USA > Vermont > Vermont in quandary, 1763-1825 > Part 24
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This gang of counterfeiters was not broken up until February, 1808 when thirteen of its members were arrested, and two rolling presses, sixty packets of fine paper, twelve copper plates and $9,000 in counterfeit bills were confiscated. Three of the gang were imprisoned in Montreal, two fled to Vermont and the remainder were acquitted "on agreeing to abandon the profession." Only Stephen Burroughs, "King of Counterfeiters," remained at large."6
Despite these sources of genuine irritation, the intimacy be-
43. V.H.S., Ira H. Allen to Zimri Allen, Oct. 28, 1806.
44. Records of the Governor and Council of the State of Vermont, IV, 19.
45. P.A.C., Canada Miscellaneous, Ruiter Papers, III, Petition of the Magistrates. Militia Officers, etc., of St. Annand.
46. N.Y.S.L., Stevens Miscellaneous, Petition of Oliver Barker, July 15, 1809.
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THE GOOD NEIGHBORS
tween Canadians and Vermonters increased greatly. Particularly was this true of their social relations. Members of the same family often lived on both sides of the border and these people gave little heed to the presence of the boundary. Geography played such caprices that Vermonters living near the outlet of Lake Champlain had more connections with the towns of Lower Canada than had Vermonters living in the southeastern tier of the Eastern Townships. The latter had their chief connections with the more settled regions in northeastern Vermont.
Social ties and family relationships stretching across the border were not the only means of spreading Vermont's influence in- to Lower Canada. Yankee schoolteachers settled in the province, carrying with them the culture of New England. A citizen of Peacham, Vermont, taught school for many years in Bolton, Lower Canada.47 One Vermont teacher contemplated moving to Lower Canada. He preferred, however, to stay in Vermont, but expressed his willingness to go to the province. "I should certainly prefer a situation in Burlington College to one in any Academy in Canada, although the Salary were somewhat less." A Canadian friend found him, as he wrote "too partial to the Green Mountains-and I rather begin to think there is something in it."48
The flow of American teachers to Lower Canada was accom- panied by a reverse flow of Canadian students to schools in Ver- mont and in other New England states. Joseph Brant, the Indian, sent his sons to his Alma Mater, Dartmouth.49 Canadians were enrolled also at the University of Vermont. When Silas Hathaway contemplated establishing a university at St. Albans, he hoped to attract students not only from Vermont and New York, but also from the Canadas.
The desire. of young American women to learn French drew some into Lower Canada. The Misses Forest and Grant advertised in the Post-Boy of Windsor, Vermont, in the spring of 1806, that they had opened a Montreal academy for young women. Those who did not wish to go to Lower Canada to learn French were, perhaps, afforded that opportunity by Charles Hyatt's offer to
47. Transactions of the Brome County Historical Society, II, 87.
48. V.H.S., Whitelaw Papers, Oct. 16, 1806.
49. V.H.S., Brant to Wheelock, Feb. 9, 1801.
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THE GOOD NEIGHBORS
teach French in Peacham. With these exceptions, the influence of Lower Canada on the education of young Vermonters was slight. The Anglo-Canadian community in the province was well aware of its lack of educational opportunities. To help remedy this situa- tion, residents of Quebec petitioned the Assembly of Lower Canada to erect a college in order not to have to send their children to the United States for their education. They petitioned also for the im- mediate opening of a grammar or high school.50
Another great New England tradition, the care of souls, in- fluenced Lower Canada even more. Since its settlement, Vermont had been a seat of the historic quarrel between predestinarians and universalists, between belief and unbelief and a host of subtle shadings in between. The reaction against the Calvinist doctrine of election gained momentum in the nineteenth century, largely because the frontier environment emphasized a degree of equality which was reinforced by ideas expressed in the Declaration of In- dependence.51
Missionaries from Calvinist churches in Vermont found the task of conversion more and more difficult in their own state, and at least one turned to proselytise in western New York. One preacher, who had gone to Cazenovia, found the population there hostile. Isaac Lyman, a Vermonter, wrote a fellow-Vermonter that the missionary from their state had met with a hostile reception from the people of Cazenovia. "They say they wish not to have them preach of Hell & Damnation, for let any Person come into a New Settlement & see how they fare will say the Inhabitants suffer all those torments of Hell and Damnation to a perfection." 52
An equally striking example of the popular rejection of Cal- vinism occurred in Vermont. About 1800, at the time of the death of a child, a Calvinist minister told the parents that there was only one chance in ten that the child would be saved. Thereupon the father gave "a heavy stampt with his foot and said, 'Hold yr. tongue, I will have no such talk in my house. I don't believe my child has gone to hell. I believe it has gone to heaven, and I just mean to go there too.' He turned to a friend and said: 'Brother
50. S, LXXX. 53-n.d.
51. Ludlum, D. M., Social Ferment in Vermont, 1791-1850 (New York, 1939), 1-2). 52. N.Y.S.L., Stevens Miscellaneous, Isaac Lyman to Phineas White, circa 179S.
