USA > Vermont > Windsor County > Windsor > The birthplace of Vermont; a history of Windsor to 1781 > Part 32
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"Att a Legal meeting of the freeholders and InHabbitants of the Town of Windsor holden att Said Windsor on the 23 Day of June 1777.
"1ly Voted and Chose Capt. William Dean Moderator.
"2ly Put to Vote wether the Town wold Chuse two Dele- gates to attend General Convention passed in the Affirmative.
"3ly Put to Vote whether the Town wold Chuse their Dele- gates by Giving their Names to the Clark. Voted in Affirma- tive
"4ly Voted and Chose Capt William Dean the first Delegate
"5ly Voted and Chose Eben' Hoisington the Second Dele- gate to attend the General Convention to meet at the Town house2 in Windsor on the Second Day of July next.
"Voted to Disolve the Meeting."
1 4 Doc. Hist. N. Y., p. 567.
2 The several towns having been notified by the vote of the June convention to elect delegates to sit in a general convention at the "meeting house" in Wind- sor, it will be seen that Windsor in speaking of the "town house" as the place of meeting, showed conclusively that the two designations meant one and the same building.
CHAPTER XXXIX A STATE IS FORMED
OF the Constitutional Convention which assembled at Wind- sor on July 2, 1777, "for the forming the State of Vermont" 1 no part of the original minutes or journal remains. Doctor Jonas Fay's record book contains no allusion to it. Writing in 1873 Mr. E. P. Walton says:
"Of this Convention-unsurpassed in importance by any other in the State, in that it established a constitution and frame of government-no official record, and no full and sat- isfactory unofficial account even, has ever been published." 2
Among the early Vermont historians neither Williams nor Allen nor Graham refers to the minutes of that momentous gathering. William Slade, junior, in editing his valuable vol- ume of Vermont State Papers in 1823, remarked with matter- of-fact unconcern that "the journals of the several sittings of the convention are not to be found." 3 Governor Hiland Hall, in his Early History of Vermont, published in 1868, goes fur- ther: "Neither the journal of the convention nor a list of the members has been preserved." 4 How these records came to be lost or destroyed nobody has shown. Doctor Jonas Fay, who acted as secretary of this and earlier conventions and who lived until the year 1818, apparently never revealed the manner or the occasion of the disappearance. Indeed, it is possible that owing to defects in the credentials of some of the delegates or because of small or irregular attendance, no com- plete minutes were kept. For like reasons it is conceivable that such minutes as were taken down by the clerk were con- veniently mislaid or burned. We have, however, the Consti- tution which that convention established; we have a few let-
1 Vt. Hist. Soc. Coll., vol. I, p. 69.
2 1 Gov. & Coun., p. 62.
* Slade's State Papers, p. 80, note.
4 H. Hall's Early History of Vermont, p. 254.
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ters sent from the convention; we have Ira Allen's brief first- hand account of the session written from memory twenty years after, and we have the speculations of a number of his- torians as to the identity of the delegates who attended. We have also, from the press of "Judah-Padock & Alden Spooner" at Dresden,1 a printed copy of a sermon2 preached to the dele- gates by the Reverend Aaron Hutchinson, of Pomfret, on the first day of the session. On the fly-leaf of the pamphlet con- taining the sermon is a copy of what is with one exception perhaps the only transcript of any part of the official minutes of the convention. This reads as follows:
State of Vermont.
In General Convention, Windsor, 2d July, 1777. Resolved,
That Col. Joseph Marsh, Vice President, Mr. John Throop and Capt. Joseph Safford be and are hereby directed to return the Thanks of this House to the Rev. Mr. Aaron Hutchinson for his Sermon delivered this Day at the opening of this Con- vention, and request a copy thereof for the Press.
Extract from the Minutes.
Jonas Fay, Secr'y.3
There is a good deal of information in that extract. It not only shows, officially, that the convention opened on the ap- pointed day but it discloses the names of four delegates pres- ent, including two of the convention's officers, that the con- vention opened with a sermon and that Aaron Hutchinson preached it. By a letter issued by the convention we know that Joseph Bowker, who had presided at earlier conventions, was the chairman or president.4
Before making any further guesses at the names of the dele- gates at this convention it is well to turn to the text of a letter written by Brigadier-General John Stark under date of August 18, 1777, to the printer of the Connecticut Courant. It ap- peared in the issue of October 7, 1777, and has been reprinted in the first volume of the Vermont Historical Society's Collec-
1 Now Hanover, New Hampshire.
2 1 Vt. Hist. Soc. Coll., pp. 67-101.
