USA > Vermont > Windsor County > Windsor > The birthplace of Vermont; a history of Windsor to 1781 > Part 34
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3 Jour. N. Y. Prov. Cong., vol. II, p. 502.
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The members of New York's Council of Safety accepted the above letter as a satisfactory explanation of Captain Wait's failure1; and well they might, since they had before them am- ple corroboration in the shape of a report from a committee which had been sent into Gloucester and Cumberland Coun- ties for the purpose of ascertaining if elections were being held pursuant to New York's constitution. Under date of June 23, Colonel John Williams and Ebenezer Clark had related that "the committee sent to Cumberland and Gloucester Counties in order to be informed how they meant to proceed with re- spect to the Senators, received for answer that the New Hamp- shire Grants had declared themselves independent and would not let the county committees sit, nor anything be transacted under the jurisdiction of New York." 2
So much for the difficulties in which Andrew Naughton, Elisha Hawley, and Benjamin Wait found themselves. We shall take up later the cases of other Windsor citizens, but at present we must revert to the untoward outcome of the peti- tion for independent statehood which Jonas Fay, Heman Allen, Thomas Chittenden, and Reuben Jones had presented to the Continental Congress, and which had been awaiting action by that body since April.
It was only after insistent demand by the State of New York that the Continental Congress actually passed upon the petition of the New Hampshire Grants to be recognized as a separate district or State. Obviously, the question was as delicate as it was important. Harrassed by the perplexities of the war, which was not going on too well, fortified by no strong Federal government such as the American Union sub- sequently became, the delegates to the Congress of the United Colonies would gladly have avoided decision on this grave internal matter. As it was, the petition had been pigeon-holed so long that New York had become not only im- patient but indignant, while the inhabitants of the Grants, as we have seen, had proceeded with their processes of state- forming as if sure of ultimate recognition by the Crogress.
On June 30, 1777, the Continental Congress acted. It voted
1 B. H. Hall's History of Eastern Vermont, p. 300.
2 Jour. N. Y. Prov. Cong., vol. I, p. 977.
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to dismiss the petition on the ground that the Congress was composed of delegates from the thirteen original colonies and from those only, that its business was to defend those colonies against Great Britain, and that it could not countenance any proceeding which tended to injure any of the thirteen con- stituents. The Continental Congress further resolved that its action in commissioning Colonel Seth Warner to raise a regi- ment was not intended to encourage the New Hampshire Grants to independent statehood, and that nothing of that nature was to be inferred from the Declaration of Independence of July 4, 1776. As to Thomas Young's papers, and in particu- lar his reference to the resolution of May 15, 1776, the Con- tinental Congress declared his arguments "derogatory to the honour of Congress and a gross misrepresentation of the reso- lution of Congress therein referred to, and tend to deceive and mislead the people so addressed." 1
Dilatory as the Continental Congress had been in giving judgment, there was still further delay in the transmission of copies of the decision to New York. It was not until July 17 that New York's Committee of Safety, sitting at Kingston, ordered copies of these resolutions to be supplied to James Clay and others for distribution in "the Eastern District of this State." 2 Clay endeavored to the best of his ability to disseminate the copies through the towns of Cumberland County3 on or before the 28th day of July, and his efficiency in this regard caused his arrest and imprisonment on a war- rant issued at the order of Vermont's Council of Safety on August 10.4
That the resolutions of the Continental Congress added greatly to the difficulty of advancing the New State project is revealed in Ira Allen's remarks in connection with the want of a popular ratification of Vermont's Constitution. "Had the constitution been then submitted to the people . . . ," said he, "it is very doubtful whether a majority would have con- firmed it, considering the resolutions of Congress and their in- fluence at that time, as well as the intrigues and expence of the provincial Congress of New York who endeavored to divide
14 Doc. Hist., 568-569.
2 4 Doc. Hist., 569.
3 Id., 470.
4 Id.
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and subdivide the people." 1 If the Continental Congress had been bold enough to denounce with greater severity Vermont's secession, there might have been no State of Vermont to-day.
