THE STORY OF THE STATES EDITED BY ELBKIDGE S BROOKS THE STORY OF THE STATES .ilE STORY OF VERMONT BY JOHN L' HEATON Illustratiotis by L J Bridgjnan BOS TO: D LOTHROP COMPANY WASHINGTON OPPOSITE BROMFIELD STREET Copyright, 1S89, BY D. LoTHROP Company. PREFACE. If that land only is happy which has no history, then has Ver- mont been most unfortunate. In the brief period since white men first made their homes within sight of the Green Mountains, their lives have been menaced by savages, their lands coveted by robbers clothed with law and power, their families driven forth in terror when invading armies came among them, while the decisive battles of three great wars were fought on the lake of their glowing sunsets. Their State was the first ad- mitted to the Union, after a forty years' struggle for its rights which happily has had no parallel in this country. And when, years later, slavery was crushed and the Union saved in the cruel war whose wounds time has not yet healed, no soldiers of the North won so great glory or paid for it so heavy a price in suffering and in loss as did the grandsons of the Green Mountain Boys. Poets, romancists and historians who have caught their in- spiration from Vermont's annals have confined their attention to the eighteenth century, as if after those years of storm there was no more to tell. But tales of war are not the only ones worth hearing. The record of a century of Statehood, with its peaceful victories and industrial accomplishments, the life of its people and the part they have played in the vaster history of the Republic — this as well as the old stirring days of war and outlawry, must be studied if one would know what claim the Fourteenth State has upon the gratitude and respect of the country. PREFACE. To tell the story of the State's early trials — which can never be too often rehearsed lest her sons should forget to be grateful for their ancestry \ to add to this an account of the more recent events that have escaped the attention they de- serve ; and to include so far as possible in this brief recital the growth of arts and learning, the development of industry and the evolution of laws, customs and institutions to meet the needs of a gracious, temperate and valiant people — such has been the purpose of the writer. Not only to the people of Vermont, but to the citizens of every state in our broad land, is the story of the Green Mountain State offered as a help, an inspiration and a record of sturdy endeavor. ^^-^^t^-^'Vv-^-Xv. 'N, . I '>~-0_c.-A^-^ CONTENTS. CHAPTER I. THE OLD WARS II 1609-1763 CHAPTER II. THE GREEN MOUNTAIN BOYS 38 1750-1775- CHAPTER III. THE FIGHT FOR LIBERTY 63 1775-1783- CHAPTER IV. BUILDING THE STATE gi 1776-1791. CHAPTER V. THE PARTIES DIVIDE . . . . . . . II5 T798-1824. CHAPTER VI. HOMESPUN FOLK . . . . . 1825. 139 CHAPTER VII. THE GREAT WEST ....... 163 1825-1850. CONTENTS. CHAPTER VIII. HOME HAPPENINGS .... 183O-1850. CHAPTER IX. THE TEMPERANCE REFORM 1844-1888. SINCE THE WAR CHAPTER XII. 1865-1889. 184 208 CHAPTER X. THE ANTI-SLAVERY CRUSADE 223 1840-1860. CHAPTER XI. IN THE FIELD 242 1861-1865. 269 THE CHRONOLOGICAL STORY 299 THE people's COVENANT 309 BOOKS RELATING TO VERMONT 314 INDEX 317 ILLUSTRATIONS. Page. Green Mountain Boys on the march ..... Frontis. " Slowly and cautiously they floated on." Initial . . . . ii " The first white man " ......... 15 The service of the captives ........ 23 " It is the bell " 31 The "beech seal." Initial ........ 38 Dr. Adams's stool of repentance ....... 42 The outlaw's proclamation ........ 49 The judges judged ......... 57 " Molly Stark " cannon. I7iitial ....... 63 Parson Allen's appeal ......... 67 In hiding from the Hessians ........ 75 Allen and Runnals .......... 85 A Hessian. Initial ......... 91 Ethan Allen explains the delay ....... 95 An old-time election ......... loi Ethan Allen monument, Burlington ....... 109 Macdonough's medal. Initial . . . . . . . 1 1 ^ In the Green Mountains. Mt. Mansfield . . . . . 119 The prophecy of victory . . . . . . . . 125 Statue of Lafayette, Burlington, Vt. . . . . . . 133 The spinning-wheel. Initial . . . . . . . . 139 The singing-school . . . . . . . . . . 143 At the tavern An old-fashioned hand-loom 151 Borrowing fire ........... icj A "Prairie Schooner." Initial ....... 163 A quilting bee ........... 167 The railway coach of our fathers ....... 173 179 The State House. Initial ........ 184 Lake Memphremagog ......... 1S8 Sugar-making: the critical moment ...... 195 ILL U STRATI ONS. " When every man was his own cobbler" An old-time tipple. Initial Signing the pledge .... A raid on the rumseller A Bloomer ..... Eagle Bay, Lake Champlain. Initial Dinah Morris's certificate of freedom A base-ball club volunteering for service In a marble quarry .... "lS6l." Initial .... The sleeping sentry The Vermonters at Gettysburg : Stannard For the soldiers .... At a creamery. Initial University of Vermont On Lake Champlain Ice yachting on Lake Champlain 's Charge Page. 203 20S 211 215 219 223 227 233 239 242 246 253 263 269 273 281 293 THE STORY OF VERMONT CHAPTER I. THE OLD WARS, UST as the sun was sinking in the west one summer afternoon 1 o n or ao^o a band of Indians paddled their canoes along the edge of a beautiful lake in the heart of the woods. Slowly and cautiously they floated on, stealing their silent way under the shelter of the shore as if expecting the approach of an enemy. Yet though their course was cautiously chosen, there was less of apprehension than of curiosity in the gaze with which they scanned the horizon to the northward ; for this was a strong war party of tried and chosen braves, who bore themselves with the air of men used to victory. 12 THE OLD WARS. The scene was one of wild and singular beauty. On either hand the shore rose, now abruptly, now with gentler slopes leading the eye back from the water's edo'e, into rounded mountains covered to their very tops with the virgin forest save where the glistening walls of cliffs peeped through the foliage. The shore was irregular, curving out at times into points and headlands and partly shutting off the view where, to north and south, yet more blue water gleamed in the distance. The lake's surface mirrored many a leaning tree or jutting crag or clinging wreath of ivy; but nowhere on all its surface did it give back the reflection of any human habitation. Nor path, nor house, nor clear- ing, nor rising film of smoke met the traveler's eye. But for the little fleet in the foreground, the wilderness was apparently unseen and untenanted by any human soul. The sun had passed behind the western mount- ains, the cool shadows of evenino- were beo-innino- to gather, when suddenly another fleet of canoes swept round a point of land ahead and came into full view. There was a moment of indecision and then the new-comers swerved outward from their course and retreated an arrow's flight from the shore; the first party was already landing in hot haste, makino- the woodland echoes rino- with sav- age yells of defiance. THE OLD WARS. 1 3 The day was too far spent to fight the battle for which both sides were eager ; the night was passed in singing the war songs of their tribes, in prepar- ing their weapons for the fray which would begin with the dawn, and in shouting threats and boasts from fleet to shore now scarce a bow-shot apart. When the morning broke, the second band secured their canoes upon the shelving beach and advanced to meet the foe. During the night the latter had been busily at work with their rude stone axes and had built from slender poles held together with twisted withes a rude palisade to serve as a slight defence in case of need. Yet they hardly seemed to require such means of shelter, for they outnum- bered their assailants three to one ; scornino^ to take refuge within the enclosure, they eagerly pressed forward on the level space without. And then a strange thing happened. For out of the canoes of the smaller party, where till now they had remained unseen, stepped three mysterious figures clad, each, from head to foot in steel. The sun rising over the lake shone full on their bur- nished cuirasses and tipped their helmet crests with dazzling light. One who seemed the leader boldly advanced till he stood midway between the lines, carrying his arquebuse at rest ; the other two, similarly armed, took up their position on the flank of the astonished savages. Never before had the 14 THE OLD WARS. red-men looked upon such a sight as the three steel- clad warriors ; but their superstitious awe of the strangers quickly deepened into abject terror when they saw the fire flash from the leveled arquebuses and heard the thunder of their discharge, and when one after another of their chiefs and leaders fell be- fore the unseen missiles. Of what use was resist- ance against these mysterious visitors who wielded the lightnings to strike dead those who dared oppose them and upon whose charmed bodies arrows could not prevail ? It was not long before the frightened braves fled in the utmost confusion, leaving many of their number dead upon the shore, and others as prisoners bound for the torture. Such was the battle which, on the thirtieth of July, 1609, Samuel de Champlain, Lieutenant-Gov- ernor of New France, waged