USA > Vermont > Windsor County > Windsor > The birthplace of Vermont; a history of Windsor to 1781 > Part 37
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From the legislative minutes we may infer that the follow- ing twenty-six town representatives from the east side of the Green Mountains appeared: Alexander Harvey, of Barnet, Captain John Coffein, of Cavendish, Major Thomas Chandler, junior, of Chester, Doctor Thomas Amsden of Fulham (Dum-
1 The Council had the use of a room at Elijah West's. A room or rooms at Josiah Hawley's accommodated "gentlemen of liberal education." In October the Council had quarters at Hawley's (39 Vt. State Papers MS., pp. 10-12, 16-17).
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merston), Ensign Edward Harris, of Halifax, Captain William Gallup, of Hertford (Hartland), Edward Aikin, of Kent (Lon- donderry), Doctor Samuel King, of Marlboro, Benjamin Bald- win, of Mooretown (Bradford), John G. Bailey and Colonel Jacob Kent, of Newbury, Jacob Burton, of Norwich, John Winchester Dana, of Pomfret, Moses Johnson, of Putney, Doc- tor Reuben Jones and Joshua Webb, of Rockingham, Daniel Gilbert, of Sharon, Colonel John Barrett, of Springfield, Joshua Tucker, of Strafford, Timothy Bartholomew, of Thetford, Major Samuel Fletcher, of Townshend, Nathaniel Robinson, of Westminster, Elijah Alvord, of Wilmington, Thomas Cooper and Captain Ebenezer Curtis, of Windsor, and Lieutenant Joseph Safford, of Woodstock. From the west side of the Green Mountains came the following eleven: Nathan Clark and Captain John Fassett, of Bennington, John Smith, of Clarendon, Captain Thomas Rowley, of Danby, Cephas Kent, of Dorset, Lieutenant Gideon Ormsby, of Manchester, Thomas Tuttle, of Neshobe (Brandon), Captain Jonathan Fassett, of Pittsford, Lieutenant Thomas Jewett, of Pownal, Captain Joseph Bowker, of Rutland, and Charles Brewster, of Tin- mouth. From the west-side members we must drop Captain Bowker, who, after he had been chosen Speaker, was found to have been elected one of the Council, and from the east-side members we must detach Major Chandler, who was chosen as Secretary of State on March 13. On the withdrawal of these two there remained but thirty-five identified members, of whom the east-side members were in an overwhelming ma- jority.1 That there may have been present a few other assem- blymen whose part in the proceedings of the first session was too slight to have brought their names into the record is not impossible.
After choosing Nathan Clark and Benjamin Baldwin to suc- ceed Captain Bowker and Major Chandler as Speaker and
1 It is not improbable that Shaftsbury and Sunderland may have elected Jere- miah Clark and Gideon Brownson as their respective town representatives, but were without representation in the Assembly because these two men sat in the Council. Norwich is said to have chosen as its representatives Peter Olcott and Thomas Murdock, who also were of the Council. If this be the fact, it is not easy to understand how Jacob Burton should have been admitted as the Norwich representative.
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Clerk, respectively, the legislature proceeded expeditiously with its work. Serious as were its problems and responsibili- ties, there was one matter that overshadowed all others. This arose on the second day, when "a committee from the east side of Connecticut River" waited upon the Assembly with a petition that sixteen New Hampshire towns be granted ad- mission to the new State of Vermont. The fact that such an application had been foreseen did not diminish its gravity nor find the legislature ready to decide. Four members of the House-Colonel John Barrett, of Springfield, Captain John Fassett, of Bennington, Doctor Reuben Jones, of Rockingham, and Captain Ebenezer Curtis, of Windsor-were appointed to join with three members of the Council-Doctor Jonas Fay, Captain Ira Allen, and Colonel Peter Olcott-as a committee "to wait on" the committee for the New Hampshire towns. In personnel Vermont's committee had the appearance of being four to three in favor of admitting the New Hampshire towns, but actually the appointing power had been so exercised that out of the seven men Colonel Olcott was perhaps the sole sup- porter of the proposal to enlarge Vermont's territory. Barrett, Jones, and Curtis, from their previous intimacy with Fay and Allen, were presumably of one mind with the men from the west side of the Green Mountains. What sort of a report the committee of seven made to the House does not appear on the minutes.1 We find, however, that on March 18 the legis- lature, unwilling to take upon itself the responsibility of de- cision, voted a referendum in the following terms:
"Voted, that the proposals and preliminaries exhibited to this House by a committee representing a number of towns on the New-Hampshire Grants, east of Connecticut River, rela- tive to forming a union between said Grants and this State, be laid before the people of this State, at large, for their considera- tion and determination." 2
1 Ira Allen stated that the committee's report was adverse and that the House voted to accept the report, but that on the threatened withdrawal of several assemblymen and councillors from further association with Vermont in case the report was accepted, the House decided on a referendum (1 Gov. & Coun., p. 428). 2 Slade's State Papers, p. 261.
