USA > Vermont > The story of Vermont (1889) > Part 4
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The British ministry well knew the importance of the possession of Lake Champlain, and the Brit- ish general Carleton in 1776 pressed down the lake with a powerful force. Every son of Ver- mont was needed at home to aid in repelling the most dangerous blow that had yet been aimed at the colonies.
General Gates was placed in command at Crown
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Point and busied himself in strengthening the works there and at Ticonderoga and in building a rude fleet. The latter was overpowered in the first engagement and Crown Point was taken, the de- fenders setting fire to the fleet and spiking their guns before retreating. It was now October, and Carleton, leaving a strong garrison at Crown Point, retired to winter quarters in Canada.
In the spring of 1777 General Burgoyne, in com- mand of a strong force of British and Hessian troops, Tories and Indians, took up, where Carleton had dropped it, the task of opening a road from Lake Champlain to the sea. The newly-formed convention of Vermont, of which more hereafter, sent Warner with all the troops he could raise to assist General St. Clair at Ticonderoga. It was useless to attempt to hold that fort, however, against Burgoyne's force. St. Clair retreated across the lake closely pursued by the enemy, and marched through Vermont to Fort Edward where General Schuyler was stationed with the Colonial Army.
A strong detachment of Burgoyne's army under Generals Frazer and Riedesel came up with the American rear guard under Warner and Francis at Hubbardton. It was on this occasion that Warner gave to his men that celebrated order, not found in any work on tactics, to take to the woods and meet him at Manchester. They had been heavily over-
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matched in the brief engagement and Colonel Francis had fallen. The Green Mountain regiment did reassemble after that bloody and unequal en- counter and when the time came they did valiant work.
The main army of Burgoyne had reached the upper Hudson, driving all opposition before it. The invaders only paused long enough to rest a few days while a strong force was sent out toward Bennington on a foraging expedition. The main object of the foray was to secure horses. Bur- goyne gave the German general Baum who was in command explicit directions to bring in "thirteen hundred horses tied in strings of ten horses each so that one man can lead ten horses." But the detachment brought back no horses. Near Ben- nington it met an unexpected obstacle in the shape of a regiment of New Hampshire militia com- manded by John Stark, a veteran Indian fighter. Baum paused to throw up intrenchments and on the third day was attacked by Stark's command.
It was on the morning of that historic sixteenth of August, 1777, that Stark made his famous speech : " Boys, there are your enemies, the red- coats and Tories. We must conquer them or to- night Molly Stark is a widow." It was then too that the Rev. Mr. Allen, the intrepid fighting par- son of Pittsfield, distinguished himself. Early in
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the morning this worthy man, who had been im- portuning Warner to hurry up the action, is said to have advanced toward Baum's works and called on the Hessians to surrender to avoid bloodshed. They understood neither his words nor his action, and their only answer was a volley. "Now give me a gun," said the man of God.
With such spirit on the colonial side the action could have but one result. Baum's Indians fled, his regulars were dispersed, many were killed and a large number of prisoners taken. On the heels of the engagement came Colonel Breyman with a reinforcement from Burgoyne which had been sent for by Baum.
Seth Warner had fought at Stark's side all day, but the bulk of his regiment arrived just in time to meet this second attack. The battle was quite as sharp as the first, and was ended by Breyman's re- treat at dusk. The spoils of that well-fought field were seven hundred prisoners, four cannon and many muskets. The British loss was comparatively heavy; of the colonial troops thirty were killed and forty wounded.
The victory at Bennington was won by pluck and determination pitted against military skill and ex- perience. Baum was a good commander, but his troops probably fought tamely and were easily made prisoners. They had no more than the mercenary's
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interest in the result of the war and had little taste for heavy blows. It is related of a colonial officer, Charles Johnston, that, coming in the thick of the fight upon a Hessian sergeant and a file of soldiers, he knocked the sergeant's sword out of his hand with a stick, picked it up and compelled the officer at its point to surrender his command.
