USA > Vermont > Vermont in quandary, 1763-1825 > Part 27
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33. March 22. 1819.
34. See Glazebrook, G. P. de T., A History of Transportation in Canada ( New Haven, 1938 ).
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St. Lawrence canals were rendered less useful than they might have been because their dimensions were different than those of the Welland, thereby preventing many Canadian and American vessels from proceeding from the lower lakes to Montreal. The Chambly Canal served chiefly as a funnel through which Ottawa Valley lumber poured through Burlington into New England and New York markets.
Some years before the completion of the first Canadian canal system, William H. Merritt, its chief promoter, gloomily ob- served that "from our defective system we have lost the trade of the entire country bordering on Lake Champlain ... " and "as far west as Lake Superior-lying within the boundaries of the United States."35 Although the Commercial Empire of the St. Lawrence remained intact until the repeal of the Corn Laws in 1846 and the Navigation Acts in 1849, it was never again so attractive to Americans as it had been before 1825.36 The changes wrought by the Erie and the Champlain canals were permanent.37
The canals effected more than a commercial revolution. They inaugurated significant political changes which contemporaries had foreseen. The traveller, John Duncan, declared in his com- ments on the Champlain Canal that "in fact much of the moral and political as well as commercial aspect of this vast continent, will, in the course probably of a few years, undergo a great revo- lution." 38 Niles Weekly Register of Baltimore made a similar but more specific prophecy. The canal, it said, would not only make Vermonters more prosperous "but more efficient when their country needs their services."39
As Duncan and Niles predicted, the withdrawal after 1822 from the St. Lawrence helped to make Americans of Vermonters. Dur- ing the Revolution, they had negotiated to reunite with Great Britain, in 1789 they had tried to prevent the entrance of Vermont into the union, during the crisis leading to the Jay Treaty they 35. Innis, H. A., Lower, A.R.M., Select Documents in Canadian Economic History, 1783-1885 (Toronto, 1933), 183-184.
36. Creighton, The Commercial Empire of the St. Lawrence, 349-385.
37. See Albion, R. G., The Rise of New York Port, 1815-1860. (New York, 1939), 76-94.
38. Duncan, John M., Travels Through Part of the United States and Canada in 1818 and 1819 ( Glasgow, 1823), 2 vols., I, 342n.
39. Niles Weekly Register, XXVIII, July 9, 1825.
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had endeavored to secure an alliance with Great Britain, in 1809 they had revived the idea of separation from the United States and during the War of 1812 great numbers of them had refused to support the Federal Government. But the Champlain Canal removed the economic motive for these separatist leanings by providing new commercial connections with the other American states. By the time of the Civil War, so unreservedly were Ver- monters attached to the American nation that they supported whole-heartedly the North's efforts to save the union, preserve American democracy and free the slaves.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
Recapitulation
Vermont's history from about 1760 to 1825 can be fully under- stood only if projected against its geographic background. He who looks at a map of Vermont may learn as much as he who . reads a dozen monographs.
What immediately strikes the eye is that. Vermont contains within its boundaries three sections: one tributary to the Hudson, one to the St. Lawrence, and one to the Connecticut River. Until the Champlain Canal connected Lake Champlain with the Hud- son, the Champlain Valley lay within the Canadian commercial orbit and at the same time it was a section of an American state. The efforts of two generations of Vermonters to reconcile their political affiliations with their commercial connections dominated their politics and seriously affected those of Canada and the United States.
The quandary in which Vermonters, chiefly of the Champlain Valley, were placed by their geographic situation did not emerge until the American Revolution. Betwen 1763 and 1776 the British flag flew over the valleys of the St. Lawrence, the Hudson and the Connecticut. Montreal, Albany and Hartford were British commercial centers. To them the Vermonters had free access because they were British subjects. It is no wonder, therefore, that Ira Allen should have described this as the "happy period," because Canada and Vermont were under one king.
The commercial advantages of living in the British Empire did not deter Vermonters from joining the American Revolution. Resenting outside interference, they were poised by 1775 to revolt against the British and to capture Canada in order to destroy this seat of British power and to make certain that the valley of the St. Lawrence would be in friendly hands in the future. What was of equal importance, they were also on the eve of declaring their independence from New York.
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The causes of the separation of what is now Vermont from New York have invariably been described in terms of boundary con- flicts and rival land speculators. Vermont, it has been said, came into existence because New York had in 1764 successfully reas- serted its claim to all the lands lying within an area in which New Hampshire had granted titles since 1749. Thereupon, the land speculators under New Hampshire grants challenged New York's right to regrant their lands and, when all else failed, declared their independence from New York.
