USA > Vermont > Vermont in quandary, 1763-1825 > Part 22
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While Hathaway lied successfully to escape implication in the plot, one conspirator, David McLane, who had been arrested in Lower Canada, was executed as a terrible warning to Vermonters and French Canadians. He was hanged, drawn and quartered and burned in the public square in Montreal on July 21, 1797. McLane's career illustrates the kind of person attracted by the conspiracy. Born in Attleboro, Massachusetts, he had been the proprietor of a Coffee House in Providence, Rhode Island, and a Major of the Independent Light Dragoons of that city. At the time of his participation in the plot, he was described as "a ruined man, and ready for any enterprise offering a prospect of wealth and honor."18 From David McLane, the trail led straight to Ira Allen. Joseph Pennoyer of the Eastern Townships, wrote a fellow-Cana- dian after the death of McLane that "there are more concerned in this horrid business than was supposed," and that "the arms bought by Allen were for McLane's expedition, this is confirmed by a letter found among McLane's papers, stating that the Direc- tory had shipped these arms for Lower Canada to arm the Cana- dians." 19
Although the British were acquainted with some of the details of the plot, they did not know that Peters, Ira Allen and their allies had so well matured their plans that they had drafted the terms of the territorial settlement in North America and the peace
16. P.A.C., Military Papers (C Series), DCLXXIII, 92.
17. N.Y.P.L., British State Papers, Liston to Grenville, Aug. 12, 179S.
18. Shea, John, "David McLane," New England Historical and Biographical Register, ( 1862), XVI, 321-323.
19. Q, LXXXIX, pt. I, 213-217.
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terms to be imposed upon Great Britain. Peters boiled with indig- nation because the British had failed to consecrate him Bishop of Vermont and because the commercial needs of Vermonters had been ignored by Jay and the British when they wrote the Jay Treaty. He complained to Chittenden on June 24, 1795, of the omissions in Williams' History. Describing it as "ingenious," Peters declared that he found the volumes disappointing chiefly because they failed to comment upon the necessity of a canal around the Richelieu rapids. The responsibility for the failure of the British to build it was placed on Lord Dorchester who, he charged, would "do nothing to displace Brook Watson Esq." and other merchants trading with Lower Canada. Furthermore, he claimed that the British government was opposed to closer connections between the French Canadians and the Americans because it de- sired to keep the former "ignorant peasants & feudalist[s]."20
· These were substantially the reasons which impelled Peters to shift quickly from friendship to hostility towards Great Britain. The peace terms he advocated were designed to wreck the British Empire. As for Lower Canada, he sought to bring Canadian in- stitutions more abreast of the republican institutions of Vermont and France. He proposed to establish a republic in the Canadas regulated by "wholesome laws, the consequence of which will then be what Britain fears, the junction of Canada with Ver- mont."21 To achieve this juncture, Peters believed that it would be necessary to destroy feudalism; to admit all men and women over twenty-one to the suffrage, if landowners; to convert French Canadians to Protestantism and to give the Jesuit lands to the Protestant Episcopal Church over which he would preside tri- umphantly and magnificently as Bishop.22
If he had been able to dictate terms of peace in Europe, Great Britain would have been compelled to repair the damage it had wreaked upon the French naval base at Toulon, to restore Gibral- tar to Spain, to restore the overseas possessions of France, Spain and Holland and, lastly, to concede Ireland's independence. To
20. N.Y.I.S., Samuel Peters Papers, VI, 87.
21. Ibid., VI, 87.
22. Ibid., VIII, 51.
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complete Britain's humiliation, he intended that Labrador, New- foundland, Nova Scotia, Cape Breton, New Brunswick, St. John Island (Prince Edward Island), Lower and Upper Canada would become "sovereign & independent States" which would later join in a federal union to be agreed upon by a constitutional conven- tion.23
At this convention, Peters trusted that it would be possible to invoke the federal principle to reconcile the conflicting interests in the new state as successfully as it had been employed in Phila- delphia to harmonize the conflicting interests of the American States. Peters proposed to reconcile the Canadian interests in fur, land speculation, timber and shipping with comparable interests in Vermont. The new government was to have power to tax, regu- late commerce and to conduct foreign affairs in an area which was to be almost as great as that of the United States, because it was to extend from Lake Champlain to Hudson Bay and from Lake Superior to Newfoundland.