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THE GOOD NEIGHBORS
Norton, won't you bring a Methodist preacher to see me?' " 53
It was Methodism and other anti-predestinarian sects which were the most popular among Vermonters and popular also among American and loyalist settlers in the Canadas. The great revivalist, Lorenzo Dow, was sent by the New York Methodist Conference to complete the formation of a circuit embracing western Vermont and the eastern half of the Eastern Townships.54 Another prom- inent preacher of the time who ignored the boundary was Joseph Sawyer of Middlebury, who became Presiding Elder of the Upper Canada District. Still another shepherd of the Lord's flock on both sides of the border was Henry Ryan, also of Middlebury. He served in Plattsburg, Bay of Quinte, Long Point, Niagara and at one time was a missionary to the Chippewa Indians. He spent his last days as a Superannuate in Upper Canada, where he was noted for his fearlessness in the presence of "lewd fellows of the baser sort" who delighted in interrupting his meetings.55
The Baptist Association of Shaftsbury, Vermont, was equally active in the Canadas. It dispatched a missionary in 1809 to Upper Canada and two to Lower Canada. Members of the Association were exhorted "that the great part of mankind was precluded from the stated administration of the Word," declaring that this was the case with most of those who inhabited the frontiers of their state and Lower and Upper Canada. In 1823, this Associa- tion claimed three hundred and thirty-six members, nine churches and eight ministers in Upper Canada alone.56
These economic, social, religious and educational ties across the border were creating a cosmopolitan rather than an international community which was, however, soon destroyed by the impact upon Vermonters and Lower Canadians of the War of 1812.
53. V.H.S., Vermont Church History, Methodism, Rutland, 3.
54. V.H.S., Vermont Church History, Milton, I.
55. V.H.S., Vermont Church History, Methodism, Middlebury, I.
56. Wright, Stephen, History of the Shaftsbury Baptist Association (Troy, 1853), 123, 176.
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CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
Embargo, Non-Intercours and War
The crisis leading to the War of 1812 brought to a close the era of the good neighbor. As the United States and Britain drifted towards war, Vermonters were pulled in opposite directions as they had been just before the Jay Treaty; the Jeffersonian Repub- licans revived the expansionist tradition of the Democratic So- cieties and the Federalists the separatist tradition of the Allens. So long as Vermont remained within the Commercial Empire of the St. Lawrence, its history continued to respond to geographical influences.
The Jeffersonian Republican party in Vermont obtained its greatest support in the Southwest and the Champlain Valley. The appeal of this party was primarily to the small farmers. Because the members of the party when in power were controlled by a caucus the Federalists declared that Vermont was ruled by an aristocracy.1 The objectives of the party, however, were demo- cratic. Its members still railed against absentee ownership of land and the evils of undemocratically controlled proprietors' meetings. They forced the incorporation of a State Bank in 1807 on the grounds that credit "ought not to be exclusively enjoyed by the Commercial Interests, but should be participated in by the Agri- cultural Citizen."? They spearheaded the opposition to the state militia laws, which were branded as "UNEQUAL, OPPRESSIVE. and intolerably grievous to the poorer classes of citizens."3 The Jeffersonians in great numbers also participated in the religious revivals which made of Vermont a "burnt-over" area.
The Federalists were dismissed by the Jeffersonians as the for- mer appeasers of Great Britain. One Jeffersonian stalwart declared
