An Animadversory Address to the Inhabitants of the State of Vermont, Part I: Context

            It strikes me that it may appear, judging from how often certain names appears within these pages, that I am only interested in shining a light on the work of the more famous members of the Founding Generation – the Jeffersons, Adams’, Franklins, and Hamiltons of it all. I wish to make it clear to my dear readers (who are so few they ought to be classified as a precious resource) that I am very conscious of the need to give attention to some of the lesser known participants in the American Founding. While I hope that my attempts to examine the writings of certain Ant-Federalist pamphleteers, among them Melancton Smith, Robert Yates, and Mercy Otis Warren, have gone some distance toward that goal, I yet feel I would be remiss if I delved no deeper into the rich literary cannon of the Revolutionary era and persisted until the end of my days in memorializing the same half-dozen men who are in no further need of memorialization.

The American Revolution was not carried off solely by a roomful of lawyers, merchants, and amateur philosophers in Philadelphia. Across thirteen states, hundreds of legislators, diplomats, financiers, statesmen, and soldiers worked tirelessly to transform the lofty ideals embodied by the Declaration of Independence into functioning governments. Of those hundreds, a mere handful is yet remembered. This is understandable, given the relatively limited scope of their individual contributions, and unfortunate, given that many of them endured significant hardship in their attempts to give substance to the promise embodied in the phrase “The United States of America.” If it is in my power, however meagre it may be, to draw the attention of some small number of people to the life and accomplishments of even one of these neglected patriots, then I feel it is something that I should do.

            To that end, let us turn now to the story of the fourteenth state and one of its own redoubtable founders.

            Because of course there was a fourteen state. While the narrative of thirteen colonies banding together in the face of tyranny and becoming thirteen states is doubtless as familiar as it is comforting, it has hopefully become clear by now that the Revolutionary era is one which stubbornly resists simplification. At the same time that thirteen sisters set about casting off the shackles of their distant, unfeeling, and arbitrary patriarch, a fourteenth lent its strength to the same cause while simultaneously continuing its longstanding struggle against one of its overbearing siblings. That fourteenth state was known, then as now, as Vermont. Born out a conflict over land grants between settlers and colonial authorities, the self-declared republic of the Green Mountain was a by-product both of intercolonial rivalries and the chaos that the Revolution visited upon the continent. In spite of its status as unrecognized and unofficial, however, Vermont actively participated in the Revolutionary War, possessed its own cohort of founding fathers, and drafted its own constitution in 1777. Indeed, the story of its foundation and early existence in many ways runs in parallel to that of the United States at large. In this sense, the creation of Vermont might fairly be termed the “revolution within the Revolution.”

            When one speaks of the founding of Vermont, of course, one cannot help but also mention the name of perhaps its favorite son. Ethan Allen, though born in Connecticut, become one of the most steadfast defenders of the land claims possessed by Vermont settlers once he migrated there in the early 1770s. Unsuccessful in court, he thereafter organized and led the famed Green Mountain Boys militia, and though a campaign of harassment and written criticism become a persistent thorn in the side of successive governments in neighboring New York. It was through his service to the united colonies, however, that Allen transcended from regional rabble-rouser to American folk hero. Though not a philosopher on par with Thomas Jefferson or an administrator possessed of the ambition and drive of Alexander Hamilton, Allen’s frontier sensibilities, reputation for insubordinate behavior, and self-promotion through written accounts of his military escapades helped make him one of the more popular Revolutionary figures in the 19^th century United States. On par with Davy Crocket or Daniel Boone, he came to symbolize the rugged individualism, disdain for authority, and common-sense ingenuity so many Americans felt was at the core of their national identity. Though Allen’s lustre has faded somewhat since that time, his significance as an early revolutionary and a political agitator remains eminently worthy of discussion and analysis. To that end, the series that follows will focus on a pamphlet written by Allen in 1778 entitled An Animadversory Address to the Inhabitants of the State of Vermont.

            Said pamphlet sought to refute the efforts of New York’s newly-established state government to persuade the inhabitants of Vermont to acknowledge its authority in exchange for recognition of their land claim, and struck a balance in tone somewhere between casual and prosecutorial. Against the power of a state government, and its formidable chief executive George Clinton (1739-1812), Allen deployed a style of debate that made use of extensive citation in order to establish and counter the arguments of his chosen opponent. To this he added a relaxed but confidant understanding of social contract philosophy, a recounting of the contributions made by Vermont to the general cause of the United States, and a number of crucial points concerning the nature of private property and the continuity of American state governments vis-à-vis their colonial predecessors. It is a brief document and proceeds at a brisk pace, yet appears under no circumstances to be the product of anything less than a sharp and incisive intellect. Allen’s penchant for rebelliousness is in evidence plainly enough, but so is his close understanding of the legal ramifications that surrounded both the claims of his fellow Vermont settlers and those of the state of New York. Consequently, An Animadversory Address can be said to offer insight into both the capacity of an American statesman who did not possess an advanced education to cultivate a nuanced understanding of contemporary political affairs, as well as the contentious and improbable circumstances that gave birth to the state of Vermont.

