USA > Vermont > Bennington County > Bennington > Memorials of a century. Embracing a record of individuals and events, chiefly in the early history of Bennington, Vt., and its First church > Part 11
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1 Dawson's Battles of the United States.
2 Butler's Address.
3 " The British appeared now so far superior in their naval and military forces, and munitions of war, that whoever computed the issue of the controversy by the natural course of things could hardly avoid the conclusion that the Colonies would have to submit to the sovereignty of Great Britain."
4 " The great battle-field of the Revolution " has been perhaps not inappropri- ately represented " as in the vicinity of Lake Champlain, - for the great purpose
149
INDIAN TERRORS.
Lieut .- Gen. Burgoyne brought to the campaign in the north a considerable prestige from over the sea, and this was now very much enhanced by his late achievements on Lake Champlain and in its immediate vicinity.1 His men, officers, and equipments had been provided with great care by the Home Government .? Upon arriving in this country he entered promptly upon his work, and down to the time of his encampment on the banks of the Hudson, opposite Saratoga, his career had been an unvarying series of suc- cesses skilfully and vigorously pursued.
II. INDIAN TERRORS. - The early colonies of Massachu- setts, Connecticut, and Rhode Island found added to their other hardships those of Indian hostility. Crafty and cruel tribes, who had preoccupied the soil, preyed upon them by night, and in ambush by day. The early settlers here were spared this severe experience ; nevertheless the sav- age nature of the red man was sufficiently understood by them. Several of the inhabitants of this town had had
of the British Government was to sever New England from the South and West, thus rendering her incapable of assisting, or receiving assistance."
1 He had concluded a campaign in Spain with great credit to himself. He then was elected to Parliament, where he served not without some distinction ; he also used his pen with considerable success, before he was appointed a lieutenant- general to take charge of the campaign in America, in the North. - Intro- duction to Burgoyne's Orderly Book.
2 " Lieut .- Gen. Burgoyne, an officer whose ability was unquestioned, and whose spirit of enterprise and thirst for military glory, however rivalled, could not pos- sibly be exceeded."-Impartial History of the War in America, London, 1787. " The British general's well-known abilities and valor." - Andrews, London. 1783. " This part of the service " (a " powerful artillery ") " was particularly at- tended to, and the brass train that was sent over on this expedition (to America) was perhaps the finest, and probably the most excellently supplied, as to officers and private men, that had ever been allotted to second the operations of any army which did not far exceed the present in numbers. " - Impartial History, etc. Account of the British preparations under Gen. Carlton, pending the arrival of Burgoyne from Europe. "Sir Guy Carleton, who had under him, Generals Bur- goyne, l'hillips, Frazer, Nesbit and Riedell; all men of acknowledged skill and ability. "- Palmer's History of Lake Champlain, pp. 117, 134. See, also, Gor- don, Thacher, Burgoyne's State of the Expedition.
13*
150
MEMORIALS OF A CENTURY.
near relatives massacred or carried captives by the In- dians.1
The murder of Miss McCrea, July 27, 1777, owing to some peculiar circumstances, was upon every tongue. She was a young woman of twenty, belonging to a patriotic family, that of a Presbyterian clergyman of New Jersey, but engaged to be married to one Jones, a commissioned officer in Peters' corps of loyalists. She was a guest at the house of Jones' mother, within the British lines, in the vi- cinity of Fort Edward, and started under an escort of two Indians to go to the house of Jones' brother, near the British camp, some three or four miles distant, to meet her betrothed. She esteemed herself under the protection of British arms. It is said a barrel of rum had been promised to her escort if she was delivered safely at the place of her destination ; and that the Indians quarrelled about the re- ward. Some half a mile yet remained to the accomplish- ment of the journey, and one of the Indians sunk his tom- ahawk in her skull. The incident was not of unusual bar- barity ; but this massacre of a betrothed girl, on her way to her lover, touched the hearts of all who heard the story.2
Gen. Carleton (Burgoyne's predecessor in command) omitted to employ savages, "probably because, in a word, that their service was uncertain, their rapacity insatiable, their faith ever doubtful, and their actions cruel and barba- rous." 3 Burgoyne hesitated for a time, but soon yielded
1 Major Wait Hopkins, father of Major Aaron Robinson's first wife, was killed by the Indians. Eliphalet Follet, father of Charles Follett, who married Hannah, daughter of Col. Samuel Robinson, was killed by them in a great mas- sacre, June, 1777; Isaac Webster, who married Anna, youngest child of Samuel Robinson, Sr., was at one time previous to his marriage a captive among them.
