USA > Vermont > Vermont in quandary, 1763-1825 > Part 10
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terms to Vermont did not prevent him from attempting to com- municate once more with the Allens. John Beverly Robinson, a Virginia loyalist, who had been used in a prior attempt to win over Rufus Putnam of Connecticut,14 wrote Ethan, March 30, 1780, that he could not make proposals until he knew his views, "but I think upon your taking an active part and embodying the in- habitants of Vermont in favor of the Crown ... you may obtain a separate Government under the king and constitution of England, and the men formed in regiments. .. . "15 On the receipt of this let- ter, Ethan met with the members of the Governor's Council; it decided to reply via Haldimand who was stationed in Quebec.
Clinton had already foreseen the difficulties of negotiating from the city of New York and had advised that the negotiations could be successfully undertaken from Quebec, from whence the Ver- monters could be easily supported and supplied with provisions, arms and clothing. If the negotiations were conducted from New York, he said, letters might be lost or fall into wrong hands and supplies could not be conveniently forwarded. Knowing these drawbacks, Vermonters would be wary, he continued, of negotiat- ing with New York but might quickly respond to overtures made from Quebec.16 Germain agreed and he wrote Clinton, December 4, 1779, that Haldimand's nearness to Vermont made him the ob- vious negotiator and would enable him to provide for all needs of the Vermonters.17 On March 17, 1780, Germain wrote Haldimand that the adherence of the Vermonters to the British cause was so essential for the safety of Canada and for overawing the inhab- itants of the northern colonies, that he wished to emphasize once more that it was the government's desire that he effect it, despite the considerable expenses which it might involve.18
As late as August 1780, however, Haldimand had not heard from Ethan. He wrote Clinton on August 15 that Allen had not made any overtures to him, that he could not be trusted and that he did not think it "would be safe to trust .. . [him] and 4000 men
14. Clinton Papers, Box for November, 1777, Robinson to Clinton, Nov. 13, 1777.
15. This letter is printed in the Haldimand Papers which are published in part in V. H. S., Collections, II, 59-366, 59-61.
16. Clinton Papers, undated memorandum, 1780.
17. Thid., Gennain to Clinton, Box December 1-9, 1779.
18. B, XLIV, 14.
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in the province; for he might seize it."19 Nevertheless, the nego- tiations were just about to begin.
The Allens, the Fays and Chittenden, who participated in the negotiations, attempted later to conceal the true nature of them. While the Reverend Samuel Williams of Rutland was writing his celebrated two-volume History of Vermont, he sought information on the Haldimand Negotiations from Ira Allen. He wrote Ira on July 11, 1792, that he did not know whether it would be proper to ask him to see his papers on the negotiations, or whether Ira wished to trust them out of his hands. In this letter Williams promised that, if he saw the papers, no one else would ever see them or know that he had examined them, nor would he make any use of their contents without Ira's permission and approval.20
Ira acceded to Williams' request. After seeing the papers, Wil- liams wrote Ira that he had delayed printing his volumes to make corrections in conformity with the ideas he had gained from the papers and from their conversations. He claimed he had incorpo- rated everything which Ira had told him and that the account could not "be construed unfavorable to any person who was con- cerned in it, or by the British in Canada or elsewhere .... " Al- though he did not suppose that the account was free of errors, Williams wrote, he was certain no one could say he had given a view unfavorable to the Allens, or in any way abused the informa- tion, or the confidence which had been placed in him.21
The account of the Haldimand Negotiations in Williams' His- tory may therefore be considered an Allen version. As one might anticipate, the account is wholly favorable to the Allens. The British, Williams wrote, attempted to persuade the leading men of Vermont to establish their state as a British province. The "gentlemen of Vermont", Williams continued, inaugurated instead a correspondence consisting of "evasion, ambiguous, general an- swers and proposals, calculated not to destroy British hopes of seduction, but carefully avoiding any engagement or measures that could be construed to be an act of government; and it had its
19. Ibid., CXLVII, 221-224.
20. N. Y. S. L., Samuel Hunt Papers, Box 1777-1801.
21. N. Y. S. L., Ira Allen Papers, Miscellaneous, 1795-1801, Williams to Ira Allen, July 28, 1794.
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object, a cessation of hostilities, at a time when the State of Ver- mont, deserted by the continent, and unable to defend herself, lay at the mercy of the enemy in Canada." 22.
