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ETHAN ALLEN
The Robin Hood of Vermont
BY
HENRY HALL
[Illustration: RUINS OF TICONDEROGA]
NEW YORK
D. APPLETON AND COMPANY
1892
COPYRIGHT, 1892,
BY D. APPLETON AND COMPANY.
PREFACE.
At the time of the death of Mr. Henry Hall, in 1889, the manuscript
for this volume consisted of finished fragments and many notes. It
was left in the hands of his daughters to complete. The purpose of
the author was to make a fuller life of Allen than has been written,
and singling him from that cluster of sturdy patriots in the New
Hampshire Grants, to make plain the vivid personality of a Vermont
hero to the younger generations. Mr. Hall's well-known habit of
accuracy and painstaking investigation must be the guaranty that this
"Life" is worthy of a place among the volumes of the history of our
nation.
HENRIETTA HALL BOARDMAN.
CONTENTS.
CHAPTER I.
PAGE
AN ACCOUNT OF ALLEN'S FAMILY, 1
CHAPTER II.
EARLY LIFE, HABITS OF THOUGHT, AND RELIGIOUS TENDENCIES, 12
CHAPTER III.
REMOVAL TO VERMONT.--THE NEW HAMPSHIRE GRANTS, 22
CHAPTER IV.
ALLEN AND THE GREEN MOUNTAIN BOYS.--NEGOTIATIONS BETWEEN NEW YORK
AND THE NEW HAMPSHIRE GRANTS, 32
CHAPTER V.
THE RAID UPON COLONEL REID'S SETTLERS.--ALLEN'S OUTLAWRY.--CREAN
BRUSH.--PHILIP SKENE, 46
CHAPTER VI.
PREPARATIONS TO CAPTURE TICONDEROGA.--DIARY OF EDWARD
MOTT.--EXPEDITIONS PLANNED.--BENEDICT ARNOLD.--GERSHOM BEACH, 61
CHAPTER VII.
CAPTURE OF TICONDEROGA, 73
CHAPTER VIII.
ALLEN'S LETTERS TO THE CONTINENTAL CONGRESS, TO THE NEW YORK
PROVINCIAL CONGRESS, AND TO THE MASSACHUSETTS CONGRESS, 81
CHAPTER IX.
ALLEN'S LETTERS TO THE MONTREAL MERCHANTS, TO THE INDIANS IN
CANADA, AND TO THE CANADIANS.--JOHN BROWN, 89
CHAPTER X.
WARNER ELECTED COLONEL OF THE GREEN MOUNTAIN BOYS.--ALLEN'S
LETTER TO GOVERNOR TRUMBULL.--CORRESPONDENCE IN REGARD TO THE
INVASION OF CANADA.--ATTACK ON MONTREAL.--DEFEAT AND
CAPTURE.--WARNER'S REPORT, 98
CHAPTER XI.
ALLEN'S NARRATIVE.--ATTACK ON MONTREAL.--DEFEAT AND
SURRENDER.--BRUTAL TREATMENT.--ARRIVAL IN ENGLAND.--DEBATES IN
PARLIAMENT, 110
CHAPTER XII.
LIFE IN PENDENNIS CASTLE.--LORD NORTH.--ON BOARD THE
"SOLEBAY."--ATTENTIONS RECEIVED IN IRELAND AND MADEIRA, 128
CHAPTER XIII.
RENDEZVOUS AT CAPE FEAR.--SICKNESS.--HALIFAX JAIL.--LETTER TO
GENERAL MASSEY.--VOYAGE TO NEW YORK.--ON PAROLE, 144
CHAPTER XIV.
RELEASE FROM PRISON.--WITH WASHINGTON AT VALLEY FORGE.--THE
HALDIMAND CORRESPONDENCE, 162
CHAPTER XV.
VERMONT'S TREATMENT BY CONGRESS.--ALLEN'S LETTERS TO COLONEL
WEBSTER AND TO CONGRESS.--REASONS FOR BELIEVING ALLEN A PATRIOT, 173
CHAPTER XVI.