Mrs. Harvey, of Cleveland, is a grand-daughter of Mrs. Isaac Webster; Mrs. « Rev. Henry M. Swift of Michigan, is a great-grand-daughter.
See Thompson's Vermont, p. 11, chap. 4, sec. 7.
2 Burgoyne's Orderly Book, Ramsey, Gordon, Irving, Bancroft.
3 An Impartial History of the War in America, etc .; London, 1787, p. 446. He was afterward ordered by the Home Government to employ the savages, and complied with his orders. - Ib., p. 447.
151
BAUM'S EXPEDITION.
his scruples. He hunted out the assassin of Miss McCrea, and threatened him with death, but pardoned him on hear- ing that the total defection of the Indians would have en- sued from putting that threat into execution.1 Early in June he confessed to Germain, that, " were the Indians left, to themselves, enormities too horrid to think of would en- sue ; guilty and innocent women and infants would be a common prey." He nevertheless resolved to use them as instruments of terror. He gave out that he would send them after arriving at Albany toward Connecticut and Boston.
"Let not people consider their distance from my camp. I have but to give stretch to the Indian forces under my direction, and they amount to thousands, to overtake the hardened enemies of Great Britain. If the frenzy of hostility should remain, I trust I shall stand acquitted in the eyes of God and man, in executing the vengeance of the State against the wilful outcasts." 2
Every day the savages brought in scalps as well as pris- oners.3 Burgoyne had detachments from seventeen nations of Indians. The Ottawas longed to go home, but on the 5th of August, nine days after the murder of Jane McCrea, Burgoyne took from all his red warriors a pledge to stay through the campaign.4
III. BAUM'S EXPEDITION. - Upon leaving the lake and proceeding southward by land, Burgoyne found his progress greatly impeded by want of horses, carriages, and supplies. The country was a wilderness. He attempted to bring for- ward his artillery and stores, and to open the way from Skenesborough to Fort Edward. But, so effectually had the Americans blocked up and obstructed the road, that the British army was frequently twenty-four hours in ad-
1, 2, 3, 4 Bancroft.
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MEMORIALS OF A CENTURY.
vancing one mile. It was not until the 30th of July that he reached and fixed his head-quarters at Fort Edward.
Nothing could exceed their joy upon their arrival at the Hudson. They flattered themselves that their diffi- culties and toils were now ended, and that there was nothing before them but a safe and easy march to Al- bany, and thence to a junction with the British army at New York. But there was still much land carriage to be accomplished, and they had not the carriages necessary, nor the horses nor supplies. On the arrival of the army at Fort Edward, the great object of immediate attention was the bringing up the transports from Fort George. The distance was about sixteen miles, but the roads were out of repair, weather unfavorable, cattle and carriages scarce. Many of the latter had been detained to drag boats and provisions from Ticonderoga over the carrying- places between Lake Champlain and Lake George. In fact, there had also been serious delay in getting the different divisions of horses, collected in Canada, through the des- ert between St. John's and Ticonderoga.
It was soon found that, in the situation of the transport service, the army could barely be victualled from day to day.1 Although at the fall of Ticonderoga Burgoyne obtained not less than 1,748 barrels of flour, and more than seventy tons of salt provisions, and also a large drove of cattle which had arrived in the American camp a few days previ- ous to their retreat,2 Glich (a German officer in the Ben- nington battle) referring to a time just before the setting out of the Baum expedition, says, "Though Burgoyne's troops had toiled without intermission during three whole weeks, there was in camp no greater stock of provisions than promised to suffice for four days' consumption."
1 Burgoyne's State of the Expedition.
2 Thompson's Vermont.
153
MILITARY STORES AT BENNINGTON.
The idea of the expedition to Bennington originated in this difficulty. By intelligence through Gen. Riedsell, and from other sources, Burgoyne had learned that Ben- nington was the great deposit of corn, flour, store cattle, and wheel carriages ; that it was guarded only by militia ; "and every day's account " - so he states - " tended to confirm the persuasion of the loyalty of one description of the inhabitants, and the panic of the other." 1
Besides, there was need of horses, not only for the trans- port service, but also for fighting. Riedsell's dragoons were without horses and needed to be mounted.2
Burgoyne, with the approbation of his officers,3- so he said before the Committee of the House of Commons, - re- solved upon an expedition to capture the Bennington military stores. The particular purpose of the expedition, namely, Bennington and its storehouse, was to be kept secret as long as possible, and an impression was to be made that Burgoyne was about to break camp and start, with his army, for Boston, in order to conceal the main part of his general plan, which was to effect a junction with Howe, who was at New York. The true scope of the particular