Id., p. 68.
4 1 Gov. & Coun., p. 65.
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tions at page 228, and in the first volume of Governor and Council at page 144. Not that Stark's letter disclosed the names of the delegates: it did not do that. It indicated to historians a rule or limitation in the process of investigation. He was speaking of the "Council of Safety" which the con- vention elected, and in two places in his letter he gives us to understand that the membership of this council was made up exclusively of men who were delegates at the Windsor Con- vention of July 2, 1777. Says Stark: "Those Gentlemen [i. e., the Council of Safety] were with others attending a General Convention . . . at Windsor. . Again he says: "The honorable convention, then sitting as aforesaid, appointed twelve members as a council . .. who without delay repaired to Manchester. . . . We italicize the word "members" to bring out clearly Stark's belief that the Council of Safety was composed of convention delegates who were in attendance at Windsor and who proceeded from Windsor to Manchester.
One other writing tends to corroborate General Stark on this point. The Reverend Aaron Hutchinson, in drafting for the Council of Safety a letter introductory to the printed ver- sion of his convention sermon, wrote under date of Septem- ber 6, 1777: "You may remember with what reluctance I yielded ... to the motion of our late Convention, whereof you were a part, for giving a copy of my sermon for the press." Here we use italics to emphasize Hutchinson's belief that all the members of the Council of Safety had been convention delegates.
Of course, Stark and Hutchinson may have been mistaken, but without contemporary evidence to the contrary we may assume that they were right and that Ira Allen, who wrote from memory twenty years later, was in full concurrence with their views when he related that "the Convention then ap- pointed a Council of Safety to act during the recess, and the Convention adjourned. The Council of Safety proceeded to Manchester. He does not say they "convened" at Manchester. Already, if we are correct in our belief, the Council had "convened" at Windsor. They merely "pro- ceeded" from Windsor to Manchester.
1 Allen's History of Vermont, p. 93.
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A field of investigation that Vermont historians seem hardly to have ploughed in their search for the names of the delegates to the Constitutional Convention is the records of the several towns. Those records, where they have been preserved, show who were elected on June 23 to go to Windsor on July 2. Proof of election is not proof of actual attendance at Windsor, but it is fairly persuasive; and the proof that A had been elected as the delegate from Woodstock would be pretty conclusive evidence that B was not Woodstock's delegate at the Con- vention.
We say that this latter line of research has not been pur- sued with diligence because nobody except the writer has published the fact that Captain William Dean and Ebenezer Hoisington appear by Windsor's town records as elected dele- gates to the Constitutional Convention, and because Captain Dean's once well-known if not notorious name has never been mentioned by Vermont historians in connection with that great meeting. Nor does one find in the so-called list of "prob- able" convention delegates the names of John Barrett and William Lockwood, whom the town of Springfield records as its elected representatives on that occasion.
We have digressed to this extent because Vermont histo- rians have given too little weight to the foregoing documen- tary evidence or sources of information in trying to solve the two fascinating puzzles of discovering the names of the con- vention delegates and the names of the twelve original mem- bers of the Council of Safety.
Before we digressed at all we had accepted as convention delegates Joseph Bowker, president; Joseph Marsh, vice-presi- dent; Jonas Fay, secretary; John Throop, of Pomfret, and Joseph Safford, of Bennington. For those five men we have contemporaneous documentary proof of their being members. We could include as members of the convention the names of the twelve men who constituted the Council of Safety, but here again we are met with uncertainty. Mr. E. P. Walton's surmises in this regard, set forth at length in the first volume of Governor and Council at pages 67 and 74 and at page 109, were not wholly satisfactory to himself and are quite unsatis- factory to any discriminating reader. Nor does Mr. Walton's
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THE BIRTHPLACE OF VERMONT
final finding in the eighth volume at page 453 carry the con- viction that he has discovered the names of the twelve men originally constituting the Council of Safety. We know, how- ever, from its records that Thomas Chittenden was its presi- dent, that Jonas Fay was its vice-president, that Ira Allen was its first secretary, and that Doctor Paul Spooner was its deputy secretary. From an official letter1 written by the last under date of August 11, 1777, and in which he referred to the council by the pronoun "us," we learn that Benjamin Spencer and General Jacob Bayley were original members. Ira Allen's History sets forth circumstances which leave little doubt that both he and Nathan Clark were members also .? We are there- fore moderately safe in adding to the five record members of the convention the names of Thomas Chittenden, Ira Allen, Paul Spooner, Benjamin Spencer, Jacob Bayley, and Nathan Clark.