            Before Allen became a war hero and renegade founding father, however, he was just a man from Connecticut. Born in Litchfield in 1738, his father Joseph moved the family further west to the town of Cornwall around 1740 in an effort to escape the religious turmoil unleashed in the colony by the Protestant religious revival now termed the Great Awakening. Cornwall and Litchfield both were located in Western Connecticut, in many ways still a frontier region in the middle of the 18^th century. This presented families like the Allens with hardships and opportunities in equal measure. Though far, by contemporary standards, from the colonial capital at Hartford, and lacking certain amenities enjoyed by inhabitants of more developed urban centres, the relatively undeveloped nature of Cornwall allowed Joseph Allen to purchase land cheaply and establish a fairly large and successful farm by the time he died in 1755. The first-born of seven children, Ethan was influenced as a youth by both by the rugged circumstances of his upbringing and the religious sensibilities of his pious and diligent father. Demonstrating an early interest in learning, the younger Allen set his mind on attending Yale College and in preparation began to attend studies in Salisbury (also in western Connecticut) with a local minister.

            Forced to abandon his education after his father’s demise, Allen spent the following decade moving from one venture to the next. During the Seven Years War (1754-1763) he briefly served in the colonial militia, returned to Cornwall tend his family’s farm in 1762, married a woman five years his senior named Mary Brownson, moved to Salisbury, fathered five children, became part owner of an iron works, and began what would prove to be a lengthy career as a scofflaw. Though his disdain for convention first manifested in a series of relatively benign incidents – a dispute with neighbors over errant pigs and an unauthorized smallpox inoculation that violated town regulations – the rebellious aspect of Allen’s character would come to fundamentally shape the direction of his life. Similarly foundational during this era was his acquaintance and friendship with a New York doctor name Thomas Young (1731-1777). The son of Anglo-Irish immigrants and a religious non-conformist, Young became a profound influence on Allen during their times as neighbors in Salisbury. From Young, Allen learned a great deal about philosophy, political theory, and theology and the two contrived to prepare a manuscript attacking organized religion and promoting their shared Deist beliefs. Though Thomas Young departed Connecticut for New York in 1764, taking the draft he and Allen had been working on with him, his influence on his younger colleague would prove to have been profound. Indeed, it was Young who illegally inoculated Allen against smallpox, and who suggested the name “Vermont” for the disputed territory north of Massachusetts.

            The five years that followed Allen’s parting with Thomas Young saw the continuation of the former’s now-accustomed transitory lifestyle. After moving to Northampton, Massachusetts sometime prior to 1766, and staying there long enough for his wife to give birth to their son Joseph, Allen was expelled from the town in July, 1767 for reasons which were not recorded. In all likelihood, his tendency to defy convention and his unusual religious convictions played some part in earning him the ire of his neighbors. Thereafter, Allen returned briefly to Salisbury before migrating just across the colonial boundary to Sheffield, Massachusetts. In 1770, still resident in Sheffield, he was approached by a group of men originally from western Connecticut who had purchased land grants in a disputed region to the north from New Hampshire Governor Benning Wentworth (1696-1770) and subsequently become embroiled in a legal dispute with the government of neighboring New York. Known by that point in his life as a man willing stand in defiance of authority, Allen agreed to take leadership of the informal association (a group which included his cousin Remember Baker and Baker’s cousin Seth Warner) and departed for New York to prepare for the impending court case.

            The land possessed by the men that Allen agreed to lead in 1770 fell within a region of British North America bounded on four sides by colonial Massachusetts, New Hampshire, New York, and Quebec. Though originally claimed in part by Massachusetts in the early 18^th century, the settlement of the boundary with neighboring New Hampshire theoretically left the territory west of the Connecticut River to the disposition of the latter colony. In 1741 the aforementioned Wentworth was appointed Governor of New Hampshire, the first not to be simultaneous Governor of Massachusetts. Eager to assert his colony’s claim, Wentworth chose to interpret the region now vacated by Massachusetts as extending as far west as a line running parallel to the Hudson River at a distance of twenty miles. This conflicted with claims made by the government of New York to the same expanse of terrain, justified by reference to the original letters patent that established the colony in the 17^th century. Heedless of the conflict he was about to unleash, Wentworth began to sell parcels of land within the disputed region in 1749 to settlers and land speculators in return for a small kickback on each grant.

