USA > Vermont > The history of Vermont, from its discovery to its admission into the Union in 1791. By Hiland Hall > Part 16
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The strife between Col. Reid and the grantees under New Hamp- shire occupies a prominent position in the New York controversy, and as it was not yet ended some further account of its origin seems necessary.
Col. Reid held a patent for seven thousand acres of land situated on both sides of Otter creek in the townships of New Haven and Panton, both of which townships were chartered by New Hampshire in 1761. Reid's patent was ten years later, bearing date June 7, 1771, and having been issued by Gov. Dunmore in violation of the king's prohibitory order of July, 1767, was consequently illegal and void.1 He seems to have obtained from Gov. Moore as early as 1766, an order of survey and from that time to have claimed the land as his own, though destitute of any show of title till 1771, as before stated. In answer to the foregoing statement in behalf of the
1 Col. Reid's was not a military but a civil grant made to him in the name of himself and six nominal associates, after the usual manner of conferring lordly domains on favored individuals. He does not appear to have been a " reduced officer," and could not, therefore, have been entitled to the bounty under the king's proclamation, though he applied to the governor in 1771 for such a grant of five thousand acres, but no patent for it is found. He had probably obtained the rights of some officers to additional tracts which he expected to locate adjoining his seven thousand acres and obtain patents for them. Col. IIist. N. Y., vol. 8, p. 312. See also Land Papers referred to in New York Calender Index, title John Reid.
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settlers made by Col. Reid to the New York council. he admitted that the New Hampshire claimants were the first occupants. and that treating them as unlawful intruders upon his land he had dis- possessed them of the saw mill and the adjacent improvements. and had forcibly prevented them from regaining and holding possession, substantially as related by them. He claimed that during his occu- pancy of the premises he had erected a grist mill and made other expensive improvements, of which by the recent dispossession of his tenants, he was now deprived. We shall hear more of this claim of Col. Reid's hereafter.
Gov. Tyron, in giving an account to the colonial secretary of the unfavorable answer of the settlers to his letter. requiring them to reinstate Col. Reid in his former possessions, informed him that the opposition to the government appeared to be daily increasing in strength, and was likely to become too formidable . for militia forces to encounter." In reply to this letter Lord Dartmouth under date of December 9, 1772, after imforming the governor of his expectation that the "question which had occasioned the disturbances. would shortly be determined in a manner that would be more effectual to restore quiet than the interposition of any military force. which." he adds, " ought never to be called in to the aid of the civil authority, but in cases of absolute and unavoidable necessity, and which would be highly improper if applied to support possessions. which after the order issued in 1767, upon the petition of the proprietors of the New Hampshire townships, may be of very doubtful title."!
Soon after the termination of the abortive attempt at reconciliation, Benjamin Stevens a New York surveyor with several assistants was met near the mouth of Onion river by a party composed of Remember Baker, Ira Allen and four or five others, and according to the account laid before the New York council, " stript of their property and effects, insulted and threatened, and John Dunbar thrown into the fire. bound and burned and otherwise beat and abused in a cruel manner." For this unlawful conduct the council advised the governor that " it be recommended to Mr. Chief Justice Horsmanden to issue his warrant to apprehend the said Baker and Allen for the offence with which they stood charged, and that his excellency should promise a reward of one hundred pounds for apprehending each of the offenders, to be paid to the person or persons by whom they should be appre-
1 Skule 28-33. Doc. Ilist., vol. 4, 793-799, 815. Albany Land Patents vol. 15. Lund Papers, vol. 28, p. 139. Col. Hist. N. Y., vol. 8, p. 312. 338-9. J. D. Smith's History of Panton in Vt. Quarterly Magazine No. 1, p. 78-79. Thompson's Vt. Gazetteer, New Haven and Panton.