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At this session of Vermont's first legislature were created Vermont's two first counties, viz., Bennington County on the west side of the Green Mountains and Cumberland County1 on the east. The legislative bills for these two enactments emanated from the Council; and it is a curious circumstance that it remained for the Assembly to detect a danger in the Council's draft of the eastern boundary of Cumberland County. The bill, as originally drawn, specified that boundary as "New Hampshire west line": the legislature voted to substitute the words "the west bank of Connecticut River." There had been and still was so much uncertainty regarding the western limit of New Hampshire's jurisdiction that the wisdom of the As- sembly's amendment was obvious.
Not one of the many laws enacted at this initial session seems to have been printed or permanently preserved. The vote in favor of having such of the proceedings "as are neces- sary for the inhabitants to know" "copied" by committees appointed for the purpose2 indicates that manuscript sheets were relied upon to inform the people of the statutes govern- ing them. Mr. Slade, in a foot-note on page 287 of his State Papers, asserts that the laws of 1778, although intended to be temporary provisions, were printed in pamphlet form. No copy containing the acts of the March or June session has come to light and the writer thinks that the Assembly's vote last cited indicates that Mr. Slade was probably in error-at least so far as the statutes passed by the first legislature are concerned.
Among the more active participants in the work of the first Assembly was Ebenezer Curtis, of Windsor. He was a mem- ber of several important committees, besides being the first clerk pro tem. Thomas Cooper, whose education seems to have been superior to that of Curtis, took but a negligible part. Of other Windsor names appearing in the minutes, Ebenezer Hoisington is recorded as having had business with the legislature, and Lieutenant Elisha Hawley secured an ap- propriation in payment of fifteen days' service at Ticonderoga.
1 The east side county was originally given the sententious name of Unity. Happily, in five days it was changed to Cumberland.
2 Slade's State Papers, p. 267.
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Hezekiah Thomson, church deacon and former tavern keeper, received from the legislature an official plum in the form of an appointment as one of the five judges of the Shire of West- minster; but the first Windsor beneficiary by legislative order was Gideon Cowles, who was chosen "to attend this House as a Constable." Another Windsor citizen to be honored by a new office was John Benjamin, who received from the Council a commission as sheriff of the newly erected County of Cum- berland. Watts Hubbard, junior, who had been imprisoned for some time on a charge of "enemical" conduct, petitioned the legislature for release. This was denied him. By the Council minutes it appears that he was admitted to bail on the bond of Watts Hubbard, senior, and Zedekiah Stone. Pre- viously a bail bond in his behalf, executed by Zedekiah Stone, Watts Hubbard, senior, and Alexander Parmelee, had been deposited with Captain William Dean, as chairman of Wind- sor's Committee of Safety. The new bond was conditioned on the younger Hubbard's appearance "before the Special Court of the half shire of Westminster." His subsequent trial, to which in later years he referred in terms of indignation, was one of the earliest judicial proceedings under Vermont's State government and illustrated the harsh, summary, and unjust methods of those tempestuous days.