with the Iroquois upon the western shore of the lake which bears his name. ThouQ-h but three white men and less than three hundred Indians were engaged in it; though for months Europe did not hear of It and even then did not deem it of much consequence in compari- son with more engrossing warfare nearer home, it is no exao-o-eration to call it one of the world's decisive engagements, upon whose issue the fate of a continent may have rested. For if France, whose power in America Champlain represented, was then the foremost nation in Europe, the Iro- THE OLD WARS. 15 quois were no less prominent among the savage tribes of the New World. They held the mountain passes which were the key to the continent. They were the acknowledged masters of the route which led by Lake Champlain and the Hudson from the St. Lawrence to the sea, dividing the Eastern from the Alleghany tribes — that route which was then THE FIRST WHITE MAN. the scene of bloody warfare between Indian and Indian and which was to witness even more deadly conflict between white man and red, Frenchman and Englishman, Tory and Colonist. By their strength, their military sagacity and their com- manding position they had almost silenced oppo- 1 6 THE OLD WARS. sition to their sway over a region extending from the lakes to the sea and from the St. Lawrence to the Chesapeake. Their friendship would have been invaluable to France in the long struggle which followed for the possession of the western world. Their resentment was implacable and dearly did the French pay for having incurred it. But all this Champlain, fresh from the gay courts of Europe and ignorant of forest politics, could not be expected to know. He had come sailing up the St. Lawrence River from far-away France. He had made firm friends of the Indians of Huron or Mon- tagnais blood and willingly went at their request to chastise the h"oquois who had driven them from their ancient hunting-grounds and even now pursued them with relentless hostility. He was the first white man who ever saw what is now the State of Vermont, and his published narrative of his advent- ures contains the best account which we possess of that commonwealth as it existed nearly three hundred years ago. Champlain ascended the Sorel River to the falls in his shallop and then pressed on with sixty Indians and twenty-four light bark canoes. He passed from the river into the lake, whose beauty awoke in him, as it still does in each fresh ob- server, delight and admiration. " There are many pretty islands here," he says, "low and containing THE OLD WARS. IJ very fine woods and meadows with abundance of fowl and such animals of the chase as stags, fallow deer, fawns, roebucks, bears and others which go from the mainland to the islands. We captured a large number of these animals. There are also many beavers, not only in this river, but also in numerous little ones that flow into it. These regions, although they are pleasant, are not in- habited by savages on account of their wars ; but they withdraw as far as possible from the rivers into the interior not to be suddenly surprised." Through this beautiful but desolate region Champlain with his Indian guides proceeded for some time, traveling southward from evening until well into the night; lying concealed by day the better to avoid surprise, and taking, constantly, keen note of his surroundings. He saw ahead of him the high peaks of the Adirondacks and on his left the lower hills of Vermont, The white eleam of the limestone rocks that tinged these latter heights he mistook for snow. But though Champlain was thus the first white man to see Vermont even he never set foot upon its soil. His mission upon the lake was war and not exploration, and for nearly its whole length he skirted the western bank until he found the Iroquois near Ticonderoga. And when the Mon- tagnais braves had chased the flying remnants of 1 8 THE OLD WARS. the defeated force to their hearts' content, it was still upon the New York shore that they camped for the night and recalled the ecstasies of combat in the savage delights of the torture. When the dusk of evening came the lurid light of the camp- fire fell upon a scene which must have seemed strange indeed to Christian e3'es. Champlain tells us that, when all was ready for the torture and an Iroquois captive was bound to the stake that the barbaric revel might begin, he was urged to take a torch and, as became a brave commander, taste first the joy of burning the poor victim's flesh. Till then he had never witnessed the full enormity of the tortures which the Indians practiced upon their captured enemies and, unable to bear the sight, he seized his arquebuse and shot the uncomplaining savage dead. All this happened in 1609, some weeks before Hendrik Hudson sailed up the North River to Albany and eleven years before the landing of the Pilgrims at Plymouth ; yet even before that early date France had entered upon her struggle with Great Britain and Spain for the possession of the New World, and her representative had nearly a century earlier claimed for the most Christian king an empire on its untrodden shores as large as all Europe, the boundaries and extent of which indeed were at the time unknown. THE OLD WARS. 1 9 It was in the year 1534 that Jacques Cartier, a bold sailor commissioned by the king of France to undertake the work of exploration, discovered partly by accident the bay of St. Lawrence and spent the brief Northern summer in exploring its shores. Returning the following year, he reached the mouth of the mighty river St. Lawrence. This he at first hoped might prove to be the long-looked-for west- ward channel to the East Indies, but the native dwellers along the river assured him that its water was fresh and that it came from inland seas, de- scending rapids in its course. Though somewhat disappointed by this infor- mation, Cartier persevered and by the end of October had reached the Indian village of Hoche- laga, which he rechristened Mount Royal, now Montreal, in honor of his king. He had been for the most part well treated by the Indians, though Donnacona, the great chief who had his headquarters at Quebec and lorded it over the tribes of the middle river, was opposed to his further explorations. The natives at Hochelaga were especially kind to the French adventurer. They showed him their village, a strongly fortified place with a single gate, and the " stones and peb- bles for the defence of it " which they had heaped up within. They supplied his ships with fresh stores of corn and fish. On the second day they 20 THE OLD WARS. led Cartier to the top of the hill and, looking out for miles around upon the dense forest, threaded here and there by streams narrowing in the dis- tance until they were lost to view, they told him of the country that lay beyond. Westward, they said, were great fresh water seas and a mighty river flowing through fair and rich regions to the ocean. To the north was a wilderness full of game and pierced by numerous rivers. Due south, follow- ing the smaller stream which lay before their eyes, was a lake shut in by hills. The great river of the Southwest was the Mississippi, the nearer lake was Lake Champlain, and all about them lay the land which Cartier had claimed for the king. Had the Indians known of Cartier's purpose, had they foreseen the anxieties and hardships in which the coming of the whites would involve their race, and the doom which was to be the end of all, they would not so kindly have received the first white men who ventured into their land. But not for many years thereafter were the Indians seriously troubled by French aggressions. It is true that Cartier and other captains came again to explore the northern waters, a little discouraged by the fact that they had found neither the passage to India nor any sign of precious metals; it is true that private enterprise supplemented the efforts of the Crown by sending every year small vessels filled THE OLD WARS. 21 with hardy seamen to prosecute the fisheries on the Newfoundland banks ; but it was not till well within the next century that the exploration of the regions lying about the St. Lawrence was con- tinued with much vigor or success. The genera- tion that had welcomed Cartier had vanished before the day of Champlain, and even the village of Hochelaga had utterly disappeared when he arrived upon its site. With the coming of Champlain the history of French conquest and exploration in America fairly begins. That brave and prudent commander made at the outset the fatal mistake of attacking the Iroquois instead of seeking to conciliate them. Had he adopted the latter course France might have occupied the continent so securely as to defy the efforts of the British to dislodge her. The Hudson and the Mohawk might have been hers as well as the St. Lawrence, the Great Lakes and the Upper Mississippi and its tributaries, and her armies might have hemmed the English colonies in upon the seacoast, thrown against them the full power of the Indian nations and finally left them not a foot- hold. But it was not to be expected that the haughty Iroquois would soon forgive or forget the intruders who had compassed their defeat before the very eyes of the despised Hurons