The town of Newbury has records showing that both Gen- eral Bayley and Reuben Foster were elected delegates to the Constitutional Convention, and we have already mentioned the election of delegates in Windsor and Springfield. Since the last-named town was still represented in the Cumberland County Committee, and to that extent still showed its fidelity to New York, we cannot feel sure that Springfield's elected delegates actually went to Windsor. Nor are we inclined to place implicit confidence in Ira Allen's memory or accuracy of statement when he describes Heman Allen as a member of the Council of Safety,3 although it must be admitted that Heman Allen would have been expected as a convention dele- gate and a natural selection for the Council. There seems no reason to doubt that Captain William Dean and Ebenezer Hoisington served as Windsor's delegates. Colonel William Williams, of Wilmington, is reported to have been in Windsor during the last days of the convention.4 Warner reports him as at Hubbardton on July 1,5 but General St. Clair lists Wil- liams's regiment as under the command of Colonel Benjamin
1 1 Gov. & Coun., pp. 137-138. 2 Allen's History of Vermont, p. 96.
3 Id., p. 101.
'B. H. Hall's History of Eastern Vermont, pp. 297-298 and note.
$ 1 Vt. Hist. Soc. Coll. 61.
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Bellows four days later,1 indicating that Colonel Williams was then absent. The record on the gravestone of Colonel Ben- jamin Carpenter, of Guilford, would imply that he also was a delegate.2 For conjectural work by others in the pleasant pas- time of making up the convention's membership, see the first volume of Governor and Council, at pages 63 and 527, and J. M. Comstock's Principal Officers of Vermont, page 274.
The approach of General Burgoyne's fine army of nearly eight thousand troops, which had begun its southward move- ment in the Champlain Valley, spread fear over the New Hampshire Grants. By June 29, 1777, he had reached Put- nam's Creek, north of Ticonderoga, and from his camp issued a proclamation of warning to the countryside. From that date evidence of panic among the settlers was discernible. They began fleeing to him for protection and professing their loyalty to the Crown. It was an inopportune and awkward time for mustering a convention at Windsor or anywhere else on the Grants-especially a convention which contemplated the erec- tion of a government rebellious against and independent of Great Britain. Under such conditions one could not reason- ably expect at Windsor a full representation from the exposed towns on the west side of the Green Mountains, or an aggre- gate attendance anywhere near equal to the seventy-odd com- posing the June convention. Aaron Hutchinson no doubt re- flected a common view of the situation when, sixty days later, he wrote: "I had expected the Convention would not sit at that time, by reason of the dark cloud then coming over us, and which overwhelmed us the week after." 3 Had it been known that the Continental Congress had finally and rather contemptuously rejected on June 30 the petition filed in April by the representatives of the New Hampshire Grants, the famous convention of July 2 would hardly have taken place.
The convention assembled, however, and on the appointed day. From the Reverend Aaron Hutchinson's note of intro- duction to his sermon preached on that occasion to the dele- gates "at the opening" of the convention, we gather that the proceedings began in the afternoon. He recites that his dis-
1 N. Y. Hist. Soc. Coll. for 1880, pp. 80, 113, and 118.
2 1 Gov. & Coun., pp. 117-118.
31 Vt. Hist. Soc. Coll., p. 72.
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course was "delivered extempore after my riding in the heat of that day,"1 and the Reverend Pliny White asserts that "before proceeding to business the convention listened to a sermon by Reverend Aaron Hutchinson." 2 Granting that the convention met at Windsor's meeting house or town house, according to plan, the quality of this sermon delivered on the afternoon of a day remembered by the preacher for its "heat" may well support Windsor's tradition that the delegates at the earliest opportunity repaired to the near-by tavern and remained there for their subsequent sessions. One who has the patience to read Mr. Hutchinson's sermon through will be convinced that it could but have had a dipsetic or siccific effect on his hearers. The subject, "A well tempered Self-Love a Rule of Conduct towards others," the preacher frequently lost sight of. The text, which was the familiar twelfth verse of the seventh chapter of the Gospel according to St. Matthew, is very far from justifying the vindictive tone which pervaded much of Mr. Hutchinson's address: "Therefore all things what- soever ye would that men should do to you, do ye even so to them: for this is the law and the prophets." The Golden Rule as taught by Jesus became under Aaron Hutchinson a text for resentment and self-defence in a sermon that, according to the Reverend Pliny White, "exhibits a logical unity and co- herence and a frequency of classical and historical allusions which testify to the highly disciplined and well-furnished mind of its author."