This federal state would promote the interests of the Allens in a way that neither the Federal Constitution of 1787 nor the gov- ernment of the British Empire could ever do. It was the last of several projects which the restless and ambitious Allens had con- sidered in order to secure the fullest possible scope for their many activities. First, they had waged a democratic crusade against New York and Great Britain during the first years of the American Revolution. Secondly, they had attempted to revive the former colonial relationship with Great Britain between 1781-1784. Thirdly, they had sought a political and commercial alliance with Great Britain on a basis of sovereign equality between 1788-1791. Lastly, they schemed to erect a new federal government in North America which would exert sovereign sway over an American state and a part of the area lying within the present Dominion of Canada. Possibly, the Allens and Peters groped towards erecting a greater North American state to include within its boundaries all the United States as well as the British North American posses- sions. If they did, they proposed to reconcile interests and loyal- ties which the British had endeavoured to reconcile between 1760
23. N.Y.S.L., Ira Allen Papers, 1795-1801, Peters to Ira, April 16, 1797.
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and 1776, and which later generations of Americans have aban- doned altogether as unfeasible.
The capital of this new and mighty federal republic was to be Burlington, Vermont. "Burlington," Peters exclaimed, "will rise and Washington will fall."24 He did not allow his enthusiasm as an imperial architect to obscure the commercial benefits of this new rival to the more southerly situated United States. He en- visaged Burlington as a great commercial center, its streets crowded with merchants, its warehouses filled with goods drawn from the four corners of the earth and its harbor providing anchor- age and wharfage for large sea-going vessels. He compared Bur- lington's position, if the canal were built, to that of Constantinople. The lake port would then command the "straits" leading from inland Vermont to the open sea.25
Peters was not content with the idea of Burlington as merely a commercial and political center. He dreamed of it as a focus of intellectual, scientific and cultural activities inspired by the spirit of the French enlightenment. He resolved that the University of Vermont, which Ira had founded at Burlington in 1791, would be attended by an international student body and staffed with a cos- mopolitan and brilliant faculty. Implying a low opinion of North American savants, he wrote a friend that he hoped to secure im- migrants from France, Holland and Germany, "amongst whom are Farmers, Mechanicks, Engineers, Chemists, Philosophers, & Scientific characters." Their establishment in Burlington, he ex- claimed, would make the city "the seat of the muses in the new world."26
Ira described in some detail the university's curriculum. In typi- cal promoter fashion, he hoped that the university would attract settlers and favorable attention to Vermont; but this was not the only motive for his interest in higher education. His great em- phasis upon the significance of natural forces in the affairs of men, his impatience with the merely conventional, his swift rise from obscurity, his sense of mastery and feeling for human prog-
24. Ibid., Peters to Ira Allen, Aug. 24, 1797.
25. Ibid.
26. Ira Allen Papers, 1795-1801, Peters to l'Abbé Vaire, Sept. 14, 1796.
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ress were congenial with some of the basic concepts of the French enlightenment. His travels in Europe had helped to corroborate his ideas and systematize his thought. As a result, the university absorbed more and more of his attention and the details of his plans took an exciting direction. He said the university was to be free from the "religious superstitions" of the clergy and would pay more attention to the study of French and other modern languages than to Hebrew and Greek. He proposed also to open an academy for the education of women because he thought that "the Girls were too much neglected."27 It can only be imagined what the impact of this plan of higher education would have had upon New England and French Canada.
The seizure of the Olive Branch brought Peters and Ira Allen face to face with the harsh realities of their unpleasant situation. Henceforth, they were concerned primarily with extricating them- selves from the consequences of their acts. Ira stoutly protested his innocence. He wrote his father-in-law, Roger Enos, that he had as much right as anyone to ship muskets and that the British would find nothing to implicate him in the McLane affair.28 He vowed to Rufus King, American Minister to Britain, that his sole intention had been to purchase arms for the Vermont militia. Consequently, he said, "the Intention of purchasing Arms did not originate in an Intreague with the French government after my arrival in Paris nor did it arise from an Impolitic Refusal of this Governments granting the Privilidge of a carnal to the People of sd. Vermont from Lake Champlain to the River St. Lawrence." As if to prove his innocence beyond the shadow of a doubt he added that the arms had been purchased on July 11 and that his canal proposals had not been rejected until August 11.28
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His deception extended even to John Graves Simcoe, who was at this time in England. Allen appealed to him in the late summer of 1797 for aid in securing the release of the Olive Branch and its cargo. Simcoe replied in a kindly and solicitous manner, drawing a distinction between the turmoil in Lower Canada inspired by
