CURIOSITIES IN AMERICAN HISTORY
THE
GREEN MOUNTAIN BOYS:
OR
VERMONT AND THE NEW YORK LAND JOBBERS
BY
PHILIP H. SMITH,
AUTHOR OF
“ACADIA: A LOST CHAPTER IN AMERICAN HISTORY;”
“HISTORY OF DUCHESS COUNTY;” ETC.
PAWLING, N. Y.:
PHILIP H. SMITH, PUBLISHER
1885
Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1885, by
PHILIP H. SMITH,
In the Office of the Librarian of Congress, at Washington.
PREFACE.
In the history of a country whose growth has been under circumstances
like our own, every locality abounds in unrecorded deeds of moral
heroism as worthy of notice as are many facts and events which have
become fixed in the historic literature current among the masses. Even
were such deeds to find a place in local history, they will necessarily
be circumscribed in their influence, and at best be so hidden among
commonplace matter as almost to escape notice; while to attempt giving
them the attention they deserve in a general history would be futile.
In the present attempt to render a comparatively unknown episode of our
country’s history the theme of a small volume, both these difficulties
will be avoided; and by so giving it the prominence it deserves,
thereby afford a better understanding of the inner workings of the
stupendous machinery of our system of government. The by-ways of our
country’s annals are fruitful in just such interesting and instructive
themes.
One of the lessons herein taught is that positions of honor and trust
are not always proof against cupidity and corruption; or, to speak
more plainly, under color of law men have been known to perform the
most lawless acts. The story of the Vermont troubles has one rare
quality--the poor hard-working settlers were ultimately successful;
and for once the cause of the humble cottager prevailed against the
machinations of the favorites of royalty.
CONTENTS.
-- Introduction 7-10
I. Geographical Outline and Settlement 11-14
II. Origin of the Land Troubles 15-23
III. Resisting New York Claimants 24-44
IV. Mandatory Laws of New York 45-48
V. Affair at Westminster 49-52
VI. Attitude of Congress 53-56
VII. Fall of Ticonderoga 57-69
VIII. Expedition into Canada 70-90
IX. Establishment of a Civil Government 91-97
X. Battle of Bennington 98-109
XI. Private Negotiations with the British 110-127
XII. Conclusion 128-130
INTRODUCTION.
Some one has truthfully remarked that the character of a people is
largely determined by the natural features of the country they inhabit.
The peasantry of mountainous Switzerland are proverbial for their
bravery and hardihood, their strong and innate love of liberty, and
their pure and exalted patriotism. Accustomed from infancy to danger,
dependent upon their own resources, mingling day by day among the
sublimest works of Creation, their aspirations acquire a buoyancy, and
their spirits an independence, that leaves an impress on their lives
amounting to a national characteristic.
Thus the brave pioneer, inured to hardship, and depending on his ax for
shelter, and on his rifle for food and protection from wild beast and
lurking Indian, will acquire a fertility of resource and vigor of limb,
as in a measure to remunerate him for the privations he endures.
The original settlers of the New Hampshire Grants,--that territory
now known as the State of Vermont,--were of this sturdy, fearless,
and independent sort. It seemed as though they had drawn inspiration
from the snow-clad, storm-riven mountains, at whose base their
lowly thatched cabins were nestled. The long and hard winters taxed
the energies of the new settlers for the necessaries of life, and
precluded the introduction of luxuries that only degenerate. The
stubborn wilderness was to be felled; the latent productiveness of
the soil developed; hand to hand encounters with wild beasts were not
infrequent; common safety demanded a unity of strength against the
crafty foe, and necessity begat friends at the same time it rendered
friendship a mutual safeguard; and this unity of purpose, thus nurtured
and sustained, afterward displayed itself in one of the most unique
chapters in the annals of American history.