and caused the song of victory to be raised by every tribe of 2 2 THE OLD WARS. Algonquin blood along the St. Lawrence and the lakes. It was not long before they were enabled to obtain firearms from the Dutch settlements about Albany, paying the thrifty burghers, we may be sure, dearly for them in peltry. Thus armed they menaced for many years the very existence of the French settlements. For the present, however, there was no fear of reprisals by way of Lake Champlain. The Canadian colonies passed through years of alternating pros- perity and adversity, gradually extending their grasp westward and gaining more and more influence wdth the tribes of Huron blood, but never succeedino- in placating the Iroquois. French missionaries and French explorers had threaded and mapped the great lakes and the sources of the Mississippi before it became necessary again to lead a war party down Lake Champlain. By 1665 the Iroquois had become so formidable and so threatened and harassed the feeble colonies alono- the St. Lawrence that two rcQ-iments were sent from France to reduce them. Courcelles, gov- ernor of Canada, made the mistake of sending south a winter expedition for this purpose. Unused to the rigors of the climate, the troops reached the frontier town of Schenectady half dead with cold and hunger and would have fallen an easy prey to the Indians had not a Dutch buroher named Arendt O ^4 ^ THE SERVICE OF THE CAPTIVES. THE OLD WARS. 25 Van Curler foiled their purpose by sending them on a wild-goose chase after other enemies who, he said, were advancing upon them. The Indians not only forgave Curler his trick, but thought so highly of him for that and other magnanimous deeds that for many years the governors of New York were called by them " Corlaer," even as they styled the French governors, after the days of Frontenac, " Onontio." Lake Champlain itself was long known as Corlaer's Lake, the worthy Dutchman having been drowned in its waters while on a trip to visit Courcelles in Canada. Two years later the French were enabled to make a peace with the h'oquois which lasted for twenty years ; this interval they busily employed in cement- ing their friendship with the forest folks. Despite their utmost effort, they made little progress in gaining the affections of the Iroquois, but their pioneers met with more marked favor among the Indians of other tribes. Alono- the whole leno-th of the chain of great lakes French missions were established, French priests baptized the red-men into the Christian church, French hunters, voyagcui^s and fur-traders took to themselves Indian wives and lived in comity with the people. Their interest in the moral welfare of the Indians was one secret of the French influence over them, the considerable number of intermarriages was another and still a 26 THE OLD WARS. third was the never-faihng politeness of the French diplomats. They carried into the forest all the arts and graces of the courts ; they treated the chiefs with the deference they imagined due to them ; they observed all the punctilios of Indian custom. They are said to have gone so far on some occa- sions as to sit naked in council after the Indian fashion. However this may be, they were certainly adepts in dealing with the Indians. The peace closed in 16S7 by another war so sud- den and so disastrous to the French colonies that Montreal was taken and burned and a thousand people put to death by the Indians. The province was on the verge of ruin when the arrival from France of Count Frontenac with a strong body of troops put the Indians again on the defensive. A treaty had scarcely been concluded when war broke out between France and Great Britain. The French colonies in Canada, though hardly recovered from their own danger, projected a winter raid on the settlements in New York. The raiders, following the bloody trail along Lake Champlain, fell upon Schenectady one bitter night in February, 1690, massacred sixty settlers and took prisoners twenty-seven of the Dutch burghers, who were now subjects of Great Britain, the New York prov- ince having passed under British control a quarter of a century earlier. So cold was the night that THE OLD WARS. 27 twenty-five of the fugitives from the scene of fire and slaughter reached Albany with limbs so badly frozen as to require amputation. It was a poor requital of Van Curler's kindness. This was not the only raid made upon the English settlements in those fierce old times. At Salmon Falls, New Hampshire, thirty persons were killed and many prisoners taken. At Dover twenty-three were killed. In all these expeditions the Indians and their French allies passed southward by way of the Sorel and Lake Champ] ain and crossed Vermont through the valley of the Winooski and White rivers, or along the course of Otter Creek ; if the attack was to fall upon New York they passed by Lake George, Wood's Creek and the Upper Hud- son. Pursuing the same way home with reddened hatchets and the scalps of white men at their belts, the savages dyed the soil of Vermont with the blood of butchered prisoners. It must have been by the Winooski trail that the descent on Deerfield, Mass., was made in 1704. The peace of Ryswick, patched up in Europe, in 1697, scarcely put an end to Indian ravages upon the New England settlements and when, less than six years later, war was again declared between Great Britain and France, the Canadians were prompt to take advantage of it. There were at the time no English towns in all 28 THE OLD WARS. the State of Vermont, but in Central Massachusetts venturesome pioneers had planted a number of towns. One of the fairest of these was Deerfield, a place of considerable size and importance. An attack upon this town was one of the first fruits of the new war. It was an attack so cruel in its nature that it may fitly be chosen to typify the brutalities of Indian warfare and to illustrate the dangers which the pioneers in the American conti- nent encountered. In the long, silent and secret march through the snow-laden trees of the forest, in the sudden- ness and fierceness of the attack, in the cruel vin- dictiveness and bloody deeds of the savages and in their forced march to Canada with the remnant of the colonists, the Deerfield raid was precisely like a score of others witnessed in those bad, dark days. It was exceptional only in the size of the town and the number of prisoners taken. Many persons were killed, a few escaped, but no less than one hundred and twelve were carried captive to Canada, there to be held for ransoni. The Rev. John Williams, pastor of the Deerfield Congregational Church, had two of his children slain in the raid and was made a prisoner with five others. The first Sunday on the march Mr. Williams ob- tained from his captors the privilege of holding a ser- vice at a point in the southeastern corner of Vermont. THE OLD WARS. 29 The prisoners were gathered together upon the snow in a glade of the forest, a dusky fringe of red men encompassed them about and the woodland echoes gave back the unfamiliar sound as they sang the first Christian hymn that ever rose in the wilds of Vermont. Not a soul was present who had not lost friends and relatives by the axe, and all had seen their homes in flames. It must have been a solemn and affectinq- sermon which the eood preacher gave that day. His text was Lamenta- tions i. 18: " My virgins and my young men have gone into captivity." It is a pleasure to know that Mr. Williams lived long after, to tell the story of that dreadful raid, and that the sufferings of the captives were soon terminated by their exchange. The grandson of Mr. Williams was in after years to become the historian of Vermont, and Williams himself has left a printed account of his captivity. The French have a different version of this raid, and one which sounds much prettier in the telling. The good priest Nicholas of Caughnawaga, so they say, had urged the Indians of his mission to collect and send to France the pelts of many otters, beavers, foxes and other animals in return for a bell for their church. On the way over the ship which bore the bell was taken by the British; the bell found its way to Deerfield and there it hung, the 30 THE OLD WARS. popish inscription erased from its brazen side, until Father Nicholas and the braves of the tribe, in the dead of the winter, marched to rescue it from the hands of the heretics. With infinite labor they carried it through the snow till the shore of Lake Champlain was reached; there they buried it. When spring broke and the snow was gone, a band of young Indians brought the bell from its far hid- ing place to Caughnawaga. And when the people of the village heard the sound of the approaching bell, its clapper swinging against its sides as the young men bore it on a pole between them, they crossed themselves and cried in awed exultation, " It is the bell." Whether the tale be true or no, certain it is that a little old bell, the inscription on whose side had been cut away, long hung in the belfry of the church of the Saut St. Louis at Caughnawaga, and all the Indians said no other bell had so sweet a sound. But the stao^e was set for vaster scenes. The Indian depredations upon the English settlements were soon almost unheeded