The "allusions" least uninteresting to the convention dele- gates and to us are those which touched the conduct of Great Britain and the conduct of the Province of New York. The expense of maintaining a court-house, a jail, and "four county courts in a year," the compulsory attendance on the courts by the jurymen, the exaction of patent fees and higher quit- rents, were some of the items in the Reverend Mr. Hutchin- son's bill of particulars against New York. "We are chiefly from New England," argued he, and "our genius and temper, and the laws we have been accustomed to, are very different from those of New-York." The only favor traceable to New York, according to Mr. Hutchinson, he set up as a man of
1 Vt. Hist. Soc. Coll., vol. 1, p. 70.
2 1 Gov. & Coun., 64.
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THE OLD CONSTITUTION HOUSE AT WINDSOR
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straw to be knocked down. This was the grant of money to support Hoisington's Rangers. "Those rangers," said he, who "were granted without the knowledge of the people" on the Grants "at the motion of one single man who attained the chief command," were deemed "rather a nuisance than a de- fence and innocently the wasters of the public money." If poor Joab Hoisington, who was lying in an unmarked grave on the Ox Bow at Newbury, had had a friend in the conven- tion, this slur upon a patriot's memory should have called forth a challenge.
It is worth noting that it was not Mr. Hutchinson's idea that the New State should be a pure democracy. "Democ- racy ... is found by the experience of all ages ... soon to lose its dignity ... and has often degenerated into the most bare-faced, intolerable tyranny." Although "monarchy and oligarchy carry dignity," they also "may easily degener- ate into oppression and tyranny." Therefore he recommended to the delegates "an happy union of the three."
So he forged on to the end of his sermon, which may be found in full in the first volume of the Vermont Historical Society's Collections, at pages 67 to 100. It was apparently followed by a prayer1 and Doctor Watts's hymn, "Blessed Redeemer, how divine," concluding with a doxology sung, standing, by "the whole assembly." 2 If, after passing the resolution to ask of Mr. Hutchinson a copy of his sermon for printing, the sweaty and thirsty delegates then sought the tavern of Elijah West,3 they were actuated by motives entirely natural and normal.
Some time on that day came to the convention a messenger with a disquieting letter written by Colonel Seth Warner while on his way from Hubbardton to Ticonderoga. Dated July 1, it told of the approach of the British and the immi- nence of the attack upon the fortress. It was addressed "To the Hon. the Convention now sitting at Windsor in the State of Vermont," beseeching prompt exertion to call out the militia on "the east side of the mountain." That Warner's prayer was promptly heeded by the convention is indicated
11 Vt. Hist. Soc. Coll., p. 100.
2 Id., pp. 100, 101.
3 Or the tavern of Jacob Hastings, if he was its landlord.
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THE BIRTHPLACE OF VERMONT
by President Bowker's letter of July 3, transmitting a copy of Warner's dispatch to the Board of War or Assembly of New Hampshire. Said Bowker: "The Militia from this State are principally with the officer Commanding the Continental Army at Ticonderoga, the remainder on their march for the relief of that distressed Post." 1 Other items of business trans- acted by the convention, in addition to adopting a constitu- tion, were measures for safeguarding the Westminster jail,2 the establishment of a loan office,3 the authorization of Colonel Joseph Marsh, Colonel William Williams, and Colonel Tim- othy Brownson as contractors for arms for the use of the State,4 and the appointment of a Council of Safety to manage the affairs of government until the election of a legislature and executive officers pursuant to the terms of the constitution. The news that Ticonderoga had been evacuated on July 6 reached the convention on July 8. The story of the proceed- ings of the convention, as related by Ira Allen and many times quoted, is as follows:
"A draft of a constitution was laid before the Convention, and read. The business being new, and of great consequence, required serious deliberation. The Convention had it under consideration when the news of the evacuation of Ticonderoga arrived, which alarmed them very much, as thereby the fron- tiers of the State were exposed to the inroads of an enemy. The family of the President of the Convention, as well as those of many other members, were exposed to the foe. In this awful crisis the Convention was for leaving Windsor, but a severe thunder-storm came on, and gave them time to reflect, while other members, less alarmed at the news, called the at- tention of the whole to finish the Constitution, which was then reading paragraph by paragraph for the last time. This was done, and the Convention then appointed a Council of Safety to act during the recess, and the Convention ad- journed." 5
1 1 Gov. & Coun., p. 65.
