Ethan Allen, of Green mountain fame, a hero of the revolution

Front matter

THE LIBRARY

OF

LOS ANGELES

Contents

Chapter Page

Introduction . . . . ...'.. 9

I. Early Life of Ethan Allen . . '.13

Introduction

The American Revolution called forth the latent energies of many individuals who, in a more peaceable state of political affairs, would have slumbered in obscurity and gone down to the grave unhonored and unknown. The very nature of the policy of Great Britain toward the Colonies — a policy every way tyrannical and oppressive — was calculated to call into action the efforts of every friend of liberty. It was an attempt to strip the people of their rights and manacle them with the fetters of slavery; but, thanks to the spirit which prevailed among our fathers — thanks to the patriotism which then warmed the hearts of the people — the mercenaries of a foreign power were unequal to the task of accomplishing the designs of their masters.

True-hearted volunteers rallied to the calls of the brave and wise men of our country — Washington, Adams, Jefferson, Franklin, Lee, Patrick Henry — all imbued with a spirit worthy of the little band of Greeks which defended the pass of Thermopylae and their national liberty. They fought and conquered, these doughty sons of Columbia, and their declining years were cheered with the knowledge that the country for which they had struggled so long and at such fearful sacrifices, was now free and her people prosperous and happy. That their deeds of heroism, privation and sufferings were gratefully

10 Introduction.

remembered by those who profited most in that hour of supreme national rejoicing, is best shown in the firm, unyielding spirit in which they flung defiance back upon the enemy in the immortal utterances of July 4, 1776.

Perhaps no individual of equal advantages, and in the station he occupied, contributed more toward establishing the independence of our country than Ethan Allen, of Vermont, unless it be the single exception of John Paul Jones. The mass of people among whom Allen resided were rude and uncultured, yet bold in spirit and insanely zealous in action. It consequently follows that no one but a man of strong, natural endowments— of much decision, energy and bravery — could control their prejudices and inclinations. Habit had rendered them familiar with danger and impatient of restraint; hence it followed that no policy, unless proceeding from a source in which they had confidence, ever gained their approbation.

Upon Ethan Allen whose courage was undoubted, and whose zealous devotion to their interests was universally acknowledged, they implicitly relied. They had known him in adversity and in prosperity; they had weighed him and found nothing lacking. To friend or foe, he was ever the same unyielding advocate of the rights of man and universal liberty, unconditionally and without reserve. Therefore the policy he upheld as beneficial to the common cause of American liberty, ever found strong and sufficient supporters among the friends with whom he associated and by whom he was best known. We see the same spirit manifested to a marked degree in

Introduction. 11

action as well as in all of the public utterances of Paul Jones, and it is even more manifest in the dying thoughts of Nathan Hale, who exclaimed, even with the noose about his neck: "If I had ten thousand lives I would lay them down one at a time for my injured, bleeding country."

From the commencement of our revolutionary struggle for liberty until victory crowned their efforts, Ethan Allen proved an ardent and strenuous supporter of the Cause. Whether in the field or council — whether at home, a freeman among the green hills of Vermont, or loaded with the manacles of despotism in a foreign country, his spirit never quailed beneath the sneer of the Tory, or the harsh threats of insolent authority. A stranger to fear, his opinions were ever given without disguise or hesitation; and, as an enemy to oppression, he sought every opportunity to redress the wrongs of the oppressed. It is not to be supposed, however, that he was faultless. Like other men he had his faults — sins; like other men, he had his foibles — his weaknesses; yet he was not willfully stubborn. When convinced of an erroneous position, he was ever willing to yield; but in theory, as in practice, he contested every inch of the ground and only yielded when inadequately supported or when he had no weapons left to meet his adversary. This trait in his character serves at least to prove that he was honest in his conclusions however erroneous the premises from which they were deduced. Ethan Allen was ever the zealous friend of the section in which he resided. He was ever the champion of the

12 Introduction.

humble citizen contending for the rights of individual property and human justice. In these offices of friendship and duty he had the confidence and esteem of his neighbors. He had evinced a spirit of patriotism and a love of freedom which warmly recommended him to the notice and the admiration of the most determined and able advocates of American liberty. That he should have been selected as a leader in an enterprise of the highest moment to the cause of liberty, was alike due to his principles, his services, his position, and to a constitution more rugged than any of his compatriots of the plains and malaria-infested inlets of the South.