The prisoners taken at Bennington were sent for safe keeping to Massachusetts. All along the way the people flocked to see them, sometimes venting their satisfaction in satirical remarks. One good dame is said to have remarked on seeing Lord Napier ragged and unkempt, among the prisoners, that she cared to see no other lord but the Lord Jehovah.
The good people could hardly be blamed for ex- ulting somewhat over the prisoners. The victory at Bennington, won by the raw militia of Vermont and New Hampshire, was the turning point in a war where hitherto all had gone very ill indeed. Burgoyne's army, weakened by the loss of a thou- sand men, hampered by lack of horses and provisions and greatly delayed by the defeat, was forced just two months later to surrender. On the plains of Saratoga five thousand seven hundred men and much valuable war material fell into the hands of General Gates, who had succeeded Schuyler in command on the Hudson. The British attempt to
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cut the colonies in halves had failed. Had it suc- ceeded the war might have had a far different termination.
Three days after the defeat of Baum, Congress passed a vote of censure upon the Legislature of New Hampshire for so wording General Stark's instructions as to permit that officer to act on his own responsibility in the campaign. Stark himself was included by implication in this censure, since he had expressly refused to join the main body of Schuyler which was facing Burgoyne on the Hud-
son. The great value to the colonial cause of Stark's victory has usually been considered a com- plete justification for his refusal; it was neverthe- less hardly excusable on military grounds. As a matter of fact, Stark's withdrawal from the army of Schuyler was due only in part to a desire to pro- tect New Hampshire and Vermont from the Brit- ish; it was due quite as much to that spirit of State jealousy which during the Revolution so often crippled the colonial cause. The troops of New Hampshire and Vermont were capable of a heroic defense when their own territory was threat- ened, but they were quite willing to let New Yorkers bear the brunt of the attack upon that colony. In this they were neither better nor worse than the other colonies, none of which at any time fully realized that the concern of one was the care
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of all. It was scarcely to be wondered at that they should have felt no ardent desire to save New York from the impending blow, considering all that they had suffered from that arrogant colony, yet disobedience of the orders of a military supe- rior in a grave crisis is not justified by pique. As it happened, the forces of Stark and Warner were enabled to render a signal service to the cause, but it might easily have happened otherwise. Had they remained with Schuyler, had Baum carried off his horses from Bennington unopposed, Bur- goyne's defeat would probably still have been accomplished. There was, then, some justification for this censure by the Congress, but to do that body justice, it had not heard of the great victory when the vote was taken. When the glorious news came, Stark was complimented upon his vic- tory and given a major-general's commission.
There was not much gold lace in those days about a general, at least a general of Stark's type. Stark lived in a log cabin and Baum's war maps were all the curtains which that structure pos- sessed for some time. The cannon captured from the Hessians have long delighted patriotic eyes at the Montpelier State House, and upon the site of the battle the grateful descendants of the men who there defended the liberties of the people are erecting a stately monument.
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The fall of Burgoyne relieved the colonies from apprehension from the north, but it plunged Ver- mont into new dangers. The people of that much badgered section now wished to establish their in- dependence of both New Hampshire and New York. Jurisdiction over them was however still claimed by both States, and in the latter they had a powerful enemy in the colonial councils.
The Vermont settlers were left without any pro- tection from the north, and from that quarter they knew only too well what they had to fear. The fate of Jane McCrea told what manner of foes they were who were likely to assail them. That young lady had a Tory lover in the army of Frazer and Riedesel, and to meet him she remained behind when her neighbors fled out of reach of the Indian allies of the invaders. For her trust she was killed and scalped, and her broken-hearted lover, resign- ing his commission, purchased her scalp and retired to Canada where for many years he lived a lonely and gloomy life. It was to elude such a fate as this that the families of the widow Storey and her neighbor Mr. Stevens lived for a long time in a cave under the bank of Otter Creek, approaching it only by canoe to avoid being tracked. It was to fend off such savage warfare and protect the people of Vermont from horrid butcheries that the newly formed Committee of Safety resorted to an
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expedient which has caused the historians of the State some unnecessary blushes and has furnished the theme for inexcusable attacks upon the memory of its foremost men.