Each day in the March session the Assembly took a mid- day recess to two o'clock in the afternoon, except on the day that the referendum was voted. Probably on that morning the sitting had been longer than usual, and hence a recess to 3 P. M. was voted. The morning sittings began normally at eight o'clock, but on the last day, when there was but one sit- ting and when everybody was anxious for adjournment, the Assembly convened at 6 A. M. With the exception of Satur- day, March 21, all the sittings were at Windsor's meeting- house. On the morning of that day, immediately on coming to order, the Assembly voted "to adjourn to Mr. Coles." This meant, probably, the house of the legislature's constable, Gid- eon Cowles, situated on the southwest corner at the junction of the town street and the road to the west parish or what is now the southwest corner of Main and State Streets in Wind- sor village. This was Cowles's property until a year later,
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when, on moving away, he sold the premises to the Reverend David Tullar, the new pastor of the Congregational Church. Both the morning and afternoon sittings of the legislature on that Saturday took place at Cowles's, and thus gave time to sweep and clean the meeting-house for Sunday's worship, and brought the legislature for a day to a pleasant position diagonally across the road from the Old Constitution House and its tempting wares.
The Assembly's minutes make no mention of the receipt of a remonstrance from the New York adherents in southeastern Vermont. While the legislature was sitting at Windsor com- mitteemen from towns loyal to New York and from some of the towns represented in Vermont's Assembly had gathered at Brat- tleborough. B. H. Hall, at page 311 of his History of Eastern Vermont, states that on March 4 a committee which had been appointed at the Brattleborough town meeting had issued invi- tations to other towns to send committees to meet in conference in Brattleborough on the 18th at the house of Captain John Ser- geant. Mr. Hall adds: "Delegates from several towns assem- bled at the appointed time, but of their proceedings no record has been preserved." In this particular he may have been mis- led by the misplacing of an important document in the George Clinton Papers. That document, having been undated, was accidentally filed as No. 3514 of the Clinton Papers, among those of the year 1780. In reality it bears internal evidence of being a remonstrance prepared during the period of the first legislative session by the committeemen who met at Brattleboro on March 18, 1778, is addressed "To the gentle- men convened at Windsor, under the Stile of the General Assembly of the State of Vermont," is subscribed by fifteen men of southeastern Vermont and sets forth in detail, with apparent sincerity and with considerable force, the protest of the signers against secession from New York and against the expediency of attempting to establish a new State. It may be found in the sixth volume of the printed edition of the Public Papers of George Clinton, at pages 607 to 613.
Addressed, as above described, to Vermont's Assembly, the remonstrance recites that it is made in behalf of the towns of Guilford, Brattleborough, Putney, New Fane, Hinsdale, Rock-
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ingham, Westminster, and Weathersfield. There appears to have been left a space for the name of one other town-per- haps Springfield, whose leading citizen, Simon Stevens, was at this time wavering between loyalty to New York and the pressure of the New Staters. It next recites the receipt of "a Pamphlet entitled 'the Constitution of the State of Vermont' and Directions, from the Gentlemen called the Council of Safety for the said State, for holding Elections for the governor &c." It then proceeds to enter a protest against setting up "at present" a government independent of New York and against the many unhappy consequences which, as the signers feared, would flow "from breaking the Bands of Civil Society in a Crisis so important."
The signers record that they decline participation in the erection of a new government, and they placed their decision on eleven numbered and specified grounds: First, the adjudica- tion of the King in Council on July 20, 1764, fixing the west bank of the Connecticut River as the eastern boundary of the Province of New York; second, the fact that since such adju- dication the district of the New Hampshire Grants had been represented in the Provincial Congress and conventions of New York until the Declaration of Independence; third, that since the Declaration of Independence the district had been repre- sented in the convention of the State of New York; fourth, that the resolutions of the Continental Congress of June 30, 1777, recognized but thirteen separate States, refused to coun- tenance the dismemberment of any, dismissed the petition for statehood emanating from the Westminster Convention of January, 1777, and repudiated the implications contained in Thomas Young's letter to the people of Vermont; fifth, that already the baneful example of secession had led certain towns on the east side of Connecticut River to forsake their proper allegiance to the State of New Hampshire; sixth, that the Articles of Confederation discountenanced the breaking up of any State in the manner proposed by Vermont; seventh, that although the New Hampshire Grants had grievances against the royal governors of the Province of New York, it was not to be expected that the free State of New York, with a gov- ernment derived from the people, would be oppressive; wit-
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ness the late proclamation of Governor Clinton and the reso- lutions of New York's State legislature; eighth, that the State capital of New York would doubtless be moved further north and made more accessible to the inhabitants of the Grants; ninth, that since there was division of opinion among the citi- zens of the Grants, and since Congress had not approved Ver- mont's independence, the dispute would be "extremely detri- mental to the common Cause of America"; tenth, that the poverty of the Grants was an obstacle to the support of a separate State government, and at the same time paying a fair proportion of the cost of the war; eleventh, that the in- habitants lacked men capable of conducting a separate State government because "very few gentlemen of learning & abili- ties equal to the task have yet chosen to remove to so uncul- tivated a part of the country."