More disconcerting than the "intrigues" of New York or the rebuff encountered at the Continental Congress was the advance of the British under Burgoyne. Following the retreat from Ticonderoga, the troops under Colonel Seth Warner had been engaged by their pursuers at Hubbardton on Vermont soil on the morning of July 7. Here, in spite of Warner's gal- lant resistance, the British gained the day and added to the fear which had spread over both Vermont and New York with the first news of the abandonment of Ticonderoga. Colonel William Marsh, of Manchester, was but one of many former Green Mountain Boys who from the west side of the State now sought refuge within the British lines. Nor was the panic confined to the west side of the mountains. In one day, as B. H. Hall informs us, from the thinly settled towns of Straf- ford and Thetford thirty men deserted and went over to the enemy.2 Lieutenant-Colonel John Peters, of Bradford, in com- mand of the Queen's Loyal Rangers, and Captain Justus Sher- wood, of New Haven, at the head of a company in Peters's Corps, were two of the conspicuous settlers of the New Hamp- shire Grants who had taken the British side and were now actively operating under Burgoyne.
Of the conditions then prevailing in Vermont it may not be uninteresting to read the contemporaneous comment by Gouverneur Morris, who, almost alone among the members of New York's Provincial Congress, had seemed to appreciate the gravity of the Vermont question and had urged the aboli- tion of the quit-rents as a means of conciliation. He had been visiting some of the northerly New York points in company with Abraham Yates, junior, on a tour of inspection, to ascer- tain further particulars of the evacuation of Ticonderoga, and had just learned of the action of the Continental Congress in dismissing the petition of the New Hampshire Grants. Writ- ing from Fort Edward under date of July 21, 1777, to Pierre Van Cortlandt, president of New York's Council of Safety, he
1 Allen's History of Vt., p. 109.
2 B. H. Hall's History of Eastern Vermont, p. 302.
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drew with characteristic freedom of expression the following sensational picture:
"Sir:
Fort Edward, 21st July 1777.
"I congratulate the Council upon the sense of Congress rel- ative to our northeastern country, discovered in their resolu- tion, of which I have several copies. I had seen one, and sup- posing the letters to Doctor Williams,1 Mr. Sessions2 and Doctor Clarke3 to contain some of them; by the advice of Generals Schuyler and St. Clair, I opened the letters, and finding myself right in that conjecture, I detained them until your further order. Mr. Yates being at Albany, I was under the disagreeable necessity of standing alone whilst I incur your displeasure, should that be the consequence of what I have done.
"The Grants, sir, are in a situation extremely delicate. Skene4 is courting them with golden offers: he hath gained many; many more are compelled to submission. There are not a few warm advocates for the British Government among them.5 At present, it is of infinite importance to get as many of these people as possible to remove their families and effects, more particularly teams and provisions, from the vicinity of Burgoyne's army. Warner is their leader, and should he be disgusted, depend upon it he will draw after him, in the pres- ent circumstances, a very large train; for disagreeable as it may be to tell or to hear this truth, yet a truth it is, that very many of those villains only want a New-England reason, or if you like the expression better, a plausible pretext, to desert the American States, New-Vermont among the rest.
"The enemy will be able to make immense advantages from it, and they will hardly fail of doing so. Skene is at hand to flatter them with being a separate Province, and what will
Colonel John Williams.
2 Captain John Sessions, of Westminster.
: Ebenezer Clarke, clerk of Charlotte County.
" The reference is probably to the so-called "Governor" Philip Skene, who had acted as guide for Burgoyne's army.
5 General Schuyler, in a letter addressed to General Washington under date of July 17, 1777, had mentioned that there was much "Toryism" on the New Hampshire Grants and in the adjoining New York townships. See 1 N. Y. Jour. Prov. Cong., 1005.
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weigh more, to give them assurances of being confirmed in their titles, howsoever acquired.
"For God's sake, sir, let us take care that we do not, by throwing those people into the arms of the enemy, support them with what they most want, and cannot get without this imprudence; to do this with the greatest advantages in view, would not be very wise, but for the sake of a mere feather, (and the government of that country is nothing more, in the present critical juncture,) it would be something too like mad- ness for me to name.