amid the stirring prep- arations made in England and seconded by the colonies for the conquest of Canada. In 1709 an expedition was projected for the capture of Quebec, but it accomplished little beyond cutting a good road from Albany to Lake George, A similar at- THE OLD WARS. 31 tempt was made in 171 1 in conjunction with a fleet sent up the St. Lawrence. A great storm dispersed the fleet and the land force disbanded. The peace of Utrecht in 171 3 put an end to the fighting, and it was more than thirty years before the stirring- music of the fife and drum and the tramp of regi- ments were heard again by the shore of Lake Champlain. It was during this interval that the first actual settlement was made in Vermont. In 1724 the State of Massachusetts built Fort Dummer in the southeast corner, near what is now Brattleborough ; one or two smaller forts or rather block-houses were afterward erected in the same vicinity. But in 1 73 1 the French es- tablished a military post — first at Addison, Vt., and later at Crown Point on the New York side of Lake Champ- lain and, the war re- commencing in 1 744, the presence of this post acted as a barrier to any further settle- ment of Vermont until the close of the last great struggle. There ' IT IS THE BELL," 32 THE OLD WARS. were a few huts nestling under the walls of Fort Dummer and of Bridgman's fort ; there were a few patches of corn, a little clearing here and there where timber had been felled for the block-houses, and that was all. The immediate cause of hostilities in i 744 was the policy of the French who were building a line of forts to connect the St. Lawrence and the Mis- sissippi, on land claimed by Great Britain. To humble the pride of France the great expedition to Louisbourg was undertaken. It was completely successful, but when peace was signed at Aix-la- Chapelle in 1748, the fortress was returned, and each side resumed precisely the same territorial possessions it had held four years before. Such a peace could not last long. In 1 756 the war which was finally to settle the fate of America was declared. Already, in 1755, Braddock's ill-fated ex- pedition had been sent against Fort Duquesne, on the ground that the French were encroaching upon English possessions granted to the Ohio company, and in the same year an expedition set out for Niagara under Governor Shirley of Massachusetts; one under General William Johnson was also sent against Crown Point. The latter oot no further than Fort Edward where it was met by the French under Dieskau. A scouting party of about a thousand colonial troops under Colonel Ephraim THE OLD WARS. 33 Williams of Massachusetts was met by the main army of Dieskau and utterly destroyed. In the battle which followed Johnson gained the upper hand, but failed to follow up his advantage. The campaign of 1756 was also an utter failure. The short summer was wasted in preparations and the winter closed in before a single blow was struck, except by the French, who captured the important fort at Oswego with fourteen hundred prisoners, some of whom were massacred by the Indian allies. In the campaign of 1757, which was not less disastrous to the British arms, John Stark who was in later days to become the hero of Bennington, distinguished himself at the head of a small party of New Hampshire rangers. He was engaged in Vermont in a desperate battle with a superior force of French and Indians and the night fell upon his little band — victorious indeed, but likely to perish in the wilderness from cold, for it was midwinter and many of the party were wounded. The command made a night march to Lake George, and Stark with two others traveled its entire length upon the ice to Fort William Henry at its foot; here he organized a relief party with sledo-es to brins^ off the wounded. Instead of staying himself under shelter he returned with the rescuing party and helped to drag one of the sledges back to the fort, having been continuously 34 THE OLD WARS. fighting and working for fifty-six hours. It was at Fort WilHam Henry later in the same year that the worst of the series of massacres which were permitted to stain the good name of France oc- curred. General Montcalm with a superior force from the north compelled the surrender of the fort from General Monroe who occupied it. The three thousand prisoners of war taken that day were ex- posed to the merciless assaults of the Indian allies ; by savage tomahawks fully fifteen hundred w^ere slain. The French have always held that it was impossible for Montcalm to restrain his allies, but it was difficult to convince the New EnQ-landers of the truth of this plea. The fall of Forts William Henry and Oswego made the situation of the English colonies des- perate indeed, but the genius of William Pitt, prime minister of Great Britain, changed defeat to victory. Under the direction of that great war minister Louisbourg was again reduced and Fort Duquesne occupied by a superior force in 1758. A third army under General Abercrombie was re- pulsed in an attack upon Fort Ticonderoga which put an end to the operations for that year. Major Israel Putnam and Major Rogers were left in Ver- mont to watch the French at Crown Point and Ticonderoga across Lake Champlain. It was while engaged in this duty that Major ■ THE OLD WARS. 35 Putnam was captured by the Indians and bound to a tree for the torture. The fire, we are told, was actually applied to the heaps of dry fagots about his feet when a French officer dashed away the kin- dling brands and released Putnam. He was carried as a prisoner of war to Canada, where he made the acquaintance of many other distinguished but un- fortunate colonials, among them Mrs. Howe, the " fair captive " whose history is typical of New England life in those days. She must have been a very beautiful woman, for so she is invariably described. Her first husband, Mr. Phipps, was killed near Fort Dummer by the Indians in 1745. Her second, Mr. Howe, met a like fate at Bridgman's Fort in 1756, and Mrs. Howe was taken with her seven children to Canada, suffering incredible hardships on the oft-traveled bloody Vermont trail. Once in Canada, she was, by the influence of General Peter Schuyler, him- self a prisoner at the time, released, after many sufferings. It was in the year 1759 that the French power in America received the final crushino: blow. Wolfe's victory on the Plains of Abraham gave England the strongest fortress in the new world, and Amherst, at the head of fourteen thousand men, drove the French from Crown Point and Ticon- deroga with comparatively little loss. In the fol- 36 THE OLD WARS. lowing year the British armies were concentrated before Montreal, and the easy task of compelling its surrender was accomplished. The French had proved themselves daring in war, fertile in resource, unequalled in finesse, but British pluck and per- severance had conquered at last, and the peace of 1763 confirmed to Great Britain undisputed rule in North America. In all these wars and forays, what is now the State of Vermont bore a most conspicuous part. Its streams were the highways of the restless In- dians, its forests sheltered the hiding savages and the beautiful lake which is its western boundary saw more fierce fis^htino- than the St. Lawrence or the Hudson. The very importance of the region as a battle m-ound, and the fierceness with which the opposing forces struggled for possession had greatly delayed its settlement, while Massachusetts, New Hampshire and New York were rapidly filling up. With the welcome peace of 1 763, however, the set- tlement of the new province began in earnest ; only a few years, comparatively speaking, passed before the unbroken Avilderness became a thriving colony whose military valor did much to turn the scale in the war for American freedom, and the homely virtues of whose citizens were remarkable even in the land and days of steady habits. The green hill-slopes and still more verdant THE OLD WARS. 2>7 valleys of the new land were being wistfully sighted by certain of the restless settlers in adjacent col- onies. As early as the close of the French War, it is asserted, they began to move toward the more attractive sections. With true prophetic fervor they declared " the land is given us for inheritance," and the new country received its christening when, in 1763, on the top of Mount Pisgah like another Moses, the Rev. Samuel Peters looked over the promised land and where, unlike the mighty prophet of old, he and his followers broke a bottle of spirits and named the country Verd Mont. CHAPTER II. THE GREEN MOUNTAIN BOYS. ERMONT was discov- ered and explored by Frenchmen from the north. It was settled and held by English- men from the south. This difference was typical of the contrast- ing methods of the two great colonizing pow- ers. The French overran the continent, named its rivers and lakes, and held relations with the savage tribes far and near. The English paid less atten- tion to exploration and to the conciliation of the Indians, whom they despised and often ill-treated. The friendship of the warlike Iroquois indeed stood them in good stead. But for this they were indebted not so much to any act of their own as to the hostile expedition of Champlain and the