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hended and brought before the chief justice." A proclamation to that effect was issued, but it is scarcely necessary to say that neither of the offenders was apprehended.1
It was evident that in a personal contest for the possession of the disputed lands, the New York claimants had no reasonable prospect of success against those under New Hampshire. They were com- posed of quite different classes of people. The New York claimants were few in number and mainly residents of New York city. They had obtained patents for large tracts. not to occupy the lands themselves, but for the purpose of making or increasing their fortunes by disposing of them to others, or perhaps in a few instances, like that of Col. Reid, with a view of peopling them with a dependant tenantry. On the other hand, the lands under New Hampshire had been chartered in townships to numerous persons, holding some three hundred and thirty acres each. The grantees were scattered throughout the New England provinces, almost every neighborhood having one or more of these proprietors who had generally become such, either with the intention of removing to the lands, or of providing homes for mem- bers of their families. The territory as before stated had long been familiarly known to New England people, many of them had already removed to it, and the desire to settle upon it was very general. From New York to this territory there was no emigration or wish to emigrate. The people there knew little or nothing of its lands, and the surplus population found more convenient and desirable situations to the westward, in New Jersey and Pennsylvania.
Besides, the New Hampshire claimants had the popular side of the controversy even in the province of New York. John Munro, who was one of the most bitter and active enemies of the settlers, and who was frequently and almost constantly threatened, and often harshly treated by them, in a letter to Mr. Duane in the spring of this year says : "The rioters have a great many friends in the county of Albany, and particularly in the city of Albany, which encourages them in their wickedness, at the same time hold offices under the government and pretend to be much against them, but at heart I know them to be otherwise; for the rioters have often told me, that be it known to me, that they had more friends in Albany than I had, which I believe to be true." But there was no need of this direct evidence of the prevailing feeling of the New York people. The fact that the sheriff's posse, when called to Bennington, werc unwilling to act ; the numerous rewards offered for the apprehension
1 Doc. ITist. N. Y., vol. 4, 799. N. Y., Nar. Ira Allen's Ilist. Vt., p. 39.
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of rioters, and the perfect security with which the proscribed parties remained at their homes and attended to their ordinary business, as well as the frequent declarations of the governor and his subordinate officers that the civil power of the province was insufficient to over- come the opposition to the laws, together with their frequent calls for the aid of regular troops, furnish satisfactory proof that the heart of their own people was against them.
The following extract of a letter from Gov. Tryon to Lord Hills- borough, dated Sept. 1, 1772, indicates the material direction from which emigration came to the territory, and proves that the foregoing is a correct view of the strength of the contending parties, and of the public feeling on the subject.
"Proclamations," he says, "have often issued to prevent the grantees under New Hampshire and others from making any settlements in those parts [between Connecticut river and Lake Champlain] all which have been treated with more or less neglect or contempt. I am under the firmest persuasion, no effectual measures at present, less than military force, can prevent the entire . colonies pouring in their inhabitants between the river and the lake, especially into Bennington and the adjacent townships, in order to strengthen themselves, that they may be the better able to maintain their possessions. * * As property and not mere delusive opinion is the object of dispute, it is natural to believe the contest will be mantained with great obstinacy."
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Although the settlers under New Hampshire were determined to defend their grants, against invasion by the New York claimants, until the controversy should be decided by the king, they were extremely anxious to be able to enjoy their homes in peace, and for that purpose to obtain the speedy determination of the crown. Petitions to the king for immediate relief were numerously signed, and at a convention of the several townships on the west side of the Green mountain, held at Manchester on the 21st of October 1772, James Breakenridge of Bennington and Jehiel Hawley of Arlington had been appointed their agents to repair to London to solicit his majesty to confirm their claims under the New Hampshire charters.1
This new application to the crown, which was believed to be coun- tenanced by the government of New Hampshire, to which the settlers had asked to be restored, together with the colonial secretary's severe rebukes of Gov. Tryon, for his disregard of the king's instruc- tions, had the effect to stop the issuiug of further patents for a con-
' Col. IIist. N. Y., vol. 8, p. 310. Doc. IIist. N. Y., vol. 4, p. 800-804.