ALLEN WITH GATES.--AT BENNINGTON.--DAVID REDDING.--REPLY TO
CLINTON.--EMBASSIES TO CONGRESS.--COMPLAINT AGAINST BROTHER
LEVI.--ALLEN IN COURT, 183
CHAPTER XVII.
ALLEN AT GUILFORD.--"ORACLES OF REASON."--JOHN STARK.--ST. JOHN
DE CRÈVECŒUR.--HONORS TO ALLEN.--SHAY'S REBELLION.--SECOND
MARRIAGE, 191
CHAPTER XVIII.
DEATH.--CIVILIZATION IN ALLEN'S TIME.--ESTIMATES OF
ALLEN.--RELIGIOUS FEELING IN VERMONT.--MONUMENTS, 198
ETHAN ALLEN.
CHAPTER I.
AN ACCOUNT OF HIS FAMILY.
Ethan Allen is the Robin Hood of Vermont. As Robin Hood's life was
an Anglo-Saxon protest against Norman despotism, so Allen's life was
a protest against domestic robbery and foreign tyranny. As Sherwood
Forest was the rendezvous of the gallant and chivalrous Robin Hood,
so the Green Mountains were the home of the dauntless and high-minded
Ethan Allen. As Robin Hood, in Scott's "Ivanhoe," so does Allen,
in Thompson's "Green Mountain Boys," win our admiration. Although
never a citizen of the United States, he is one of the heroes of
the state and the nation; one of those whose names the people will
not willingly let die. History and tradition, song and story,
sculpture, engraving, and photography alike blazon his memory from
ocean to ocean. The librarian of the great library at Worcester,
Massachusetts, told Colonel Higginson that the book most read was
Daniel P. Thompson's "Green Mountain Boys." Already one centennial
celebration of the capture of Ticonderoga has been celebrated. Who
can tell how many future anniversaries of that capture our nation
will live to see! Another reason for refreshing our memories with
the history of Allen is the bitterness with which he is attacked.
He has been accused of ignorance, weakness of mind, cowardice,
infidelity, and atheism. Among his assailants have been the president
of a college, a clergyman, editors, contributors to magazines and
newspapers, and even a local historian among a variety of writers of
greater or less prominence. If Vermont is careful of her own fame,
well does it become the people to know whether Ethan Allen was a hero
or a humbug.
Arnold calls history the vast Mississippi of falsehood. The untruths
that have been published about Allen during the last hundred and
fifteen years might not fill and overflow the Ohio branch of such
a Mississippi, but they would make a lively rivulet run until
it was dammed by its own silt. The late Benjamin Disraeli, Lord
Beaconsfield, fought a duel with Daniel O'Connell, because O'Connell
declared it to be his belief that Disraeli was a lineal descendant
of the impenitent thief on the Cross. Perhaps the libellers of Allen
are descended from the Yorkers whom he stamped so ignominiously with
the beech seal. The fierce light of publicity perhaps never beat upon
a throne more sharply than for more than a hundred years it has beat
upon Ethan Allen. His patriotism, courage, religious belief, and
general character have been travestied and caricatured until now the
real man has to be dug up from heaps of untruthful rubbish, as the
peerless Apollo Belvidere was dug in the days of Columbus from the
ruins of classic Antium.
Discrepancies exist even in regard to his age. On the stone tablet
over his grave his age is given as fifty years. Thompson said his
age was fifty-two. At the unveiling of his statue, he was called
thirty-eight years old when Ticonderoga was taken. These three
statements are erroneous, and, strange to say, Burlington is
responsible for them all, Burlington, the Athens of Vermont, the
town wherein rest his ashes, the town wherein most of the last two
years of his life were passed, and the town that has done most to
honor his memory.