1. Vermont Journal, Nov. 21, 1808.
2. Vermont, Office of the Secretary of State, Manuscript State Papers, XLV, 234.
3. Ibid., XLVI, 192-193.
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that Vermont Republicans compromised their principles when they failed to steer "clear of those who joined Britain in open hos- tilities, those who took protection under them or espoused their policies."4 The election of 1799 resulted in the rout of the Jeffer- sonians by the popularity of John Adams' anti-French policies and by the collapse of Vermont expansionism. It brought into power, so Jeffersonians charged, "old Tories, refugees, and British protection men of 1777."5
The Federalists repulsed the charges that they were no better than the hated loyalists with the statement, which contained much truth, that other Vermonters than those who had become Federal- ists had played an equivocal role during the Revolution. One of them, in denying President Thomas Jefferson's contention that man was governed by reason and a sense of right, said:
. do not the New Yorkers throw it into our teeth, that we took the land from them wrongfully, and that while they and other states were encountering labors and losses for Independence as their object, we made clandestinely a treaty with the Governor of Canada, that we might still call ourselves Whigs, and go on to confiscate Tory estates, that we and the British were not to fight against each other and if they conquered the States then we were to be a Government by ourselves under them, so that we could always protect our lands against the New York Courts; and this was our object; and as Mr. Jefferson knows it, then when he talks to us Vermonters, about a government founded on Reason of man and his sense of Right, and is so particular to say, that it was the only object we saw worthy of labours and losses we encoun- tered in the war, folks will think he means something like a fling at us, which would be a very mean thing in him.6
The conservative character of the Federalist party in Vermont was correctly described by a Republican who said it was com- posed of "four-fifths of the lawyers, nine-tenths of the merchants and nineteen out of twenty of the clergy."7 Prominent Federalists were Isaac Tichenor; Lewis R. Morris; the opportunistic loyalist,
4. Vermont Gazette, August 18, 1800.
5. Ibid.
6. Vermont Journal, Feb. 9, 1802.
7. The Washingtonian, November 11, 1811.
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Benjamin Green; and the nationalist, Nathaniel Chipman, who never forsook his Hamiltonian faith in the United States. The party, greatly influenced in favor of what passed in Vermont for "wealth, talents and respectability," was stronger in the Connecti- cut Valley than in the other sections. As Federalists constituted the more substantial and conservative elements of the community, they were not so averse as Jeffersonians to the monarchical insti- tutions existing in the near-by Canadas.
As the United States and Great Britain approached an impasse over the rights of Americans as neutrals, the antagonisms arising from local issues merged with the divisions over external issues. The Jeffersonians became the party in favor of war against Great Britain, if necessary, and of striking against the British by con- quering the Canadas. Although remote from the issues on the sea, they did not ignore the British violations of the rights of Americans as neutrals. Jeffersonians shrewdly pointed to the Canadas as a source of indemnification for British spoliations of American commerce. The Canadas, they claimed, were the sole British possessions which were conveniently within striking dis- tance of American armies. They maintained that they desired so far to affect British interests as "to force Great Britain to do jus- tice-to make compensation for past injuries and secure us for the future." Such being the case, "we may certainly ... strike our enemy in the most vulnerable spot .... Canada is a part of Great Britain. ... Where then should we make the attack? Were we calculated to effect a landing at Liverpool or London?"8
Nevertheless, there was much truth in the Federalist charge that the Vermont War Hawks wished to use a declaration of war against Britain as the justification for conquering the Canadas. Indeed, the desire to conquer the Canadas arose independently of the desire to force Great Britain to redress American griev- ances. Jeffersonians sought support for war on the grounds that Vermonters would gain substantial advantages and satisfy old ambitions which were similar to those later marshalled under the slogan of Manifest Destiny. As Julius W. Pratt has demonstrated. the northwestern frontier was indeed aflame with expansionist 8. Vermont Republican, Aug. 16, 1813.
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fever by 1812.9 The American frontiersmen believed that the Brit- ish continued to instigate the Indians against them and they thought this was a legitimate reason for seizing Canadian lands and for securing control of the St. Lawrence outlet to the north Atlantic. As a result, Vermonters, who lived in a state which very early was drawn into the Canadian commercial orbit, contributed greatly to the revival of anti-British and American expansionist sentiment. The expansionist newspaper, The Green Mountain Farmer of Bennington, appealed to history:
Our grandfathers remember what a nest of vipers this same Canada was when the French held it and erected a chain of forts from the St. Lawrence to the Mississippi; our fathers remember the infernal use the British made of it in our revolutionary war; and the history of the present day records murder and massacre from the same quarter. ... Ought we not then drive their armies, not their farmers, from the banks of our western lakes and rivers, and put the landed property of their peaceable landholders on a par with that of their brethren within the present lines; that is, raise it in value from one to three hundred per cent. In an equitable point of view we have a heavy claim on the territory as we assisted in its original conquest, and were never paid for our services.10
The payment just mentioned was demanded in the form not of cash but of the valley of the St. Lawrence. "We want the River St. Lawrence .... We want the British expelled from every inch of the North American continent ... . " As early as 1SOS, a Ver- monter argued in favor of an immediate agreement with Napo- leon by which the Americans would annex the Canadas and the Floridas "which would secure us the two great keys of America, the Mississippi and St. Lawrence, with that inexhaustible source of enterprize and wealth; the fisheries and fur trade."11 The decla- ration of war gave promise of achieving this long-standing ambi- tion. The Vermonter, Jacob Collamer, wrote on October 12, 1813, that "opening the navigation of the St. Lawrence is an object not to be overlooked in making peace with Great Britain." 12
9. Pratt, Julius W., The Expansionists of 1812 ( New York, 1925) 1-59. For a different view, see Burt, The United States, Great Britain and British North America, 305-310.
