When Ethan Allen, the Green Mountain Boy, broke into Fort Ticonderoga
at the head of a handful of followers and demanded its surrender, its
bewildered and still sleepy Commandant began to stutter out a very
natural inquiry as to the authority in whose name Allen acted. History
has recorded Allen’s grandiloquent reply: _In the name of the Great
Jehovah and the Continental Congress!_ (But certain old Vermonters will
have it that his actual words were, _Here, come out of that, you old
rascal and give us the fort, quick, or we’ll smoke you out like rats!_)