2 B. H. Hall's History of Eastern Vermont, p. 298.
3 1 Gov. & Coun., p. 75.
5 Allen's History of Vermont, pp. 92-93.
4 Id., p. 67.
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A STATE IS FORMED
To Allen's report we may add Thomas Chittenden's asser- tion that the representatives at the Convention "did . . . agree Unanimously on a Constitution. . . . " 1 And we also venture the suggestion that this important step was taken by delegates who had had before them not a single copy of the great code they ratified other than Thomas Young's draft.
According to accepted beliefs, while the thunderstorm was raging without, the members of the convention who had been prevailed upon to stay to the end concluded their labors in the tavern-now called the Old Constitution House-adopted the Constitution, appointed a Council of Safety, and ad- journed. This was on Tuesday, July 8, 1777. Had it not been for that storm the delegates would have scattered in conster- nation without finishing their work of forming a State. Thus two fortuitous circumstances-first, the delay in getting news that the Continental Congress had disapproved Vermont's aspirations, and, second, the great thunderstorm occurring at the nick of time-permitted the birth of the New State.
1 1 Gov. & Coun., 215.
CHAPTER XL THE CONSTITUTION
ONE day, towards the end of his term as British Ambassa- dor to the United States, James Bryce, author of Bryce's American Commonwealth, stood on Windsor Rock, that point on the crest of Mount Ascutney, from which one obtains the view of the beautiful Connecticut Valley, with the village of Windsor lying at one's feet. "Has Windsor anything notable in its history ?" asked he. On being told that Windsor was the place in which a convention of delegates from the towns on the New Hampshire Grants framed and adopted the Consti- tution of Vermont, and that this Constitution was the first to prohibit slavery, he said with emphais: "That is notable indeed. Windsor should be proud of such a heritage."
The item of history which Bryce seized upon as something of exceptional value is, of course, the feature of Vermont's first Constitution. Whence came this provision, who was mainly responsible for its insertion in the Constitution, what amount of Vermont sentiment there may have been behind it, no historian seems to have discovered. It does not appear in the Pennsylvania constitution, from which Thomas Young prepared his draft for the use of the settlers on the New Hamp- shire Grants. There is nothing of that nature in the consti- tution of any of the thirteen original States, nor did it become a part of the Constitution of the United States, as originally formed ten years later. Samuel Williams, who published the first edition of his History of Vermont in 1794, did not mention the constitutional prohibition of slavery, although he did dis- cuss Vermont's Constitution, which, curiously enough, he as- serts was formed in 1778.1 Graham in 1797 made the same error2 as to the year in which the Constitution was established, and neither he nor Ira Allen mentions the subject of slavery.
There had been organized in Philadelphia in 1775 an anti-
1 Williams, History of Vermont (1st ed.), p. 347; Id. (2d ed.), vol. 2, pp. 387, 397.
2 A Descriptive Sketch of the Present State of Vermont, p. 18.
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THE CONSTITUTION
slavery society, so that Thomas Young had at hand in his home town a source from which he might have gained the idea if it was he who was responsible for its introduction into Ver- mont's Constitution. The circumstances of the inhabitants of the New Hampshire Grants could not have been such as to make the ownership of slaves at all common among them or give rise to a lively local issue, based on local instances. On the other hand, if somebody had pointed out to the delegates that the well-to-do citizens of the Province of New York quite commonly held slaves and were not prohibited from so doing by New York's new constitution, there might at once have occurred to the convention at Windsor a very natural reason for marking the Vermont Constitution with this distinguished and distinguishing provision. Whatever its origin, there it is; and to Vermont and to Windsor and to the group of men who stuck together in the Old Constitution House during the thunderstorm of July 8, 1777, belongs the credit of establish- ing as a basic State law what afterwards became the law of the entire Union. Looking at the history of the United States from to-day's perspective, and realizing the part which slavery played in shaping the destiny of America, we can well appre- ciate the importance of pointing to Windsor as the place where slavery first was outlawed.
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