10. Green Mountain Farmer, Oct. 12, 1813.
11. Vermont Republican, April 17, 1812; Green Mountain Farmer, Feb. 29, 1808.
12. N.Y.S.L., Vermont Papers, XIV.
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EMBARGO, NON-INTERCOURSE AND WAR
Despite the popularity of the Jeffersonians' clamor for war, they met stiff opposition at the hands of the Federalists. Earlier, the latter had made political capital of the Allens' negotiations with the British during and after the Revolution. During the trying period before the outbreak of the War of 1812 the accusers of the Allens were in turn accused of negotiating with the British-and rightly so. These new negotiations got under way after the Fed- eralist landslide in the election of 180S. It had resulted from the unfavorable reaction of a majority of Vermonters in all sections to Jefferson's efforts, after the Chesapeake Affair of 1807, to avoid war by embargoing all American trade with other nations. In an extremely hotly contested election, Isaac Tichenor was elected governor once more. Republicans later maintained that he had been elected fraudulently. Indians, negroes and tramps, they said, were marched to the polls, "and fearing that these might not be sufficient, hundreds of his Majesty's subjects crossed the lines" to cast votes for Tichenor.13
Meanwhile, Governor James Craig of Lower Canada faced the unpleasant prospect of war. Although New England's hostility.to the Embargo was undoubtedly well-known to him, he decided to send an agent into the New England states who would report to him at first hand the specific views and opinions of Federalists whom he knew were violently opposed to war. The agent selected was John Henry of Montreal who had been a resident of Windsor, Vermont, and the editor of the Windsor Post-Boy. Craig instructed him to go to Vermont and to other New England states in order to discover the political views of Yankees.14 After Henry became angered by his failure to secure compensation from Craig for his services, he sold his correspondence to President James Madison for $50,000. For a time, however, he proved useful to Craig. His reports, sent from many places in New England, throw light on the Federalist state of mind at this time. Between 180S and 1809. Henry made several journeys into Vermont. He gave the gist of his information in his report to Craig that in Vermont free trade with Canada was the universal desire. "Either Vermont must be-
13. Rutland Herald, Aug., 1509 ( torn ).
14. See Cruikshank, E. A., The Political Adventures of John Henry; The Record of on International Embroglio (Toronto, 1936).
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long to Canada," he said, "or Canada must belong to Vermont or there must be peace and friendship between them." 15
Corroboration of Henry's reports on the attitude of Vermonters may be found in the negotiations set on foot by Tichenor soon after his election. On November 11, 1808, the Vermont Assembly passed a resolution which the Records of the Governor in Council and contemporary newspaper accounts record as one requesting the Governor to communicate with the Executive Council of Lower Canada in order to break up the gang of counterfeiters.16 In June of 1809, Tichenor dispatched to Quebec his political ally, Josiah Dunham, a Windsor schoolteacher who knew John Henry, ostensibly on the mission which the Assembly had requested. On July 3, armed with a letter of introduction from Tichenor, he left to see Craig.
The letter which Dunham carried in his pocket did not refer to the problem of counterfeiters; it contained instead a copy of a Vermont Assembly's resolution, designed to remove obstacles to commercial intercourse with Lower Canada.17 He saw Craig in Montreal, delivered Tichenor's letter to him and succeeded in securing the Governor's promise to do what he could. But did Craig refer to the counterfeiting problem, or to Vermont's desire for neutrality and commercial connections with Lower Canada in case of an Anglo-American war? The following year, Henry reported that he had agreed with Tichenor to neutrality in case of war.18
Despite Federalist efforts to keep hidden what they were doing, Jeffersonians charged Federalists with treasonable connections with the authorities in Lower Canada. Sufficient Vermonters were convinced of the truth of these charges to sweep Tichenor from office in 1809 and elect in his stead the Jeffersonian, Jonas Galusha. In his first message as governor, Galusha did not hesitate to refer to the Dunham mission. He and his fellow-citizens, he said, could congratulate themselves on having exposed the intrigues of foreign agents and domestic traitors who had been endeavoring to pit Americans against each other.19
