The History of Vermont

From Its Earliest Settlement to the Present Time

W. H. Carpenter

• Publisher: Left Of Brain Onboarding Pty Ltd
• Year: 2021
• ISBN:
  9781396320101
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Histoire
• Subtopic: Histoire de l'Amérique du Nord

Vermont is a beautiful state known for many things: its scenic hiking trails, natural forest beauty, its over one hundred picturesque covered bridges, location of The Lincoln home, and as the home of Maple syrup.

But that's not all there is to know about Vermont. Much like Vermont's beauty, its history is intricate and fascinating. Vermont was once home to a tribe of Native Americans, British colonialists, and French explorers. The history of Vermont is riveting for several reasons; the American Revolutionary war, slavery, its political challenges with New York, New Hampshire, Great Britain, and United States, because once upon a time, Vermont was a republic.

In this book, W. H. Carpenter and T. S. Arthur provide a rich and detailed history of Vermont. Including the earliest settlers, conflicts, progress and what led to its eventual joining of the union.

Of all America's history, Vermont's is about to become your favorite.

CHAPTER I.

Samuel Champlain—Indian tribes and their wars—Character of French colonization—Champlain’s alliance with the Algonquins—Hostility of the Iroquois—French missionaries—Lake Champlain—First permanent settlement in Vermont—Crown Point erected by the French—Opening of the New Hampshire grants—Increase of emigration—Steady progress of settlement.

THE long and irregular lake which forms the western boundary of the State of Vermont, bears the name of the European who earliest explored any portion of its territory, Samuel Champlain, the first successful founder of French settlements in North America. He was for many years the governor of New France, as the French Canadian possessions were called; and he has left behind him a monument which has survived the last trace of French dominion on this continent. He published a curious work entitled “Voyages and Travels in New France,” or Canada. It possessed sufficient interest to call for a modern reprint; and in 1838, more than two hundred years from its first appearance, was republished in Paris.

Champlain’s observations on the aborigines were so exact that his successors have in few cases found reason to depart from his conclusions. Perhaps we should except such writers as invest the American Indian with imaginary traits of impossible heroism, and with savage virtues of a higher than the civilized standard. He records a very minute account of their shocking barbarities to their prisoners, of which he was, most probably, the first European witness. And he gives us relations of their garrulity and nimble-tongued vituperations and rejoinders, which contrast very strongly with the dramatic Indian, reserved and dignified. He describes hostile Indian nations making ready for a fight at dawn by dancing in hearing of each other, and preparing themselves for the encounter by a whole night of mutual reviling; and when, by the aid of European strategy, he had enabled an Indian besieging force to take a position commanding the enemy’s entrenchment, the martial Frenchman was astonished to find the siege delayed while the combatants hurled curses at each other.

From various causes the French coalesced with the Indians better than any other colonists have done. There was less repugnance of race and caste between them. And the wisdom of the Jesuits, who were effective leaders in all French intercourse with the Indians, procured a clause in the charters which performed wonders for French enterprise. Every convert, upon baptism, became ipso facto a French subject. He was entitled to equal privileges with the colonists. He was identified with their success, and bound to them by much stronger ties than the subsidies of the English could ever purchase. Whatever may be charged against the Jesuits, their heroism and self-denial cannot be gain-said; and, without entering into a discussion of the matter of their teaching as compared with that of the Protestant missionaries, they certainly made firmer temporal allies of their Indian converts.

With all his sagacity, Champlain’s love of adventure led him into a capital error; a mistake which did not cease to operate until the French were entirely dispossessed of Canada. He sought a north-west passage to Cathay—a problem which, even unto the present day, promotes incidental benefits to commerce and geographical knowledge, without any approach to its own solution. The error to which we refer, was that of espousing the quarrel of one Indian tribe or family of tribes against another. The Indians who held the lands on the Atlantic were the Algonquins. From Lake Champlain, as far west as Huron, the warlike Iroquois, sometimes called the Six Nations, were in possession. Champlain, on condition of being guided through the territories of these fierce tribes, readily undertook to aid the Algonquins in their wars against them. His visit to Lake Champlain and Lake George, which took place in 1609, was made under such unlucky auspices; and the first knowledge which the Iroquois had of the French was as the allies of their hereditary enemies. Three Frenchmen only appear to have been present, but their arquebuses decided the day in favour of the Algonquins; and this commencement entailed persecution and death upon many an unfortunate missionary, and provoked the Iroquois to adhesion to the Dutch and English in New York.

