USA > Vermont > The history of Vermont, from its discovery to its admission into the Union in 1791. By Hiland Hall > Part 21
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In the assembly after considerable debate it was finally resolved "that this house will make provision for granting to his majesty the sum of one thousand pounds to be applied in enabling and assisting the inhabitants of the county of Cumberland to reinstate and main- tain the due administration of justice and for the suppression of riots in said county." This resolution was carried by a vote of eleven to ten. In the affirmative were the names of Crean Brush and Colonel Wells, the members from Cumberland county, who in
1 Slade, p. 55. Doc. Ilist. N. Y., pp. 903-916. Jour. Congress, Oct. 20, 1774. Hall's Eastern Vermont, chap. 9 and Appendix, pp. 746-755. Wil- liams's Vermont, 1st ed., pp. 746-755.
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this vote were undoubtedly misrepresenting their constituents. It was also, on motion of the speaker, resolved without a division, that an additional reward of fifty pounds each be voted for " apprehending and confining in any jail in the colony, the following persons, being rioters named in the act of the last session, to wit : Ethan Allen, Seth Warner, Robert Cochran and Peleg Sunderland, and that a reward of fifty pounds be voted for apprehending and securing as aforesaid, James Mead, Gideon Warren and Jesse Sawyer, or either of them so that they can be brought to justice for assisting the first four mentioned persons in committing sundry violent outrages on the person of one of his majesty's justices of the peace for the county of Charlotte."
These proceedings, which took place on the 30th and 31st of March, were the last efforts of the colonial government of New York to exercise jurisdiction over the people of the New Hampshire Grants. It is scarcely necessary to say that the general revolt of the colonies against the king's government, which soon after followed, rendered any attempt to enforce them altogether impracticable.
The uprising of the people of Cumberland county of the 13th of March, was not only an expression of the dislike of the majority of the inhabitants to the measures of the mother country, but also to those of the local government of New York. On the 7th of Feb- ruary a few weeks previous to this outbreak, a convention of the committees of twelve towns, held at Westminster, addressed a me- morial to the lieutenant governor, council and assembly, in which they strongly complained of the great expense and heavy burdens imposed on them by the government of that province, particularly in the administration of justice by the county courts, and proposed various radical changes in the colonial laws and in the mode of executing them, as indispensible to the welfare and prosperity of the people. The courts of the county had. in fact, for a long time been extremely unpopular with the masses of the community, as had been shown by previous riotous attempts to interrupt their sittings, and it needed only the supposed countenance of the general congress to prepare the minds of the people to put an end to the proceedings of the courts.
After the hostile action of the assembly in regard to the West- minster massacre, the dissatisfaction of the people with the New York government was shown to be greater than with that of the miother country, by a resolution of the committees of Cumberland and Gloucester counties to petition the king to be relieved from the oppressive jurisdiction of that colony. At a convention of com-
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mittees from those counties, held at Westminster on the 11th of April, 1775, it was voted :
" That our inhabitants are in great danger of having their property unjustly, cruelly and unconstitutionally taken from them by the arbitrary and designing administration of the government of New York; that the lives of those inhabitants are in the utmost hazard and imminent danger under the present administration," and further "that it was the duty of said inhabitants as predicated on the eternal and immutable laws of self preservation to wholly renounce 'and resist the administration of the government of New York till such time as the lives and property of those inhabitants should be secured by it, or until such time as they could have opportunity to lay their grievances before his most gracious majesty in council, together with a proper remonstrance against the unjus- tifiable conduct of that government ; with an humble petition to be taken out of so oppressive a jurisdiction, and either annexed to some other government, or erected and incorporated into a new one, as might appear best to the said inhabitants, to the royal wisdom and clemency, and till such time as his majesty should settle the contro- versy," and Col. John Hazletine, Charles Phelps, Esq., and Col. Ethan Allen were appointed a committee to prepare a remonstrance for that purpose.