1 Burgoyne's State of the Expedition.
2 " This want of necessaries " (in Burgoyne's camp) " was the more mortifying, as the Provincial (New England) camp was furnished with them in greatest abundance. . . Here a copious magazine had been formed for the Provin- ial army." - Andrews, London, 1786. " The enemy " (Americans) "received arge supplies from the New England provinces, which, passing the upper part of he Connecticnt River, took the route to Manchester," · "until they
were at length deposited at Bennington, whence they were conveyed, as occasion required, to the regular army." " It (Bennington) was, however, at his time, beside being a store for cattle, a depot for large quantities of corn and ther necessaries; and, what rendered it an object of particular attention to he royal army, a large number of wheel carriages, of which they were in par- icular want, were laid up there." - Impartial History of the War, London, 1787. lee, also, Glick's Narrative.
3 Burgoyne's State of the Expedition. - The testimony before the Committee of the House of Commons shows that Burgoyne acted with the approbation of is officers, only that Gen. Frazer, a British officer, thought British soldiers bet- er than German for the purpose.
154
MEMORIALS OF A CENTURY.
expedition now in hand was not, however, merely to cap- ture the block-house at Bennington, but also to scour a wide circuit of the country. The instructions he gave to the commander of the expedition were, to try the affections of the country ; to disconcert the counsels of the enemy ; to mount Riedsell's dragoons ; to complete Peters' corps of loyalists, and to obtain large supplies of cattle, horses, and carriages ; to scour the country from Rockingham to Otter Creek; to go down the Connecticut River as far as Brattleborough, and return, by the great road, to Albany, there to meet Gen. Burgoyne. The number of horses to be brought was thirteen hundred at least. They were to be tied in strings of ten each, in order that one man might lead ten horses.1
With all the elation of his hopes he fitted out this expe- dition with much care. He selected for its nucleus and chief dependence a corps of Riedsell's dismounted dragoons, - the same that had behaved so gallantly at Hubbardton, - a company of sharpshooters, chosen with care from all the regiments, under Capt. Frazer, - a most excellent offi- cer ; - Peters' corps of Loyalists, to be swelled as they proceeded ; a body of Canadian rangers ; Hanau Artiller- ists with two cannon ; a hundred and fifty Indians. He placed all under the care of Lieut .- Col. Baum, a skilled and thoroughly brave German officer. To these troops he, after they had proceeded on their way a little, added fifty chasseurs. There can be no doubt he expected his column to be much increased by the accession of tories along the route.
1 Burgoyne's State of the Expedition. - " You will use all possible means to make the country believe that the troops under your command are the advanced corps of the army, and that it is intended to pass the Connecticut on the road to Boston. You will likewise insinuate that the main army from Albany is to be joined at Springfield by a corps of troops from Rhode Island."- Burgoyne Instructions to Baum. Also Burgoyne to Col. Skene.
155
VERMONT AROUSED.
To support Col. Baum in case of necessity, Gen. Bur- goyne stationed Lieut .- Col. Breyman at Battenkill, twenty- two miles off from Bennington, with two cannon of larger calibre than those in charge of Baum, and a strong body of German regulars, Brunswick grenadiers, light infantry, and chasseurs.
To be himself more advantageously situated to render further support with his army, if there should be need, he moved it to a point on the Hudson opposite Saratoga, and encamped there on the side of the river toward Bennington. When Baum had started on his way, Burgoyne rode after him and gave him verbal orders.
IV. VERMONT AROUSED. - The weight of gloom at this time on minds devoted to the American cause must have been indescribable. But nowhere would this be true of patriots and brave men more than on the Hampshire Grants. It may be said this feeling would be intensified at Bennington.
In most, if not all, of the important actions recently at he North, both prosperous and adverse, Bennington had borne a part. Upon the fall of Montgomery and defeat of our troops before Quebec, Col. Warner, having, within a few weeks, honorably discharged his regiment of Green Mountain Boys, at the call of Gen. Wooster, again beat up 'or volunteers, and was at the head of another regiment marched to Quebec, endured the rigors of a winter cam- paign, and brought up the rear of the retreating American irmy in the coming spring. The northern portions of the Grants being then exposed, Bennington, at a town meeting, oted,
" To raise ninety dollars as an encouragement to those who may nlist in the service of guarding the frontier towns in the Grants."