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It is true that the British did attempt to seduce Vermonters from their allegiance to the colonial cause; but the reception accorded the British proposals was different from that accorded to a similar one made to Jonathan Trumbull of Connecticut by ex-Governor Tryon who was still in the colonies. Trumbull immediately re- buffed him. He wrote Tryon that "the present mode bears too much the mark of an Insidious Design .... " All such proposals, he said, must go to the Continental Congress.23 The Vermonters reacted very differently. Far from repelling the British overtures, the Allens welcomed them because they might solve all their problems by supporting the New Hampshire titles, recognizing the government of Vermont under the Constitution of 1777 and promising friendly commercial relations between Vermont and the Province of Quebec. On September 27, 1780, Chittenden re- sponded to the overtures by writing Haldimand a letter in which he requested a cartel for the exchange of prisoners. On October 22, Haldimand replied, asking Chittenden to send a trusted agent with full power to negotiate with his representative at Crown Point or at St. Johns.24 Instead of meeting either at Crown Point or at St. Johns, Ethan, Chittenden's envoy, met Justus Sherwood, the Vermont loyalist and Haldimand's intermediary, at Castleton on the twenty-ninth. This was the beginning of prolonged and tortuous negotiations with Sherwood, who was joined later by the Albany loyalist, George Smyth.
Sherwood told Ethan that Haldimand was fully acquainted with the Vermont-New York deadlock and that the General be- lieved that the Continental Congress was only misleading Ver- monters. Now was the time, Sherwood declared, for Vermont to repudiate the Continental Congress. Ethan refused to be pushed into a precipitate act because Vermonters, he argued, would "cut of his head" were he publicly to support reunion with Great
22. Williams, Samuel, The Natural and Civil History of Vermont (2nd Ed., Burling- !!!! , Vermont. 1809 ), 214-215.
23. Clinton Papers, Trumbull to Tryon, April 23, 1778, Box April, 1778.
24. V. H. S., Collections, II, 70.
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Britain at this time. Furthermore, Ethan declared, Haldimand's army was not sufficiently strong to come to his aid in case the Congress should retaliate by sending a military expedition against Vermont. These considerations convinced Ethan that Vermont must remain neutral. Only in case of an attack upon the state by the Congress would he seek Haldimand's assistance. He declared that Vermont would not rejoin the empire unless the British should permit Vermonters to choose their own civil officers and recognize the New Hampshire titles to their lands. In conclusion, Ethan insisted that the negotiations should be abruptly terminated and forever kept secret if the Congress were to recognize Ver- mont's claim to independence. The results of this first conference were not wholly inconclusive. Soon thereafter, the Vermont troops were ordered to return to their homes. Henceforth, Vermont stood aside from the American Revolution.25
In opening negotiations with the British, Chittenden and the Allens jeopardized their alliance with Vermont revolutionaries who clung tenaciously to the political objectives of the American Revolution. To open negotiations was to break asunder, perhaps, the coalition which had supported the Allens since 1775. Only Vermonters whose interests were identical with those of the Allens would support such counter-revolutionary activities and aims. This coalition began to crumble when on November 4, 1780, Captain Hutchins and Simeon Hathaway criticized Ethan's activities in the Vermont Assembly. At the first opportunity Ethan arose "and said he would hear no more of it, as it was beneath his Character to sit there and hear such false and ignominious aspersions against him etc., and went out of the house." So frayed were Ethan's nerves that he resigned his Brigadier-Generalship and offered his services to Governor George Clinton of New York.26 .
The Allens, however, were supported by many Vermonters dur- ing the negotiations with Haldimand. They shrewdly played upon the fears of Vermonters exposed to British raids by claiming that the negotiations were designed solely to save Vermont from such dangers. To gain the support of other Vermonters, they repre-
