THE NEW STATE.
When Vermont had taken her place in the Union, her state government
continued to run smoothly in its accustomed lines, still guided by the
firm hand and wise counsel of her first governor. With unabated faith in
the wisdom, integrity, and patriotism of Thomas Chittenden, the freemen
of Vermont again and again reelected him to the chief magistracy of the
commonwealth after its admission, as with but one exception they had
done in the twelve years preceding that event.
Notwithstanding the simplicity of home life in those days, "Election
Day" was observed with a pomp and ceremony well befitting the occasion.
An old newspaper[93] of the day tells us that the morning was ushered in
by beat of drums, and that the governor-elect, Thomas Chittenden, Esq.,
and Lieutenant-Governor Peter Olcott, accompanied by several members of
the council, Jonas Fay, Samuel Safford, Walbridge, Bayley, and Strong,
old associates in the stalwart band of Green Mountain Boys, were met at
some distance from the town of Windsor by a troop of horse, a company
of artillery, and one of infantry, all in "most beautiful uniforms,"
doubtless of the beloved Continental buff and blue, glittering with
great brass buttons, whereon were inscribed the initials "G. W." and the
legend, "Long live the President."
As this corps, made up of veterans who had smelled powder when it burned
with deadly intent, and of martial youths whose swords were yet
unfleshed, marched proudly to the screech of fife and beat of drum, the
chronicler writes, their evolutions and discipline would have gained the
applause of regular troops. Upon the formal announcement of the result
of the election, the artillery company fired a salute of fifteen guns,
and then the governor and council, the members of the house, and all the
good people there assembled, repaired to church, and listened to the
election sermon, delivered by the Rev. Mr. Shuttleworth "with his usual
energy and pathos;" and in the evening the happy occasion was further
celebrated by an "elegant ball given by a number of Gentlemen of this
town to a most brilliant assembly of Gentlemen and Ladies, of this and
neighboring States."
The sessions of the legislature usually continued about four weeks, and
its business principally consisted in the granting of new townships,
levying a small tax, and the passage of necessary laws. Frequent
petitions were received, and many granted, to establish lotteries to aid
towns in the building and repairing of bridges and roads; to remove
obstructions in the channel of the Connecticut; to enable individuals
to carry out private enterprises, such as the building of a malt and
brew house; in one case to furnish a blind man means wherewith to go to
Europe to have an operation performed on his eyes; and at least one
petition was presented praying for the grant of a lottery to build a
church!
Some of the statutes made for the government of the commonwealth in its
turbulent infancy, and which were soon repealed, are curious enough to
deserve mention.
Manslaughter was punishable by forfeiture of possessions, by whipping on
the naked back, and by branding the letter "M." on the hand with a hot
iron. Whoso was convicted of adultery was to be punished by whipping on
the naked body not exceeding thirty-nine stripes, and "stigmatized or
burnt on the forehead with the letter 'A' on a hot iron," and was to
wear the letter "A" on the back of the outside garment, in cloth of a
different color, and as often as seen without it, on conviction thereof,
to be whipped ten stripes. The counterfeiter was punished by having his
right ear cut off, and by branding with the letter "C" and being kept at
hard labor during life. Burglary and highway robbery were punished by
branding with the letter "B" on the forehead, by having the right ear
nailed to a post and cut off, and by whipping. A second offense entailed
the loss of the other ear and the infliction of a severer whipping, and
for the third offense the criminal was to be "put to death as being
incorrigible."
Every town was obliged to maintain a good pair of stocks set in the most
public place, and in these were exposed the convicted liar, the
blasphemer, and the drunkard. In such place also must be maintained a
sign-post, whereon all public notices were placed, with occasional
ghastly garnishment of felons' ears.
Every town assigned a particular brand for its horse kind, each one of
which was to be marked on the left shoulder by a regularly appointed
brander, who should record a description of every horse branded. All
owners of cattle, sheep, or swine were required to ear-mark or brand
such animals, and cause their several marks to be registered in the town
book. Many of these ear-marks may yet be seen described and rudely
pictured in faded ink on the musty pages of old record books.
There was a general revision of the laws in 1787, and a second revision
ten years later, whereby the barbarous severity of the penal laws was
considerably lessened.