It is one of the favorite tales of the Ethan Allen mythology that on one occasion he received a letter from a British general offering him the title of Duke of Vermont and vast landed possessions therein if he would espouse the Royal cause. It is further stated that he responded virtuously that his tempter reminded him of a certain personage who offered our Saviour the kingdoms of the earth, well knowing that he didn't own a foot of it. Alas for the legend ! It was to Ethan Allen, now back in Vermont and wearing the title of Commander-in- Chief of the Militia, that the British Colonel Beverly Robinson wrote in 1780 making distinct overtures for an alliance of Vermont with Great Britain. Allen's first impulse would undoubtedly have been to write an indignantly rhetorical re- fusal, but Governor Chittenden and Ira Allen, of the Committee of Safety, advised other measures. In a word, they resolved to play off the British in- vaders, who could crush them with their military power, against the Congress, which persistently refused to admit them on an equality with the other colonies to the Congressional councils and privi- leges. By affecting to coquet with Great Britain
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they would awaken the jealousy and alarm of the colonies and, at the same time, save their outposts from destruction.
This was undoubtedly the intention, yet it speedily became apparent that one half of the plan must be relinquished. To produce any effect on Congress some publicity about the negotiations would be necessary ; but this would have meant the utter ruin of the committee before the people. They could and did, however, succeed in accomplishing with much success the second object of the parley. During the latter years of the war Vermont suf- fered very little from incursions of the enemy.
It was not probable that Congress was greatly affected, after the first, by these negotiations. Bev- erly Robinson's letter was indeed somewhat tardily transmitted to that body, but there was obviously little to fear from an intrigue so repugnant to the · people of Vermont that a bare suspicion of it almost cost the leaders their places.
The temper of the people on this point was pretty conclusively tried in the military operations of the year 1780. In the two previous years a few forts had been erected to guard the northern frontier. This barrier did not prevent an incursion of Indians, who on the sixteenth of October fell upon Royalton with crushing weight. The town was burned, two persons killed and twenty-six prisoners
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taken to Canada. At the same time Major Carle- ton led a force up Lake Champlain which created a panic on both its shores. It avoided Vermont, un- doubtedly by design, but penetrated into New York as far as Ballston, which was burned.
Carleton had received instructions to favor the Vermonters in every way, and accordingly he now concluded arrangement for a cessation of hostilities pending an exchange of prisoners. By Allen's insistance the New York frontiers were included in this arrangement, though Carleton was at first very much averse to this. The people of New York, not understanding the situation, became very nervous when, after the agreement, Allen withdrew the militia of Vermont. They ques- tioned and grumbled and they began to mutter that the action was very mysterious.
General Schuyler wrote to Washington for ad- ditional forces for the defense of New York. These however were not needed, as the enemy soon re- tired from the lake to Canada, but the retreat set the tongues wagging faster than ever. The dis- satisfaction extended to Vermont where remon- strances were presented to the Assembly. The brief record of that body cites the presentation of the complaints, but fails to specify their nature. Four days later they were withdrawn while curiously enough, a vote of thanks was passed to Allen.
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It was in the preceding March that Allen had received the letter from Colonel Robinson, but it was not transmitted to Congress until March 9, 1781. In his letter to Congress Allen assured that body of his fidelity to the cause of the colonies. But he said that he was "fully grounded in the opinion that Vermont has an indubitable right to agree on terms of cessation of hostilities with Great Britain, provided the United States persist in reject- ing her application for a union with them."
It was two months later than this that Colonel Ira Allen crossed the Canada line and spent a num- ber of days in negotiations with the British general. Haldimand. In these and subsequent conferences Britain assumed the role of suitor, Vermont that of the sued. The British officers wanted Vermont at once proclaimed a crown province and two red- coated regiments raised there ; Allen wanted noth- ing but delay and immunity from assault mean- while. He had his way, for the British seem never to have doubted that Vermont's dissatisfac- tion with Congress would in the end drive the peo- ple into a British union. 1.