Vermont was not in the path to Cathay, and the French seem to have paid little heed to the territory of the future fourteenth state in the American confederacy. The French missionaries and explorers were confined to the north of the St. Lawrence, and north and west of the Lakes Erie and Ontario. They were in friendly relations with the Indians near Lake Superior, while they could not venture upon the Ontario or Erie; and their unceasing wars with the Mohawks forced their missionaries to run the gauntlet through fierce tribes before they could reach their stations near Lake Huron. These Mohawks were Iroquois, the tribe whose first acquaintance with the French we have mentioned as derived from their fire-arms, which scattered death in a new and wonderful manner.

Lake Champlain divided the country of the Iroquois and the Algonquins. Its waters, as they had been before Champlain saw them, still remained the highway of war parties for nearly two hundred years. Vermont west of the mountains was uninhabitable. Even the savages avoided it for any purpose of permanent residence; and it merited the name which has been given to another portion of our continent, “The Dark and Bloody Ground.” English and French expeditions followed the old war-paths, guided by savage allies; and the Hudson River and Lakes George and Champlain seemed practically useful only as military avenues. In 1760, when the French lost Canada, this state of things ceased; but Lake Champlain was again the scene of hostilities during the revolutionary period, and during the second war between the United States and Great Britain.

It does not come within our scope to give the details of the murderous Indian conflicts of which the territory of Vermont was the theatre before its settlement. Many of these events belong to the history of another state, and are there treated. The first permanent settlement in Vermont was made in 1724, in its southeastern corner, on the land now embraced within the town of Brattleborough. This post was called Fort Dummer, and was supposed to be within the jurisdiction of Massachusetts. The French, in 1731, made a settlement on Lake Champlain, within the limits of the present town of Addison. They also established on the opposite or New York shore, a fortress which they called St. Frederick, but which was afterward known as Crown Point. In 1759, Crown Point and the settlements on the Vermont side were abandoned by the French, who retreated to Canada before the victorious arms of Lord Amherst. No European settlements now remained in Vermont, except a few in the southeast corner, which had been undertaken under the protection of New Hampshire. The land still remained in its primeval wilderness. But a military road from Charlestown, in New Hampshire, to Crown Point, crossing the territory of the present State of Vermont, had apprized the public of the character and value of the land; and when the French war was ended, in 1760, there were abundance of applicants for tracts. Vermont, so long closed to emigrants, now became a land of promise, and population flowed toward it with what was then considered great rapidity. The spirit of the hostile Indians had been subdued by several exemplary inflictions, the ferocity of which can only be excused by the exasperation which the borderers felt against a ruthless foe, with whom no argument except force seemed to avail.

CHAPTER II.

Boundary line between Massachusetts and New Hampshire established—New Hampshire required to support Fort Dummer—Township grants by the governor of New Hampshire—Bennington founded—Claims of New York—Number of grants issued—Fees for the same—Controversy with New York—Duke of York’s patent—Its vagueness—Cadwallader Colden of New York—His proclamation—Counter-proclamation from New Hampshire—Eastern boundary of New York defined by England—Jurisdiction asserted over Vermont—The grants from New Hampshire declared null and void—Resistance by the people—Their appeal to the British ministry—Royal orders to New York—Writs of ejectment obtained—Inability to execute them—Land speculators—Hatred of them in Vermont—Ethan Allen—His character—The Green Mountain Boys.

THE impediments to the success of the infant state did not cease with the close of Indian hostilities. In the year 1740, to put a period to the controversy between Massachusetts and New Hampshire respecting the boundary between them, the British government established a line parallel with the Merrimack River, at three miles distance, from the Atlantic to Pawtucket Falls, and thence due west to the boundary of New York. This line, while it settled the controversy between Massachusetts and New Hampshire, opened another dispute, which lasted for a quarter of a century. Fort Dummer, and the few settlements west of the Connecticut were found by this line not to be in Massachusetts. The King of Great Britain repeatedly called upon the New Hampshire legislature to make provision for the support of Fort Dummer. The presumption grew up that the jurisdiction of New Hampshire extended west as far as that of Massachusetts; that is to say, to a line twenty miles east from Hudson River.

In 1749, Benning Wentworth, Governor of New Hampshire, made a grant of a township six miles square, situated, as he conceived, on the western borders of New Hampshire, being twenty miles east of the Hudson River, and six miles north of the Massachusetts line. This township he called Bennington. He granted also fifteen other townships; but the breaking out of hostilities between England and France put a stop to applications. A correspondence had meanwhile arisen between the governors of New Hampshire and New York, in which the latter, under an old grant from Charles II. to the Duke of York, claimed all the land west of the Connecticut River. As, however, this grant would have covered the lands in Massachusetts and Connecticut west of the river, and no claim had been established against those provinces, the governor of New Hampshire paid no heed to the pretensions of New York.