It was also " voted to pay those who went a little time be-
156
MEMORIALS OF A CENTURY.
fore on this service if the Continent did not." Ticonderoga was threatened on an occasion previous to its surrender under St. Clair. The militia of Bennington and the neigh- boring towns, under Col. Moses Robinson, turned out en masse and marched to its relief; the defence of the fort at this time was successful. Col. Robinson and his regiment received the official thanks of Gen. Gates.
At the same time flour was wanted for the subsistence of the army, and a letter on that behalf was addressed to Ben- nington. The next day it was returned for answer, that one thousand bushels of wheat were collected and being ground at the mills ; though, as the militia had left, almost to a man, it would be difficult to get what they had on hand conveyed.1
Col. Ethan Allen was a British prisoner ; Col. Seth Warner, as we have seen, had been defeated at Hubbard- ton.
The state of alarm in the country after the fall of Ticon- deroga and the defeat at Hubbardton has been described ; also the confident hopes of Burgoyne from the disaffection on the Grants toward the Yorkers, and the compromised situation of those inhabitants of the Grants who had sympathized with New York. There was an impression in Burgoyne's mind that the region of country through which he was passing, and especially the Hampshire Grants, be- cause of their hostile relations to the new State of New York, and through the influence of New York with the general government, was ripe for defection to his cause.
. Let not the reader, therefore, conclude that Burgoyne's impressions on this subject were correct ; or even that our sturdy Vermont settlers had the first thought of shunning at such a crisis the post of danger. While women and children, and the infirm, and some timid ones, fled in large
1 Vermont Hist. Mag.
-
157
GETTING A FOOTHOLD.
numbers southward for safety, the profound anxiety of the time carried with it this most significant of all its results : the thorough arousing of the sturdy dwellers among these green hills of New. England to the duty and necessity of the hour.
It is not too much to say that it was this spirit thus thoroughly in earnest that turned the scale of victory on the heights of the Walloomsac.
To this spirit Burgoyne's menace of Indian hostilities was rather an exasperation than a terror. " The murder of Miss McCrea resounded throughout the land, counteracting all the benefits anticipated from the terror of Indian hostilities. Those people of the frontiers who had hitherto remained quiet now fled to arms to defend their families and fire- sides. In their exasperation they looked beyond the sav- ages to their employers. They abhorred an army which, professing to be civilized, could league itself with such barbarians ; and they execrated a government which, pre- tending to reclaim them as subjects, could let loose such fiends to desolate their homes. The blood of the unfortu- nate girl, therefore, was not shed in vain. Armies sprang up from it. Her name passed as a note of alarm along the banks of the Hudson ; it was a rallying word among the Green Mountains of Vermont, and brought down all their hardy yeomanry." 1
V. GETTING A FOOTHOLD. - In estimating the influ- ences which determined the result of the Bennington bat- tle, one must not be overlooked, which was the growth of all the previous history here of our early settlers, but did not get complete maturity until about the time of Burgoyne's invasion, the motive of building up upon the New Hamp- shire Grants a separate and independent State. An august
1 Irving's Life of Washington. See Thacher. 14
158
MEMORIALS OF A CENTURY.
crisis is that of the life of the nation, and it were well, perhaps, to pause longer and consider it; and to see how the zeal of the early settlers here was identical, to a degree, with their zeal for their country; but there was at this time, also, a crisis in the life of this community and this commonwealth.
To go back a little further, now, in our retrospect. Western Vermont, owing to its intermediate location be- tween the French on one side and English on the other, in the times of the colonial wars had been a great thorough- fare and battle-ground for both sides, and so its permanent settlement had been prevented. The same course had pre- vented the permanent occupancy of this part of the country by Indian tribes at an earlier day ; they crossed these val- leys and roamed stealthily for prey up and down these mountain sides, but they established no permanent occu- pancy. The ground was common for battle and thorough- fare between tribes never for long at peace with each other.1 The country here had remained comparatively destitute of Indian settlements, as it afterward was of French or Eng- lish colonists.
A new order of things opened when our hardy immi- grants of 1761 set foot upon this soil. They came to stay. They brought with them too much vigor and determination for any obstacle or foe whatever. It requires no stretch of imagination to see that, had not the Green Mountain Boys determined that Burgoyne should not cross this soil, their beautiful territory would have again become mere frontier ;
1 " The scantiness of the population cannot be attributed to any other cause than the local situation of Vermont with respect to the various Indian nations, which prevented its becoming a permanent residence for the red man in earlier times, and afterward prevented its being settled by the French and English during the colonial wars."-Mr. Houghton's Montpelier address on the life of Seth Warner. See Williams' Hist. Vermont, 1794, p. 211 ; also Palfrey's Hist. New England; also Thompson's Vermont, P. II., pp. 205, 207, 216.