27. Ira Allen Papers, 1789-1802, to Fulwar Skipwith, Feb. 20, 1799.
28. V.II.S., Ira Allen Papers, Feb. 12, 1797.
29. Ibid., Dec. 17, 1796.
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French emissaries and the Olive Branch affair involving Ira Allen. He said that he had the fullest confidence in Ira's "foresight and probity," and that he refused to believe the grave charges made against him.30 Encouraged by Simcoe's gullibility, Allen proposed to the British government that it grant him the modest number of six townships in the Canadas to make up for his losses, he agree- ing in return to prevent the settlement of any person to which the British might object. If they were granted, he promised to go to Lower Canada and Vermont "& devise measures to preserve Peace, order, Tranquillity." 31
In the United States, Timothy Pickering, the Secretary of State, could not decide what attitude to take towards Ira and his activi- ties in Europe. Because France and the United States were on the verge of war as the result of a new crisis between the two countries, he could scarcely believe that Allen, as an American citizen, would take part in a conspiracy so contrary to American interests which at this time were closely identified with Britain, France's enemy. The crisis arose because France interpreted the Jay Treaty as a violation of the French Alliance of 1778. In re- taliation, French men of war and privateers pounced upon Amer- ican ships in a manner reminiscent of British depredations just prior to the Jay Treaty.
Pickering was strengthened in his belief that Ira was innocent by a letter from Isaac Tichenor, the new Governor of Vermont, who had been swept into office in October, 1798, by the unfavor- able reaction to the disclosure of the collapse of Ira's French negotiations. This election retired Chittenden from office. His death soon afterwards prevented him from making a political re- covery like that he had made after the Woodbridge Charter scan- dal of 1789. Chittenden's successor championed Ira for a reason which he gave in his letter to Pickering. He wrote the Secretary of State that he had no doubt of Ira's innocence and that he was anxious for many reasons that Allen should succeed in regaining his arms. "No one incident," he declared, "could have happened, so effectually to wound the feeling of so numerous a class of citi-
30. P.A.C., "Wolford" Simcoe Papers, I, Bk. 8, 398-399.
31. Q, LXXIX, pt. 2, 497-499.
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zens and embittered them to revive a prejudice against the British Nation." 32
A former resident of Vermont, who did not have a political mo- tive for wishing the release of Allen's arms, refused when asked by Philip Schuyler to intercede with Pickering. John Williams, now living in Salem, Massachusetts, wrote Schuyler that he had not had any dealings with Ira since 1783 when he had sold him $200 worth of flour for which he had never paid. "I know the man," he concluded, "and love the peace of my country too well, to have anything to do with him."33
Fortunately for Ira, Pickering accepted Tichenor's opinion and advice upon the Olive Branch affair and instructed Rufus King, American Minister to Great Britain, to inform the British Govern- ment that it was the wish of the United States that Allen be re- leased. Probably the intervention of Pickering was responsible for Allen's regaining his freedom in the spring of 1798.
Shortly thereafter, he sought to fabricate evidence to support his contention that the arms were his property and not that of the French state. To secure it, he crossed once more to France in May. of 1798 to persuade the Directory to aid him in rescuing the arms from the clutches of the British prize courts. On his arrival in Paris, he wrote immediately to Talleyrand asking him for a docu- ment with which he could convince the British Government that he had purchased the arms from the Directory and that therefore they were his property and not that of the French Government. On the thirtieth, the Directory complied with his wishes by order- ing the Minister of Finance to give him a bill of sale which was, of course, fictitious.34
Yet the next day Ira was arrested and thrown into prison. This sudden turn in his fortunes was a great shock because he assumed that it was as safe for him to pass from London to Paris during these negotiations as it had been to pass from Ile aux Noix to the Continental Congress in Philadelphia during the Haldimand Nego- tiations. The Directory, however, did not treat him as leniently as
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32. N.Y.S.L., Tichenor Papers, April 21, 1797.