"Genl. Schuyler intends to write to the Council upon the same subject; if the reasons he offers should prove satisfactory, you will dispatch an express to prevent the publication of it in Loudon's paper, which I perceive is part of your plan. . . . " 1
Gouverneur Morris's fear of the effect of publishing the res- olutions of the Continental Congress, although to some ex- tent shared by New York's delegates at Philadelphia,2 did not impress New York's Council of Safety. In any event, his warn- ing could not have been acted upon, since in his interception of letters he had missed the Council's letter to James Clay, which contained numerous copies of the resolutions for dis- tribution. In respect to his doubt of the durability of Seth · Warner's attachment to the Revolutionary cause, Gouverneur Morris soon was proved to be in error; but in the matter of British intrigue in "New-Vermont" and the resulting peril, history shows Morris's prediction to have been nearly a bull's eye shot, while in contrasting the cause of American indepen- dence with the diminishing and already doomed authority of New York over the region of the New Hampshire Grants, Gouverneur Morris-then but twenty-five demonstrates that he had begun his career as a great national statesman.
With the foregoing particulars of the conditions during the first days of Vermont's statehood, we shall now pass to the administration of affairs under the provisional government of the New State's Council of Safety, which had been chosen by the Constitutional Convention at Windsor on July 8, 1777.
11 Jour. N. Y. Prov. Cong., 1011, 1012.
2 Id., 999.
CHAPTER XLII THE COUNCIL OF SAFETY
IN a previous chapter we mentioned the names of Thomas Chittenden, Ira Allen, Paul Spooner, Benjamin Spencer, Jacob Bayley, and Nathan Clark, as six of the original members of Vermont's Council of Safety. We also quoted General Stark to the effect that the whole number was twelve. Twelve was the number prescribed in the seventeenth section of the Con- stitution.1 Who were the other six members of that group of comparatively obscure men who ruled the State of Vermont with determination and efficiency during the first perilous eight months of her life ?
Ira Allen, in his History of Vermont, refers to his brother, Heman Allen, thus: "Heman Allen, Esq., a member of the Council of Safety of Vermont, went to the field of bat- tle. . . . " 2 The "battle" was the Battle of Bennington, which occurred on August 16, 1777; so that unless Ira Allen, when writing in England his history twenty years later, had confused his brother's membership in some of the earlier con- ventions or committees with membership in the Council of Safety under the Constitution, we ought to accept Heman Allen as one of the original twelve appointees.
Another of the original members of the Council of Safety we assume was Doctor Jonas Fay, who on August 13, 1777, signed a letter on behalf of the Council as Vice President.3 The addition of his name would bring the list up to eight.
We have, under date of August 11, 1777, a letter to Gen- eral Bayley from Paul Spooner, who wrote from the Council of Safety at Bennington, as its deputy secretary, in part as follows:
"As the Council is much crowded with business, as one of our members is with our Enemies (viz. Esq. Spencer) as an
1 See also Mr. E. P. Walton's note in 1 Gov. & Coun., 142.
' Allen's History of Vermont, p. 101. 3 1 Vt. Hist. Soc. Coll., 197.
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attendance of all the Members is required (that are on this side the mountain) to make a quorum, and as some of us want to visit our families, we wish for your speedy attendance on the Council, together with the other Members on the east side of the mountain." 1
Spooner's letter tells a good deal. Besides indicating that he was one of the Council of Safety himself, Spooner discloses to us that Bayley and at least two other persons "on the east side of the mountain" were, to a certainty, among the origi- nal members of the Council. It discloses, also, that Benjamin Spencer, of Clarendon, had been one of the original members and that he had deserted to the British. Assuming that Spoon- er's use of the word "quorum" conformed to the definition prescribed in the eighteenth section of the Constitution, there were but seven members of the Council present on the date of the letter.
It is not improbable that all four of the missing names were those of men who lived on the east side of the Green Moun- tains. Not only does Spooner's letter come near to implying it, but we have already six original members from the west side of the State-viz. Ira Allen, Heman Allen, Benjamin Spencer, Nathan Clark, Jonas Fay, and Thomas Chittenden- as against two known members from the east side in General Bayley and Paul Spooner; and we should not overlook the fact that the practice and policy then and thereafter was gen- erally to observe a balance of power and an equal distribution of offices between the two sides of the Green Mountains. Such a policy must have been expedient in the interest of unity and harmony in the initial steps of State government. To have given less than equal representation to the eastern portion of the State, which was the region having the larger population, the larger portion of the little accumulated wealth and what- ever there was of credit would have been highly impolitic. In this connection we should take notice that the two orders passed by the Council of Safety on November 24, 1777, and set forth in full in the first volume of Governor and Council, at page 200, show that at that date there were several "mem-
1 1 Vt. Hist. Soc. Coll., 196, 197.
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bers of the Council belonging on the east side of the Green Mountains" other than Paul Spooner.