25. Wilbur, Ira Allen, I, 195-201.
26. V. H. S., Collections, II, 79; B, CLXXVI, 233-237.
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sented the negotiations as a desperate measure to frighten the Congress into immediately recognizing their state's independence. Many Vermonters supported the negotiations because they lacked any strong feeling of nationality. Their loyalties were deeply rooted in Vermont and only superficially, if at all, in the Continental Con- gress. Loyalty to Vermont was undoubtedly increased after the Vermont Assembly moved swiftly in November, 1780, to dispose of all lands within the state which had not been granted by New Hampshire or New York. Between November 4 and November 8, 1780, the Assembly voted the extraordinary number of eighty- three land grants! 27
The negotiations which many Vermonters supported from op- portunism were, however, supported by others who were gen- uinely loyal to Great Britain. Many British sympathizers and a few loyalists had remained in Vermont where they had survived the first phase of the Revolution by withdrawing from active par- ticipation in politics. Many of them were conservative Yorkers who comprised a further subdivision of the pre-revolutionary Yorker faction. This subdivision, loyalist by conviction, joined the Allens for the sole purpose of detaching Vermont from the Revo- lution. It re-emerged as a factor in Vermont politics after the Assembly repealed "An Act to prevent the return to this state of Loyalists" on November 7, 1780.28
The most prominent of these sympathizers were Samuel Wells, Micah Townshend, Samuel Gale and Luke Knoulton. Samuel Wells had been Judge of the Cumberland County Inferior Court of Common Pleas and the bête noir of Leonard Spaulding and Reuben Jones. Micah Townshend, who moved from Westchester County to Brattleborough in 1778, married one of Wells' daughters. Samuel Gale, British-born clerk of Wells' court, married Wells' other daughter. Although Luke Knoulton had come to Vermont from Massachusetts, he was a staunch sympathizer with the Yorkers and the British. During the Revolution, he lived in New- fane where he had remained in discreet retirement prior to 1780.29
27. Vermont State Papers, III, 152-157. 158-165, 172-179.
28. Nye, Sequestration, Confiscation and Sales of Estates, 40.
29. For Wells, see Hall, History of Eastern Vermont, 11, 718-725; for Townshend. see Records of the Governor and Council of the State of Vermont. I, 519n; for Gale see Hall, op. cit .. II, 643-644; for Knoulton see Records. I, 344, 351-352.
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Like the Allens, these loyalists endeavoured to be all things to all men. A few of them actually held office under the invisible govern- ment which George Clinton attempted to maintain in Vermont. Micah Townshend, while supporting the Haldimand Negotiations, corresponded with George Clinton.3º As Yorkers, their coopera- tion with the Allens was never based on mutual trust or esteem. According to William Smith, their real object was the restoration of Vermont to New York and both to Great Britain.31
Another group which acquiesced in the negotiations was com- posed of inhabitants living on both banks of the Connecticut River. Heretofore, they had been violently opposed to the Allens because of the dissolution of the East Union of 1778. After the beginning of the Haldimand Negotiations, some of them came to the support of the Allens. This startling reversal was caused, in part, by their fear that the British would continue to raid their settlements. Above all, the Connecticut Valley people had be- come thoroughly disillusioned with the Revolution. Seaboard New Hampshire's shabby treatment of its backcountry inhabitants had alienated many of them from further participation in the Revolu- tion. Such persons as Bezaleel Woodward, Peter Olcott and the Wheelocks, father and son, sincerely believed that they had legiti- mate reasons for withdrawing from the struggle against Great Britain. Like the Yorkers, they could not be depended upon to support all the Allens' aims and aspirations.32
An uneasy coalition of these erstwhile warring factions was cemented at a fantastic convention held at Charlestown, New Hampshire, on January 16, 1781.33 The convention was attended by delegates from forty-three towns situated on both sides of the river. The purpose of the convention was to find a permanent solu- tion to the problems arising from its hostility to western Vermont, on the one hand, and seaboard New Hampshire, on the other. The convention first voted to unite the towns on both sides of the river to New Hampshire, an unexpected decision in view of the attitude
30. Public Papers of George Clinton, V, 596; Sir Henry Clinton Papers, Report of In- telligence of Micah Townshend, April 10, 1781.
31. Stevens, Facsimiles. no. 108.
32. N. Y. S. L., Stearns Miscellaneous, An Address to the People of New Hampshire and the Other United States.
33, V. H. S., Collections, II, 97-98.
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of the members towards that state. Nevertheless, it was carefully designed to obliterate the troublesome boundary between Ver- mont and its eastern neighbor and to increase immeasurably the power of the backcountry in the counsels of New Hampshire.
