EARLY LIFE, HABITS OF THOUGHT, AND RELIGIOUS TENDENCIES.
The life of Allen may be divided into four periods: the first
thirty-one years before he came to Vermont (1738-1769), the six years
in Vermont before his captivity (1769-1775), the two years and eight
months of captivity (1775-1778), and the eleven years in Vermont
after his captivity (1778-1789).
When he was two years old the family moved into Cornwall. There
his brothers and sisters were born, there his father died, there
Ethan lived until he was twenty-four years old. When seventeen he
was fitting for college with the Rev. Mr. Lee, of Salisbury. His
father's death put an end to his studies. This was in 1755, when the
French and Indian war was raging along Lakes George and Champlain, a
war which lasted until Allen's twenty-third year. Some of the early
settlers of Vermont, Samuel Robinson, Joseph Bowker, and others,
took part in this war. Not so Allen. There is no intimation that
he hungered for a soldier's life in his youth. His usual means of
earning a livelihood for himself and his widowed mother's family is
supposed to have been agriculture.
William Cothrens, in his "History of Ancient Woodbury," tells us
that in January, 1762, Allen, with three others, entered into the
iron business in Salisbury, Connecticut, and built a furnace. In
June of that year he returned to Roxbury, and married Mary Brownson,
a maiden five years older than himself. The marriage fee was four
shillings, or sixty-seven cents. By this wife he had five children:
one son, who died at the age of eleven, while Ethan was a captive,
and four daughters. Two died unmarried; one married Eleazer W. Keyes,
of Burlington; the other married the Hon. Samuel Hitchcock, of
Burlington, and was the mother of General Ethan Allen Hitchcock, U.
S. A.
Allen resided with his family first at Salisbury and afterward at
Sheffield, the southwest corner town of Massachusetts. For six miles
the boundary line of the two states is the boundary line of the two
towns. In these towns the families of Ethan Allen and his brothers
and sisters lived many years. Two years after moving to Salisbury
he bought two and a half acres, or one-sixteenth part of a tract of
land on Mine Hill, an elevation of 350 feet in Roxbury, containing,
it is said, the most remarkable deposit of spathic iron ore in the
United States. Immense sums of money were expended in vain attempts
to work it as a silver mine. Two years after Allen began his Vermont
life he still owned land in Judea Society, a part of the present town
of Washington. The details and financial results of these business
undertakings are not furnished us. They indicate enterprise, if
nothing more. Carrying on a farm, casting iron ware, and working a
mine, not military affairs, seem to have been the avenues wherein
Allen developed his executive ability during his early manhood.
What were his educational facilities, his social privileges, and
his religious views during this formative period of his life? Ira
Allen, in 1795, writes to Dr. S. Williams, the early historian of
Vermont, that when his father, Joseph Allen, died, his brother Ethan
was preparing for college, and that the death of his father obliged
Ethan to discontinue his classical studies. Mr. Jehial Johns, of
Huntington, told the Rev. Zadock Thompson that he knew Ethan Allen in
Connecticut, and was very certain that Allen spent some time studying
with the Rev. Mr. Lee, of Salisbury, with the view of fitting himself
for college. The widow of Judge Samuel Hitchcock, of Burlington,
told Mr. Thompson that Ethan's attendance at school did not exceed
three months. Ira Allen writes General Haldimand in July, 1781, that
his brother Ethan has resigned his Brigadier-Generalship in the
Vermont militia, and "returned to his old studies, philosophy." To
what period in Ethan's life does the phrase "old studies" refer? It
could not be his life after the captivity, during his five years'
collisions with the Yorkers, but the period we are now considering.
Heman Allen's widow, when Mrs. Wadhams, told Zadock Thompson that one
summer when he was residing in her house he passed almost all the
time in writing. She did not know what was the subject of his study,
but on one occasion she called him to dinner, and he said he was very
sorry she had called him so soon, for he had "got clear up into the
upper regions." Allen himself says:
In my youth I was much disposed to contemplation, and at my
commencement in manhood I committed to manuscript such sentiments
or arguments as appeared most consonant to reason, lest through
the debility of memory, my improvement should have been less
gradual. This method of scribbling I practised for many years,
from which I experienced great advantages in the progression
of learning and knowledge; the more so as I was deficient in
education and had to acquire the knowledge of grammar and
language, as well as the art of reasoning, principally from a
studious application to it; which after all, I am sensible, lays
me under disadvantages, particularly in matters of composition;
however, to remedy this defect I have substituted the most
unwearied pains.... Ever since I arrived at the state of manhood
and acquainted myself with the general history of mankind, I have
felt a sincere passion for liberty. The history of nations doomed
to perpetual slavery in consequence of yielding up to tyrants
their natural-born liberties, I read with a sort of philosophical
horror.