kindly conciliation of the Dutch settlers and traders of New Amsterdam. These, even after Nevv' York had 3& THE GREEN MOUNTAIN BOYS. 39 become a British province, continued to transact a large proportion of the traffic with the Indians. While the French colonists were few and widely scattered, seldom pursuing husbandry or any in- dustry save the fur trade, the English built up from a score of sea-coast centres comparatively solid and compact settlements. These took firm root in the soil, they became fit to bear the brunt of war and, when the time came, to achieve their own independence. Fort Dummer, already alluded to as having been built in 1724, near what is now Brattleborough, was the first structure of any importance erected by Englishmen upon the soil of Vermont. Other smaller forts were afterward built near it. Fort Bridgman and Sartain's Fort stood due south near the west bank of the Connecticut. They were little more than mere block-houses and af- forded but slight protection to the settlers. Each was burned by the Indians and rebuilt in the second war of the century. In 1745 a fort was built on the Great Meadow in Putney. It proved too advanced an outpost, and was abandoned to its fate. The site was not again occupied till 1755. The Putney settle- ment went to ruin with the fort, but was renewed when the rebuilding of the stockade promised some degree of protection. One by one the pioneers 40 THE GREEN MOUNTAIN BOYS. crossed the Connecticut into the new country ; by twos and threes they passed northward along its westward bank from Massachusetts or pushed from Connecticut into the southwestern corner of the new region. The victory at Montreal stimulated immigration, and when peace was declared in 1763 there were probably over two thousand people in Vermont. These were mainly sturdy frontiersmen with a taste for the venturesome ; soldiers who had fought against Montcalm; hunters and trappers who had penetrated the wilderness and seen its beauty and promise ; land speculators and surveyors who saw a chance for profit in the new country. Their settlements were as yet wholly confined to the southern extreniity of the State, when the boundary dispute which exercised such an important influ- ence upon its future began to be a burning question. The territory of Vermont was, at the time of the building of Fort Dummer, claimed by Massachu- setts ; that colony made grants of townships to associations of speculators who undertook, in con- sideration of their grants, to effect certain improve- ments within a specified time. The present town of Westminster was so granted, under the title of " No. I," to a number of Taunton people, and other towns to the west of it were laid out on the colo- THE QREEN MOUNTAIN BOYS. 4 1 nial maps. But in 1740, in settlement of a dispute between Massachusetts and New Hampshire, the king announced that the southern boundary of the latter province should run parallel with and three miles north of the Merrimac River to a point op- posite the Great Falls (Lowell), and thence upon a line due west to the " boundaries of His Majesty's other provinces." This decision put a stop to the Massachusetts settlements. Some of the grantees of towns were reimbursed by the colony for their expenditures. The others had hardly proceeded far enough in their enterprise to warrant the payment of quit money. New Hampshire for some years refused or neg- lected to man Fott Dummer, shrewdly and correctly reasoning that Massachusetts would continue the garrison as a protection to Deerfield and the neigh- boring towns, even though the fort was removed from the territory of the Bay Colony by the king's decision. But in 1749 Benning Wentworth, the royal governor of New Hampshire, who had been especially commissioned by the king to grant town- ships in the new territory to worthy persons, gave to William Williams and sixty-one others the town- ship of Bennington, named after himself and defined by its present limits. The king's instruc- tions to Wentworth and Massachusetts' appeals to New Hampshire to garrison Fort Dunimer 42 THE GREEN MOUNTAIN BOYS. render it clear that the Hne of the latter colony was commonly understood in 1749 to run due west to the present southwestern corner of Vermont. This presumption was strengthened by the fact that the western boundaries of both Massachusetts and Connecticut had already been fixed at, speaking roughly, twenty miles east of the Hudson River. DR. ADAMS S STOOL OF REPENTENCE. This line, however, was not finally determined until a later time. In spite of this strong presumption, Governor Clinton of New York laid claim to the territory west of the Connecticut River and north of the Massachusetts line, on the strength of the royal THE GREEN MOUNTAIN BOYS. 43 grant to the Duke of York by Charles II. wherein the boundary of the province had been thus de- fined : " . . and all that island or islands com- monly called by the several names of Matowacks or Lono- Island . . and the narrow Hiehean- setts abutting upon the main land, between the two rivers there, called or known by the several names of Connecticut and Hudson's River together also with the said river called Hudson's, and all the lands from the west side of the Connecticut River to the east side of Delaware Bay " and the islands of " Martin's Vineyard and Nantuckes." These boundaries had already been abandoned on the east so far as Massachusetts and Connecticut were concerned ; the twenty-mile line had been estab- lished as already related; but New York still laid claim to the " New Hampshire Grants," as Ver- mont now began to be called. The original grant of Bennington was made by Governor Wentworth as a test, under an agree- ment with Governor Clinton of New York that while the boundary question was pending before the king, no more grants should be issued ; but before the end of the war in 1759 Governor Went- worth had issued fourteen grants ; by 1763 he had chartered one hundred and thirty-eight towns, all owing allegiance to New Hampshire. These extended in a reasonably compact body up the 44 THE GREEN MOUNTAIN BOYS. Connecticut, across the lower border of the State and up the twenty-mile line to Lake Champlain. In the following year the king decided that the western bank of the Connecticut River was " to be " the eastern boundary of the province of New York. With this decision the border dispute first became a matter for really serious contention. The original grants of townships had been made to speculators who did not intend to occupy their lands, but with the cessation of hostilities these non-resident owners had begun to find a market for their holdings; both New York and New Hampshire therefore naturally became much more desirous of establishing their authority over lands which had a considerable money value than they had been of possessing an uninhabited wilderness. The real bone of contention was, however, the profit accruing to the royal governors from every township grant. Benning VVentworth became a rich man from the two shares which he reserved for himself in each township, along with those set aside for the Church of England, for school pur- poses and for the first settled minister. In New York the fees and perquisites for a grant of one thousand acres were, in 1772, as follows: Governor ......... $31-25 Secretary 10.00 Clerk of Council ........ 10.00 THE GREEN MOUNTAIN BOYS. 45 Auditor .......... 4.62 Receiver General ........ 14-38 Attorney General ........ 7.50 Surveyor General . . . . . . . . 12.5c Larger tracts yielded fees in like proportion. A good many of the governors were not above the suspicion of taking for themselves the major part of the subordinates' fees. Nearly all shamelessly enriched themselves by land jobbery considering it presumably only a fair return for their conde- scension in consenting to live in the colonies. The greater part of the first settlers held title from the New Hampshire grantees. Naturally they favored the claim of that colony. They had paid for their little farms or had agreed to pay ; in the majority of instances they had made improve- ments and built houses, barns and mills. With quick ingenuity they caught at the words " to be " in the royal decision and reasoned that, while in future the government of the grants must be con- ceded to New York, it was evidently the king's intention that grants already made by New Hamp- shire and settled upon in good faith should be respected. But such special pleading was not to find favor in the courts at Albany. This the settlers in the grants soon discovered. The towns were redivided for the benefit of New York favorites at the colo- 46 THE GREEN MOUNTAIN BOYS. nial court, without regard to the settlers' rights. The colonists were invited to quiet the new claims upon their farms by repurchase. Failing in this the court at Albany threatened to issue writs of ejectment and send the sheriff to serve them. In many cases this was actually done. The settlers dispatched Samuel Robinson of Bennington, as their ao-ent to the kins;. Robinson obtained in 1767, just before his death in London by the small-pox, an order forbidding the Governor of New York to make any more grants until the king had made known his final pleasure. To this