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siderable period. They appear also to have produced in the New York claimants serious apprehensions, that they might be perma- nently prevented from making their grants available. Under these circumstances it was considered very important to the government and its patentees, to place their cause before the British authorities and the public, in its strongest and most imposing light. and under the sanction of the colonial assembly. Accordingly a petition sub- scribed. by some of the prominent land claimants was presented to that body on the 16th of February, 1773, of which the following notice is found on its journal.
" A petition of Col. John Maunsell and a number of other persons interested in lands to the westward of Connecticut river was pre- sented to the house and read, praying that this house will adopt such measures as to them shall seem expedient, as well to prevent the success of the solicitation and interposition of the government of New Hampshire, in prejudice of the ancient limits of this pro- vince, and of the right of the petitioners and those claiming with them, as of the unreasonable claims set up under the late French government of Canada, to lands on both sides of lake Champlain." This petition is not now found among the colonial archives at Albany, and its further purport or who were its other signers has not been as- certained. It is worthy of remark however that the patent under which Maunsell, who headed the petition claimed, bore date March 7th, 1771, and was issued by Lord Dunmore in violation of the king's prohibitory order of July, 1767, and was for land situated in the township of Wells which had been chartered by New Hampshire Sept. 15th, 1761, nearly ten years previously.
On consideration of the petition, resolutions were adopted by the house affirming the right of New York against New Hampshire, to extend castward to Connecticut river, denying the validity of the French claims and providing for the appointment of a committee to prepare a statement of the rights of the colony in these respects. Upon which, in the language of the journal, an order was made as follows :
" Ordered, that Col. Schuyler, Mr. De Noyellis, and Mr. Brush, be a committee to prepare a draft of a representation to be trans- mitted to the agent of this colony at the court of Great Britain, pursuant to the foregoing reslution, and that they report the same to this house with all convenient speed."
On the 6th of March, Mr. Brush from the committee made a report which two days afterwards was adopted by the house. and ordered to be entered on the journal. It consisted of two parts, one relating to the French claims, and the other entitled, " A state
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of the right of the colony of New York with respect to its eastern boundary on Connecticut river, so far as it concerns the late encroach- ments under the government of New Hampshire."
Crean Brush, who presented this report to the house, was a member from the county of Cumberland, which had been constituted by the government of New York, on the east side of the Green mountain, and was at this session first represented in the assembly. He was a lawyer by profession, who had emigrated from Dublin to the city of New York, where he had resided for a few years, extensively engaged in land speculations. Besides large tracts in other parts of the province, he held claims for over twenty thousand acres, under New York patents, in the district of the New Hampshire Grants. He had recently taken up his residence at Westminster, the county seat of Cumberland county, where in addition to his membership of the assembly, he held the offices of county clerk and surrogate. He was a fluent speaker, possessed of some shrewdness as a politician, and had considerable influence in the assembly. This he always exerted in favor of the government, sustaining with great zeal all the most arbitrary and tyrannical demands of the mother country, as well as the most oppressive measures of the provincial authorities against the settlers under New Hampshire. He was wholly desti- tute of principle, and though at first a favorite, he eventually became unpopular and troublesome to the people of the new territory in which he had settled. This, however, he abandoned in 1774, and returned to New York. He was afterwards at Boston with the British army, fled with it on the evacuation of that town, was captured, brought back to the city and imprisoned for fraud, pecu- lation and robbery, escaped from prison and fied to New York, where he became a confirmed sot and ended his career by committing suicide. 1
1 Assembly Journal N. Y. Com. Report, pp. 120, 121. Thompson's Vt. Gaz., Wells. For an interesting biographical notice of Crean Brush, see B. H. Hall's Eastern Vt., p. 603. A daughter of Mr. Brush, who became the wife of Thomas Norman, was allowed in 1797 by the New York com- missioners appointed to distribute the $30,000 paid by Vermont on the settlement of the controversy, the sum of $718.60, for the loss of title to fourteen thousand five hundred and fifty acres of Vermont land, granted her father by the New York government. Brush's claims were still more extensive, but the above is all that were held sufficiently proved. It appears from the journal of the connmissioners (p. 3), that Brush had a conveyance of ten thousand acres, being the whole of Snyder's patent of land in Ben- nington and Pownal, and had transferred one thousand two hundred and twenty-two acres to Goldsbrow Banyar. His heirs were not allowed for the residue of it, and what was done with it does not appear.