New Hampshire was never given the opportunity even to con- sider this proposal because the next day the convention reversed its decision by voting to rejoin Vermont, thus reviving on a much larger scale the first East Union of 1778.34 The second East Union was engineered behind the scenes in some mysterious fashion by the Yorkers, Samuel Wells and Luke Knoulton; the New Hamp- shire opportunist, Peter Olcott; and Ira Allen, as was later charged by inhabitants of the east bank of the Connecticut River who re- fused to join in partitioning New Hampshire or in abandoning the Revolutionary cause. While the motives for the Yorkers and New Hampshire opportunists' action are clear, those of Ira require explanation. He supported the second East Union because he sought to increase whenever possible the number of persons who sympathized with the objectives of the negotiations with Haldi- mand. At the same time he could employ the union for the purpose of confounding New Hampshire which had renewed its claims to Vermont in the fall of 1779 and never abandoned them.
Meanwhile, a third faction awaited an opportunity to join Ver- mont in order to support the objective of the Allens to withdraw Vermont from the Revolution. This faction was composed of in- habitants of the towns lying between the Vermont-New York border and the Hudson River. In such small communities as Cam- bridge, Granville and Saratoga lived many Yorkers who had be- hind them, as had Vermonters, a history of troubled relations not only with the Royal Province of New York but also with the State of New York. Under the leadership of John Rodgers, the ardent democrat, this faction wished to join Vermont in order to secure the township form of local government, the democratic fruits of the Vermont Constitution of 1777 and protection from British raids.35 So disaffected were the inhabitants of this region that
34. Ibid., 98.
35. Sir Henry Clinton Papers; Stevens Miscellaneous, Vermont Boundary Controversy, Memorandum on Vermont Claims, East and West, Box for Aug. 1-7, 1781.
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Germain wrote Haldimand on April 12, 1781, that he was "not without hopes that our numerous friends about Albany will find means of connecting themselves with the Vermont people" and that they would declare themselves loyalists.36
These disaffected Yorkers would not only swell the ranks of the Allens' supporters but also provide them with a springboard for further partitioning New York. Fantastic as it may now seem, the Allens plotted to annex to Vermont all the lands lying between Vermont and the Hudson and from thence to the forty-fifth par- allel. This annexation would forestall the establishment of a per- manent New York-Vermont boundary through Lake Champlain. Such a boundary might present obstacles to the movement of goods and people, as much as did the Connecticut River boundary between Vermont and New Hampshire.
In addition, the Allens sought to offset the increased influence of eastern Vermont in the Assembly after the second East Union, by a corresponding increase in the influence of western Vermont.37 Acting in compliance with the Allens' wishes, the Vermont Assem- bly voted on April 11 to send delegates to a convention to be held at Cambridge. On May 15, the Cambridge Convention, over which John Rodgers presided, voted to join Vermont as the West Union.38
. Before the Cambridge Convention met to vote to secede from New York, Ira had been dispatched for his first extended meeting with Haldimand's intermediaries at Ile aux Noix between the eighth and twenty-fifth of May. Germain believed that this was the golden opportunity for Vermont to rejoin the empire. Haldimand, he said, could feel secure because he had reliable information that the French government had ordered Luzerne, the French envoy to the Continental Congress, to dissuade the Americans from at- tacking Quebec. On May 4, he instructed Haldimand to dispatch troops to support the Allens and to cut off communications be- tween upper and lower New York.39
Germain's optimism was not justified by the conversations be- tween Ira and the British at Ile aux Noix.40 On the eighth; Ira
36. B. XLIV, 72-80.
37. Ibid., CLXXVII. 680-381.
38. See N. Y. S. L., Vermont Boundary Controversy Papers.
39. B. L., 209-210.
40. Collections, II, 109-119.
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said that he was not authorized at this time to negotiate for re- union, but shortly thereafter he indicated that he was not satisfied with the terms which Haldimand had proposed to offer Vermont. He criticized them because they did not include the right of Ver- monters to elect their own governor, a right which he said Ver- monters would never relinquish. On the eleventh, Ira introduced a very important issue into the conversations by displaying dis- satisfaction with the idea of negotiating and closing an agreement solely with Haldimand. As Sherwood later reported, Ira wished to know the extent of Haldimand's powers to treat with Vermont. Sherwood replied somewhat evasively that Haldimand would not exceed his powers. Ira then asked Sherwood if the British Parlia- ment had passed an act concerning Vermont's readmission to the empire. Sherwood replied that Parliament had never passed such a bill; to which Ira retorted that Vermont would have to be the subject of a Parliamentary Act before Vermonters would willingly reunite with Great Britain.