Fortunately, Colonel Allen took the precaution to furnish abundant material out of which an innumerable number of memoirs or biographical sketches could be evolved, and succeeding generations have the assurance that few writers who have attempted to portray the character of this eccentric mountaineer have dared to wander far from this hero's estimate of his own services or the part he played in defense of his country's liberty. No excuse is offered in the present instance for a liberal extraction from so authentic a source, for the author believes a biographical work is materially strengthened by permitting the subject of his sketch to add a line here and there,thus giving color as well as realism to the whole. The memory of so eminent, so unselfish, so devoted a patriot and defender of his country's flag as Colonel Ethan Allen of Green Mountain fame should be held in veneration by every American.

OF "

GREEN MOUNTAIN FAME.

Chapter I. / Early Life Of Ethan Allen

Little is known of the early life of Ethan Allen of Green Mountain fame — the hero of Ticonderoga. His father, Joseph Allen, was a native of Coventry, Tolland County, Connecticut, where the family had resided many years. It is indeed a singular coincidence that so small a village as Coventry, with scarcely a score of dwellings, should also have been the birthplace of Captain Nathan Hale, the martyr spy, as well as other members of these two illustrious families which the Revolution called from obscurity to imperishable fame.

Joseph Allen was a sober, industrious farmer, of kind and generous character. He was ready at all times to give liberally of his sustenance, which though not great was ample for his small but increasing family. After his marriage in 1736 to Mary Baker, the daughter of another Tolland County patriot, Allen removed to Litchfield, the county seat of a large and prosperous county of the same name, some hundred or more miles distant from his native village. He had bargained for the purchase of a large farm near Litchfield, but not finding things to his liking, Allen with his young wife took up their abode on a smaller farm a short distance from town. It was here on the tenth of January, 1737, that their first child was born, and they named him Ethan after his paternal great grandfather.

Shortly after the birth of Ethan the family again moved farther west, settling near Cornwall on the west bank of the Housatonic river, not far from the present village of Ellsworth. Here other children were born, eight in all. Ethan, being the oldest, was followed in the order named by Heman, Lydia, Heber, Levi, Lucy, Zimri and Ira. All grew to maturity, for they were nature's children and had the good fortune to have been born where grass and flowers and trees grow untended; where waters gush from nature's own fountains and where the air is not polluted with gas from sewers and smoke from factory, mill and shop. The girls, marrying early, remained near the old homestead, while the boys, influenced by their elder brother Ethan, emigrated northward and settled in the hills west of the Green Mountains, then a wilderness in southern Vermont. They were as bold and fearless a lot of patriots as were those intrepid scouts of the plains — Custer, Cody, Boone, Carson, Crocket and others whose names are synonyms for bold and enterprising deeds.

About the year 1772 or 73 Ethan Allen, then about thirty-five years of age, moved to Bennington, a small but promising village in southwestern Vermont. Here he married his first wife who did not long survive. His second wife, after the death of Allen, married a Doctor

Early Life of Ethan Allen. 15

Penniman, a physician of prominence at Colchester, in upper Vermont.