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Mr. Brush had little or nothing to do in the preparation of this report, though he was doubtless ready and competent to advocate its adoption by the house. It was an elaborate paper, covering eighteen folio pages of the assembly journal, and had been drawn up with great labor and care by Mr. Duane, who, prompted by his own deep interest in the success of the New York patents and his employment as counsel for the other claimants in the ejectment suits, had made the subject his peculiar study.1 The object of the report was to show that Connecticut river was the eastern boundary of the pro- vince of New York prior to its being declared so by the crown in 1764 ; that it had in fact always been such boundary, and that the charters of the governor of New Hampshire, though previous to that date, were void, because they granted lands which were not within that province. It embodies all the arguments that have at any time been adduced in favor of the New York title, and presents the title in its most plausible and imposing character. It shows much historical research, and evinces the skill and adroitness of a learned professional advocate. By ingeniously giving prominence to historical events of trifling consequence, and by either discoloring and distorting or entirely suppressing others of real importance to the question discussed, the author succeeded in constructing an argument not ill calculated to make a favorable impression on a cur- sory reader. As a historical document it is, however, deceptive and unreliable. It would occupy too much space to enter into a critical examination of this report in the body of this work, but such a review of it will be found in the Appendix (No. '8). One or two, however, of its prominent errors will here be pointed out.
As a basis for his argument that New York originally extended eastward to Connecticut river, Mr. Duane undertakes to convey the idea that such was the extent of New Netherland at the time of its conquest by the English in 1664, thereby having it understood that
1 In Mr. Lossing's Life of Gen. Schuyler, vol. 1, page 265, the preparation of this report is ascribed to him, perhaps from the fact that he was chairman of the committee. It was not reported to the house by him, and there is no doubt whatever that Mr. Duane was the author. It is so stated in his bio- graphy by Hon. S. W. Jones published in the fourth volume of the Docu- mentary History of New York, page 1065. John Adams in his diary for August, 1774, written on his way to the congress at Philadelphia, of which both he and Mr. Duane were members, says John Morin Scott told him that the document " was principally drawn by Mr. Duane who had unhappily involved almost all his property in the lands ;" and that "he had pur- chased patents of government and claims of soldiers to the amount of a hundred thousand acres."
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New York, by succeeding to the rights of the Dutch, would be of equal extent. In support of the assumption that such was the extent of New Netherland, he quotes the letter of Gov. Stuyvesant of Sept. 2, 1664, in answer to the summons of Col. Nicolls to sur- render his province to the English, when in that very letter Gov. Stuyvesant refers, as of binding force on the Dutch, to the treaty of Hartford in 1650, by which the eastern boundary of New Nether- land on New England was declared to be a line running from the west side of Greenwich bay on Long Island sound, indefinitely to the northward, so "that it came not within ten miles of Hudson's river ;" which line, we have already seen, had been ratified by the States General of Holland, and had been declared in the commission of the Dutch governor, on the reconquest of the province from the English in 1673, to be their eastern boundary. The existence of this treaty boundary is not mentioned by Mr. Duane for the very good and sufficient reason that it would overthrow at once his whole argument on that most important point.1
In order to make it appear that the government of New York had always claimed jurisdiction over the disputed territory of the New Hampshire grants, Mr. Duane refers to several ancient patents of land by the governors of that province which he claimed were situated, not indeed upon Connecticut river or very near it, but which reached towards that river, and beyond the line as claimed by New Hampshire. The most important of those grants, and indeed the only one which on close examination seemed to favor such a claim of jurisdiction, was one made to Godfrey Dellius in 1696, which was alleged to embrace a territory of twelve miles in width and about sixty miles in length along the eastern shore of Lake Champlain, and within the present limits of Vermont. An exami- nation of the description in the grant makes it very plain that not a single acre of the land could possibly be situated within the disputed territory. These two examples of error in this New York document must suffice for the present."