It is probable that the contemplated prayer in the proposed petition to the king, in the alternative of being "erected and incorporated into a new government," had reference to a project which had been formed by Col. Allen, William Gilliland and others, in conjunction with Col. Philip Skene, to establish a royal colony, which was to embrace the grants of New Hampshire west of Con- necticut river and the country north of the Mohawk and west to Lake Ontario and to reach north to the forty-fifth degree of latitude, of which colony Col. Skene was to be the royal governor. Skene had obtained grants of large tracts of land in the vicinity of Wood creek and Lake Champlain, and had made extensive improvements at Skenesborough, now Whitehall, where he resided. He was then in England and had written home, to Jehiel Hawley of Arlington, who had been one of the agents of the New Hampshire settlers, sent to England in 1772, that he had received the appointment of "governor of Ticonderoga and Crown Point." He is also desig- nated by the title of governor in the Journal of Congress of June 8, 1775. What the precise character and extent of his authority was, or what was really in contemplation by him, or by the king's govern- ment, is not known. The commencement of the revolutionary
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struggle by the battle of Lexington on the 19th of April, eight days after the votes of the convention, rendered any petition to the king inexpedient, and the organization of a new government altogether impracticable. That the formation of such new province had been actually ordered by the crown, was long believed by many, and it was thought that, but for the war, full proof of such an order could have been obtained. The existence of such supposed new govern- ment, was afterwards earnestly urged in behalf of the inhabitants of the New Hampshire Grants, in opposition to the claim of New York to their territory, the king, it was alleged, having thereby annulled the title of that province.1
1 Doc. Hist. N. Y., vol. 4, p. 903-916. Journal of N. Y. Assembly, March 23, 30, 31. Brattleboro Eagle, Dec. 6, 1849. Slade, p. 60. Am. Arch. 1775, p. 315. In relation to Gov. Skene, see Ira Allen's Vt., p. 53-55. Wat- son's Champlain Valley, p. 44, 45. Williams's Vt., p. 224. Dr. Fitch's in Transactions of N. Y. Agricultural Society for 1818, p. 964-968. Jour. Cont. Con., June 8, 1775, and Jan. 5, 1776. Sparkes's Washington, vol. 3, p. 296, 524.
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CHAPTER XVIII.
THE CAPTURE OF TICONDEROGA.
1775.
Political situation of the New Hampshire Grants at the breaking out of the revolutionary war-Capture of Ticonderoga and Crown Point by men under Ethan Allen and Seth Warner- Arrogance of Arnold - New Yorkers decline to aid in or approve of the capture-Their strong tory and conservative tendencies- Strange resolve of the Continental con- gress to abandon those posts and substitute one at the south end of Lake George- Alarm and remonstrance of the New Hampshire Grants and New England - The resolve not executed - A regiment from Con- necticut arrives under Col. Hinman and relieves the captors of Ticon- deroga and Crown Point - Insubordination of Arnold - He is discharged from service by a committee of the Massachusetts congress.
"THE opening of the revolutionary war found the people of the New Hampshire Grants nominally under the jurisdiction of New York, but substantially independent, obeying only the orders and decrees of committees and conventions, and of their cherished town mectings. This had for sometime been their situation on the west side of the Green mountain, and the recent proceedings at Westminster had overthrown the New York jurisdiction on the opposite side, at least for the time being. The people, in general, had been prepared to enter actively into the contest for American liberty, by their natural hostility, as a free people, to the arbitrary measures of the British crown and parliament, by sympathy with their friends in Massachusetts and the other New New England colonies whence they had emigrated ; by deep distrust of a monarch who had suffered his greedy servants to grant, in his name, his lands a second time, and to dispossess his first grantees, and to prose- cute them as felons and outlaws; by the hesitating and tardy manner in which the province of New York, to which they had been unwillingly annexed, had seconded the patriotic measures of the other colonies, and finally by the massacre by the king's New York officers of two of their number at Westminster.