Mr. E. P. Walton and others have found evidence-some of it inconclusive, we think-that before the Council of Safety terminated their labors in March, 1778, several members other than those we have mentioned had been elected or ap- pointed. For example, there is a record of the election of Benjamin Carpenter, of Guilford, by the Constitutional Con- vention when it re-assembled at Windsor on December 24, 1777.1 The Council's minutes also show that Moses Robinson, of Bennington, was a member in 1778,2 while records of the first Assembly of 1778 indicate that Timothy Brownson, of Sunderland, and Jeremiah Clark, of Shaftsbury, may have belonged to the Council of Safety at the expiration of the Council's term of office.3 Mr. Walton from his discoveries was led to a finding that Robinson, Brownson, and Jeremiah Clark were original members.4 In this conclusion we cannot concur. As to Mr. Walton's inclusion of the name of Joseph Fay as a member of the Council, we can do no more than refer to Gov- ernor Hall's doubts.5
We should bear in mind that the Constitution itself gave the Council power to fill vacancies in their own body. In the absence of a full daily journal of the proceedings we have to rely mainly on the letters, orders, and resolutions emanating from the board; and although but one letter has been pre- served showing the election of a new member, and although the election in that case was made by the Constitutional Con- vention at the additional session in December, 1777, there seems no reasonable ground for assuming that the Council of Safety failed to exercise their constitutional power while the Convention was not in session, or that Benjamin Carpenter was the only person chosen to fill a vacancy by the Constitu- tional Convention or otherwise. Take, as an example, the case of Moses Robinson. All authorities agree that he was
1 1 Gov. & Coun., 204
2 Id., p. 211.
3 8 Gov. & Coun., 453, and notes. The evidence rests on the assumption that Brownson and Clark, having been elected to the first "Governor's Council," had not been elected to the Assembly. Joseph Bowker and perhaps others were elected to both.
៛ Id. 5 Early History of Vermont, p. 259, note.
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eventually a member of the Council of Safety: the record proves it. But unless General Stark and Aaron Hutchinson erred in their testimony to the effect that the Council were originally composed of delegates who had been present at the Constitutional Convention in Windsor on July 2-8, 1777, then Moses Robinson, who at that time was with his regiment, either near Hubbardton1 or at Bennington,2 and not at the convention at all, could not have been an original member of the Council.
Mr. Walton appears to be of opinion that Heman Allen finally terminated his services with the Council of Safety when he left to engage in the Battle of Bennington.3 Ira Allen seems to limit his own membership in the Council of Safety to the year 1777.4 He signed papers for it as secretary, until Septem- ber 6, 1777, but not once thereafter, was obviously not in attendance at its sessions with regularity after that date5 and, for all the records show, was uniformly absent. As to Jacob Bayley, there is no evidence that he was present at a single meeting, yet the fact that the Council on September 4 ap- pointed him with Doctor Fay and Ira Allen as a committee to wait on General Benjamin Lincoln, gives color to the belief that General Bayley was in attendance on that day.6 On Sep- tember 22 we find General Bayley at Castleton, but far more occupied with the prosecution of the war than with the man- agement of the New State.7 Taking the records of the Coun- cil as a whole there is so much to suggest occasions for filling vacancies from time to time that one is quite justified in the opinion that the personnel of this body in March, 1778, was considerably changed from what it was at the date of its creation.
The writer confesses that he has been baffled in his search for the names of the four remaining members of the original Council of Safety. Believing that most, if not all, of the four were inhabitants of the east side of the Green Mountains, he offers the names of Colonel Joseph Marsh, of Hartford, Colonel William Williams, of Wilmington, Colonel Peter Olcott, of
1 1 Vt. Hist. Soc. Coll., 166. 2 Id., 175. 8 1 Gov. & Coun., 115. 5 1 Gov. & Coun., 142, 204.
4 3 Gov. & Coun., 418.
6 Id., 159.
7 Wells, History of Newbury, 395.
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Norwich, Colonel John Barrett, of Springfield, Captain Wil- liam Dean and Ebenezer Hoisington, of Windsor, Reuben Jones, of Rockingham, and Benjamin Emmons, of Wood- stock, as worthy of consideration. Several of these men, of course, by reason of active military duties, could not have attended the Council's sessions with regularity, but the defer- ence shown towards some of them and the authority vested in them by the Council's letters and orders prove that Marsh, Williams, Olcott, and Barrett, at least, held very close rela- tions to the Council of Safety. An absentee membership in the Council might have been a not intolerable institution from the standpoint of the known active members, who, interested mainly in prospering the organization and recognition of their New State, would thus be unhampered by the presence of the army members with the soldiers' instinct to treat the success- ful operation of the war as of somewhat greater moment than forcing the development of a New State government.