Soon after the adoption of this legislative manifesto, it was pub- lished and extensively circulated, together with an appendix of still greater length, entitled " A narrative of the proceedings subsequent to the royal adjudication, concerning the lands to the westward of Connecticut river, lately usurped by New Hampshire, with remarks on the claim, behavior and misrepresentations of the intruders under that government."
' For the letter of Gov. Stuyvesant, see Smith's Hist. N. Y., vol. 1, p. 20.
2 For the descriptive language of the patent, see Appendix No. 7.
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This narrative, after a weak apology for the regranting of the disputed lands by New York, relates, in much detail and in highly colored language, the various threatening and violent acts of the settlers before mentioned, together with some others of similar cha- racter, but of less importance ; and represents them as the lawless and unjustifible proceedings of a tumultuous unfeeling mob, deserving the decided condemnation of all friends of order and good govern- ment. If considered without reference to the cause which produced them, they should doubtless be viewed in that light. The conduct of the settlers was in opposition to the laws of the province, and might therefore be termed "lawless." The actors were not directed in their operations by an established and recognized government, and might consequently be denominated "a mob." But it should be remembered that such is always the character of the uprising of a people against government oppression. The American Revolution was initiated and largely aided in its early progress by " tumultuous mobs." The famous stamp act was prevented from being put in execution by what has often been styled "mob law.". The officers of the crown who were appointed to distribute the stamps were in all the colonies prevented from doing so, either by threats of injury to their persons or property, or by actual violence. In New York, Lieut. Gov. Colden was only induced to give up the stamps by the pursuasion of a mob, which had first broken open his coach house and made a bonfire of its contents, together with his own effigy, amid the plaudits of a surrounding populace. The British armed schooner Gaspee, at Rhode Island, was captured and destroyed by " a mob," and "a lawless mob," disguised as Indians, seized by force and emptied into Boston harbor, three hundred and forty-two chests of tea, thereby in connection with similar irregularities in other parts of the country rendering the odious tax on that article inoperative. But there can be no need of enumerating instances of such unauthorized demonstrations. Such irregularities inseparably belong to every forcible opposition of a people to the tyranny of an established government. The question in such case is whether there shall be submission, or irregular or in other words mob resistance, for that is the only resistance which it is possible to make.
The point to be determined in relation to the New Hampshire settlers and claimants, is whether the measures attempted and threatened by the New York government were such as to excuse and justify resistance.
If we consider the instances in which those who have revolted against established governments, have been justified by the tri-
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bunal of history, we shall rarely find a case stronger than that of the New Hampshire claimants. Our American revolution can scarcely be said to furnish so clear an example of rightful resistance to oppres- sion. The American people revolted from the mother country because of the imposition of taxes, which though sinall in amount, were founded on a principle that would allow the extortion of any further sum the parliament might at any time think proper to demand; thus destroying the security of the residue of their property, and leaving it at the mercy of the government. In the case of the inhabitants of the New Hampshire grants the principle of government exaction was carried at once by New York to its utmost extent by requiring not a fraction of their property, but demanding as a right the imme- diate surrender of the whole. If revolution were justifiable in the former case, as is now universally admitted, it must be deemed at least equally so in the latter. It should also be remembered that the New York oppression was rendered peculiarly hateful and odious by the fact that the motives which prompted it were of the most selfish and mercenary character ; and that it was moreover inflicted by a subordinate government contrary to the declared opinion and express command of the king, its acknowledged superior.
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