This interpretation falls short of being comprehensive. It ignores other and equally potent causes for resentment against New York among those who were not speculators. New York failed to win the allegiance of the rank and file of actual settlers between 1764 and 1777 both by what it did and by what it did not do in this period. The province neglected to grant its citizens on the New Hamp- shire grants what they deemed equitable representation in the colonial assembly and it failed to distribute political patronage in an acceptable fashion. On the other hand, it acted in a most posi- tive manner to maintain its authority by establishing a court sys- . tem which was deemed arbitrary; it enforced the payment of debts owed to Yorkers by hard-pressed farmers; and it required-on paper at least-the payment of quit rents. New York could not be made responsible, however, for the facts that its ports were at an inconvenient trading distance from most of the grants and that its inhabitants were cast in a different cultural mold than were Yankees. Whether responsible or not, New York faced a rebellion in a part of its backcountry. In the struggle which ensued the sea- board was ultimately defeated.
This victory was in very large degree owing to the extraordin- arily able leadership of the Allen brothers. They were successful because they identified the cause of the speculators ( among whom they were very prominent) with the cause of the rank and file of the settlers and upon this base they built a united front against New York. When the Revolution had weakened both British and Yorker authority, they secured a declaration of independence from both. This revolution within a revolution was brought to a con-
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clusion by the writing of the Vermont Constitution of 1777 which included democratic features, such as universal manhood suffrage, and which established a government to support the New Hamp- shire titles.
By 1780 or thereabouts, two objectives remained to be achieved -recognition of independence by the Continental Congress and the conquest of Canada. Disavowed by the American association, Vermonters lost hope that they would ever be admitted as mem- bers in good standing. Faced with the awkward reality that the British were still a military power nearby and that they could ex- clude Vermonters after the war from the mercantilistic economy of the British Empire, the Allens decided to withdraw from the Revolution and discover the terms upon which they might rejoin Great Britain. They reasoned that if Canada could not be swung into the American orbit, Vermont might have to revolve in the Canadian.
Their attitude in opening negotiations with intermediaries of General Haldimand, who commanded at Quebec, was thoroughly opportunistic. Before Cornwallis' surrender, the Allens hoped to prepare Vermont to join whichever side won the war and to use the negotiations as the means of forcing the hand of the Con- tinental Congress. They were undoubtedly averse to rejoining the Empire until British victory on the continent had been won or assured. The British debacle at Yorktown confirmed their worst fears and vindicated their policy of watchful waiting.
Yet, it was after Cornwallis' surrender that the Allens actually threw themselves wholeheartedly and without reservation into ac- tivities designed to make Vermont in effect a British province. Their determination resulted from complete disgust with the Con- tinental Congress and from fears for their commercial future. Be- tween Cornwallis' surrender and the peace treaty of 1783, the Allens sought first to make a secret treaty with Britain and, secondly, to seek British.intervention on their behalf at the Paris peace conference. These measures failed to win a favorable re- sponse chiefly because the British were indifferent to North Ameri- can affairs, weary of waging war and desirous of weaning the
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Americans from the French Alliance by making a treaty favorable to the American states. The treaty which resulted was a catastro- phe for the Allens in that the Canadian-American boundary was drawn along the forty-fifth parallel between the Connecticut and St. Lawrence rivers.
From this blow the Allens swiftly recovered by revising their foreign policy. Between 1784 and 1787 they sought and won the privilege of exporting Vermont natural products free of duty into Canada; a victory won with the support of Canadian merchants who foresaw great profit by attracting to themselves all the trade of the American territory lying within the St. Lawrence water- shed. The Canadian government fell in with this plan because it hoped to maintain the friendship of the Vermonters and antici- pated smuggling on a large scale if it were not conceded. Over- seas, the home government permitted this radical departure from orthodox mercantilistic practice (which forbade direct trade be- tween a colony and a foreign state) because a Vermont-Canada trade would be carried on by land or inland navigation rather than by sea.
The year which saw the opening of this trade was also the year in which the Federal Constitutional Convention met in Philadel- phia. The adoption and ratification of the Constitution upset the relative position of the various powers on the continent and brought into existence a government with power sufficient to bring Vermont to terms.