After the close of the French war, in 1760, the governor of New Hampshire resumed the granting of townships, and in the course of two or three years issued grants to the number of one hundred and ninety-eight. The fees on each were about one hundred dollars. In each township he reserved five hundred acres for himself, and in this mode he accumulated a large fortune. These perquisites were emoluments which New York was determined not tamely to relinquish, and a war of proclamations forthwith commenced. Although for convenience we have used the name Vermont, and shall continue to do so, the name was not as yet applied to the territory. The people styled themselves the inhabitants of the “New Hampshire Grants.”

Whatever might be said of the claims of New Hampshire to jurisdiction, that of New York was vague and indefensible. In the first place, the grant to the Duke of York was very indefinite, as were most of the parcellings out of this continent by European powers. It gave the Duke of York “all the lands from the west side of the Connecticut River to the east side of the Delaware Bay,” a boundary, the vagueness of which we need not enlarge upon. But whatever title it might have conferred upon the Duke of York was merged in the crown upon James’s accession, and descended to William upon James’s abdication; so that the authority of the royal governor of New Hampshire was quite as good under this very grant as that of New York. It established no colony and authorized no government; and the Massachusetts and Connecticut charters were given without regard to the previous royal disposal of “all the lands” west of the Connecticut.

Nevertheless the perquisites which accrued from land grants could not be willingly given up by New York; and in 1763, Cadwallader Colden, acting governor of that province, issued his proclamation reciting the obsolete grant to the Duke of York, and claiming jurisdiction as far as the Connecticut River. He also commanded the sheriff of Albany to make returns of the names of all persons who had taken up lands under grants from New Hampshire. In reply, the governor of New Hampshire issued his proclamation, denying the validity of the old grant under which New York claimed, and asserting the western limits of New Hampshire to be a continuation northerly of the western line of Connecticut and Massachusetts. He told the settlers that their claims to their lands under the New Hampshire grants would be unaffected, even though they should come under the jurisdiction of New York. He exhorted the people to be industrious and diligent, and to proceed without intimidation to cultivate their territory; and he commanded the civil officers to exercise jurisdiction as far as the grants extended. The ground taken by the governor of New Hampshire in this proclamation, in regard to land titles, was not only plausible but equitable. It could not be supposed that a dispute about jurisdiction between two royal governors could vitiate the grants which either had made, as a representative of the crown. The minds of the people were quieted, and no fears for the future were entertained.

The New York authorities, convinced perhaps of the untenable nature of their claims, or willing to put them on a clearer basis, even while they were defending the obsolete grant to the Duke of York, were operating in England to obtain a less questionable title. They procured in 1764 a decision by the British crown that the Connecticut River, from the Massachusetts line to the forty-fifth degree of north latitude, should be the eastern boundary of New York. The application for this decree based the request on the “convenience and advantage of the people;” and it was more than suspected that it was supported by a fraudulent use of the names of the settlers, who were those most interested.

The decree, or the mode in which it was obtained, was not at first subjected to any rigid examination, or made the subject of any complaint. The people were rather pleased than otherwise that the troublesome question of jurisdiction was determined; and imagined that their titles would be confirmed by it, rather than impaired. They supposed the decree would have an entirely prospective action; and were alarmed and astonished when the New York authorities gave it a retrospective interpretation, and claimed that it vitiated the grants from New Hampshire. The government of New York proceeded under this interpretation to declare the titles given by New Hampshire null and void, and to require the settlers to take out new grants from New York, and to surrender their New Hampshire charters. Aside from the injustice in principle of this demand, it was accompanied with onerous pecuniary conditions; for, whereas, the modest province of New Hampshire had been content with fees amounting to only one hundred dollars on each township, New York claimed from two thousand to twenty-six hundred. The New Hampshire grants were divided into four new counties, and courts were held in them under the new jurisdiction. Some few of the towns complied with the hard terms, and bought their lands over again. But the greater number of townships refused to submit to what they justly deemed a gross and cruel imposition. Where the people refused to submit, fresh grants were made of their lands, and suits were commenced in the names of the new grantees, for the ejectment of the original holders. There was no difficulty in obtaining judgments against the settlers, but there was no possibility of enforcing them. The people banded together for mutual support; and the officers met with such rough treatment that few dared, at length, to present themselves for the performance of a duty so odious. The people were left without redress in the ordinary forms of law; and even the governor of New Hampshire felt compelled, though unwillingly, to issue his proclamation recommending the settlers on the grants to yield due obedience to the laws and authority of New York.

The settlers associated themselves together; and held frequent conventions to devise means of resisting the wrongs which were attempted against them. As the governor of New York had appealed to the British government, the “Green Mountain Boys,” as they now began to be called, determined to make an effort to be heard there also, nothing doubting that a true representation of their case would be followed by measures for their relief. The result justified their expectations, so far as the will of the British crown was concerned. The Lords of the Board of Trade and Plantations having investigated the subject in 1767, the governor of New York received the following order: “His majesty 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 pain of his majesty’s highest displeasure, presume to make any grants whatsoever, of any part of the land described, until his majesty’s further pleasure shall be known concerning the same.”

