USA > Vermont > The Lake Champlain and Lake George valleys, Vol. I > Part 17
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was slowly coming to the conclusion that membership in the Union was not an unmixed blessing. Our country was at this time operating under the Articles of Confederation. National problems seemed to be moving from bad to worse as the government bungled and blun- dered along on the road toward bankruptcy and anarchy. Confidence in the national Congress was gradually waning in the Green Mountain republic, as in the thirteen states. On the other hand, conditions in Vermont were gradually improving. Another factor was the huge debt that the United States had accumulated as a result of the Revolu- tion. While Vermont was out of the Union she was exempted from making payments. This situation certainly did not increase her desire to join the Union.
Meanwhile sentiment in Congress was becoming more and more favorable to the admission of Vermont into the Union and, one by one, leading figures in New York politics came to side with the aspirations of the people of the Green Mountain territory. Attempts on the part of the government of New York to control the disputed area had con- sistently failed. There seemed little likelihood that this situation would ever change, because the Vermonters were as opposed to its jurisdiction as ever. It seemed to many that the independence of the territory was an accomplished fact. Furthermore, the national inter- ests of the Vermonters were similar to those of New Yorkers, and their votes in Congress might be helpful. Statesmen began to ques- tion what was to be gained by further antagonism. Gouverneur Morris was favorable to Vermont as early as 1778, while such eminent figures as John Jay, Alexander Hamilton and General Schuyler also enlisted themselves in the same cause. Governor Clinton was hostile toward Vermont and, with the aid of friends who were interested in the land claims, managed to stem the tide for a time; but this could not last forever.
Finally, in 1789, the New York Legislature voted to appoint a commission to settle the controversy with full power to consent to the creation of Vermont as a separate State, and later on in the same year the Legislature of the Green Mountain republic appointed represen- tatives. National conditions now tended to promote harmony. As the government of the Articles of Confederation gave way to the new Constitution, the atmosphere of pessimism faded away before the hope of a new and better day. A system of laws was now established which placed the affairs of state on a sound basis. George Washing-
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ton was, moreover, the President. In him, the people of Vermont had complete confidence. The representatives of the two States met in New York City in February, 1790, but negotiations were soon broken off when it became apparent that New York's commissioners had no power to settle land claims. A bill was immediately intro- duced into the Legislature at Albany, however, providing for the necessary increase in authority. Governor Clinton, as hostile as ever to Vermont, tried to prevent its becoming a law, but failed. The rep- resentatives of the two States thereupon resumed deliberations in New York City in September, 1790, and arrived at a satisfactory agreement. Vermont was to pay, by June, 1794, the sum of thirty thousand dollars, and in return all land claims on the part of New York were nullified. The Vermont Legislature passed the necessary act providing for payment of the money promptly, and Nathaniel Chipman and Lewis R. Morris were finally sent to Philadelphia to negotiate for admission into the Union. On February 18, 1791, Con- gress passed an act declaring that, on the fourth of March, Vermont should be received into the Union on a plane of full equality with the original thirteen States. There were no objections. The contest which had dragged on for so many years accompanied with so much bitterness and violence was thus ended in an atmosphere of peace and quiet.
Vermont shares with Texas the distinction of being the only State in the Union admitted by the petition of its people. It also was the first State to be added to the original thirteen, thus setting a good precedent for the organization of territory in the west. By its vote and influence it tended to strengthen the northern States in Congress as some of its New York friends had foretold.