In Allen's youth great revivals were inaugurated, organized, and
continued mainly by the preaching of Whitefield, who roused and
electrified audiences of several thousands, as men have rarely been
moved since the days of Peter the Hermit. Even Franklin, Bolingbroke,
and Chesterfield were fascinated by him. As for Allen, baptized
in his infancy, in the days when no Sabbath-school blessed the
race, when the Westminster Catechism and Watts' Hymns were in use
throughout New England (Isaac Watts died when Allen was eleven years
old), living in and near northwest Connecticut in as democratic and
religious community as the world had ever seen, reading none of
the books of the Deists, he was fond of discussion and delighted
in writing out his arguments. Having been brought up an Armenian
Christian, in contradistinction to a Calvinistic Christian, his
views in early manhood began to change. One picture of this gradual
evolution he gives us in the following description:
The doctrine of imputation according to the Christian scheme
consists of two parts. First, of imputation of the apostasy of
Adam and Eve to their posterity, commonly called original sin;
and secondly, of the imputation of the merits or righteousness
of Christ, who in Scripture is called the second Adam to mankind
or to the elect. This is a concise definition of the doctrine,
and which will undoubtedly be admitted to be a just one by every
denomination of men who are acquainted with Christianity, whether
they adhere to it or not.
I therefore proceed to illustrate and explain the doctrine by
transcribing a short but very pertinent conversation which in
the early days of my manhood I had with a Calvinistic divine; but
previously remark that I was educated in what are commonly called
the Armenian principles; and among other tenets to reject the
doctrine of original sin; this was the point at issue between the
clergyman and me. In my turn I opposed the doctrine of original
sin with philosophical reasonings, and as I thought had confuted
the doctrine. The Reverend gentleman heard me through patiently:
and with candor replied:
"Your metaphysical reasonings are not to the purpose, inasmuch
as you are a Christian and hope and expect to be saved by the
imputed righteousness of Christ to you; for you may as well be
imputedly sinful as imputedly righteous. Nay," said he, "if you
hold to the doctrine of satisfaction and atonement by Christ,
by so doing you presuppose the doctrine of apostasy or original
sin to be in fact true;" for, said he, "if mankind were not in
a ruined and condemned state by nature, there could have been
no need of a Redeemer; but each individual of them would have
been accountable to his Creator and Judge, upon the basis of
his own moral agency. Further observing that upon philosophical
principles it was difficult to account for the doctrine of
original sin, or of original righteousness; yet as they were
plain, fundamental doctrines of the Christian faith we ought to
assent to the truth of them; and that from the divine authority
of revelation. Notwithstanding," said he, "if you will give me
a philosophical explanation of original imputed righteousness,
which you profess to believe and expect salvation by, then I will
return you a philosophical explanation of original sin; for it
is plain," said he, "that your objections lie with equal weight
against original imputed righteousness, as against original
imputed sin."
Upon which I had the candor to acknowledge to the worthy
ecclesiastic, that upon the Christian plan I perceived the
argument had clearly terminated against me. For at that time
I dared not to distrust the infallibility of revelation; much
more to dispute it. However, this conversation was uppermost
in my mind for several months after; and after many painful
searches and researches after the truth, respecting the doctrine
of imputation, resolved at all events to abide the decision of
rational argument in the premises; and on a full examination of
both parts of the doctrine, rejected the whole; for on a fair
scrutiny, I found that I must concede to it entirely or not at
all; or else believe inconsistently as the clergyman had argued.
He relates also a change from his juvenile views of biblical history:
When I was a boy, by one means or other, I had conceived a very
bad opinion of Pharaoh; he seemed to me to be a cruel, despotic
prince; he would not give the Israelites straw, but nevertheless,
demanded of them the full tale of brick; for a time he opposed
God Almighty; but was at last luckily drowned in the Red Sea; at
which event, with other good Christians, I rejoiced, and even
exulted at the overthrow of the base and wicked tyrant. But after
a few years of maturity and examination of the history of that
monarch given by Moses, with the before recited remarks of the
apostle, I conceived a more favorable opinion of him; inasmuch as
we are told that God raised him up and hardened his heart, and
predestinated his reign, his wickedness, and his overthrow.
In 1782 he says:
In the circle of my acquaintance (which has not been small), I
have generally been denominated a Deist, the reality of which I
never disputed; being conscious I am no Christian, except mere
infant baptism makes me one; and as to being a Deist, I know not,
strictly speaking, whether I am one or not, for I have never read
their writings.
We are told that Allen in his early life was very intimate with
Dr. Thomas Young, the man who supplied the state with its name,
"Vermont," in April, 1777, and who so strongly encouraged it to
assert its independence. One of the most noted characteristics of
Ethan, his fondness for the society of able men, is illustrated in
his association with Young.
Dr. Young, who was a distinguished citizen of Philadelphia, was on
most of the Whig committees in Boston, before the Revolution, with
James Otis, Samuel Adams, Joseph Warren, and others. He and Adams
addressed the great public meeting on the day "when Boston harbor was
black with unexpected tea." He was a neighbor of Allen, living in the
Oblong, in Dutchess County, while Allen lived in Salisbury. Afterward
he lived in Albany, and died in Philadelphia in the third year of
Allen's captivity. He was influential in causing Vermont to adopt the
constitution of Pennsylvania.
The Oblong, Salisbury and vicinity, abounded in free thinkers. Young
and Allen opposed President Edwards' famous theological tenets, the
latter spending much time in Young's house, and it was generally
understood that they were preparing for publication a book in support
of sceptical principles; the two agreeing that the one that outlived
the other should publish it. Allen, on going to Vermont, left his
manuscripts with Young, and on his release from captivity after
Young's death obtained from the latter's family, who had gone back to
Dutchess County, both his own and Young's manuscripts, and these were
the originals of his "Oracles of Reason."