Chief among the supporters of the Constitution who saw clearly that Vermont looked to the north rather than to the south was Alexander Hamilton. Few statesmen of the time were so keenly aware of Vermont's predicament. He believed that, if Vermont were not eventually to join the British, New York must abandon its claims at once. Only by doing so would it be possible to make a beginning by winning the support of the Vermonters who lived in the two sections which lay within the American commercial orbit and who naturally desired to connect their state with the other American states. In this area Hamilton found a Vermonter, Nathaniel Chipman, who felt as he did about Vermont's future.
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By appealing to a sense of nationality, by rallying his fellows who resented the Allens' playing fast and loose with their government, and by utilizing the widespread fear that the Federal Govern- ment would lay duties on imports from Vermont, Chipman was able to build an intersectional coalition sufficiently powerful to outweigh the Allens and to effect the entrance of Vermont into the union. In 1791, Vermont became an American state upon terms which were a triumph for the land claims of its citizens.
Seeing the hand-writing on the wall, the Allens tried the des- perate expedient of sending Levi to London in 1789 to make a final effort to secure a treaty of alliance between Vermont and Britain, a ship canal around the Richelieu rapids, and permission to navigate the entire length of the St. Lawrence and to re-export all Vermont produce from Canada to Britain as if it were Canadian.
Only the latter request was granted. The ship canal project ran afoul the opposition of Canadian merchants who believed that their profitable position as middlemen would be jeopardized if sea-going vessels could ascend the St. Lawrence and Richelieu rivers to Lake Champlain. The proposal to make a treaty was chimerical because, after 1787, the Allens could no longer bend their government to their will and because the British govern- ment did not wish to offend the United States at this time. When Levi returned to Vermont he discovered that it had become the fourteenth state.
The new political affiliation of the Vermonters failed to clear the atmosphere. Indeed, the quandary of inhabitants living in the Champlain Valley was increased rather than diminished. Chipman was sufficiently intelligent to see that this was so. He proposed to make good Americans of all Vermonters by giving what en- couragement he could to the efforts of Yorkers to build a canal connecting the Champlain Valley and the Hudson. Only a canal could extinguish the separatist feelings among those Vermonters who traded almost exclusively with Canadians. The failure of the Yorkers to complete the canal in the seventeen-nineties must have been a bitter blow to him.
Although the trade with Canada did not come up to expecta-
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tions during the years immediately after Vermont joined the United States, this did not mean that Vermonters dropped their interest in things Canadian. After 1791 they became absorbed in efforts to settle upon and speculate in Canadian lands lying di- rectly north of the boundary. When, in 1791, the Canadian gov- ernment invited petitions for warrants of survey for Canadian lands, Vermonters responded with alacrity. By the end of the year, about three million acres of land had been warranted for survey, most of which passed into the hands of Americans who returned home to describe what good fellows the British were after all.
The disappointment of these men can be imagined when, in 1794-1795, the Canadian government decided to recall the war- rants of survey on the grounds that they had been issued in viola- tion of royal instructions and that the threat of war between Britain and the United States over the issue of British retention of the western posts made Americans undesirable residents of the province. This reversal of land policy irritated Vermonters beyond belief. Prior to this time the British had refused to grant them direct access to the north Atlantic; now they endeavoured to take back the land which they had seemingly granted. Those griev- ances put Vermonters into a mood similar to that in which they had been when they rebelled against New York. Now they might fly to arms once more if their ambitions in Canada were not satis- fied. As a consequence, some Vermonters would have supported the United States with enthusiasm if it had gone to war over the issue of the western posts. Others, however, preferred by remain- ing neutral to win British concessions as the price of their neu- trality. The benefits neither of war nor of neutrality were ever within their grasp because the Jay Treaty of 1794 blew away the war clouds.
Thereupon a Vermont faction, to which Ira Allen belonged, de- cided to ally itself with Britain's enemy in Europe, revolutionary France, and with her aid wrest Canada from the British. To effect this bold plan, Ira crossed the Atlantic and signed a secret agree- ment with the Directory in 1796, while at the same time his sym- pathizers in Vermont sought to enlist the aid of disaffected French
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and Anglo-Canadians in the British province. Thanks to British vigilance, the plan totally miscarried, bringing disaster to Ira and Levi, both of whom now passed forever from the Vermont scene, discredited, frustrated and embittered.