CHAPTER X
The Life of the Early Pioneer
As we read of the trials and tribulations of the people who settled in Vermont and northern New York in the period between the French and Indian War and the American Revolution, the wonder grows that they migrated at all. We can think of many more pleasant ways of living than to attempt to carve a livelihood out of that virgin wilder- ness, remote from civilization in a region inhabited primarily by wild animals and infested with bands of Indians. In addition, as has already been described, the settlers had to promise to pay quitrents and make other equally impossible engagements. Their grants were also often indefinite, due to inaccurate surveys and contests with Indi- ans and other patentees. Furthermore, the scandalous manner in which the lands were disposed of by the royal Governors was a hard- ship to the pioneers. The main consideration of the King's represen- tatives seems to have been their own individual emolument. To replenish their personal fortunes they made huge grants, particularly along the banks of rivers where the land was most convenient and desirable. The men, who held these grants, as a rule, desired to fill them with dependent tenants rather than to sell small sections. The land not included in these large grants was generally of an inferior nature. As a result, the actual settler had the choice of independently owning some of the less desirable land or living the restricted life of a tenant on better land. These difficulties were troublesome to all colonists, yet in Vermont they were dwarfed into comparative insig- nificance by the bitter dispute between New Hampshire and New York over the land grants. In spite of all obstacles, however, the settlers moved in, cut down trees and built their rude shanties.
On the other hand, most of them had little to look forward to in their old communities. Life was not democratic along the sea-
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coast and in the earlier settlements. Class distinctions existed almost everywhere. This was particularly true in the New York Colony. Inhibitions on the lower classes were both social and political. There was, for all practical purposes, a ruling class, an aristocracy, which retained its influence to the end of the eighteenth century. There was a profound distrust of popular government as we understand it today. The Declaration of Independence, to which the ruling families were to render lip service only, so far as some of its provisions were con- cerned, was not signed until 1776. There were many other conditions existing in the older communities, such as the uniformly large fam- ilies and the resulting insufficiency of wealth to provide for all the children, which also made the common people feel that no chance existed for them in the shadow of their aristocratic neighbors. The lines of caste and class on the seacoast were too high to hurdle. The frontier promised equality of opportunity and privilege.
Theodore Roosevelt has given us a fine description of old New York: "The colony was in government an aristocratic republic, its constitution modelled on that of England and similar to it; the power lay in the hands of certain old and wealthy families, Dutch and Eng- lish, and there was a limited freehold suffrage. The great landed families, the Livingstons, Van Rensselaers, Schuylers, Van Cortlandts, Philipses, Morrises, with their huge manorial estates, their riches, their absolute social preeminence and their unquestioned political headship, formed a proud, polished and powerful aristocracy, deep rooted in the soil. . . . They owned numerous black slaves, and lived in state and comfort on their broad acres, tenant-farmed, in the great roomy manorhouses, with wainscotted walls and huge fireplaces, and round about, the quaint old gardens, prim and formal with their box hedges and precise flower beds.
"Next in importance to the great manorial lords came the rich merchants of New York; many families like the Livingstons, the most prominent of all, had representatives in both classes. They were shrewd, daring and prosperous; they were often their own ship- masters, and during the incessant wars against the French and Span- iards went into privateering ventures with even more zest and spirit than into peaceful trading. Next came the smaller landed proprietor, who also possessed considerable local influence; such was the family of the Clintons. The law, too, was beginning to take high rank as an honorable and influential profession. . . . The bulk of the people
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were small farmers in the country, tradesmen and mechanics in the town. . .. The farmers were thrifty, set in their ways and obstinate; the townsmen thrifty also, but restless and turbulent."*
The average settlers came to the frontier, both in Vermont and New York, for the same reason that they migrated to the fringe of civilization elsewhere, and that purpose was to make homes for them- selves. The primary motive was to advance their chances, and also to improve the opportunities of their children. Here, on the frontier, if they were rugged enough, and if fortune should smile on them suffi- ciently, they possessed the chance that they did not have in Albany, Boston, Providence or New York City. Perhaps, too, the frontier was not so black as sometimes painted. Indians were not always on the warpath, and not all of them were enemies, even in time of war. In fact, friendly savages were often very helpful. The dangers exist- ing because of the wild animals that populated the wilderness could be reduced to a minimum by proper precautions and the construction of buildings. Quitrents apparently were seldom collected, and other conditions listed in the patents were not usually enforced. In addi- tion, the validity of the grant, or the lack of it, did not always matter. In the words of Frederic L. Paxson, that great historian of the frontier :
"Whether in the crown or the proprietary colony, the right of the squatter was generally one that could be protected. There were no preliminary surveys, and no descriptions of the land until some desir- ous settler wrote down the metes and bounds of his tract and opened negotiations for a deed. As between two claimants to a tract, the occupier or squatter had precedence. That anyone should be excluded from unoccupied land merely because of the demand of the crown, the proprietor, the large owner, or even the State, ran against frontier opinion. A more congenial idea was the notion that such land was by nature free until some squatter should improve it, and then it belonged to him."+
Out on the frontier were to be found human freedom and individ- ual liberty so far as nature permitted. No aristocrats were present to dictate the settler's customs or his place in society. His position in the new community depended entirely upon his worth as an individual,
*Roosevelt, Theodore: "Gouverneur Morris."