order, however, not the slightest attention was paid. The formation of the organization known as the Green Mountain Boys was the direct reply of the Vermonters to the encroachments of New York. Of this organization, so famous in song and story, Ethan Allen was the acknowledged leader. He was born in Litchfield, Conn., and was in the prime of life when the boundary disturbances brought him into prominence. He was a man of ready wit and considerable ingenuity, gifted with a natural talent for leadership, great physical strength and endurance, fluent speech and a fine knowledge of men. He had a singularly handsome countenance, ruddy and bold, and an eye which flashed uncon- querable contempt for " Yorkers " and Tories, Brave to the pitch of rashness, he was more sue- THE GREEN MOUNTAIN BOYS. 47 cessful in daring exploits than in pitched battle. His second in command and influence was Seth Warner, a cool and reserved man, an accomplished horseman, more cautious than Allen, but equally brave, and a capable military commander. These two men were a power in themselves ; backed as they were by a number of vigorous and determined settlers, they kept for years the power of New York at bay. The court favorites for whose benefit the Ver- mont lands were regranted by New York rarely made their appearance there. Their only object w^as enrichment, and they sent surveyors to divide their purchases into plots for sale, without regard to the existing improvements. The men of chain and compass were driven off by the settlers. An appeal to the sheriff of Albany County brought little redress. The people of New York had no quarrel with the Vermonters ; they had no interest in the land speculations of their crown- appointed ofBcials and they certainly had no desire to form sheriff's posses to drive the Vermonters from their homes. The New York authorities tried with some success the policy of appointing resi- dents of the grants to lucrative peace offices, but the Green Mountain Boys with equal success sealed the New York commissions of these officers with the " beech seal " when they became troublesome. 48 THE GREEN MOUNTAIN BOYS. Thus one Benjamin Hough, a justice of the peace under a New York commission, was given two hundred blows of a beechen goad upon his bare back, driven out of the grants and warned not to return on pain of death, as a punishment for hav- ing petitioned the New York assembly to declare Allen and others outlaws. To this day every Ver- mont boy is supposed to know the precise use of a " blue beech goad." The " beech seal " was a questionable expedient ; others equally questionable were resorted to, if we may believe the solemn affidavits of the New Yorkers, forwarded to the legislature of that colony. John Munro, another " Yorker," complained that "a few nights agoe all my Pot and Pearlash with 20 barrels of Pot and Pearl Ash was burned to ashes." John Headers, a Scotchman who settled on the tract of Colonel Reid, was examined by Hough, who testified that Readers had been " unhumanly beaten'd by the New Hampshire Rioters." Samuel Gar- denier, who bought land of James de Lancey of New York, was visited by neighbors " some of them disguised in Blankets like Indians, others with Handkerchiefs and others with Women's Caps on their Heads," who threatened him and, a fortnight later, came back a hundred strong and overturned his hay-stacks. It was at Durham that Allen and Remember THE GREEN MOUNTAIN BOYS. 5 I Baker, another Green Mountain leader of impetu- ous temper, turned Benjamin Spencer out of bed. They knocked him on the head with a gun-barrel and committed other breaches of the peace, rather unnecessarily it would seem, since the " Yorkers " at Durham were not apparently occupying any land from which members of the other party had been driven. Occasionally there was a grim humor in the pun- ishments inflicted by the Green Mountain Boys. There stood in the town of Bennington the Green Mountain House, a famed resort of those days, whose sign was a stuffed catamount grinning de- fiance toward New York. For too freely criticis- ing the acts of the Bennington partisans of New Hampshire, one Dr. Samuel Adams was hoisted up by the side of the cat and made to keep it com- pany through several unpleasant hours. Of course the government of New York was not inactive during these developments. Allen, Baker and others were denounced as felons, and a reward of twenty pounds offered for their apprehension. It is related of Allen that on hearino; of this action he made a wager that he would ride to Albany, drink a bowl of punch and return unharmed. This he did in the middle of the day with n-iuch bravado and ostentation, though the sheriff was in town and knew of his presence. Soon after this the " Yorker," 52 THE GREEN MOUNTAIN BOYS. John Munro, with a party of adherents desirous of turning an honest penny, surprised Captain Remem- ber Baker in his bed and took him prisoner. They dealt very roughly with him and even with his wife and fourteen-year-old son. All three were severely wounded in the melee Captain Baker was thrown into a sleigh and driven with all speed toward Albany, but rescued by his neighbors. Not long- after this encounter Munro attempted the capture of Seth Warner. But that intrepid partisan, who was mounted at the time, dealt Munro a blow with his sword and escaped. Then appeared on the scene the majesty of the law itself in the person of Sheriff Ten Eyck of Albany. With a strong body of troops he marched east from Troy prepared to enforce the New York titles. But the royal gov- ernor of New York came very near to faring no better than did a certain " King of France " who marched up and then down again. For he was n^et by a resolute band of Green Mountain Boys, fully prepared to battle for their homes. Ten Eyck saw that they were determined and deemed it wisest not to fight. So a temporary truce was patched up. This, however, was soon broken under a misun- derstanding. Allen, having taken prisoner a surveyor named Cockburn, angrily broke his in- struments and warned him under penalty of death THE GREEN MOUNTAIN BOYS. 53 not to return to Vermont while the negotiations were pending. At about the same time a number of Scotch tenants of one Colonel Reid were placed by him upon land which he had taken from the granters. The "Boys" resented this invasion of their " rights " and when the colonel had left his lands, pounced down upon the " invaders " ; the Scotchmen were again driven off and a block-house was built upon the Winooski to protect the settlers. To these occurrences the Durham campaign was a fitting companion. The settlers in Durham had bought their land of one Lydius of Albany. The accounts describe him as an Indian trader and the heir of that Dominie Lydius, to whom Dominie Dellius of Albany assigned his famous claim to a good portion of the State of Vermont, granted in 1696 for the " Annuall Rente of one Raccoon Skinn." This claim was two years later declared excessive and invalid by the New York Legislature. It became a fruitful source since of contentions. The best authorities agree that Lydius got his land on the strength of a treaty made with the Indians and confirmed by Governor Shirley of Massachu- setts. Whatever the merits of Colonel Lydius' original title, the residents of Durham were desir- ous of making their claims to rightful possession absolutely secure. They therefore applied to New York for a patent. This was issued in 1772 and 54 THE GREEN MOUNTAIN BOYS. was in direct disobedience of the king's orders in council forbidding the Governor of New York to issue furtlier grants until authorized to do so. The application for a New York patent enraged the Green Mountain Boys. They knew that the people of Durham naturally sided with the New Yorkers to whom they were bound by a common interest and they resolved by the picturesque if lawless methods of their organization, to convert the Durham folk to the true faith in the validity of New Hampshire's title. With this intent Allen and Baker led the " Ben- nington Mob " of one hundred men upon Durham. Their excesses were made, in 1774, the subject of complaint to the legislature by the Durham people. It was because of this and other troubles that the legislature of that year named Allen, Baker, War- ner, Robert Cochrane, Peleg Sunderland, Silvanus Brown, James Brackinridge and John Smith as the leaders of the mob and empowered the gov- ernor and council to issue a proclamation ordering them to surrender within seventy days. The gov- ernor accordingly offered one hundred pounds re- ward each for the arrest of Allen and Baker and fifty pounds each for the others named. At the same time the legislature, b)- a close vote, passed an act decreeing the outlaws "to be adjudged, deemed, and (if indicted for a capital offence hereafter to THE GREEN MOUNTAIN BOYS. 55 be committed, to be convicted and attainted of felony." It further decreed that the accused should "suffer death as incases of persons convicted and attainted of felony by verdict and judgment with- out benefit of clergy," if they did not give them- selves up within seventy days. It is said that Allen, upon hearing of this, laughed loud and long and asked, " How will the fools manage to hang a Green Mountain