During these conferences, Ira occasionally lifted the veil which concealed other reasons for refusing to declare in favor of the Bri- tish. On one occasion he said that Vermont had joined the Revolu- tion on principles he deemed just and that, for the present, for Vermont to consent to be a British province would be little more than changing sides and inviting American invasion. He would give most of his fortune to know the outcome of the war. Obvi- ously, Ira doubted the expediency of rejoining the empire so long as the success of British arms was still uncertain.
HIaldimand was despondent upon hearing incomplete reports of the Ile aux Noix conversations. Sherwood, however, wrote him that he believed that Allen had departed fully determined to press for a reunion and that he would be supported by Governor Chittenden. He described Ethan and others as impelled by self- interest rather than by loyalty to Great Britain. Ira, he added, "doubts much of success and I am afraid that none of them will have the fortitude enough to open the matter fairly in their June Assembly."41
41. B, CLXXVI, 120-121.
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That an effort was made to increase the number of persons in the Assembly who favored the negotiations is demonstrated by the contents of a petition sent by the inhabitants of Rockingham to the Assembly on April 19, 1781. This petition claimed that, after the last Assembly had appointed the time and place for the elec- tion, "the friends of ministerial Tiorany," who were also the per- sons who had joined the Court Party after the Westminster Riot of 1775, distributed handbills urging the election of loyalists to the Assembly. The petition requested that the commissions of election of Noah Sabin, John Bridgman, Luke Knoulton, Benjamin Burtt, Oliver Lovell, Elias Olcott and Jonathan Hunt be sus- pended because they were "avowed Enemys to all authority save that derived from the crown of Great Britain." 42
Soon after the Ile aux Noix conversations, the Assembly seethed with conflicting rumors. One member declared that he was in- formed that the Governor and Council were secretly negotiating with Governor Haldimand on matters which were unfriendly to the best interests of Vermont and the American States, and he peremptorily demanded that Governor Chittenden's official papers be laid before the Assembly. After a heated argument on the floor of the Assembly, a resolution was offered to force Chittenden to produce his papers. Over his objections, the resolution was passed. A few days later Ira Allen laid copies of several letters before the Assembly which referred solely to an exchange of prisoners and gave as he wrote, "so plausible an account of negotiations that spies of other states and Great Whigs [were] satisfied." 43
Despite this rising tide of opposition, the Allens did not hesitate to resume negotiations by sending Joseph Fay, their trusted Ben- nington ally, to the foot of the lake to confer with Sherwood. At this time Haldimand doubted the sincerity of the Vermonters. He wrote Sir Henry Clinton on August 2 that they had expressed a preference for the Continental Congress if that body would recog- nize Vermont's independence. If Great Britain wins the war, "Vermont will gladly become loyal, if the contrary, she will de- clare for Congress, being actuated as well by interest as Heartfelt
42. Vermont. Office of the Secretary of State, Manuscript State Papers, XVII, 43. 43. B, CLXXVI, 233-237.
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Attachment to their cause-In six months she will be a Respect- able Ally to either side." 44
Haldimand's shrewd analysis was confirmed by Sherwood's re- port of August tenth, following Fay's departure. He wrote Haldi- mand that Fay desired to continue the negotiations intermittently until the Vermonters were ready to join the British, perhaps in the following November. "To us it appears they wish to have two Strings in their Bow that they may choose the strongest, which they are not able to determine till it is better known how Mr. Washington succeeds in the present campaign." Sherwood sus- pected that the Vermonters wished to protect themselves from invasion by either American or British armies "by spinning out the summer and autumn with Truces, Cartels, and negotiations at the Expiration of which they expect to hear the consequences of the present important maneuvers by Sea and Land." 45
That the Allens desired to have two strings in their bow is demonstrated by Ethan's dispatching John Beverly Robinson's letter to the Congress in November, 1780, as a warning that the British hoped to fish in the troubled waters of the Congressional deadlock over Vermont. In August, 1781, while Joseph Fay was at Ile aux Noix, Jonas Fay and Ira boldly appeared before the Congress in Philadelphia, ostensibly to secure recognition of all Vermont's claims. According to the Vermonter, Timothy Beadle, this was not the real object. Beadle informed the British that the real object was to secure the Congress' rejection of Vermont's claims.46 Such a rejection would enable the Allens to secure greater support in Vermont. If this interpretation is correct, the real object of the mission met with success. The Continental Congress made the dissolution of the east and west unions the prerequisite for discussing Vermont's claims.47
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