter,
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therefore, was to be one that would not be sanction- ed by all parties, perhaps not by a majority.
The north and south line between New Hampshire and what was claimed to be New York, as estab- lished by the original grant to John Mason, com- menced at a point on the line between New Hamp- shire and Massachusetts, sixty miles from the sea, which left quite an extensive territory between that and Connecticut River. If the decision should be in favor of Gov. Wentworth, some might claim that New Hampshire ought not to exercise its jurisdiction over the lands easterly from the river and westerly from the line defined by the grant to Mason. If the decision should be in favor of New York this same tract of land would still be left as a bone of conten- tion, and the inhabitants of the territory in dispute might desire to divide, the easterly half going over to New Hampshire, and the westerly to New York, or the whole might unite and form a new State.
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With all these contingencies pending, the appli- cation had been made, and great anxiety was felt in relation to the result. Governor Wentworth had issued one hundred and thirty-eight grants, and a large number, in some cases covering the same ter- ritory, had been granted to New York.
At the court of St. James, on the 20th day of July, 1764, it was declared that "the western banks of the river Connecticut, from where it enters the Province of Massachusetts Bay, as far North as the forty-fifth degree of North Latitude, to be the
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boundary line between New Hampshire and New York." This decision was not very objectionable to the government of New Hampshire or its people outside of the New Hampshire grants, it being con- sidered only a change of jurisdiction; and if the land titles had been left undisturbed there would have been no further controversy between New Hampshire and New York.
But when the authorities of New York decided that the New Hampshire grants were null and always had been, and that the settlers would be compelled to re-purchase their lands or be ejected therefrom, a spirit of resentment arose among the pioneer set- tlers of the New Hampshire grants that could not be allayed short of revolution. The magnificent blunder of Charles the second in granting to the Duke of York, in 1664, all the lands from the west side of Connecticut River to the east side of Dela- ware Bay, without any reference to the charter of Massachusetts Bay, granted in 1629, or that of Con- necticut granted in 1662, became apparent to the settlers, and they were led to question the validity of the grant under which the New York officials were beginning to proceed against them.
Within a month from the time of the passage of the royal decree establishing the eastern boundary of New York, Sheriff Schuyler found it necessary to appeal to the Commander-in-chief in a case where he claimed that a citizen of "Hoseek" had been ejected from his lands and tenements, and compelled
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to suffer other wrongs at the hands of the New Hampshire people. In consequence of this, the said Sheriff arrested four persons and committed them to jail in Albany. This was the New York version ; but Gov. Wentworth in his letter to Lieut. Gov. Colden, claimed that "several of the inhabitants of Pownal, at a time when the Deputy Sheriff was ex- ecuting a legal precept, were set upon by the Sher- iff of Albany and more than thirty armed men on horseback, and that the Deputy Sheriff with the three other principal inhabitants, were seized upon and carried to Albany, where they were immedi- ately committed to jail."
Whatever might have been the original provoca- tion in this case, whether trifling or otherwise, an effort was made, probably on both sides, to adjust it by resorting to violence. False imprisonment to- gether with the "Beech Seal" were frequently ap- pealed to in the settlement of similar cases.
But at this period there were two parties residing upon the territory now Vermont, one being favor- able to New York and the other an ally of New Hampshire, without any marked opposition to each other ; but none of them knew or cared for any law except the individual code, dictated by individual conscience ; and never was a community better or- ganized for a reign of terror than were these dis- contented pioneers.
For the better administration of justice, and the convenience of the settlers, three petitions were
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presented to Lieut. Gov. Colden, in 1765, praying that several counties might be erected covering ter- ritory occupied by the New Hampshire grants. One of these petitions represented that one murder had been committed "and one man more missing, that is supposed to be murdered by the same Villin, and that unless there be a county made as prayed for, instead of good wholesome Inhabitants comeing and Settling amongst us, the land will be filled with nothing, but Villins and Murderers."
These petitions were read in council and referred to a committee who reported on the twenty-second day of October, 1765, that the inhabitants had "as yet only an Equitable Title to the lands they pos- sess; are utterly unacquainted with the laws of the Province, and the modes of dispensing Justice there- in," and recommended the appointment of "a num- ber of fit persons for the conservation of the Peace and the administration of Justice."
This was not a very flattering state of affairs to be contemplated by those who had bought and paid for their lands; nor was it much of a compliment to the men fresh from Massachusetts and Connecti- cut, to be told that they were incapable of self government.
Four counties were established and the "fit per- sons" appointed, but submission to their dictation was never made complete. The settlers finally concluded to resist the authority of New York, and Samuel Robinson of Bennington was appointed to
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represent them at the court of Great Britain and obtain, if possible, a confirmation of the New Hamp- shire grants, and his Majesty was induced to issue a special order for the purpose of prohibiting the Gov- ernor of New York from making future grants till his Majesty could further consider the whole matter.
No heed was paid to this order, but further grants were made, and fresh writs of ejectment were con- stantly being issued. Up to this time, and still later, most of the controversy had been carried on by per- sons residing west of the Green Mountains.
About this time a convention was held at Ben- nington wherein the delegates resolved to maintain their rights under the New Hampshire grants by force. Thereupon a military association was organ- ized, with Ethan Allen for commander. The militia were called out by the Governor of New York to assist the Sheriff, but their sympathy seemed to be with the people to such an extent as to destroy all dicipline, and the appearance of Allen's troops caused them to disband. The next official display was in the form of a proclamation, issued by the Governor of New York, offering a reward of £150 for the arrest of Ethan Allen, and £50 each for Seth Warner and several others. On the other hand a proclamation was issued offering £5 for the Attor- ney General of the Colony of New York.
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