Boy before they catch him } " The question was a pertinent one. The com- mittees of the several townships promptly met and resolved to defend, against the ofBcers of the law, those " who, for their merit in the great and gen- eral cause, had been falsely denominated rioters," adding that in all civil processes and legitimate criminal ones they were ready to aid the author- ities to enforce the law. The outlaws themselves issued a proclamation threatening death to any one who should be temipted by the reward to try to de- liver them up for punishment. Matters were clearly approaching a crisis beneath the shadow of the vert monts. But by this time greater events were impending. Resistance to tyranny was moving all the colonies ; acts as well as desires were hastening forward the war which was to free the provinces. Though re- mote from the centres of organized opposition to the Stamp Act and to military despotism, the 56 THE GREEN MOUNTAIN BOYS. Green Mountain Boys were fully aware of the diffi- culties which were arising between the people and the king. So it came to pass that the cause of the grantees, which had all along been the popu- lar one, became more and more identified with that of the colonists, while the cause of the New York authorities became the cause of the king's, whose servants they were. An event was now to occur which emphasized still more this distinction. The next session of the New York court for the county which then embraced Southern Vermont, was to be held at Westminster, for so the old town- ship of "No. I " had been rechristened by New Hampshire. Criminal proceedings against the leaders of the riotous Green Mountain Boys were to be expected, as well as other acts inimical to the interests of the settlers. These therefore resolved that the court should not sit. The Whigs, as the popular party had now come to be known, occu- pied the court house with one hundred men. The night before the court was to be opened the sheriff's posse demanded admittance. It was re- fused. On the assurance that no attempt would be made to enter the building before morning, the larger part of the people's guard retired, leaving only a small force armed with clubs. Scarcely had they withdrawn when the sheriff returned THE GREEN MOUNTAIN BOYS. 57 with his posse. Being again refused admission he gave the order for the firing of a volley. The result was disastrous to the people's party for when the smoke cleared away it was found that William French and Daniel Houghton were fatally wounded. Others also were wounded though less seriously. About twenty of them were imprisoned. Among these was the dying French. The court was opened in the morning and ad- journed to three o'clock. Before that hour the judges, the sheriff and his posse all were fleeing from the wrath of the people. Pursued by the enraged crowd, now numbering five hundred armed men, they were brought in one by one and impris- oned in the very room where they had so re- cently confined the de- fenders of the court house. A rude court was improvised and two of the judges, the clerk, the sheriff and his deputy and four others were held for trial for the murder of William French ; the others were allowed to depart on bail to appear THE JUDGES JUDGED. 58 THE GREEN MOUNTAIN BOYS. when wanted. The people's prisoners were soon after released, ostensibly for trial, by Judge Hors- manden at Albany. To this, however, they were never brought. But it was long before court was held again at Westminster. The following epitaph was placed above William French's grave : IN MEiMORY OF WILLIAM FRENCH SON OF MR. NATHANIEL FRENCH WHO WAS SHOT AT WESTMINSTER MARCH YE 13TH 1775 BY THE HANDS OF CRUEL MINISTEREAL TOOLS OF GEORGE YE 3D IN THE COURTHOUSE AT All a'CLOCK AT NIGHT IN THE 22D YEAR OF HIS AGE. Here William Freiuii his Body lies For Murder his Blood for Vengeanee eries Ki?ig Georg the third his Tory cre2o tha with a bcnvl his head Shot threiv For Liberty and his Country s Good he Lost his Life his Dearest blood. What the Boston martyrs were to Massachusetts William French w^as to the Green Mountain Bo3^s. His death was indeed a sacrifice "for Liberty and his Country's Good." It was never forgotten in the comino' struoQ-le aoainst the Crown. The population of Vermont had increased very rapidly during these troubles. At the outbreak of THE GREEN MOUNTAIN BOYS. 59 the Revolution their number must have been about twenty thousand. One main reason for this rapid increase undoubtedly was that many of the original New Hampshire grantees, fearing that their titles would become valueless, hastened to dispose of their lands at attractively low figures. Indeed it is stated that some of them sold farms under the express stipulation that the settlers should not be required to pay anything if the title should prove worthless. This may have been the case in a few instances — an affidavit referring to the matter was submitted to the New York Legislature at the time — but certainly was not in many. It is probable that a sincere belief in the sfrantees' rio-hts induced many to settle in Vermont just as, many years later, the slavery-hating men of the North and East poured into " Bleeding Kansas " to save her for freedom. Nor was the increase of population wholly de- pendent upon immigration. Sons and daughters were in those days numerous in every well-regulated Vermont household. Ethan Allen was one of seven strong brothers. In the township of Guilford in 1772 there were eighty-two families with three hundred and ninety-three children, an average of nearly five to a household. Three families had eleven children each and six out of the eighty-two had nine each. These sturdy settlers were men of 6o THE GREEN MOUNTAIN BOYS. character and determination. They had little, but were much. They built huts in the woods by themselves, to which, when the winter snow came, they dragged on sledges their wives, children and household effects. Sometimes they took up their residence in summer and camped out while the log hut was building. Having so toiled for their humble homes they were ready to defend them against what they considered illegal confiscation and against the aggressions of the king. They were made of stern stuff, these pioneers ; they have left their mark and influence upon their time and ours. Historians of the present day are generally agreed that the cause of the New Hampshire Grants against New York was a just one and that its success was a triumph of right. So long as the territory remained uninhabited, it was hard to say which colony of the three which first claimed Vermont had the best right to possession, if, indeed, either of the three could be said to possess any risht at all to lands which no one used or occu- pied save the Indians, their ancient owners. The vast royal grants of that day were issued to and by men ignorant of the country; they were based upon maps ludicrously inaccurate, and were very vague and contradictory in their phrasing. In- stances of such boundary disputes were very fre- quent. Massachusetts claimed that its western THE GREEN MOUNTAIN BOYS. 6 1 boundary was the Mississippi ; sometimes indeed the modest proprietors of the Bay Colony asserted that their western possessions were stopped only by the Pacific Ocean. New York's charter, as we have seen, covered New Jersey on the west and half of the land already granted to the Connecticut colony on the east. These carelessly drawn grants were everywhere a fruitful source of trouble. But if there was little to choose between the rival claims of grasping royal governors, the question became a wholly different one when for the first time an actual body of settlers occupied the land, building houses, mills and churches upon it, clear- ing away the forest and cultivating the soil. These men were the first to establish any rights in the country which most moralists would concede. Filching splendid empires from the Indians by royal charter without payment did not establish a moral right to the new country, but as between the rival claimants of Vermont the choice certainly lay with New Hampshire under whose auspices the first work was done to make it habitable and of value. Certainly, in what may be considered the strict legal sense, the settlers had the best of the ar- gument. The subject of right is one of much com- plexity but in the early stages of the quarrel prece- dent and the common understanding of the matter were upon the side of the settlers, while the fact 62 THE GREEN MOUNTAIN BOYS. that Governor Wentworth was expressly commis- sioned to grant townships across tlie Connecticut strengthened their claim. It is no less true that every township grant issued by New York after 1 767 was a direct violation of the king's orders in council. But New York clung resolutely to the grants, even throuMi the distractions of the Revolution. The Green Mountain Boys dealt and received many hard blows in defence of their asserted rights and gained for themselves undying fame as picturesque but patriotic partisans. But the Revolution came only as an entractc. After the triumph of the colonies the old dispute again arose and the final settlement of the difficulty was not reached for more than forty years after the granting of Bennington