            The government of New York, which had also begun selling land in the contested territory, demanded that Wentworth cease on numerous occasions. While claiming to have terminated any land surveys and sales while awaiting the verdict of adjudication by the Crown, the Governor of New Hampshire continued to dole out grants into the early 1760s and actively encouraged grant owners to settle on their land, cultivate it, and form communities. Upon an appeal by beleaguered authorities in New York, the Board of Trade – responsible for administering the colonies – ruled against Wentworth in 1764 by reaffirming that the Connecticut River formed the western border of the Province of New Hampshire. Considering this as a wholesale invalidation of the grants made by Wentworth – one hundred thirty-five in all – the government of New York divided the region into four counties (Albany, Cumberland, Charlotte, and Gloucester), and demanded payments often in excess of the original purchase price in exchange for recognizing the so-called “New Hampshire Grants.” Those who did not, or could not, pay had their claims nullified and the deed to their land sold. In response to the outcry by residents and grant-holders, New York authorities agreed in the late 1760s to suspend further land sales in the disputed region until the issue was settled by the colony’s Supreme Court.

            When the case finally arrived before the court in 1770, the New Hampshire Grant owners were led by one Ethan Allen and represented by Pennsylvania lawyer-in-training Jared Ingersoll (1749-1822). Unfortunately, and unsurprisingly, the odds were already stacked against the defendants. Cadwallader Colden (1688-1776), the Lieutenant-Governor of New York, James Duane (1733-1797), the chief prosecutor, and Robert Livingston (1708-1790), the Chief Justice of the New York Supreme Court, had all purchased grants in the disputed territory and were doubtless uninterested in invalidating their own rights as property-holders. The trial thus reached a speedy conclusion. The New Hampshire Grants, seen as illegitimate by the government of New York, were ruled inadmissible as evidence, and the claims of the grant holders were brushed aside. Allen, who at some point between being contacted by the petitioners and the conclusion of the trial had purchased a series of grants from Governor Wentworth himself, soon after departed for the contested region to deliver the verdict in person. At Bennington, founded in 1749 as the first chartered town in the New Hampshire Grants, he met with a group of local settlers in the Catamount Tavern in order to discuss what options remained to them. This discussion gave birth to a militia company known as the Green Mountain Boys, led by Allen and organized with the intention of resisting the efforts of New York to assert its authority in the Grants by force of arms.

            The next several years witnessed a slowly but surely escalating campaign of intimidation, property destruction, and general agitation. For their part, the Green Mountain Boys sought to dissuade New York grant owners from settling in the disputed territory, and New York surveyors from facilitating the sale of more land. Houses were burned, people were manhandled, and a whole host of threats, polemics, proposed truces, and denunciations were exchanged with authorities in the neighboring colony. New York, under the leadership of Governor William Tryon (1729-1788), meanwhile attempted to quiet the incipient rebellion that Allen and his followers had stirred by branding several of the militia members outlaws and offering rewards ranging from £20 to £100 for their capture. Allen responded by drawing up notices of his own that labeled prominent New York grant holders criminals and tyrants, accompanied by parallel cash rewards. Unfortunately, these theatrical tactics proved insufficient on their own to maintain the enthusiasm of the New Hampshire Grant owners in the face of a struggle with no end in sight against a much larger and wealthier adversary. Thankfully for Allen and his militia followers, Governor Tryon helped renew their flagging sense of outrage by approving a law in 1774 that handed down exceedingly stiff penalties to those caught intriguing against the colonial government – meetings of three people or more “for unlawful purposes” were forbidden – or interfering with its agents – the punishment for which was death. Spurred by these harsh terms, Allen spent the following summer drafting a two hundred page polemic laying out the position of the New Hampshire Grant holders, and then in 1775 helping pen a plea to the Crown for relief from New York’s intransigent behavior. The latter effort, unfortunately, was never completed. In April of that year, in Middlesex Country, Massachusetts, the American Revolutionary War had begun.

            At this point in Allen’s life, already possessed of a rather unusual trajectory, his fortunes shifted yet again. At the request of a militia company raised in his native Connecticut, he agreed to lend the assistance of the Green Mountain Boys to the planned capture of Fort Ticonderoga in northeastern New York. Though no doubt motivated by the same philosophical, cultural, or personal impulses as any man who served in the Revolutionary War, it is likely Allen also perceived the expedition as a chance to improve the general perception of him and his fellow grant owners. The attack, led by Allen and Connecticut-born, Massachusetts-commissioned militia officer Benedict Arnold (1741-1801), was a complete success. The lightly garrisoned post surrendered without either side firing a shot, and a follow-up assault on nearby Fort Crown Point resulted in another British defeat. Allen, eager to press the advantage and secure some measure of glory for himself, pushed on against the council of the more experienced Arnold and attempted to capture Fort Saint John, on the Richelieu River in British Quebec. The effort was ill-considered and unplanned, and the one hundred Green Mountain Boys who accompanied their founder barely escaped with their lives. As commonly occurred throughout his life, Allen allowed his enthusiasm and his ego to get the better of him. Equally characteristic, however, was his determination to press forward regardless with proposals for the wholesale invasion of Quebec.