However humiliating it may be to state pride, it is probable that the
Allens, centuries ago, were no more respectable than the ancestors
of Queen Victoria and the oldest British peers. The different ways
of spelling the name, Alleyn, Alain, Allein, and Allen, seem to
indicate a Norman origin. George Allen, professor in the University
of Pennsylvania, says that Alain had command of the rear of William
the Conqueror's army at the battle of Hastings in 1066.
Joseph Allen, the father of Ethan, comes to the surface of history
about the year 1720, one year after the death of Addison and the
first publication of "Robinson Crusoe," in the town of Coventry, in
Eastern Connecticut, twenty miles east of Hartford. When he first
appears to us he is a minor and an orphan. His widowed mother, Mercy,
has several children, one of them of age. Their first recorded act is
emigration fifty miles westward to Litchfield, famous for its scenery
and ancient elms, located between the Naugatuck and the Shepaug
rivers, on the Green and Taconic mountain ranges; famous also as the
place where the first American ladies' seminary was located, and
most famous of all for its renowned law-school, begun over a century
ago by Judge Tapping Reeve and continued by Judge James Gould. Chief
Justice John Pierpoint and United States Senator S. S. Phelps were
among its notable pupils. The widow, Mercy Allen, died in Litchfield,
February 5, 1728. Her son Joseph bought one-third of her real estate.
Within five years he sold two tracts, of 100 acres each, and fourteen
years after his mother's death he sold the residue as wild land. On
March 11, 1737, Joseph Allen was married to Mary Baker, daughter of
John Baker, of Woodbury, sister of Remember Baker, who was father
of the Remember Baker that came to Vermont. Thus Ethan Allen and
Remember Baker were cousins.
Ethan Allen was born January 10, 1737, and died February 21, 1789,
and consequently he has been said to have been fifty-two years, one
month and two days old. In fact, he was fifty-one years, one month
and two days old. The year 1737 terminated March 24. Had it closed
December 31, Allen would have been born in 1738. The first day of the
year was March 25 until 1752 in England and her colonies. In 1751 the
British Parliament changed New Year's Day from March 25 to January
1. The year 1751 had no January, no February, and only seven days of
March. Allen was thirteen years old in 1750, and was fourteen years
old in 1752.
The year 1738 gave birth to three honest men--Ethan Allen, George
III., and Benjamin West. In 1738 George Washington was six years
old, John Adams three years old, John Stark ten years old, Israel
Putnam twenty years old. Seth Warner and Jefferson were born five
years later. In that year no claim had ever been made to Vermont
by New York or New Hampshire. No one had ever questioned the right
of Massachusetts to the English part of Vermont. New Hampshire was
bounded on the west by the Merrimac. Colden, the surveyor-general
of New York, in an official report bounded New York on the east by
Connecticut and Massachusetts, on the north by Lake Ontario and
Canada; Canada occupying Crown Point and Chimney Point.
If by waving a magician's wand the English-American colonies on
the Atlantic slope, as they existed in 1738, could pass before us,
wherein would the tableau differ from that of to-day? West of the
Alleghanies there were the Indians and the French. On the north were
50,000 prosperous French, farmers chiefly along the valley of the St.
Lawrence from Montreal to Quebec. On the east, Acadie, including Nova
Scotia, New Brunswick, and a part of Maine, was Scotch. Florida was
Spanish. From Georgia to Maine were 1,500,000 English-Americans and
400,000 African-Americans. The colony of New York had a population
of 60,100. New Hampshire, consisting of a few thousand settlers,
was located north and east of the Merrimac, and had a legislature
of its own, but no governor. Massachusetts, with its charters from
James I. and Charles I., claimed the country to the Pacific Ocean,
and exercised ownership between the Merrimac and Connecticut and
west of the Connecticut, without a breath of opposition from any
mortal. Massachusetts had sold land as her own which she found to be
in Connecticut, and she paid that state for it by granting her many
thousand acres in three of the southeastern townships of Vermont.