After admission to the Union, Vermont was as faithful to the newly
assumed bond as she had been steadfast and unflinching in the assertion
of her independence of Congress when that body attempted to exercise its
authority over the unrecognized commonwealth. She was not backward in
furnishing soldiers for the common defense. In 1792, Captain William
Eaton, who some years later won renown as the heroic leader of a bold
and successful expedition against the city of Derne in Tripoli, raised a
company for service against the Indians in the Northwest. There, in the
fourth sub-legion of General Wayne's army, these brave men well
sustained the valorous reputation of the Green Mountain Boys, bearing
the evergreen sprig to its accustomed place in the battle-front. At the
battle of Miami, of the eleven privates killed in the fourth sub-legion
five were Vermonters. The patriotism of these three-years' volunteers
was stimulated by a bounty of eight dollars, and a monthly wage of three
dollars.
The pioneers of Vermont aged early under the constant strain of anxiety
and hardship which their life entailed, and though most of the leaders
were spared amid the dangers of the frontier, the perils of war, and
intestine feuds, few reached the allotted term of man's life. Warner,
whose vigorous constitution was sapped by the stress of continuous
campaigns, died in 1785, aged only forty-two, six years before the State
in whose defense he first drew his sword became a recognized member of
the nation to whose service he unselfishly devoted the best years of his
brave life. Neither was Ethan Allen permitted to see the admission of
Vermont to the Union, but was suddenly stricken down by apoplexy, in the
robust fullness of his strength, two years before that event. Noble and
generous in his nature, bold, daring, and resolute, "he possessed,"
says Zadoc Thompson, "an unusual degree of vigor both of body and mind,
and an unlimited confidence in his own abilities."
Vermont has given him the first place among her heroes, has set his
marble effigy in the national capitol, in her own, and on the monument
that marks his grave; yet to that brave and modest soldier, Seth Warner,
the knightliest figure in her romantic history, the State he served so
well has not given so much as a tablet to commemorate his name and
valorous deeds. It is as if, in their mouldering dust, the character of
the living men was preserved, the one still self-asserting, the other as
unpretentious in the eternal sleep as he was in life. Though Governor
Chittenden's age was not beyond that in which modern statesmen are still
active, infirmity and disease were upon him, admonishing him that he
could no longer bear the fatigues of the office which for eighteen years
he had held. In the summer of 1797 he announced that he would not again
be a candidate for the governorship. He had seen the State, which he had
been so largely instrumental in moulding out of the crude material of
scattered frontier settlements, and which his strong hand had defended
against covetous neighbors and a foreign enemy, in the full enjoyment of
an honorable place in the sisterhood of commonwealths, and felt that his
work was done. While still in office, a few weeks later, his honorable
life closed at his home in Williston, among the fertile fields that his
hand had wrought out of the primeval wilderness, and his death was
sincerely mourned by the people whom he had so long ruled with
patriarchal care.
At the next election, Isaac Tichenor was chosen governor. He was a
native of New Jersey, and, becoming a resident of Vermont in 1777, he
presently took an active part in the affairs of the State. For several
years previous to his election to the first place in its gift, he had
served it as a member of the council, chief justice, and United States
senator. No choice was made by the people, though he received a
plurality of the popular vote, and the election devolved upon the
assembly. The Federalist party predominating therein, he was elected by
a large majority. He was ten times reelected, and, such faith had the
people in him, several times after his party was a minority in the
State, although the acrimony of party strife had begun to embitter its
politics.
In the early part of Tichenor's administration, while the legislature
was in session at Vergennes in the autumn of 1798, five chiefs of the
Cognahwaghnahs presented a claim of their people to ancient hunting
grounds in Vermont, bounded by a line extending from Ticonderoga to the
Great Falls of Otter Creek, and in the same direction to the height of
land dividing the streams between Lake Champlain and the river
Connecticut, thence along the height of land opposite Missisque, and
then down to the bay, and comprising about a third of the State. The
Indians were handsomely entertained during their stay, and dismissed
with a present of a hundred dollars, "well pleased with their own
policy," says Williams, "and with that of the Assembly of Vermont,
hoping that the game would prove still better another season."
An investigation of this claim resulted in a decision that, if any such
right ever existed, it had been extinguished by the cession of the lands
in question to the United States by Great Britain, whose allies these
Indians were in the late war.
When, upon the passage of the alien and sedition laws by Congress, the
legislatures of Virginia and Kentucky, in 1798, passed resolutions,
which were sent to the legislatures of all the other States, declaring
these acts null, the Assembly of Vermont made a firm, dignified, and
forcible reply, denying the right of States to sit in judgment on the
constitutionality of the acts of Congress, or to declare which of its
acts should be accepted or which rejected. Considering the almost recent
antagonism which had existed between Congress and the State of Vermont,
the one by turns vacillating or threatening, the other boldly defiant
and denying the right of interference with her affairs, it might be
thought that the new commonwealth would be found arrayed among the
extreme defenders of state rights rather than so stoutly opposing them.