15. S, LXXIII, 155.
16. Records of the Governor and Council of the State of Vermont, V, 236.
17. S. LXXVIII, 320.
18. Cruikshank, op. cit., 70.
19. Records of the Governor and Council of the State of Vermont, V, 401.
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His address provided the chief issue during the campaign of 1810. With telling effect, Jeffersonians asked Vermonters if they wished to vote for the party which had held treasonable conver- sations in Lower Canada and, in a seditious caucus at Burlington had discussed and accepted the proposals agreed upon during these conversations.2º Jeffersonians were provided with additional political ammunition by the activities of the Washington Societies which sprang up in New England during 1811. Jeffersonians charged that these were secret societies, extending from New York to the Canada line, which favored trading with Great Britain and seceding from the middle, southern and western states.21 In Ver- mont, the mouthpiece of these societies was the Windsor paper, The Washingtonian. Founded in 1810, its financial backers in- cluded the Federalists, Nathaniel Chipman, Isaac Tichenor, Lewis R. Morris, Elijah Paine and Josiah Dunham. Its readers lived on both sides of the border. "We have just received," wrote Dunham, in. December, 1810, "an additional list of subscribers from St. Al- bans quarter & Canada amounting to 800." 22
How much credence is to be given to the Jeffersonian charges . that Vermont Federalists, in company with others in New Eng- land, sought the separation of New England from the United States and reunion with Great Britain? Had a later generation arrived at the conclusion of an earlier one that the American Revolution had been a mistake? The answers to these questions is provided by John Henry. He wrote Craig from Windsor that Vermont Federalists declared that "the state will negotiate sepa- rately for itself in the event of War with England, and maintain its neutrality even by an armed force; if no other state should unite with it." 23 A minority of Vermont Federalists actually looked forward to the secession of Vermont from the Union. "The idea of Separation, you know," declared Dunham, "will not go down well here with the Majority even of Federalists -- the pill must be gilded to make them swallow it .... New England must come on to it or be slaves." 24
20. Vermont Republican, Aug. 27, 1810.
21. Massachusetts Historical Society, Transactions, XLIX, 276-277.
22. N.Y.S.L., Hubbard Papers, 1811-1812, Dunham to Hubbard, Dec. 7, 1810.
23. S, LXXVII. 127.
24. Hubbard Papers, 1811-1812, Dunham to Hubbard, Feb. 4, 1811.
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It would be a mistake to assume that this separatism was wholly the result of the commercial connections between Vermont and Lower Canada. Indeed, not all Vermonters were influenced by these ties. In the Connecticut Valley they were slight. As John Henry, who had lived in Windsor, shrewdly pointed out, the in- habitants of eastern Vermont were not "dependent on Canada for the sale of their produce and supply of foreign commodities. .. . " 25 Here, separatism was due largely to Federalist hatred of Jefferson and all his works.
Vermont Federalists accused the Jeffersonian administration of giving aid and comfort to Jacobinical radicalism. "The Gallic Mania still rages," sighed Nathaniel Chipman, "what will be the outcome of present measures God only knows." " 26 Federalists re- sponded similarly to Jefferson's domestic policies. The imminent admission of more western states and the lapse without renewal of the charter of the Bank of the United States brought forth a diatribe from one Vermonter who said "if this be the liberty for which our revolutionary patriots fought and bled, it is a boon not worth possessing."27 When war broke out, Martin Chittenden, son of Vermont's first governor, could see no other reason for it than party politics and expansionism. He blamed the pro-French lean- ings of the administration, the desire to bolster sinking party for- tunes, the ambitions of southerners to conquer the Floridas and those of northerners to conquer Canada. James Madison, he said, favored war because influential leaders in his party threatened to repudiate him if he did not do so.28 These opinions were scarcely calculated to make converts of Jeffersonians to Federalism. Con- sequently, the appeal of Federalism to Jeffersonians was neces- sarily economic. In answer to the Vermonter's expansionist letter, already quoted, a Federalist asked very pointedly what Jeffer- sonians would do with their beef, pork, grain, lumber and potashes if they could not export them to Lower Canada.29
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