Mr. Frederick P. Wells, in his valuable History of Newbury, states upon the authority of Mr. L. E. Chittenden that Jacob Bayley became a member of the Council of Safety "at the personal solicitation of Thomas Chittenden, who represented to the Convention the importance of having the strongest man east of the mountains on the board." 1 If Thomas Chittenden entertained such sentiments he might have gone further and described General Bayley as the strongest character on the New Hampshire Grants, for the history of the several conven- tions shows that the members were possessed of that idea in their repeated efforts to make Bayley one of their New State party. At Windsor this ambition was satisfied. They were shrewd enough, however, not to make him their chairman or president; but in choosing for that office Thomas Chittenden, there is suggestion of Bayley's influence, for, as we have seen before, Bayley had grave doubts of the character of some of the other men who were to be his colleagues.
The choice of Chittenden as president of the Council of Safety is commonly based on his sagacity and experience. With certain reservations we may admit that he was lacking in neither of these respects. He had been a militia colonel and
1 Wells, History of Newbury, 110.
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a member of the Colonial Assembly in Connecticut, the State to which, beyond all the others, Vermont looked for sympathy. He had once voyaged to the West Indies. He was older than any other of the known original members of the Council except Nathan Clark, had been appointed several times to committee work by the New Hampshire Grants conventions, and had once been to Philadelphia. Nevertheless, so far as contempo- rary records are controlling, he had shown himself less of a figure in the New State movement than Heman or Ira Allen or Doctor Jonas Fay. Furthermore, he was illiterate; although that failing on his part, in the advantage over him which it gave to the persons last named, was not without its value to them. Under these circumstances and in view of the anxiety of the convention to secure the co-operation of Jacob Bayley, the writer inclines to the theory that Chittenden was a com- promise candidate put up for the office in the belief that Gen- eral Bayley's antipathy for the Allens and the Fays would make the elevation of any of them inexpedient, and that with Chittenden as the titular head of the Council General Bayley would be more likely to work in harmony. Although he failed to keep General Bayley's good will, Thomas Chittenden through his complete understanding of the temper of the majority of Vermonters developed into a very considerable personage in the history of the State.
The records of the proceedings of the Council of Safety, so far as they have been preserved, have been printed with Mr. E. P. Walton's helpful annotations in the first volume of Governor and Council, at pages 130 to 229. The journals begin with appeals to the Council of New Hampshire for military aid. The new State of Vermont had neither an army nor the revenue for raising troops. On the proposal to recruit a regi- ment Nathan Clark doubted the practicability. Ira Allen, ac- cording to his own version, met the difficulty by his plan of seizing and confiscating the goods of those who had joined or should join the enemy. On the strength of this solution the Council commissioned Samuel Herrick as lieutenant-colonel of the first Vermont regiment of rangers.1 Encouragement came in the shape of a letter from Meshech Weare, president of the
1 Allen's History of Vermont, p. 96.
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New Hampshire Council of Safety, in which he addressed Ira Allen as "Secretary of the State of Vermont." Not less than thrice Weare used the words "your State" besides promising that Brigadier General Stark was about to march with three battalions to defend the frontiers of Vermont against the British.1
Weare's letter, dated July 19, 1777, was very naturally re- garded by Vermont's Council of Safety as a recognition of Vermont's independent statehood, but Meshech Weare at the moment was "all things to all men": on August 5, 1777, he wrote to Pierre Van Cortlandt, chairman of New York's Com- mittee of Safety, that General Stark had orders "to march into your State and join Colo. Warner" and that "I was in- formed this day that he had sent off from No. 4 700 men to join Colo. Warner at Manchester. . . . " 2 2 To Meshech Weare it seemed best to describe the location of the town of Man- chester in the manner that would best please the individual whom he chanced to be addressing. General Stark, however, on the strength of Weare's orders to him3 was unequivocal in treating Vermont as a State 4 while General Schuyler, on the other hand, was scrupulously careful not to do so.5
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