She built and sustained a fort in Brattleboro', kept a garrison there
with a salaried chaplain, salaried resident Indian commissioner, and
she established a store supplied with provisions, groceries, and
goods suitable for trade with frontiersmen and the Indians of Canada.
Bartering was actively carried on along the Connecticut River, Black
River, Otter Creek, and Lake Champlain. In 1737 a solemn ratification
of the old treaty occurred there; speeches were made, presents given,
and the healths of George II. and Governor Belcher, of Massachusetts,
were duly drunk. There was no Anglo-Saxon settlement in Vermont
outside of Brattleboro'. In Pownal were a few families of Dutch
squatters. The Indian village of St. Francis, midway between Montreal
and Quebec, peopled partly by New England refugees from King Philip's
war of 1676, exercised supreme control over northeastern Vermont.
In all the land were only three colleges: Harvard, one hundred and
two years old, Yale, thirty-seven, and William and Mary, forty-five.
Ethan Allen had five brothers, Heman, Heber, Levi, Zimri, and Ira,
and two sisters, Lydia and Lucy. Of all our early heroes, few glide
before us with a statelier step or more beneficent mien than Heman
Allen, the oldest brother of Ethan. Born in Cornwall, Connecticut,
October 15, 1740, dying in Salisbury, Connecticut, May 18, 1778, his
life of thirty-seven and a half years was like that of the Chevalier
Bayard, without fear and without reproach. A man of affairs, a
merchant and a soldier, a politician and a land-owner, a diplomat and
a statesman, he was capable, intelligent, honest, earnest, and true.
But fifteen years old when his father died, he was early engaged in
trade at Salisbury. His home became the home of his widowed mother
and her large family. Salisbury was his home and probably his legal
residence, although he represented Rutland and Colchester in the
Vermont Conventions, and was sent to Congress by Dorset.
Heber was the first town clerk of Poultney.
Ira was able, shrewd, and gentlemanly; a land surveyor and
speculator, a lieutenant in Warner's regiment, a member of all the
conventions of 1776 and 1777, of the Councils of Safety and of
the State Council; state treasurer, surveyor-general, author of a
"History of Vermont", and of various official papers and political
pamphlets. In 1796 he bought, in France, twenty-four brass cannon
and twenty thousand muskets, ostensibly for the Vermont militia,
which were seized by the English. After a lawsuit of seven or eight
years he regained them, but the expense beggared him. He died in
Philadelphia, January 7, 1814, aged sixty-three years.
Levi Allen joined in the expedition to capture Ticonderoga, became
Tory, and was complained of by his brother Ethan as follows:
BENNINGTON COUNTY, _ss._:
ARLINGTON, 9 January, 1779.
To the Hon. the Court of Confiscation, comes Col. Ethan Allen,
in the name of the freemen of the state, and complaint makes
that Levi Allen, late of Salisbury in Connecticut, is of Tory
principles and holds in fee sundry tracts and parcels of land
in this State. The said Levi, has been detected in endeavoring
to supply the enemy on Long Island; and in attempting to
circulate counterfeit continental money, and is guilty of holding
treasonable correspondence with the enemy under cover of doing
favors to me when a prisoner at New York and Long Island; and in
talking and using influence in favor of the enemy, associating
with inimical persons to this country, and with them monopolizing
the necessaries of life; in endeavoring to lessen the credit
of the continental currency, and in particular hath exerted
himself in the most fallacious manner to injure the property and
character of some of the most zealous friends to the independence
of the U. S. and of this State likewise: all which inimical
conduct is against the peace and dignity of the freemen of this
State. I therefore pray the Hon. Court to take the matter under
their consideration and make confiscation of the estate of said
Levi before mentioned, according to the laws and customs of this
State, in such case made and provided.
ETHAN ALLEN.
Levi died while in jail, for debt, at Burlington, Vermont, in 1801.
Zimri lived and died in Sheffield.
Lydia married a Mr. Finch, and lived and died in Goshen, Connecticut.
Lucy married a Dr. Beebee, and lived and died in Sheffield.