The approaching struggle with the mother country had for some- time been foreseen, and the provincial congress of Massachusetts on the 15th of February, 1775, to guard against an apprehended attempt of the emissaries of the British ministry to engage the Cana- dians and Indians in hostilities against the colonies, directed the
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committee of the town of Boston to open a correspondence with the province of Quebec in such manner as they should think proper. That committee appointed John Brown, Esq., a young lawyer of spirit and intelligence of Pittsfield, to repair to Canada, to obtain information of the state of the province and to endeavor to counter- act any unfriendly efforts of their enemies. At Bennington Mr. Brown had a consultation with " the grand committee " of the New Hampshire Grants, and was furnished by them with a guide and assist- ant, who was an old hunter and familiar with the route and with the Indians on the border. He was no less a personage than Peleg Sunderland, one of the eight outlaws then under the ban of the New York government, with a price set upon his life. After a tedious, as well as dangerous journey of over two weeks, partly by water on the lake, amidst floating ice, they reached Montreal. In a letter written from that place by Mr. Brown .to Samuel Adams and Joseph Warren of the Boston committee, dated March 29, 1775, after giving a rather favorable account of the state of feeling among the Cana- dians and Indians, he speaks of the importance of the fortress of Ticonderoga and of his consultation with the committee at Benning- ton, as follows : " One thing I must mention to be kept a profound secret. The fort at Ticonderoga must be seized as soon as possible should hostilities be committed by the king's troops. The people on the New Hampshire Grants have engaged to do the business, and in my opinion are the most proper persons for this job. This will effectually curb this province and all the troops that may be sent here." When, therefore, a few days after the battle of Lex- ington, messengers arrived at Bennington from Connecticut, accom- panied by Brown, for the purpose of collecting a force to attack that fortress, they found the leaders of the people with their minds already prepared for the undertaking.1
The importance, in the then approaching struggle, of securing Ticonderoga, must have been obvious to others besides Mr. Brown
1 Brown's letter in American Archives, 4th Series, vol. 2. p. 243, Jour. Mass. Cong., Feb. 13 and 15, 1775. Petition of Peleg Sunderland to the Vermont Assembly Feb. 26, 1787, and the Report of a Committee thereon of March 7, 1787. Sunderland in his petition says, that "in the month of March, 1775, he was called upon by the Grand committee of Bennington to go to Canada to pilot Major John Brown who was sent by the Provincial congress as a delegate to treat with the Indians respecting the then approaching war," and that he was out in that service twenty-nine days, which the committee of the Assembly reported to be true. It also appears from Mr. Brown's letter that his guide was of essential service in his nego- tiation with the Indians,
EARLY HISTORY OF VERMONT. . 199
and the committee of the Green Mountain Boys, and must, indeed, have been the subject of common conversation among the intelligent whigs of New England. Capt. Benedict Arnold, then of New Haven, appears to have spoken to Samuel H. Parsons, of the Con- necticut Assembly of the importance and feasibility of its capture and of his desire to attempt it. But the honor of devising and putting in motion the first expedition to seize it, belongs to some influential gentlemen at Hartford, acting on their individual respon- bility, of whom Mr. Parsons was one. The orignal parties to the project appear to have been Mr. Parsons, Samuel Wylis, and Silas Deane, who associated with them Christopher Leffingwell, Thomas Mumford and Adam Babcock. Those six gentlemen, for the sake of secrecy and dispatch, without communicating their intention to the assembly then sitting, obtained from the colony treasury on their personal obligations, the sum of three hundred pounds to be used in the undertaking. This was on Friday the 28th of April, and the same day Capt. Noah Phelps and Bernard Romans were dispatched with the money to the northward to obtain men and supplies, and the next day they were followed by Capt. Edward Mott, Epaphras Bull, and four others, and overtaken at Salisbury. Mott, Bull, Phelps and Romans appear to have been intrusted with the disburse- ment of the money, and with the general conduct of the expedition, they, with such others as they afterwards associated with them in authority, styling themselves " the committee of war." 1 At Pitts- field the party was joined by Col. James Easton and John Brown, Esq., and messengers were sent to Bennington to engage Col. Ethan Allen and his associates on the New Hampshire Grants, in the expedition ; who proceeded to raise men with all possible dispatch.
1 This account of the origin of the expedition seems to be well established by contemporaneous documents published in the collections of the Connec- ticut Historical Society, vol. 1, p. 163-188. In " a letter from a gentleman in Pittsfield to an officer in Cambridge, dated May 4, 1775." (Thursday) it is stated that " the plan was concerted at Hartford last Saturday " (the 29th) by the governor and council, Col. Hancock and Mr. Adams and others from our province being present." This statement has been followed by several historians, but of its correctness there is room for much doubt. John Han- cock and Samuel Adams on their way to the congress at Philadelphia did not leave Worcester till the 27th and were not likely to have arrived at Hartford until after the advance party had set out for Ticonderoga. The money was obtained from the treasurer on Friday the 28th, as the receipts show, and the same day Phelps and Romans started for Ticonderoga. It was on the next day, Saturday the 29th, that the Pittsfield letter states " the plan was concocted by the governor and council," etc. Gov. Trum- bull in his letter to the Massachusetts congress of May 25, 1775, apparently
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On Wednesday the 3d of May, the men from Connecticut, sixteen in number, and forty-one raised by Col. Easton in Jericho (now Hancock), and Williamstown, reached Bennington, where it was agreed that the chief command should be assigned to Col. Allen, and that Castleton, about ten miles from Skenesborough, (now Whitehall), twenty miles from Ticonderoga, should be the place of general rendezvous. Proper measures were taken to prevent a ยท knowledge of the contemplated attack from reaching the fort, and also for procuring information of its condition and means of defense. On Sunday evening the 7th of May the whole party were together at Castleton, and on Monday a council of the committe of war, of which Capt. Mott was chairman, was held to decide upon future operations. It was agreed that a party of thirty men under Capt. Samuel Herrick, of the New Hampshire Grants, should the next day in the afternoon, take into custody Maj. Skene and his party at Skenesborough, and that the residue of the men about one hundred and seventy in number, under the immediate command of Col. Allen should procced to the lake shore opposite Ticonderoga, cross over in boats and attack the fort. Col. James Easton was second in com- mand to Allen and Capt. Seth Warner, the third, they ranking according to the number of men they had respectively raised.