            The next several months Allen spent quarrelling with Arnold over the spoils of their joint victories, imploring the Continental Congress not to abandon the captured forts, requesting the delegates in Philadelphia authorize an attack on Montreal, and pleading for the inclusion of the Green Mountain Boys in the newly-authorized Continental Army. Strident as ever, he succeeded in the latter two appeals. In June, 1775 Congress granted General Phillip Schuyler (1733-1804) authorization to plan an invasion of British Canada while also directing him to form a regiment around the Green Mountain Boys and see that they were paid for their service at Ticonderoga. In spite of the years-long insurgency that had been waged by Allen against authorities in New York, he also managed to convince the colony’s revolutionary government to agree to support the adoption of the Boys by Congress and provide for their provisioning. In spite of these early successes, however, Allen’s headstrong nature caught up with him more than once over the next several months. Fatigued by his stalled campaign of resistance, annoyed by his egotism, and distressed by the foolishness he had displayed during his failed attempt to capture Fort Saint John, the newly-restructured Green Mountain Boys rejected him as their leader for the upcoming invasion of Quebec. Indeed, the assembled companies did not deign to assign him any role at all in the regiment, and he was forced to request its new leader Seth Warner allow him to accompany the men as a civilian scout during the coming campaign.

            When the invasion finally began in August, 1775, Allen discovered fairly quickly that his presence was cause for resentment and concern among the officers in command. Though requested by both General Schuyler and his replacement Richard Montgomery (1738-1775) to scout the area between Fort Saint John and Montreal, and help raise a force of French-speaking locals sympathetic to the American cause, Montgomery at least may have done so to ensure that the famously insubordinate Allen was kept away from the bulk of his encampment. Chastened and isolated, the former leader of the Green Mountain Boys thereafter plotted with the officer to whom he had been assigned, Major John Brown (1744-1780), to assemble a small force and capture Montreal on his own. Though Brown and his followers failed to rendezvous with Allen on the north bank of the St. Lawrence River, he pushed ahead anyway, and he and thirty of his men were subsequently captured at the disastrous Battle of Longue-Pointe (September 25, 1775). Allen spent the next three years as a prisoner of the British, first in a prison ship anchored off Montreal, and then successively in Pendennis Castle in England, Cork, Ireland, and a series of vessels off the American coast. In 1777 he was paroled in New York City, giving him limited freedom of movement, and then placed in solitary confinement for violating the terms of his release. He was finally exchanged for a British officer in May, 1778 and reported to Continental Army Commander George Washington on the 14^th of that month. Granted the rank of Colonel in recognition of the hardships he had endured, Allen was given a monthly salary and told to await assignment.

            No assignment ever came, and in the interim Allen chose to return to Bennington, in what by that time was the State of Vermont. During his lengthy absence, the disputed territory had declared its independence from Britain and New York alike in January, 1777, framed and adopted a constitution in July of that year, and sent men to help successfully blunt the British invasion of the Hudson River Valley. Perhaps seeking to make up for lost time and lost glory, Allen thereafter began a zealous campaign to ferret out British sympathizers as a judge assigned to the state’s anti-Tory tribunal. In this role he once more ran afoul of the government of neighboring New York. Governor George Clinton protested to Continental authorities that many of the individuals Allen was helping to exile from Vermont were in fact New Yorkers that were being dispossessed of their lawfully purchased land in keeping with Allen’s pre-Revolutionary activities. Doubtless hoping to bring a final end to the conflict, Clinton issued a proclamation stating that all of the New Hampshire Grants would be thereafter honored by New York so long as the grant holders recognized the authority of that state over the territory claimed by Vermont. Allen, angered that the contributions of men like himself, Seth Warner, and the Green Mountain Boys to the Revolutionary War still did not warrant recognition by the government of New York of their property, drafted a pamphlet that once more attempted to make the case that Vermont was, and by rights had always been, independent of New York. This document was entitled, in full, An Animadversory Address to the Inhabitants of the State of Vermont; with Remarks on a Proclamation under the Hand of his Excellency George Clinton, Esq; Governor of the State of New York, and first saw publication in August, 1778.