¡Paxson, Frederic L .: "History of the American Frontier."
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and his ability to lead others in the activities of the frontier. Far from the centers of legal authority, he was in a rough way his own law. This condition of human freedom existed only on the frontier, and it was in many ways a desirable change to many of the less fortunate people living in the older sections of the colonies and fettered by social castes, religious inhibitions, economic inequalities, and political helplessness.
Once out on the frontier, these early settlers had an important bearing upon the nation's development, as well as upon the evolution of the Colonies or States. We can agree with Frederick Jackson Turner that the most important influence in American history up to 1890 was the frontier. This it was that moulded Europeans into Americans, directly or indirectly. In this evolution of democracy, the frontiers of Vermont and northern New York played their important part. The services of the pioneers who carved our nation's greatness out of the endless wilderness are so obvious and so numerous that it is outside the province of this work to catalogue them here. We are all well acquainted with the life of the early frontiersmen.
"It is a familiar story . . . . and has often been described . . . . that first warfare waged with the axe and fire against countless num- bers of towering trees covering hills and bottom-lands with primeval growths. On sites where other giants had grown up and died of old age in the long and uncounted past, the pioneer, by felling these prides of the forest, literally cut out the space whereon to rear his humble home, its roof of bark, its walls of logs, its floor the bare earth.
"Gradually he extended his cleared areas and was able to plant corn and wheat, the blackened piles of half-burnt logs and the enor- mous stumps he could not extract making later in the season the only blemishes on the golden surface of his autumn fields. Beyond his clearing lay the narrow forest-borders of his home. From the small- ness of his first expanse of cleared land, sprang a feature that became familiar to many frontier homes. It was well into the forenoon ere the sun could reach his cabin-door, and it was early in the second half of the day when the last rays of light vanished from his western win- dows, casting dark shadows from the adjacent forest over his small domain.
"As time went on, the pioneer's problem was how to get rid of vast accumulations of timber in fields where he had felled the pine, the
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oak, and the maple. Enormous bonfires were lighted, and from the remains, pot and pearl ashes were obtained. These fires made stir- ring scenes to look upon and must have been a chief source of height- ened pleasure for the small boy. On hillsides as well as in valleys, conflagrations were lighted, and so vast were some of them as to brighten and make resplendent at night for miles around the hills across the valleys, the water of streams, and the azure sky above them all. Not less familiar were the noises made by falling trees and the resounding axeblows that were echoed back from neighboring hills."*
Far from the inner zones of legal authority emanating from colo- nial governing centers, the settlers developed not only a dislike for the inhibitions of the law, but also a startling disrespect for law enforcement agents. Even during the French wars, the people living on the fringes of civilization traded almost openly with the enemy that was then threatening their homes and kindred. This condition, however, was only trivial compared to the smuggling that took place after the wars were over. The smugglers living in the so-called civ- ilized communities along the Atlantic seaboard were, by comparison, few in numbers when it came to attempts to evade England's colonial regulations.