From about 1800 to 1807, Vermonters adopted a different ap- proach to their Canadian problems. For almost a decade they eschewed politics, abandoned all thought of conquering their neighbors, and turned instead to participate in the business boom in Canada which resulted from the Napoleonic wars. During this time Vermonters poured a tremendous quantity of timber into the Canadian market in order to meet the unprecedented demand for shipbuilding materials. They moved to Montreal in order to be- come merchants, sought jobs as skilled or unskilled laborers, settled as farmers in the Canadian countryside just north of the boundary and, in company with other Americans, began to win such a sizeable share of Canadian business as to cause great dis- tress among Anglo-Canadian merchants. All in all, Vermonters prospered mightily, and Canadians, too.
This felicitous situation was of short duration. By 1807 the growing crisis between Britain and the United States over the American interpretation of their rights as neutrals in the great con- test for the European balance of power increasingly involved Canadians and Vermonters. In the long run it was to spell war between them.
The threat of war once more divided Vermonters into two camps: one favoring war, the other neutrality. The latter group feared that war would destroy the prosperous trade with Canada and it drew back in horror from the prospect of fighting Napo- leon's enemy. The former group whipped up a war-like frame of mind by holding out the promise that war against Britain would involve an attack upon Canada which, if successful, would open Canadian land to American farmers upon American terms, gain control of the St. Lawrence vestibule to the high seas and destroy the alliance between Britons and Indians.
Vermonters who wished to remain neutral were drawn into smuggling on a vast scale during the days of the Embargo and
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Non-Intercourse acts, and some of their leaders contemplated pro- posals to separate Vermont from the union in case war actually ensued. Those who thought in terms of the conquest of Canada supported Jefferson's efforts to use the Embargo and Non-Inter- course Acts as the means of forcing Britain to accept the American point of view. When these measures failed to achieve their pur- pose, they participated in the various assaults upon Canada, all of which were unsuccessful.
After the signing of the Treaty of Ghent, history repeated itself to the extent that the pre-war commercial ties between Vermont and Canada were resumed, but not to the extent of reviving wholly the neighborly ties of the years just before the Embargo. These might have come in due time if it had not been for the fact that New York soon gained rapidly on Montreal in the race to capture the trade of the western Great Lakes basin and the Champlain Valley. New York's great advantage in this conflict was its capacity to build a canal system. When the vision of De Witt Clinton finally materialized with the building of the Champlain and Erie canals, the bulky raw materials of the valley and the west were sent to the Hudson rather than to the St. Lawrence. The opening of the Champlain Canal in 1822 provided Vermonters in the Champlain Valley with a market in New York and, by so doing, solved Ver- mont's persistent commercial problem and delivered its inhabit- ants from their quandary.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
I. MANUSCRIPTS
COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY LIBRARY De Witt Clinton Papers.
WILLIAM L. CLEMENTS LIBRARY Lord George Germain Papers. Sir Henry Clinton Papers. Shelburne Papers.
DARTMOUTH COLLEGE LIBRARY Eleazer Wheelock Papers.
NEW HAMPSHIRE HISTORICAL SOCIETY John Wentworth Papers ( Transcripts ). Meseach Weare Papers.
NEW YORK HISTORICAL SOCIETY Samuel Peter Papers.
NEW YORK PUBLIC LIBRARY
Samuel Adams Papers.
George Bancroft Transcripts.
George Chalmers Collection.
Emmett Collection.
Transcripts of Loyalist Claims.
Philip Schuyler Papers.
William Smith Papers. William Smith Diary.
NEW YORK STATE LIBRARY Ethan Allen Papers.
Ira Allen Papers.
Levi Allen Papers.
George Clinton Papers.
Silas Hathaway Papers.
Hubbard Papers. Samuel Hunt Papers.
Mayo & Follett Papers. Zephaniah Platt Papers.
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BIBLIOGRAPHY
Stevens Miscellaneous Collection.
Isaac Tichenor Papers. Vermont Papers.
PUBLIC ARCHIVES OF CANADA
See Parker, David, Guide to the Materials for United States History in the Canadian Archives ( Washington, 1913).
George Allsopp Letterbook.
Baby Collection.
Series "C. O., 42"-Board of Trade Papers Relating to Canada. Series "C. O., 5"-Board of Trade Papers Relating to Canada. Series "B"-Haldimand Papers ( Calendared in the Reports of the Canadian Archives, 1884-1889).
Series "C"-Military Papers.
Series "E"-Privy Council Documents.
Series "G"-Governor-General Papers.
Series "Q"-Transcripts from London, Canadian State Papers. Series "S"-Internal Correspondence of the Province of Que- bec and Lower Canada,
John Graves Simcoe Transcripts:
"Cole" Simcoe Transcripts.