Party spirit had begun to embitter the politics of the State, and the
growing minority of Republicans was hotly arrayed against the still
predominant Federalists. The Federal strength was further weakened by
the imprisonment, under the sedition law, of Matthew Lyon, one of the
Vermont members of Congress. His free expression of opinion concerning
the conduct of the administration of President Adams would not now be
considered very extravagant, but for it he was sentenced to four months'
imprisonment, and to pay a fine of $1,000.
While in prison at Vergennes, he wrote letters which it was thought
would cause his re-arrest before he could leave the State to take his
seat in Congress, to which he had been reelected while in prison.
Measures were taken for the payment of his fine in indisputably legal
tender, one citizen of the State providing the sum in silver dollars,
and one ardent Republican of North Carolina coming all the way from that
State on horseback with the amount in gold. But Lyon's many political
friends desired to share the honor of paying his fine, and it was
arranged that no person should pay more than one dollar. No sooner had
he come forth from prison than his fine was paid, and he was placed in a
sleigh and driven up the frozen current of Great Otter to Middlebury,
attended, it is said, by an escort in sleighs, the train extending from
the one town to the other, a distance of twelve miles. With half as
many, he might boast of a greater following than had passed up the
Indian Road under any leader since the bloody days of border warfare
when Waubanakee chief or Canadian partisan led their marauding horde
along the noble river.
Lyon was of Irish birth, and came to America at the age of thirteen
under an indenture for his passage money. This was sold for a pair of
steers to one of the founders of Danville, Vermont, and Lyon was wont to
swear "By the bulls that redeemed me." He served in the Vermont troops
in the Revolution, and for a time was paymaster in Warner's regiment. He
was a member of the Dorset convention, and for several years took a
prominent part in the politics of the State, of which he was an
enterprising and useful citizen. His second wife was the daughter of
Governor Thomas Chittenden. In 1801 he removed to Kentucky, and was
eight years a member of Congress from that State. He died at the age of
seventy-six, in the territory of Arkansas, soon after his election as
delegate to Congress.
Four years after the arbitrary measures against Lyon by a Federalist
majority in the legislature, the opposite party gained the ascendency in
that body, though Tichenor had been reelected by a majority of the
freemen of the State.
The customary address of the governor, and the reply of the house
thereto, was the occasion of a hot party debate, which was kept up for
several days, and it was expected that the Republicans would use their
newly acquired power to place adherents of their party in all the
offices at their disposal. But the wise counsel of the first governor
still prevailed, and there were but few removals for mere political
causes. Though party spirit was rancorous enough, the elevation of men
to office, more for their political views than for their fitness, did
not obtain in the politics of Vermont till the bad example had for some
years been set by the party in power at the seat of national government.
Until 1808, the legislature of Vermont wandered from town to town, like
a homeless vagrant, having held its sessions in fifteen different towns,
one of which, Charlestown, was outside the present limits of the
commonwealth, though then in its Eastern Union. This year, as if
partially fulfilling the threat of Ethan Allen, it gathered among the
fastnesses of the mountains, and established a permanent seat at
Montpelier, which town was chosen as the capital for being situated near
the geographical centre of the State. A large wooden structure, three
stories in height and of quaint fashion, was erected for a state house.
The seats of the representatives' hall were of unpainted pine plank,
which so invited the jackknives of the true-born Yankee legislators that
in a quarter of a century they were literally whittled into uselessness.
A handsome new state house of Vermont granite was built in 1835 on
nearly the same ground. Twenty-two years later this was destroyed by
fire, and replaced by a larger one of the same style and material.
Commercial intercourse with Canada had been established soon after the
close of the war, principally by the people of western Vermont, to whom
the gate of the country now opened the easiest exit for their products,
the most of which were the lumber and potash that the slain forest
yielded to axe and fire.
As early as 1784, steps were taken by the independent commonwealth to
open free trade with the Province of Quebec, and a channel through it
for such trade with Europe. Ira Allen, Joseph and Jonas Fay were
appointed agents to negotiate this business. Only Ira Allen acted in
this capacity, and in the following year he reported having succeeded so
far as to procure a free exchange of produce and manufactures, except
peltry and a few articles of foreign production.