In their attitude toward the British Crown, there was consider- able difference between the inhabitants of New York and the New Hampshire Grants. This was only natural, because one Colony was pri- marily aristocratic, whereas the other was fundamentally democratic, and because of the King's partiality to New York during the struggle over lands. The Green Mountain Boys captured Ticonderoga from a British garrison more than a year before the Declaration of Inde- pendence was signed, and there is no question but that the settlers on the Grants were wholeheartedly in favor of the patriot cause. Such was not the case with the New Yorkers. Independence made little headway in that Colony until the end of 1775, and there was certainly little commotion over the Stamp Act outside of New York City. The life of the period leading up to the Revolution, peaceful as it may have been in comparison with other colonies, finally became bitter with the approach of war, however. Brawls and clashes took place between loyalists and patriots. As the settlers chose sides for the approaching fray, neighbors were pitted against neighbors, and
*Halsey : "The Old New York Frontier."
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families were rent asunder by the schism. Some of the frontiers- men became spies for one side or the other, while most of them at one time or another fought in the opposing armies. The pioneers who had penetrated the wilderness while the fields were still damp from the blood lost in the French wars had, by 1776, earned in many cases the right to be regarded as heroes; but their heroism was now to be put to a still more severe test before they and their descendants could enjoy their possessions in peace.
As was to be expected, there was a religious tinge to the division between patriots and Tories in New York. The aristocratic Episco- palians tended to be loyal to England, while the Calvinists constituted the backbone of the patriots. The Methodists attempted to remain neutral, but if they leaned in either direction it was toward the Tories because of their Church of England background. The settlers in the vicinity of Glens Falls were mostly Quakers and against all warfare. Actually, they also leaned toward the English cause, and when Bur- goyne's soldiers finally advanced from the north, the redcoats left many of these settlers unmolested.
In spite of the tremendous Tory strength in New York State, the patriotic element contributed much to our eventual independence. Of the three hundred and eight battles and engagements of the Revolu- tion, ninety-two were to take place within the boundaries of this State. For all this military activity the frontier was not prepared, and the forts were in general in a rather dilapidated condition. Fort George was practically abandoned in 1768, and as late as 1774 only enough men were maintained at the head of Lake George to take care of sup- plies bound for northern points. The fort at Crown Point blew up in 1773. Only a few soldiers were left at Ticonderoga and that fort was in a bad condition as well. The chief duty of this garrison was to attempt to maintain a certain amount of order among the people liv- ing in the New Hampshire Grants.
In the meantime, State government was in the transition stage. As we have seen, Vermont opposed the efforts of others to rule her, and set up a liberal and democratic constitution of her own. In New York, during the Revolution, there were two governments function- ing within the State at the same time; the British ruling New York City and vicinity, while the rest of the State was under the authority of an American government. The patriot constitution was adopted in 1777, and was a much more democratic document than we might
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expect. Although slavery was still recognized and voting was restricted to citizens that owned a certain amount of property, it pro- vided for the separation of powers, and a majority of men were per- mitted to exercise the franchise. At least it was advanced enough to withstand further important democratic assaults for over forty years. On the other hand it of course was conservative compared with Ver- mont's constitution of 1777, which contained provisions abolishing slavery, and permitting all men to vote and hold office without any · property limitations provided they had resided in the State for one year.
County government was also undergoing changes. As early as 1683, all of the present State of Vermont, and much of the colony of New York, including the entire northern section, had been designated as Albany County. Finally, in 1772, a redivision took place. The territory now included in the present counties of Washington, War- ren, Clinton and Essex in New York State, and sections of Benning- ton, Rutland, Addison, Chittenden and Franklin counties in the pres- ent State of Vermont, was used to form a new county named Char- lotte, so designated in the honor of Princess Charlotte of Mecklen- burg-Strelitz. In 1784 its name was changed to Washington County. As settlement of the frontier increased, further subdivisions of the early counties were made. For example, a large section including the present New York counties of Clinton, Essex, and Franklin, was set apart to form Clinton County in 1788. Essex split off from Clinton in 1799, and Franklin did likewise in 1808. This same process was repeated elsewhere in New York State, while a similar metamorphosis was developing in Vermont. As will be noted, much of this change developed after the Revolution, but it was under way in the period of settlement before the outbreak of hostilities.