To the foregoing reasons the remonstrance added as a con- clusion that the secession from New York was impolitic and dangerous, tending to weaken the authority of Congress and to disunite the friends of America and stimulating to a spirit of sedition. Altogether, the document is conspicuously well worded for a locally composed public paper of the time. It put the case for loyalty to New York as forcibly as any writ- ten argument that has been preserved. It is a fair guess that its draftsman was Micah Townsend, who appears as one of the Brattleborough signers. The other committeemen from that town signing the remonstrance were Benjamin Butterfield, Israel Smith, James Blakeslee, and Samuel Knight. Hinsdale's signers were Eleazar Paterson and Gad Wait; Guilford's, Thomas Cutler and Timothy Root; Newfane's, Matthew Mar- tin; Rockingham's, Asher Evans; Putney's, Joshua Hide; Westminster's, Benjamin Burt and John Norton; Weathers- field's, Hilkiah Grout. However strong their plea and how- ever substantial their personal characters, their protest was too late to alter the situation, even if the paper on which it was written ever came to the eyes of the members of Vermont's legislature at Windsor.1
1 A "Protest from Hinsdale, Brattleborough, &c.," dated April 15th, was laid before the second legislature of Vermont at Windsor on October 13. That this may have been the paper summarized above is indicated by a circular letter sent
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More emphatically though less elegantly the same sort of reasoning had been uttered orally over and over again in tav- erns and at town meetings and had been rejected. The seces- sionists were beyond converting. But annoying to them as may have been the aloofness and hostility of the towns in the southeast corner of Vermont, a greater embarrassment lay in the popularity of the New State among their near neighbors in the New Hampshire towns along the Connecticut River. It was easy to foresee that desertions from New Hampshire to Vermont might make an enemy of the older State which hith- erto had been friendly.
Mindful of the advice and instructions written by Thomas Young to the people of Vermont the year before, the Council ended its labors at the legislative session at Windsor by pass- ing the following vote:
"Voted, that the Honble Joseph Marsh Esqr. & the Honble Jonas Fay Esqr. be Delegates to Wait on the Honble Conti- nental Congress, to announce to that Honble body the forma- tion of this State. Likewise voted to invite Colo Elisha Payne1 to accompany the above persons for the purposes above written." 2
The session closed with a record of many statutes passed, including, probably, one prescribing the form of municipal government for the individual towns. Two counties had been erected, a military organization, four courts of jurisdiction un- specified except as to locality, and two " courts of confiscation" to deal with estates of Loyalists. The State was not only formed but it was furnished with public officials and more or less definite rules for their procedure in the executive, legislative, and judicial departments. All of this had been accomplished
to the various towns by Thomas Cutler, chairman, under date of April 15, 1778, and given in full in volume 3 of the Clinton Papers, at pages 171 to 172.
1 Colonel Elisha Payne, of New Hampshire, was then active in consummating the admission of some of the New Hampshire towns into the new State of Ver- mont.
2 1 Gov. & Coun., p. 250. The delegates did not go to Philadelphia because of their apprehension, as Joseph Marsh asserted, "that Congress were desirous not to be troubled with the matter at present" (8 Gov. & Coun., p. 399).
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at Windsor. Thus, in addition to the honor of having been the town in which the State was named, in which its Consti- tution was established, and in which its provisional govern- ment was set up, Windsor now had the honor of being the town in which the permanent form of constitutional govern- ment was inaugurated. Although the creation of Vermont dated back to the eighth day of July, 1777, the view of the Council, as expressed in the resolution last quoted, was that the "formation" of the State was completed in March, 1778.