33. N.Y.P.L., Schuyler Papers, XLII, Sept. 21, 1797.
34. Wilbur, op. cit., II, 197, passim.
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had Haldimand and the Continental Congress. Its reasons for dealing so summarily with him arose largely from the fact that the Directory was greatly angered and puzzled by his return to London and the resumption of his British negotiations after it had furnished him with arms and money.
Ira languished in prison from September 1, 1798, to September 12, 1799, with the exception of the short period from December 9 to December 30, 1798. He bent every effort to secure his release. He claimed with a degree of plausibility that he had always been a firm supporter of the French Revolution and its ideas, that his resolution to fulfill his agreement with the Directory had never faltered and that his freedom was indispensable for its success. Two Americans at that time in Paris were importuned in the same way. One was Thomas Paine, author of Common Sense; the other, Joel Barlow, the poet of the American Revolution who had be- come an agent for the notorious Scioto Land Company. Ira wrote the former that he could be assured "there are documents of mine in the Possession of the Minister of Police that Shews it to be my opinion that Revolutions will be further extended to the Advan- tage of France."35 He attempted to ingratiate himself likewise with the Directory by advising it on French relations with Russia. He made a proposal which was designed to effect an alliance be- tween the two countries. His experiences in Vermont rather than in Europe suggested the means to achieve it. From "much experi- ence in Revolutionary matters," Ira said he found it "generally best to take the most secure measures," and, therefore, he ad- vised the Directory to build a canal from the Red Sea to the Medi- terranean and one from the Volga to the Black Sea to detach Russia from the Grand Coalition against France.36
After Ira's release from prison he arrived in Vermont in 1801, thoroughly discredited among Vermonters who abhorred him and all his works or who firmly believed that nothing so succeeds like success. The bulk of his lands had been signed away or attached for debt, and he did not find any purchasers for the arms which the British government had by now released.
35. N.Y.S.L., Ira Allen Papers, 1795-1801, Oct. 9, 1798.
36. Ira Allen Papers, 1789-1802, Jan. 19, 1799.
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In the same year in which Ira returned ignominiously to Ver- mont, Levi died in the debtor's gaol in Burlington. Under the im- pact of successive disappointments, his mind had given way.37 His friend, William C. Harrington of Burlington, reported that he had always been "exantrick" in some things, but that his mind did not fail until three or four months before his death. Harrington re- lated that only a few days before his last illness, Levi had asked him if some way could not be devised so that he could go to. Quebec to secure the lands for which he had petitioned. When Harrington told him that he could not leave, "he appeared ex- tremely chagrined & grieved, which was the last time I saw him previous to his decease." 38
The other eccentric, Samuel Peters, remained in London until he was struck from the pension roles in either 1803 or 1804. He then went to Vermont, immediately becoming embroiled in a most dubious claim to a tract of land in the vicinity of the Falls of St. Anthony on the upper Mississippi River. Failing to secure these lands, Peters settled in New York, gaining there a reputation for his eccentricities, now more obvious than ever.39
As for Ira, he too left Vermont under a cloud. He was sued in 1801-1802 by heirs of his brothers for the recovery of the Onion River Company lands which he was accused of having appro- priated by "underhand" methods.4º These and other serious accu- sations forced Ira to leave the state. He finally settled as an exile from Vermont in Philadelphia where he died in 1814. In his latter years, he attempted to make his political recovery by intriguing with a Spanish adventurer to secure the independence of Mexico. To the end he was financially embarrassed. The last known letter which Peters wrote to Ira speaks of his debts in a reproachful and unfeeling manner. "If you sleep well," Peters wrote, "your .. . creditors do not." 41
37. S, XLIX, 79.
38. Ibid., XLIX, 81. Levi's nephew, a true Allen, turned northward to become a clerk in Montreal; V.H.S., Daniel Read to G. F. Houghton, Feb. 12, 1862. Ethan Allen's adopted daughter, Frances Allen, entered a Montreal nunnery where she "made [ .. ' secret of her unbelief." Sister Helen Morrissey, Ethan Allen's Daughter ( Quebec, 1940 ). 39. Sprague, A. D., Annals of the American Pulpit ( New York, 1859-1865), 8 vois .. V, 192-194.
40. Vermont, Office of the Secretary of State, Surveyor-General Papers, XV, 325-333 41. N.Y.S.L., Ira Allen Papers, 1799-1802, Sept. 10, 1802.