Ethan's education, like that of a great majority of the people of that period and locality, was quite limited owing to the fact that few schools were then in operation and books were neither as plentiful nor as easy to procure as they are today even in localities farther removed from commercial centers than was Vermont when Boston and New York were without railroads, telegraphs or telephones. The necessity of a thorough education was not deemed as essential to a successful career then as it is today. More attention was given to the moral welfare of a sturdy manhood and womanhood than to the acquirements and spread of scientific information which is of little value unless applied for the betterment of the race. Notwithstanding the difficulties under which these sturdy pioneers labored, a vast fund of practical knowledge was possessed by the majority of settlers; knowing nothing of the ways of Dartmouth, Harvard or Yale — then in their prime — Ethan Allen possessed an abundance of rare common sense; he was a self-made man — a born leader of men. He was enterprising; he was ambitious; he sought fame — notoriety, and like Paul Jones, Lafayette and Casimir Pulaski, he early espoused the cause of the Colonies as the surest means of obtaining recognition for himself and freedom for the oppressed from all lands. He was endowed with rare observing faculties, which, on the clear and superior mind that he possessed, led him to explore every avenue that led toward his cherished goal.

A warm attachment to liberty, freedom, independence— component parts of the elements, which, entering into the physical man and manifesting its assimilation in a frenzy, took on the aspect of a religion; the longing for these led Allen to freely and boldly express his contempt for the oppressive policy manifested by Great Britain toward her Colonies in America. "Ever since I arrived at the state of manhood, and acquainted myself with the general history of mankind, I have felt a sincere passion for liberty. The history of nations, doomed to perpetual slavery, in consequence of yielding up to tyrants their natural born liberties, I read with a sort of philosophical horror."

To such sentiments as these, is to be attributed the zeal with which he sought on every occasion to instill into the minds of his associates an aversion for the political power by which the Colonies were controlled, and the people held in thraldom. Convinced that man was designed by nature to be the arbiter of his own actions, and that he was fitted to act for himself in matters concerning the affairs of the country in which he lived, he entertained, as he uniquely observes, a "philosophical horror" of every species of tyranny and oppression. It is not singular, therefore, that the friends of the American Revolution found in him an efficient leader ready for any emergency and any danger, and that wherever any evils existed affecting the interests of the community in which he lived, he was the first to apply the language of persuasion or the rod of correction.

Chapter II. The New Hampshire Grants

We hear little of Ethan Allen until we find him a resident in the New Hampshire Grants — now the State of Vermont. At the period of his removal to this territory, a controversy was pending between the authorities of New York and the settlers in relation to the validity of the original titles to their lands and other matters connected with their rights and property. The first settlements were made under grants from the Provincial Government of Massachusetts, but in the year 1740, by a recommendation of King George II., the father and immediate predecessor of George the Third, through whose insane belief in the divine right of kings the American colonies were lost to Great Britain, the territory was placed under the jurisdiction of New Hampshire. A correspondence, however, was opened between the Governors of New Hampshire and New York in which the governor of the latter commonwealth claimed exclusive jurisdiction over the territory. Notwithstanding this claim, the New Hampshire governor proceeded to make further grants, and by advice of his Council in the year 1760, ordered a survey of all lands lying on both sides of the Connecticut river for sixty miles above the former survey made by the Massachusetts Bay Colony.

The applications for lands being numerous, other surveys rapidly followed, and during the year 1761 about sixty townships were apportioned among the settlers. In return for these, the Governor was liberally paid by the settlers, receiving besides fees allowed by law, a reservation of five hundred acres in each township for himself. This state of affairs excited the jealousies of the New York authorities, who determined if possible to check the operations of the Governor of New Hampshire. In view of this result the Lieutenant-Governor of New York issued a proclamation in which he referred to the grants made by Charles II. to the Duke of York in 1664, which embraced "all the lands from the west side of the Connecticut river, on the east side of Delaware Bay to the most northerly parts below the St. Lawrence."