"J. Ross Robertson" Simcoe Transcripts. "Wolford" Simcoe Transcripts.
UNIVERSITY OF VERMONT Ira Allen Diary.
VERMONT HISTORICAL SOCIETY
Ira Allen Papers.
Nathaniel Chipman Papers.
Matt B. Jones Photostats.
Royall Tyler Papers. James Whitelaw Papers.
VERMONT, OFFICE OF THE SECRETARY OF STATE Surveyor-General Papers. Manuscript State Papers.
Manuscript Assembly Journals. Stevens Transcripts.
WILBUR LIBRARY
Ira Allen Collection.
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II. PRINTED SOURCES
Allen, Ira, Autobiography [printed in Wilbur, J. B., Ira Allen, ยท Founder of Vermont ( Boston and New York, 1928), 2 vols., I, 1-59].
Annals of Congress (Washington, D. C., 1834-1856), 42 vols. Burnett, E. C., Letters of the Members of the Continental Con- gress (Washington, D. C., 1921-1936), 8 vols.
Carter, C. E., The Correspondence of General Thomas Gage (New Haven, 1931-1933), 2 vols.
Cruikshank, E. A., The Correspondence of John Graves Simcoe with Allied Documents Relating to His Administration of the Government of Upper Canada (Toronto, 1923-1931), 5 vols. Doughty, A. G., MacArthur, D. A., Documents Relating to the Constitutional History of Canada, 1791-1818 ( Ottawa, 1914). Innis, H. A., Lower, A. R. M., Select Documents Relating to Canadian Economic History, 1783-1885 (Toronto, 1933).
Lodge, H. C., The Works of Alexander Hamilton (New York and London, 1904), 12 vols.
Manning, W. R., Diplomatic Correspondence of the United States: Canadian Relations, 1784-1860 (Washington, D. C., 1940-1943), 2 vols.
New Hampshire, Provincial and State Papers (Concord, etc., 1867-1943), 40 vols.
New York, Documents Relating to the Colonial History of New York (Albany, 1856-1883), 14 vols.
O'Callaghan, E. B., Documentary History of the State New York (Albany, 1850-1851), 4 vols.
Public Papers of George Clinton (Albany, 1899-1914), 10 vols. Records of the Governor and Council of the State of Vermont ( Montpelier, 1873-1880), 8 vols.
Shortt, A., Doughty, A. G., Documents Relating to the Constitu- tional History of Canada, 1759-1791 ( Ottawa, 1918).
Stevens, B. F., Facsimiles of Manuscripts in European Archives Regarding America.
Vermont Historical Society, Collections (Montpelier, 1870- 1871), 2 vols.
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BIBLIOGRAPHY
Vermont, The Laws of the State of Vermont ( Randolph, 1808- 1817), 3 vols.
Vermont State Papers (Montpelier, etc., 1924), 5 vols.
Wood, W., Select British Documents of the Canadian War of 1812 (Toronto, 1920-1928), 3 vols.
III. NEWSPAPERS
Bennington Gazette.
Connecticut Courant ( Hartford).
Green Mountain Farmer ( Bennington).
New Hampshire Gazette (Portsmouth).
New York Packet.
Quebec Gazette. Rivington's Gazette ( New York).
The Post-Boy ( Windsor ).
The Washingtonian ( Windsor ).
The Watchman ( Montpelier ).
Vermont Gazette ( Bennington ).
Vermont Journal ( Windsor ).
Vermont Republican (Windsor ).
Vermont Republican and American Yeoman (Windsor).
IV. MAGAZINES
Bemis, S. F., "The Relations Between the Vermont Separatists and Great Britain, 1789-1791," American Historical Review (XXI, 3, April, 1916), 547-560.
Bixby, G. F., "The History of the Iron Ore Industry on Lake Champlain," Proceedings of the New York State Historical Association (X, 1911), 171-237.
Brown, G. W., "The St. Lawrence in the Boundary Settlement of 1783," Canadian Historical Review (X, 3, September, 1928), 223-238.
Jones, R. H., "Agriculture in Lower Canada," Canadian Histori- cal Review (XXVII, 1, March, 1946), 33-51.
Lunn, Jean, "The Illegal Fur Trade out of New France, 1713- 1760," Report of the Canadian Historical Association, 1939.
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302
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Mackintosh, W. A., "Canada and Vermont: A Study in Histori- cal Geography," Canadian Historical Review (VII, 1, March, 1927), 9-30.
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