In local affairs, the settlers as a rule had a rather thorough con- trol of the machinery of government on the frontier. Their little communities were isolated from each other and the centers of gov- ernment. Naturally, the proprietors to whom the grants had been made were important people, and if they actually lived with the col- onists, they generally took the most prominent part in affairs. On the other hand, their liberty-loving neighbors certainly were not in the habit of allowing the emergence of dictatorship or tyranny, no matter how mild it might seem. Vermonters in particular were zealous in retaining the town-meeting idea of democracy and kept a constant
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check on the activities of their selectmen, who were invested with the main authority.
The old warpaths became the ways of peace, as families left their familiar surroundings to go deeper and deeper into the virgin forests. Sometimes the pioneer left his family behind him and made his way alone or with other men into the unknown wilderness to locate a site for a new home. When at last he decided he had found his concep- tion of the promised land, he halted, rid himself of his luggage, and with fire and ax began his assault upon the multitude of giant trees
BATTENKILL RIVER AT MIDDLE FALLS NEAR GREENWICH, N. Y.
that towered about him. Week after week passed by as he continued his conquest, sometimes without the sight of another human being during his entire labor. Out of the trunks of trees he fashioned a crude log-house, and constructed a roof of bark, while at one side he planted corn to test the soil of his new-found paradise. Finally, when snow was in the air, his crops gathered, and his home finished, he set out eastward and southward to his loved ones in the old settlement to spend the winter. In the spring, he set out again toward the prom-
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ised land with his family and his earthly possessions, happy with anticipation and chafing at the slow movements of the oxen.
In sharp contrast to the lonely ordeal of erecting a cabin without assistance in the unsettled wilderness was the erection of buildings where pioneers were already established. Here the construction of a log house was a scene of festivity and community effort. From far and near, neighbors gathered to lend their assistance. On the day appointed for the "house-raising," a dozen men would set to work with a will, their zeal quickened and their spirits cheered by frequent consultation with a jug of whisky. Long before night the walls would be raised to a height of six or eight feet and the rafters put in place, while in the evening of the same day the pioneer and his family often sat down to the supper table in their new home. The finishing touches were generally added by the owner at his leisure. One room served as kitchen, dining and living room throughout the year, while during the winter it often was used as a bedroom in addition because of the necessity of utilizing to best advantage the heat from the crude fire- place. A large slab resting on legs, fashioned by the pioneer, gen- erally constituted the only table. Dishes, forks and spoons were also made of wood.
The life of the pioneer and his wife was hard in the extreme. While the head of the family fought off the wild beasts, cleared his land of rocks and stumps, and by sheer necessity wrested vegetables and fruit from the untamed soil, the lady of the house made homespun garments for her large flock, toiled in the garden with her spouse and worked valiantly from dawn to darkness and then often far into the night. So great was the courage needed by the early settlers, and so strong their will to survive, that weaklings seldom penetrated beyond the older communities. Survival was difficult, and many, particularly women, were crushed early in life by the accumulated hardships of the frontier, and crucified by the stubborn wilderness. Necessity is the mother of invention, however, and out of the ceaseless struggle for a living grew a spirit of fraternity and sociability. The futility of battling alone, unaided, against the elements was generally recog- nized, and the settlers worked shoulder to shoulder in common under- takings. The method used in "house-raisings" was employed else- where. For example, if a settler desired additional space cleared for his crops, he simply set the day for a "logging bee," and at the
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