Relying upon this title to the territory, he ordered the Sheriff of Albany County, New York, to furnish him with the names of all persons occupying lands on the west side of the Connecticut river under the New Hampshire Grants. In answer to this proclamation the Governor of New Hampshire issued a counter one in which the grant to the Duke of York was declared obsolete. The settlers were urged to be diligent and industrious, and not to fear the threats of the New York authorities. In this state of things, application was made by the Governor of New York, William Tryon, directly to the Crown, for a confirmation of New York's claims; and in consequence of this application, the king ordered that the "Western bank of the Connecticut river from where it enters the province of Massachusetts Bay, as far north as the forty-fifth degree of north latitude, be the boundary line between the said provinces of New

Hampshire and Vermont." This decision surprised and irritated the settlers on the grants, yet it produced no serious alarm. It was merely regarded as extending the jurisdiction of New York over the territory without affecting in any manner their title to the lands upon which they had settled, for they had paid for them and obtained deeds to the same under the Crown. The Governor of New Hampshire at first remonstrated against the decision of the king in relation to extending the jurisdiction of New York, but finally submitted to the change and issued a Proclamation to that effect.

The Governor of New York, immediately after the decision of the Crown, proceeded to extend his jurisdiction over the New Hampshire Grants, dividing the territory into four counties and establishing courts of justice in each. The settlers were imperatively commanded to surrender their charters and repurchase their lands under grants from New York. A few complied with this order, but a large majority peremptorily refused. The lands of the latter were granted to others in whose names writs of ejectment were issued and judgments obtained in the New York courts. A determined resistance was made by the settlers against these unjust and arbitrary measures, and for the purpose of rendering the resistance more effectual, a number of associations of the people were formed and a convention finally called composed of representatives from the different towns of the Green Mountain district. After much deliberation the convention appointed Samuel Robinson agent to go to London and represent to the king the grievances suffered by the settlers and to obtain a confirmation of the New Hampshire grants. The report of the agent was favorably received by the king: "His Majesty was pleased with the advice of his Private Council, to approve thereof, and doth hereby strictly charge, require and command, that the Governor or Commander-in-chief of His Majesty's Province of New York, for the time being, do not, upon His Majesty's highest displeasure, presume to make any grant, whatsoever, of any part of the lands described in the said report, until His Majesty's further pleasure shall be known, concerning the same."

This explicit prohibition of the king, however, was of little or no avail. The Governor of New York continued to make grants, and writs of ejectment were issued as formerly. Thus, compelled to resort to more effective measures than mere argument, the people assembled in convention at Bennington and "Resolved to support their rights and property under the New Hampshire Grants, against the usurpation and unjust claims of the Governor and Council of New York by force, as law and justice were denied them."

The adoption of this resolution was followed by a resolute and spirited resistance to the Civil officers of New York. Many of them were siezed by the people and severely "chastised with twigs of the wilderness." A military association was also formed of which Ethan Allen was appointed Colonel-Commandant and Seth Warner, Remember Baker, Robert Cochran, Gideon Warner and others were appointed Captains. Committees of safety were likewise appointed in several towns west of the Green Mountains.

The authorities of New York directed the Sheriff of

Albany County to raise a posse comitatus to assist in the execution of his office and a proclamation was issued by the Governor of New York offering a reward of one hundred and fifty pounds ($750) for the apprehension of Ethan Allen, and fifty pounds ($250) each for the apprehension of Seth Warner, and five others named in the writ. Allen and the other proscribed persons, in turn, issued a Proclamation offering five pounds ($25) for apprehending and delivering to any officer of the Green Mountain Boys, the Attorney-General of the Colony of New York.

At this crisis of the controversy, Governor Tryon of New York addressed a communication "To the Rev. Mr. Dewey [an ancestor of Admiral George Dewey] and the inhabitants of Bennington and the adjacent country on the east side of Hudson's River," in which he unequivocally pointed out what he termed the "illegal acts" committed by the settlers against the authority of New York. He also extended an invitation to Mr. Dewey to lay before the government the causes of the proceedings. "That there may be no obstruction to your laying before me, in Council, as soon as possible, a fair representation of your conduct, I do hereby engage full security and protection to all persons whom you shall choose to send on this business, to New York, from the time they leave their homes to the time of their return, except Robert Cochran, as also Ethan Allen, Remember Baker, and William Sevil, mentioned in my Proclamation of the 9th of December last, and Seth Warner, whose audacious behavior to a Civil Magistrate, has subjected him to the penalties of the laws of his country." To this communication a respectful but firm answer was returned, detailing the oppressions under which the settlers suffered, and beseeching his Excellency to be friendly disposed towards them and lend his assistance to quiet them in their possessions "until his Majesty, in his royal wisdom, should be graciously pleased to settle the controversy." In addition to this reply, the following special communication was made to the Governor at the same time :

BENNINGTON, June 5, 1772.