This royal mandate was certainly explicit and satisfactory enough, so far as its apparent meaning and intention could be gathered from its plain English. But whether “his majesty’s further pleasure” was immediately communicated to the New York governor, revoking this order, or whether the governor found the fees too lucrative to be tamely surrendered, the people soon found that royal orders gave them no respite. No regard was paid to the royal mandate. New grants continued to be made, and actions of ejectment continued to be pressed in the courts at Albany. The Green Mountain Boys paid no heed to these proceedings, and suffered judgment to go against them by default. They complained, and with reason, that the officers of New York, while calling upon the people to obey the royal orders and decisions, violated those injunctions themselves.

The militia were called in to aid and support the sheriff and his officers. But this measure served only to demonstrate the weakness of a government which aimed to enforce the perpetration of a wrong. The claimants holding titles purchased under such circumstances had not a feeling in common with the people. They were speculators, odious for the fact that they would attempt to possess themselves of what was the equitable property of others. They were loathed as adventurers who preferred an unjust course, rather than to purchase lands at a fair valuation to which there was no adverse claims—idlers, who would willingly derive emolument from the distress of the hardy pioneers who had subdued the forest. The militia, when summoned, though compelled to march, had no affection for the business, and declined hazarding their lives against their convictions, and against the people with whom they sympathized, for the emolument of speculators for whom they had no respect. Wherever a show of opposition was made, the New York militia refused to act; and the sheriff with his posse were in a worse predicament than without it. The exasperation of the people was increased, and the fugitive posse only emboldened the resistants.

The name of Ethan Allen, celebrated in connection with the Revolutionary war, appears first in the history of these struggles of the people of the New Hampshire grants against their grasping neighbours. Allen was born in Litchfield, Connecticut, but emigrated with his parents to the New Hampshire grants at an early age. He possessed in a rare degree that indispensable requisite to a self-constituted leader in troublous times—rude and overbearing self-confidence. He was abashed by no consciousness of ignorance, and made boldness in the declaration of his opinions serve him in the place of a more refined style. As the right was manifestly on his side, and he vigorously contended against an injustice, the effects of which he suffered under in common with others, the leadership to which his daring impetuosity made him aspire was at once accorded to him. There was at this time no newspaper in Vermont, and, indeed, no printing office; but Ethan Allen entered vigorously into the contest with New York as a pamphleteer. He was the author of the manifestoes of the Green Mountain Boys, to which, with other names, his was appended.

Allen’s method of expression in these appeals to the public was in keeping with the character of the public which he addressed. They can scarce be read now without a smile, their inkshed being of the most ferocious character. The rude borderers of that day found their own feelings well represented in the harsh language of Allen. Their all was at stake, and no terms seemed too severe to denounce their oppressors. If the better educated among them perceived, as they doubtless did, the absurdity of the pamphleteer, they were too politic to take exception to what seemed best adapted to keep up that excitement, which alone promised successful and continued resistance. The nature of the population of the New Hampshire grants is thus summed by Dr. Samuel Williams, the first historian of Vermont:—

“The main body of the settlers at that time, consisted of a brave, hardy, intrepid, but uncultivated set of men. Without many of the advantages of education, without any other property than what hard labour and hard living had procured, destitute of the conveniences and the elegancies of life, and having nothing to soften or refine their manners, roughness, excess, and violence would naturally mark their proceedings. To deny such people justice was to prejudice and arm them against it; to confirm all those suspicions and prejudices against their rulers, and to give them an excuse and plea to proceed to outrage and violence. When the government of New York gave to these proceedings the names of mobs and riots, abuse and outrage, it is probable that such expressions conveyed pretty just ideas of the appearance of their conduct and opposition to the laws. But when they called their opposition treason, felony, and rebellion against lawful authority, the people of the adjoining provinces seem to have believed that the government of New York was much more blamable in making and exercising such laws as called these titles to their lands in question, than the settlers were in acting in open and avowed opposition to them.”

CHAPTER III.

The Green Mountain Tavern—Its sign—Convention at Bennington—Determination of the settlers—Organized opposition to New York—Committees of Safety formed—Military associations—Indictment of Allen, Warner, and others—Rewards offered for their apprehension—Attempted arrest of Warner—Conciliatory efforts of Governor Tryon—Exception of the ringleaders—Proclamations and counter-proclamations—Decree of the Green Mountain Convention—Green Mountain law—The Beech Seal—Action of ...