These negotiations, occurring with the arrival of English troops in Nova
Scotia, gave rise to alarming rumors that Vermont was taking measures to
become a British dependency; but this freedom of commerce through Lake
Champlain and the Richelieu, and exclusively confined thereto, was
accorded by the Canadian government to the States already in the Union
as well as to the independent republic of Vermont, though the latter
derived the greater benefit from it. To further promote this commerce,
Ira Allen proposed the cutting of a ship canal to navigably connect the
waters of Lake Champlain with those of the St. Lawrence, and made a
voyage to England with the object of engaging the British government in
this work. He offered, under certain conditions, to cut the canal at his
own expense, and continued, though unsuccessfully, to urge the
government of his own State to aid him in the enterprise so late as
1809.
The great pines, that fifty years before had been reserved for the
"masting of His Majesty's navy," were felled now by hardy yeomen who
owed allegiance to no earthly king, and, gathered into enormous rafts,
voyaged slowly down the lake, impelled by sail and sweep. They bore as
their burden barrels of potash that had been condensed from the ashes of
their slain brethren, whose giant trunks had burned away in grand
conflagrations that made midnight hills and vales and skies bright with
lurid flame. The crew of the raft lived on board, and the voyage, though
always slow, was pleasant and easy when the south wind filled the
bellying sail, wafting the ponderous craft past the shifting scene of
level shore, rocky headland, and green islands. In calms or adverse
winds, it was hard work to keep headway with the heavy sweeps, and the
voyage grew dangerous when storms arose, and the leviathan heaved and
surged on angry waves that threatened to sever its huge vertebrae and
cast it piecemeal to the savage rocks.
Sloops, schooners, and square-sailed Canada boats plied to and fro,
bearing that way cargoes of wheat and potash; this way, salt and
merchandise from over-seas. After midwinter, the turbulent lake became a
plain of ice, affording a highway for traffic in sleighs, long trains of
which fared to Montreal with loads of produce to exchange for goods or
coin.
The declaration of what was commonly called the land embargo in 1808,
cutting off this busy commerce, and barring western Vermont from its
most accessible market, caused great distress and dissatisfaction, and
gave rise to an extensive contraband trade.
The Collector of the District of Vermont wrote to Mr. Gallatin, United
States Secretary of the Treasury, that the law could not be enforced
without military aid. Upon this, President Jefferson issued a
proclamation, calling on the insurgents to disperse, and on all civil
and military officers to aid in quelling all disturbances.
There is nothing in the newspapers of the day or in official documents
to show any combination to oppose the law, and at a regularly called
town meeting the citizens of St. Albans, through their selectmen,
formally protested to the President "that no cause for such a
proclamation existed." Nevertheless, the militia of Franklin County were
called out by Governor Smith, a Republican, who had that year been
elected over Tichenor. The troops were assigned to duty at Windmill
Point in Alburgh, to prevent the passage of certain timber rafts, which,
however, got safely past the post in the night. For this the Franklin
County troops were unjustly blamed, and, to their great indignation,
were sent to their homes, while militia from Rutland County and a small
force of regulars were brought up to take their place.
The smugglers grew bold, plying their nefarious traffic by night in
armed bands of such strength that the revenue officers seldom ventured
to attack them. A notorious craft named the Black Snake had crept a few
miles up the Winooski with a cargo of contraband goods, when she was
seized by a party of militia. Twelve soldiers, under command of
Lieutenant Farrington, were detailed to take her to the lake. The
smugglers ambuscaded them, firing on them repeatedly from the
willow-screened bank with a wall-piece charged with bullets, slugs, and
buckshot, killing three of the party and wounding the lieutenant. The
remainder of the militia hurried to the rescue of their comrades, and
succeeded in taking eight of the smugglers, while two escaped who were
afterwards captured. At a special term of the Supreme Court one of them
was sentenced to death,[94] and three to ten years' imprisonment, after
first standing in the pillory, and two of the smugglers to receive fifty
lashes each.
The temper of both parties grew hotter under the existing conditions,
but expended itself in violent language, and there was no further
resistance to the laws. The Federalist party gained sufficient strength
to reelect Governor Tichenor at the ensuing election, but in the
following year the Republicans elected their candidate, Jonas Galusha,
who was continued in the office four years.
FOOTNOTES:
[93] _Vermont Journal_, October 18, 1791.
[94] This was the first instance of capital punishment since the
organization of the State.