On the evening of Monday the Sth of May, after the plan of operations had all been settled, the men assigned to their respective duties, and ready to march, Col. Benedict Arnold arrived with a single servant and claimed the chief command, by virtue of a com- mission which he exibited from the committee of safety of Massa- chusetts, appointing him " colonel of a body of men not exceeding four hundred," which he was " directed to enlist," and with them to
disclaims all participation in the origin of the expedition by declaring that it was "an advantage gained by the United councils and enterprise of a
number of private gentlemen * * * without public authority to our . knowledge." That information of the expedition was, soon after it had been set in motion communicated to Hancock and Adams and to others, in confidence, is doubtless true. Mr. Adams alludes to it in a letter to the president of the Massachusetts congress, dated at Hartford, May 2, four days after the expedition had started, in language as follows : "certain military movements of great importance and with the utmost secrecy, have been set on foot in this colony of Connecticut, while I dare not explain, but refer you to Cols. Foster, Danielson and Bliss."- Sec Mott's Journal and letter of Parsons, and notes of J. H. Trumbull in Conn. Hist. Collections above referred to- also Am. Archives, vol. 2, 4th series, 507, 706. Jour. Mass. Cong., 527 note. Wells's Life of Samuel Adams, vol. 2, p. 297-8. New York Rev. and Atheneum Magazine, Feb. 1826, p. 219-220.
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proceed to reduce the fort at Ticonderoga. This commission bore date the 3d of May, the day on which the men from Connecticut and Massachusetts arrived at Bennington, and, with the aid of Allen, Warner, and others, were gathering the men of the New Hampshire Grants. Col. Arnold had reached Stockbridge on the western border of Massachusetts, on Saturday the 6th of May, but had scarely begun his attempt to raise men, when learning that a party from Connecticut were in advance of him in the enterprise, he followed with all possible speed in its train, and reached Castleton on Monday evening as before stated. Arnold's commission as colonel was not in the usual general form, but was a special commission for the particular purpose of raising men for the capture of Ticonderoga. By the terms of it he was to " enlist" the men by whom the capture was to be made, and he was authorized to command only those whom he should enlist.' The men, among whom he had thus unexpectedly appeared, were already raised ; they had in no sense been enlisted by or under him, and he had clearly no right by his commission to assume the command of them, against their wishes. He however, claimed that he had a right to the command, and insisted upon it, with such warmth and pertinacity, that the men, to whom he was an entire stranger, became alarmed lest they should be placed under him, and declared that they would serve under no other officers than those with whom they had engaged, and that if the command was surrendered to him, they would abandon the expedition at once, and return to their homes. Arnold was consequently forced to yield, at least for the time being, but was allowed to serve as a volunteer, with the rank of colonel, but without any command.