The people of these Grants, known to the world as the Green Mountain
Boys, were worthy the wild and romantic country in which they lived,
and the stirring times in which they acted. Vermont was never organized
as a separate colony under England, and from the first that plucky
little community refused to submit to the domination of the older
colonies on her borders. Her people seemed to imbibe a spirit of
independence from the free air and the everlasting mountains.
New York claimed a jurisdiction over her soil, and a like demand was
put forward by New Hampshire and Massachusetts. But the brave Green
Mountain Boys, under the guidance of such natural leaders as the
Allens, Baker, Warner, and others of like invincible spirit, kept the
greedy land-grabbers at bay. In short, Vermont never had a government
other than the supreme will of her own people, nor acknowledged the
authority of any earthly potentate, until she was admitted on an equal
footing into the Union of States, as the Fourteenth luminary in the
blue field of the nation’s emblem.
Yet had this people no inconsiderable share in the work of achieving
that independence which made the present of our country a glorious
possibility. They secured what they believed to be their own rights, at
the same time they contributed to the adjustment of the claims of her
sister communities.
There is no pretension, in the present pages, to giving what will be
new to specialists in Vermont history. But to the general reader, and
to the student of the philosophy of human events, there is much, we
hope, both new and instructive. The firm bearing of the brave and hardy
settlers of the Hampshire Grants, and the important part they played
in the War of the Revolution, give to the material of this little book
somewhat of a national interest. Indeed, but for timely services of
the Green Mountain Boys, it is more than possible the cause of America
might have been lost.
[Illustration: Indians fishing by torchlight.]
CHAPTER I.
GEOGRAPHICAL OUTLINE AND SETTLEMENT.
Stephen A. Douglas has been credited with the remark that Vermont is an
excellent place to emigrate from. Though small in area, with a surface
singularly broken by mountain ranges, wracked by frosts and covered
with snows five months of the year, yet her internal economy has
proved favorable to the growth of both brain and brawn: in the halls
of Congress, as well as in the pursuits of science and literature, she
maintains her place right gallantly.
That long and irregular lake on the northwest boundary bears the name
of the great European discoverer and explorer, Champlain, who here
sought, and vainly, for a northwest passage to Cathay. The loveliness
of its shores, and the unsurpassed picturesqueness of its islands,
endear it to the tourist. Twice it has been the scene of a naval combat.
The Green Mountains,[A] from which the state takes its name, run
lengthwise through the central portion, about midway between the
Connecticut River on the east and Lake Champlain on the west. The sides
of these mountains are clad with the perpetual verdure of their hardy
evergreens, the verdant mosses and winter grasses clinging to their
towering summits. The principal streams, rising among these mountains
and following the natural declivities, find their way into this river
and lake, except those flowing northerly into Lake Memphremagog.
It was not until after the conquest of Canada that any considerable
settlements were effected in the territory now known as Vermont.
Situate about midway between the French districts on the River St.
Lawrence and the New England settlements along the Atlantic coast,
it had very naturally become the battle-ground of the contending
powers, and a lurking place of their respective Indian allies. The
early colonists of Massachusetts and Connecticut, in their frequent
expeditions against the French in Canada, and while traversing these
woods as hunters and scouting parties, had become familiar with
the fertility of the lands between the Connecticut River and Lake
Champlain. As soon as the danger attending their settlement was in a
measure removed, by reason of Canada and New England coming under
the same King, swarms of emigrants from the adjacent colonies poured
into the country, and the most available and valuable portions were
immediately taken up; and, as though by magic, the wilderness developed
into fruitful fields, and gardens flourished where the wild rabbit had
made its home. At the beginning of the Revolution the population was
estimated at from twenty to thirty thousand.
If not to be governed at all is to be governed well,--and so it would
seem to be in this instance,--the remarkable exemption of the State
of Vermont from taxation at the close of the Revolution, as compared
with other States, added to the fertility and cheapness of the land,
attracted settlers from many of the older communities, resulting in
large additions to population and resources.