To His EXCELLENCY, WILLIAM TRYON, ESQ., ETC.

May it please your Excellency — We, his Majesty's loyal subjects, whose names are to this piece affixed, inhabitants on that tract of land your Excellency describes by the name of Bennington, and the adjacent country, etc., and who were, by your Excellency's letter of the 19th of May last, prohibited the privilege of going to New York, and personally vindicate either ourselves or country, before your Excellency, and being put to the extremity of informing your Excellency by writing the reason of our discontent, and also of our behavior, which we shall more largely set forth, than is in the foregoing general answer to your Excellency's letter; and also exhibit more arguments deduced from reason and the nature of things; we hope your Excellency will be graciously pleased to view this our defence with that tenderness and candor, a gentleman in so elevated a station should do, and, therefore, beg leave to observe, that, as, on the one hand, no consideration whatever, shall induce us to remit, in the least, of our loyalty and gratitude to our most gracious Sovereign, nor of a reasonable subjection to your Excellency; so on the other hand, no tyrannical exertions of the powers of the government can deter us from asserting and vindicating our undoubted rights and privileges as Englishmen. We expected an answer from your Excellency, to our humble petition to you delivered, soon after your Excellency's accession to the administration of the government; but for reasons to us unknown, your Excellency passed it by in silence.

However, we cheerfully embrace this opportunity of laying before your Excellency in Council the true state of our controversy, which, we can no otherwise do but by absorbing our personal distinction into the community, and general cause, to which we have obtained the character of faithful. We assure your Excellency that we assent to your authority of jurisdiction, inasmuch as his Majesty's Proclamation assures us, it is his will and pleasure, we be under the jurisdiction of New York; and not only now assent to it, but have ever done the same, except in instances where such perverse use has been made thereof as would dispossess us of our property and country. We are truly desirous of petitioning his Majesty to re-annex us to the Province of New Hampshire. But this is not the ground of our discontent, or at least, is far from being the principal ground for it, though it was done ex parte, and we apprehend there were more or less wrong representations 'made to his Majesty, to obtain the jurisdiction. However, it is the unreasonable and unconstitutional exercise of it, that is the present bone of contention — our properties are all at stake; this we contend for, as the following known facts will demonstrate: A certain number of designing men in New York (and elsewhere) procured patents under the great seal of that Province, and those grantees, being non-residents, brought writs of ejectment against the New Hampshire settlers on the same land, covered by both patents, as aforesaid, and obtained judgment against them, and proceeded further and took out writs of possession, and actually dispossessed several of them by order of Law of their houses and farms, leaving them to suffer the inclemency of the weather, bereaved of all the necessaries of life, their new masters having monopolized their earthly all to themselves. These indigent families, having in the first place expended their several fortunes, in bringing their farms out of a wilderness state, into that of fruitful fields, gardens and orchards, the whole country consisting of more than fifteen hundred families, was greatly alarmed at the event which had already begun to take place, and in the greatest consternation; each individual, from these instances, reading their own intolerable and universal destruction. Still the writs of ejectment came thicker and faster, and universal slavery, poverty and horror, emblematically appeared in every countenance.

Thus, things having come to this pass, the oppression was too great for human nature, under English Constitution, to grope under, for those unparalleled instances struck an infinitely more terrible idea, than that of the exertion of the Powers of Government.

Law and society compacts were made to protect and secure the subjects in their peaceable possessions and properties, and not to subvert them. No person or community of persons can be supposed to be under any particular compact of Law, except it presupposeth, that that

Law will protect such persons or community of persons in his or their properties; for otherwise, the subject would, by Law, be bound to be accessory to his own ruin and destruction, which is inconsistent with the Law of self-preservation; but this Law, being natural as well as eternal, can never be abrogated by the Law of men.