The march was pursued according to the original plan, and the party arrived late on the 9th, at Orwell, opposite the fort. With great difficulty a few boats, sufficient only to carry about half the force were procured, on which eighty-three men crossed with Allen and landed near the garrison. The boats were sent back for the rear guard under Capt. Seth Warner, but the day was dawning, and if these men were waited for, the fort could not be taken by surprise. The men were therefore at once drawn up in three ranks and Allen addressed them ; " Friends and fellow soldiers ; we must this morning quit our pretensions to valor or possess ourselves of this fortress ; and inasmuch as it is a desperate attempt, which none but the bravest men dare undertake I do not urge it on any contrary to his will. You that will undertake voluntarily, poise your firelocks." Every
1 For a copy of the commission see Appendix No. 12.
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firelock was poised, and Allen ordering the men to face to the right, and placing himself at the head of the middle file, led them with a quick step up the height on which the fortress stood, and beforethe sun rose he had entered the gate and formed his men on the parade between the barracks. Here they gave three huzzas, which greatly surprised the sleeping inmates. When Col. Allen had passed the gate a sentinel snapped his fusee at him and then retreated under a covered way. Another sentinel made a thrust at an officer with a bayonet, which slightly wounded him. Col. Allen returned the compliment with a sword cut on the side of the soldiers head, at which he threw down his musket and asked quarter, which being granted, Allen demanded to be led to the apartment of Capt. Delaplace A flight of stairs outside of the barracks was pointed out, which Allen hastily ascended, and with a voice of thunder at the door cried out to the captain to come forth instantly or the whole garrison should be sacrificed. At this the captain came out undressed, with his breeches in his hand. " Deliver to me the fort instantly," said Allen. " By what authority ?" asked Delaplace. "In the name of the great Jehovah and the continental congress," answered Allen. Delaplace began to speak again but was peremptorily interrupted, and at sight of Allen's drawn sword near his head, he gave up the garrison, ordering his men to be paraded without arms.
Thus in the gray of the morning of the 10th of May, 1775, the very day of the first assembling of the revolutionary congress, and a few hours prior to the gathering together in the State House at Philadelphia of its illustrious members, was its authority made known and proclaimed by a body of Green Mountain Boys within the walls of Ticonderoga - a fortress which had been acquired by the government from which it was now wrested at the cost of thousands of lives and millions of money. And thus to Allen, with his associate patriots, belongs the honor of compelling the first sur- render of the British flag " to the coming republic."
The Americans gained with the fortress fifty prisoners, one hun- dred and twenty pieces of cannon, also swivels, small arms and stores. To a detachment under Capt. Seth Warner, Crown Point with its garrison of twelve men, with sixty-one good cannon, and fifty-three unfit for service, were surrendered on the first summons. The party which had been sent to Skenesborough was also successful, taking Major Skene the younger prisoner, and seizing likewise a schooner and several batteaux, with all of which they hastened to Ticonderoga.1
' Papers relating to the expedition to Ticonderoga in Coll. of Conn. ITist. Soc., vol. 1, p. 162-188. Jour. Muss. Proc. Cong., p. 695-726, and Jour.
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The capture of these two fortresses of Ticonderoga and Crown Point, thus early in the contest, was of great advantage to the strug- gling colonies, not only protecting them against immediate invasion from Canada, but also furnishing them with a large quantity of the munitions of war, of which they were in great necd. Following quickly after the spirited resistance to the king's troops at Lexing- ton and Concord, it increased the confidence and stimulated the enterprise of the Americans, and gave to their enemies further dis- couraging evidence of the activity and bravery with which they were likely to be resisted. The news of this unexpected event was indeed received by the friends of the king with both astonishment and grief. Lieut. Gov. Colden, who was then, in the absence of Tryon, administering the government of New York, and devoting all his energies to sustain the odious measures of his royal master, gave a doleful account of the misfortune to Lord Dartmouth the British minister. After speaking of sundry violent proceedings of the people of the city of New York, he says, " a matter of greater importance was carried on in the northern part of this province ; no less than the actual taking of his majesty's forts at Ticonderoga and Crown Point, and making the garrisons prisoners." The only consolation which he finds in the accounts of the affair that have reached him is, to use his own language, that " the only people of this province who had any hand in this expedition, were that lawless people whom your lordship has heard much of under the name of the Bennington mob." The latter statement of Mr. Colden was true. Of the people of New York, over whom he claimed jurisdic- tion, it was only the turbulent inhabitants of the New Hampshire Grants that were concerned in the outrage upon his majesty's for- tress. The people of the old colony of New York were not prepared for so bold a measure. A great portion of them were either secretly or openly in favor of the crown. Some of these mingled in the deliberations of the whigs and influenced their councils. Isaac Low, chairman of the New York committee, was a loyalist, and was after- wards attainted as such ; several of his associates on the committee were of the same stripe. Of the twenty-one delegates to the Provincial congress, then recently chosen for the city, no less than one-third were tories, and there were members with like sympathies
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