CHAPTER XLVI PERMANENT STATE GOVERNMENT
FOR a summary of some of the previous chapters and what next follows let us observe a passage from the History of the People of the United States, by James Bach McMaster. It is not wholly accurate nor is it over-friendly, but it is the lan- guage of an eminent American historian, and it gives what might be termed an outsider's view of what took place in the way of setting up the Republic of Vermont and maintaining it. This is the passage:
"In the darkest hour of the war, the men of the southern counties of what was then known as the New Hampshire Grants, had risen up, renounced their allegiance, asserted their independence, chosen a Governor and Assembly, formed a State and called it by the name of 'New Connecticut, alias Vermont.' The independence of New Connecticut was soon acknowledged by New Hampshire. But many settlers had come in from New York, had made their clearings, laid out farms, built villages and towns, and had paid taxes to New York. The great State, proud of so prosperous a community, steadfastly refused to give up jurisdiction over it; and in a little while the peace of New Connecticut was disturbed by the contentions of two parties. To one the name of Yorkers was given; the other assumed that of Vermonters. For seven years their treatment of each other would have delighted two Indian tribes on the war-path. Their history during this time is a shameful record of wanton attacks and reprisals, of am- buscades laid in the dead of night, of murder, arson, and bloodshed." 1
We cannot let this go unchallenged. It was not a "south- ern counties" uprising, but a pretty general movement on the settled portion of the New Hampshire Grants west of the
1 McMaster's History of the United States, vol. I, p. 347.
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Connecticut River. The name "New Connecticut," momen- tarily used and then forgotten, gave place to "Vermont" be- fore the State was formed. Not before but after the State's creation came the election of State officers. The settlers who chose the side of loyalty to New York were not mainly those who had moved to the New Hampshire Grants from New York. There were comparatively few settlers from outside the New England Colonies. Both in the period before and in the years following the establishment of Vermont's State govern- ment there was, on the part of the New Staters, systematic co- ercion of the men whose sympathies were with New York, but at no time did acts of persecution or retaliation take on quite so bloody and horrible an aspect as to resemble Indian warfare. If the homicides at Westminster be pointed out as exceptions, it is well to remember that, whatever label was affixed to the "Westminster massacre" after the event, the affray was an isolated incident which stands practically by it- self, and was nothing more than the outbreak of poverty- stricken debtors. In its proximate cause it was neither a part of the secession from New York nor the rebellion against the Crown.
Nor can we pass as strictly correct the statement that "vil- lages and towns" had been "built" by New York sympathizers or anybody else on the New Hampshire Grants at this period. Townships or what we of New England call "towns" had been granted in profusion. In many of them were settlers. In some of the townships were favored localities where the farmhouses were comparatively near together. Those sites were, in some instances, to become villages; but at the period of which we write the instances were few in which "hamlet" was not more appropriate than the word "village" to describe any cluster of homes in Vermont. That New York was "proud of so prosperous a community" as Vermont hardly squares with the straitened circumstances of almost all of Vermont's inhabitants, although one can well understand that New York was loath to give up an area which gave promise of commer- cial and agricultural value as settlement and development pro- gressed.
The setting up of independent State government at Windsor
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was only a milestone in what was almost a civil war between New York and the New Hampshire Grants. Statehood for Vermont proved to be no short cut to peace and good order. The interstate quarrel continued with varying degrees of vio- lence throughout the period of the American Revolution and thereafter. On Vermont's side the case was handled with great ingenuity and energy. Errors in practical judgment sometimes occurred. The methods in some instances fell short of recognized standards. The popular histories of Ver- mont would lead one to believe that Vermont was continuously sinned against and always in the right, just as the popular histories of the United States would make America appear throughout the Revolution invariably on the side of righteous- ness and honor. A great teacher once wrote: "The people of the United States have many virtues, but all nations have their failings, and there are many passages in the history of every country which it is painful for its citizens to contem- plate." 1 So with the people of Vermont: they have exhibited themselves as possessed of many virtues, but there are pas- sages in their history which show neither high character nor wisdom nor sound morals.
Turning from these generalizations to the progress of events in Windsor we find that Windsor's first town meeting to be held under the independent Republic of Vermont took place at the meeting-house on Thursday, April 9, 1778. The warn- ing for the meeting has not been preserved, but presumably due notice of the meeting was given pursuant to a statute or resolution passed by the Vermont legislature at the March session and made applicable to each municipality within the State.
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