We would acquaint your Excellency, that since our misfortune in being annexed to the Province of New York, law has been rather used as a tool than a rule of equity, to cheat us out of the country we have made vastly valuable by labor and expense of our fortunes. We conclude these things are yet unknown, or in a great measure so to your Excellency, as your Excellency's commencement of the administration, hath not been long, and a set of artful, wicked men, concealing the truth from your Excellency, purposing to make a booty of us, characterizing us (speaking of our inhabitants in general) as so many rioters, if not rebels ; and we being a poor people, at a great distance from your Excellency's place of residence, fatigued in settling a wilderness country, have little or no opportunity of acquainting your Excellency of our grievances, except by one short petition delivered to your Excellency, soon after your first taking the administration— and as our cause is represented before his Majesty and Council, we did not expect your Excellency to determine the controversy, nor do we yet expect it. We are sensible those men that seek our ruin, thereby, to enrich themselves, do, by stratagems of every kind, represent us to your Excellency as breakers of the peace, and enemies to the government ; and under this pretense, they hope to catch a number of the boldest of our inhabitants, and punish them in the New York Inquisition, with that severity that the residue may be frightened out of both liberty and property; for otherwise, they would soon be indicted rioters, and thus, under color of punishing rioters, and a zeal of loyalty and veneration for good government, rob the inhabitants of their country.' If we do not oppose the Sheriff and his Posse, he takes immediate possession of our houses and farms; if we do, we are immediately indicted rioters; and when others oppose officers in taking such, their friends, so indicted, they are also indicted and so on, there being no end of indictments against us, so long as we act the bold and manly part, and stand by our liberty.

This is a short sketch of the disingenuous cunning of Messieurs Duane and Kemp, and their associates; and it comes to this, at last, that we must tamely be dispossessed, or oppose officers in taking possession; and as a next necessary step, oppose taking of rioters, so called, or run away like so many cowards, and quit the country to a number of cringing, polite gentlemen, who have, ideally, possessed themselves of it already.

As to sundry men, who have eloped lately from our grants, and fled to New York for protection, self-preservation necessitated us to treat some of them roughly; and others, viz., Ebenezer Cowl, and Jonathan Wheat, of Shaftesbury, fled to New York, on account of their own guilt, not being hurt or threatened. Would time permit, we could give a rational account for most, or all of our late conduct towards these men. The general reason is this, namely, they were a set of men that loved themselves, and not their country; they busied themselves in planning and assisting to take rioters, so called. In fine, they were the emissaries of that mercenary corps of Yorkers, and did more, in oppressing the people, than their preposterous benefactors.

The assault, made upon Mr. Baker, at daybreak, of the night of the 22d of March last, by a number of ruffians, under the command of the infamous John Munro, Esq., was a notorious riot, and gave energy and motion, to the subsequent acts, your Excellency denominates illegal. This Munro, and his bloody party, by cutting, wounding and maiming, Mr. Baker, his wife -and children, in such an inhuman and savage manner, was no less than proclaiming himself in a public manner, to be a malicious and bloody enemy, not only to Mr. Baker, but also to all those men on our grants who manfully adhere to maintaining liberty and property; and inasmuch as the murderous villain is alive, he has no cause of complaint — for, after his assault upon Mr. Baker, he made another assault upon Mr. Seth Warner; but not having so strong a party of ruffians with him, as in his other expedition, it was riot attended with the like consequences, for Mr. Warner struck his head with a cutlass, and leveled him to the ground; but the blow proved not mortal; and after this, for his satisfaction for the wound, threatened the lives of a number of New Hampshire settlers. Your Excellency will undoubtedly consider, as our opponents have had the manufactory of the civil laws so much under their power, that this merciless man could not be brought to justice, nor could others among us be safe any other way, but by using him in his own play; he set the example and enraged the people to mimic him from that natural principle in every man's own breast.