159
APPEALS FROM THE COUNCIL OF SAFETY.
a disputed territory no one can tell how long between inimical powers.
This appears from the address of the Council of Safety of Vermont to the Councils of Safety of Massachusetts and New Hampshire, requesting a concentration of patriotic troops for the defence of the Western Vermont border against Burgoyne. In that address the Council of Safety said : -
" This State in particular seems to be at present the object of destruction. By the surrender of the fortress of Ticonderoga, a communication is opened to the defenceless inhabitants on the frontier, who, having little more in store at present than sufficient for the maintenance of their respective families, and not ability immediately to remove their effects, are therefore induced to ac- cept such protection as is offered them by the enemy. By this means those towns which are most contiguous to them are under the necessity of taking such protection, by which the next town or towns become equally a frontier as the former towns before such protection; and unless we can have the assistance of our friends so as to put it immediately in our power to make a suffi- cient stand against such strength as they may send, it appears that it will soon be out of the power of this State to maintain its territory."
Message after message came to New Hampshire from outraged Vermont in this style : - " When we are crushed and cease to be the frontier, you must be. There is no frontier, and will be none, except where there are sufficient troops with arms in their hands to defend it." 1 The action of the Vermont Council of Safety, boldly com- mitting the State as a barrier of the bodies of her citizens against the further inroads of a powerful foe flushed with recent and uninterrupted success, was taken on the 15th of July, 1777 (the day that Burgoyne fixed in his procla- mation for the affrighted towns and people to come in
1 Butler's Address, referring to Stevens.
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160
MEMORIALS OF A CENTURY.
and make their submission to him). It was only six months previously, Jan. 15, 1777, that the adjourned con- vention was held at the Westminster court-house, which voted (N. C. D) : -
" That the district of land commonly called and known by the name of New Hampshire Grants be a new and separate State, and for the future conduct themselves as such."
The author of that Declaration of Independence, Dr. Jonas Fay, was a Bennington man and member of the Council of Safety.
VI. PREPARATIONS TO MEET THE ENEMY. - The appeals of the Vermont Council of Safety to those of Massachusetts and New Hampshire have been noticed. Their efforts were not relaxed ; nor were they the only ones that Vermont put forth.
When the loss of Ticonderoga was known, agents were appointed by the Vermont Convention to procure arms to the amount of four thousand pounds sterling. Within a week their agents had been in Connecticut, and, failing of success there, had set out for Massachusetts. All arms found in the possession of tories in Vermont were seized. Their property also was confiscated to fill the military chest. One hundred and fifty stand of arms had been recently presented to Vermont by Massachusetts, and an equal number sold among the Green Mountains by Charles Phelps, of Marl- borough. Massachusetts had also furnished New Hamp- shire with five tons of lead and five thousand flints. When news of the evacuation of Ticonderoga was brought to the Legislature of New Hampshire, the speaker, John Langden, thus addressed them : -
"I have three thousand dollars in hard money. I will pledge my plate for three thousand dollars more. I have seventy hogs-
161
GENERAL STARK.
heads of Tobago rum, which shall be sold for the most it will bring. These are at the service of the State. If we succeed in defending our firesides and homes, I may be remunerated ; if not, the property will be of no value to me." 1
Stark was now a private citizen. The comrade of Put- nam in the French war, and at the battle of Bunker Hill (where he defended light breastworks among the foremost in service) ; a brigadier with Washington at Trenton and Princeton, when the army went into winter-quarters at Mor- ristown, he returned to New Hampshire on a recruiting ex- pedition. Having filled his regiments, he returned to Exe- ter to await orders, and there learned that several junior officers had been promoted by Congress, while he was left out of the list. Soured with government, he had retired from service. He was upon his farm in New Hampshire ; 2 and his name was a tower of strength among the Green Mountain Boys. The Legislature of New Hampshire offered him the command of the forces they were to raise. Laying aside his private griefs, he once more donned his armor, and went to the field ; stipulating, however, that he should not be obliged to join the main army, but hang upon the wing of the enemy in our own borders, and strike when opportu- nity should offer. Joy pervaded the militia when their favorite commander was announced as their chief. They cheerfully flocked to his standard, which he raised first at Charlestown (No. Four, on the Connecticut River), and then at Manchester, twenty miles north of Bennington.
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