Allen left the British in that belief and received the written commendation of eight equally patriotic citizens for having so conducted the difficult nego- tiations as to deceive the enemy. The men who signed this paper were Jonas Fay, Samuel Safford,
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Samuel Robinson the younger, Joseph Fay, Thomas Chittenden, Moses Robinson, Timothy Brownson and John Fassett. These were all men of repute in the State and patriots to the core. They sanc- tioned the continuance of a policy of deceit to save the people from utter destruction at the hands of an enemy of overpowering military superiority. Yet any one of them would have cut off his right hand sooner than betray the popular cause to the king.
Nor was there any doubt which was the popular cause. It had been sufficiently indicated by the murmurs in the previous year, and an untoward incident was now to cause yet louder complaints. While the secret ne- gotiations were in pro- gress some show of military activity had to be kept up to keep the people ignorant of their real nature. In October, 1781, General St. Leger ascended Lake Champlain with a British force as far as Ticonderoga, and General Enos with the Vermont troops ALLEN AND RUNNALS.
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watched him from across the lake. Both gen- erals understood that their campaign was not meant to be a bloody one, but the scouts took it in earnest, and in an " affair of the outposts," Ser- geant Tupper of Vermont was killed. General St. Leger buried Tupper and sent his clothing with a message of apology and condolence to General Enos. He was sorry, he said. But why? Why was St. Leger sorry that Tupper was killed? This query and the reflections suggested by it created great commotion in Enos' army. An inconven- ient demand for an explanation was made at Charles- town by Major Runnals of New Hampshire of Ira Allen and Chittenden. The demand came at the very moment that Governor Chittenden was fur- tively perusing the letters of Enos and his chief of staff to see how much of them it would be safe to read to a large and angry-looking throng of patriots who had followed into the very presence of the governor the messenger who bore the letters.
To divert attention from the letters, Allen affected to get very angry with Runnals and abused that good and brave man unmercifully for eating the substance of the people instead of being at the front. By the time that Runnals had flung himself from the room in a white heat of passion, Chitten- den was enabled to convene the Board of War. Before another demand for the letters could be
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made, new ones had been prepared. From these were omitted certain paragraphs of the originals, whose reading in Vermont might have had an awkward effect. It was a very narrow escape. Had the original letters been read by those not in the secret it would have fared very ill indeed with the Committee of Safety.
The surrender of Cornwallis at Yorktown com- ing at about this time must have been a vast relief to the worried and anxious conspirators. The ne- gotiations were continued indeed until peace was declared in the following year, but the war had practically ceased and the Vermonters were nerved to perseverance by the thought that they saw the beginning of the end.
General Haldimand and his superiors seem toward the last to have relaxed somewhat their efforts to hasten the slow steps of Chittenden and Allen. So it came about that though the proclamation de- claring Vermont a royal province was actually pre- pared, it was never published. On the news of peace the whole intrigue, having accomplished its object, was dropped forever.
The success of these Cincinnati of Vermont in negotiations of the most delicate and intricate na- ture was something almost marvelous. Chittenden who left the plough to guide the infant State as its first Governor was a farmer, Ira Allen was a land
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surveyor, and these two men, neither of whom could to-day be called well-educated, neither of whom possessed the slightest experience in state- craft, met and solved some of the most difficult problems which confronted any of the colonies. It is probably not too much to say of them and their associates that they saved Vermont from destruc- tion at a time when the northern frontier was left absolutely unprotected by Congress and when there was not in Vermont itself a sufficient force to repel · an attack from the North.
Nor was this all. Although intended primarily as a protection to Vermont alone, the negotiations with Haldimand were of great value to the other colonies, and especially to the ancient enemy, the " Yorkers." To have kept off further invasion from the north when all the colonial troops were grappling elsewhere with the king's redcoats was no small triumph for Green Mountain diplomacy, and a great service to the popular cause.