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The inglorious end of the Allens demonstrates that they had sadly overreached themselves. In retrospect, it would have been best if they had acted upon the opinion which Ira expressed to Levi before leaving on his disastrous mission abroad. He had written his brother that he believed the family had been overly ambitious and had already sufficient landed property. Embold- ened to the point of recklessness by their revolutionary triumphs over New York, they had trusted, however, to achieve with the aid of France a similar triumph in pursuing their commercial and landed ambitions. in Lower Canada. Unfortunately, Lower Canada did not prove to be so easily vanquished as New York. By 1798, the Allens were totally frustrated.
It is a commentary upon the means which they used that their immediate descendants did not take pride in the career of their ancestors. Nevertheless, after their own unscrupulous fashion, . they wrestled with problems imposed by geography which placed Vermont between the spheres of Canadian and American influ- ence in North America. Ira was convinced that the quandary in which Vermonters found themselves as a result of their geographic situation could be resolved in one way only. While in prison in Paris, he wrote:
the offer of British Gold in 1781, 1782, etc. . . . haith not altered or changed principles adopted in early life and practiced in more riper years nor will French prisons alter my determination unless the want of health may prevent Activity. ... Should the Waters of Lake Cham- plain change their course and empty into Hudson's River & Haith of land rise between the north end of sd. Lake and the River St. Lawrence, then will my interest be altered & not before.42
42. N.Y.S.L., Ira Allen Papers, 1795-1801, Oct. 60, 1798.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
The Good Neighbors
With the exception of rumors that Vermonters contemplated, once more, a descent on Lower Canada, the years between the frustration of the Allens and the passage of the Embargo Act of 1807 may be characterized as the era of the good neighbors. De- spite the boundary, geography dictated an exchange of goods and an intermingling of Canadians and Vermonters. Neither of them challenged these propositions. The question, still unanswered at this time, was: what kind of relations were to exist after the turmoil and strife of the nineties? Instead of pursuing a policy of conquest, the Vermonters now decided to play the role of the good neighbor.
This new era rested on Vermont's acceptance of British control of the Canadas and pursuit of economic opportunity within the framework of the Commercial Empire of the St. Lawrence. As a result, a distinct improvement in the relations between the two peoples took place and, what is more, an increase in the number and kind of contacts between them. During this period, the boun- dary all but disappeared from the consciousness of Vermonters and Canadians. The relations between them became so close that they should be excused for forgetting, on occasion, that the first British Empire had been destroyed by the American Revolution. The sense of American nationality was so weak and the com- mercial connections with Canadians so numerous that the Ver- monters' feeling at this time towards the Canadas was almost as it had been before the American Revolution.
Before the Revolution the foundations of the potash and lumber trade had been laid, roads to connect Vermont and the Canadian province had been constructed, the first vessels had plied Lake Champlain, saw and grist mills had been built and St. Johns, Montreal and Quebec had become the commercial centers for large numbers of Vermonters. During the depression following
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the Revolution, these activities had not increased relatively as much as the population of Vermont. When this depression ended, they were accelerated. The generation which succeeded the Allens reaped benefits which, in part, were due to their work.
The cause of the revival of the lumber trade lay in the necessity for Great Britain to turn to North America for ship timber, which could no longer be obtained with safety from the historic Baltic source of supply because of the Napoleonic Wars.1 To encourage the rapid growth of this trade, the British government placed duties on timber imports, called differential duties, which were lower on Canadian timber than on Baltic.
As a result, the Canadian provinces leaped into prominence as a source of supply after the renewal of War in Europe in 1802. From the Maritime Provinces and from Lower Canada enormous quantities of ship timber flowed across the North Atlantic to Britain. Much of this timber exported from Lower Canada came from Vermont and New York, where lay the most accessible and finest supply of white pine and white oak. The existence of this supply had long been known to Canadians. As early as 1792, Jonathan Coffin, Surveyor of Woods, wrote Lieutenant-Governor Clarke that the only trees fit for the use of the British Navy were to be found in the bays of the Gulf of St. Lawrence and that Canadian oaks were "so few and contemptible as scarcely to ob- serve attention." Fine stands of timber were available for cutting in Upper Canada; but Coffin's major interest was in Champlain Valley timber. He said that timber in the Valley and on the south bank of the St. Lawrence afforded masts which were big enough for the largest ships built in Britain and that they could be mar- keted only in the Province of Lower Canada and might therefore be bought at a reasonable price for the British Navy.2
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