It is remarkable that some of the Vermont his- torians who speak with barely-concealed exultation of the overturned haystacks and the whip-scars of the New York partisans in the heat of the boun- dary dispute have never quite forgiven Chittenden, Allen, Fay and their associates for having deceived the British with respect to their wish to declare Vermont a royal colony. But deceit of an enemy
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has always been considered justifiable in war and usually in diplomacy. The Vermonters at no time exceeded in this transaction the rules which have governed nations in civilized intercourse. Their motive was the preservation of the State. They ·sought no self-advantage. They played a game in which the people's safety was the stakes. It was a difficult one and they played it well, but they took no advantage and used no means which the sober judgment of posterity will condemn as unfair.
The Revolutionary period practically closed the public labors of the Green Mountain leaders. Seth Warner, much broken in health, retired from the service soon after the battle of Bennington. His land had been sold for taxes while he was fighting the king and the last years of his life were strait- ened by poverty and clouded by fits of insanity. Baker had fallen in the Montreal campaign. Ethan Allen survived the war a short time, but he was never again so prominent in public affairs. He died at Burlington in 1789, leaving a memory which will undoubtedly long be held above that of any other man of Vermont. Chittenden and Ira Allen were his superiors in statecraft; Warner and Stark were more able leaders in war; but Ethan Allen was every inch a man. His ready wit, his personal strength, his courage and his rugged honesty made him a popular hero.
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No county was named for him as for Chittenden ; no stream or peak of his home land links his name to the soil he fought to defend; but for a full cen- tury after his death his name has been both watch- word and rallying cry and regarded as the talisman of popularity.
To the boys and girls of Vermont the Green Mountain Boys live in all the heroics of tradition and romance, while even from the earliest days they have grown familiar with Ethan Allen stoves, Ethan Allen ploughs and Ethan Allen machinery of all sorts. There have been Ethan Allen mills, Ethan Allen stock companies, Ethan Allen fire compan- ies and Ethan Allen streets. The name of the daring partisan leader has been used in Vermont much as has that of Washington throughout the Union, and it is likely to continue equally well- remembered, honored and glorified.
CHAPTER IV.
BUILDING THE STATE.
A HES SIAN
HEN the war for lib- erty broke out, the seat and source of power in the new con- tinent was transferred from the king of Great Britain to the Conti- nental Congress. With more confidence in a fair hearing and a speedy compliance than they had ever felt in lay- ing their case before the distant court of the Georges, the settlers upon the New Hampshire Grants turned with their pleas to the Congress they had helped establish.
Here, they reasoned, are men more familiar with our situation and more in sympathy with our wishes than the English king or his patrician councilors could ever be. But they reckoned without their host. They were cherishing a con- fidence which was destined to be rudely shaken
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in the long and complex negotiations which followed.
At the outbreak of the Revolution, the attempts of the New Yorkers to force their jurisdiction upon the people of the Grants relapsed for the time. Heretofore the direction of affairs had been vested in royal governors anxious to enrich themselves and their associates by confiscation of the settlers' property and clothed with plenary power to carry out their wishes. Now it passed, after a consider- able period of indecision between king and colo- nies, to committees of safety. These had hardly more than advisory functions; they were too much engrossed in their all-absorbing struggle with the Tory element in their own colony, and too deep in preparation for meeting King George's soldiers, to waste much time or thought upon the Grants.
One result of the hurry and confusion of the time was a little wholesome neglect by which the peo- ple of Vermont were quick to profit. They under- stood perfectly well that the claims of New York were not abandoned, but only held in abeyance. In the early part of 1776 a convention was held at Dorset and attended by delegates representing eight- een of the western towns, to consider how far the inhabitants would submit to the authority of New York. The right of the king was not now recog- nized in the colonies, and the convention resolved
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to appeal from his decision in the boundary dispute to Congress. Dr. Jonas Fay, Captain Heman Allen and James Brackinridge were deputed to present the case of Vermont to Congress "by petition and re- monstrance." The petition which had been pre- pared recited the grievances of the people, and closed with the prayer that Congress would permit them to do duty in the Continental service as inhabitants of the New Hampshire Grants and not as inhabi- tants of New York. It was presented to Congress, but found little favor with that body, and was with- drawn by Allen in June.
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