township, and sixteen years after the outbreak of the great war for national liberty. CHAPTER III. THE FIGHT FOR LIBERTY. Cfannorx capturea aC J^enr\ir\crtoi\. I HE story of the capt- ure of Fort Ticonde- roga by the intrepid Ethan Allen and his eighty-three men is one of the most pop- ular of American tra- ditions. It will never be forgotten by young and old Americans. It does not detract from the glory of that exploit that the project seems to have occurred almost simultaneously to the patriot leaders in three dif- ferent and widely separated places. A victory so bold in execution need not claim entire originality of conception to insure itself a place in history. As a matter of fact, the credit of first proposing the expedition seems to belong to Connecticut. So early as April, 1775,* that colony appropriated * It IS claimed that at an even earlier date, on February the twsnty-first, 1775, Colonel John Brown, of Pittst^eld in the Massachusetts colony, wrote to Joseph Warren at Boston suggesting the capture of Fort Ticonderoga, but the move made by Connecticut was the earliest decisive action — Ed. 63 64 THE FIGHT FOR LIBERTY. three hundred pounds for the expenses of an ex- pedition against Ticonderoga, in the organization of which Benedict Arnold, Silas Deane and Samuel H. Parsons were leading spirits. A few troops were raised and sent North. These were rein- forced by others from Western Massachusetts. " To the North ! " was the rallying cry, and the comniand of the whole expedition was given to Colonel Easton, who joined the troops at Pittsfield. On the third of May the little command reached Bennington ; here the Green Mountain Boys had already gathered in considerable numbers. It was found that Ethan Allen had raised the larger num- ber of the troops. He was therefore made com- mander of the united party. Seth Warner had joined the expedition with a personal following that was less than Easton's, and he yielded to that officer the second place. There was no jealousy or contention among these three patriotic soldiers, but bad blood was soon caused by the arrival of Arnold from Massachusetts. He displayed a com- mission from the Committee of Safety of that State by virtue of which he claimed the command. He had no troops, but his commission authorized him to raise them, and the easy method of taking those already collected by Allen, Easton and Warner was c{uite to his taste. He found in Allen, how- ever, a spirit as imperious as himself. The chief THE FIGHT FOR LIBERTY. 65 of the Green Mountain Boys would yield what he esteemed his rights to no man and Arnold was obliged to content himself with accompanying the expedition with a colonel's rank, but without command. These details arranged, the expedition marched to the shore of the lake, as Allen and his advisers had planned. Arriving there on the ninth of May a hasty search was made for boats to carry them across. Only enough were secured to transport Allen, Arnold and eighty-three others ; when these had been safely ferried over to a point well below the fort it was so near morning that it was evident that the darkness would not last until Warner and the remainder of the force could be brought across. Rather than abandon the attempt Allen soon de- cided to push on with his present force, and making an address of memorable brevity he asked every man who was willing to follow him into the fort to poise his firelock. Every weapon was raised in an instant and the stealthy march began. A sleepy sentinel at the gate snapped his fusee at Allen ; the piece missed fire. Another made a cut at a Continental officer with his bayonet ; he was quickly disarmed. No noise disturbed the sleeping garrison ; the interior of the fort was gained. Then amid the ringing echoes of his men's victorious huzzas Allen appeared at Captain 66 THE FIGHT FOR LIBERTY. Delaplaice's door demanding the surrender of the fort. " By what authority ? " asked the commander, rubbing his eyes and still holding in his hand his undonned uniform. " In the name of the Great Jehovah and the Con- tinental Congress," replied Allen. There could be no parleying; Allen stood with drawn sword before the commandant's door. Dela- plaice yielded to the inevitable and Ticonderoga fell. The fortress was surrendered with fifty pris- oners and considerable stores of war material. Its possession had cost Great Britain dearly; not a life was lost by the Green Mountain Boys in its capture. The fortress of Crown Point yielded as readily to Captain Seth Warner. Arnold, who had marched by Allen's side into Ticonderoga, was afterward placed in command of a schooner captured at Skenesborough by a detachment of Vermonters. With her he took a British corvette. From end to end Lake Champlain was under rebel control and the king's power was broken. The news of these triumphs of the colonial cause was almost the first that greeted Congress upon its assembling, for that body was not in session at the time of Allen's famous appeal. Nor, when it did hear the news, did its members exhibit overmuch THE FIGHT FOR LIBERTY. 67 joy or readiness to profit by the success of the Green Mountain Boys. After all their trouble, danger and enterprise, Congress passed a resolu- tion half apologizing for the seizure and directing the removal of the captured war material to a post at the southern end of Lake George. This order caused great anger in the grants. It was finally PARSON Allen's appeal. reversed and a strong force was sent from Con- necticut to whose custody Allen gracefully yielded the forts. The capture of Ticonderoga left the road appar- ently clear for the invasion of Canada. An expe- dition organized for that object was placed under 68 THE FIGHT FOR LIBERTY. the command of General Schuyler. In his illness however the leadership devolved upon General Montgomery. The enterprise was reasonably suc- cessful at first and Montreal was taken. A reo-i- ment of Green Mountain Boys under Seth Warner bore themselves with conspicuous valor in this cam- paign. Ethan Allen was somewhat chagrined at the choice made by the Vermont soldiers, of Warner for commanding officer instead of himself. But he accompanied the regiment as an unattached officer and was sent among the Canadians with the mission of assuring: them that the invasion was not designed to harm them or abridge their lib- erties, but rather to bring them benefits. The mission was one foredoomed to failure. The population of Canada was mainly French ; the peo- ple neither sympathized with nor understood the aspirations of the Colonists, and their own special o-rievances ao;ainst Great Britain had been removed some years before by the recognition of the Cath- olic religion in Canada. This act won for King- George the title of the " Pope of Canada" among the English colonies, and was no slight factor in determining their revolt. Allen f^iathered a few recruits and with them made a mad attack upon Montreal before that city had been invested by Montgomery. Naturally he found the task of takinc: a citv a vastlv different THE FIGHT FOR LIBERTY. 69 matter from the surprise of Ticonderoga. His force was speedily dispersed and he himself was taken prisoner. The town soon after yielded to a military assault by a sufficient force under Mont- gomery, but its capture was the last gleam of sun- shine upon the campaign. The fall of Montgomery before Quebec checked the effort to take Canada, and the Continental Army had some difficulty in regaining a place of safety, the Vermont regiment of Seth Warner doing good service in covering the retreat. Ethan Allen by his own act had fully justified the preference shown for Warner as a military leader. His rashness deprived the colonies of his really valuable services and inflicted upon himself great discomfort. For to be a prisoner of war was in those days no slight matter. The doughty leader of the Green Mountain Boys was confined first in Ireland, next in England, then at Halifax, then on Long Island and finally in New York. Here he was one of the charges of the infamous provost Cunningham, who crowded his prisoners so that they had to turn in bed by platoons and at the word of command. His exchange for a British colonel was finally effected but by that time the former stalwart fio-ure was much broken in O health by confinement and suffering. Many stories are told of Allen's imprisonment; JO THE FIGHT FOR LIBERTY. how he once saved a platoon of prisoners from being shot by stepping between them and the firing squadron ; how he boasted that never mother bore seven such sons as he and his brothers, and was wittily reminded by a British officer of Mary Mag- dalene who also was delivered of seven devils; how he barely escaped having his eyes gouged out in a fight with a fellow prisoner at New York. It is prob- able that some of these tales have grown by telling. Certainly not all that are told of him can be true. He lived out his life in public sight scarcely a cent- urv ago, yet he is already a legendary character. But as the impression conveyed by the tales of his romantic career is reasonably true alike to his known character and to the times in which he lived, it is to be hoped that the youth of Vermont may lono' love to listen to them. It may not be literally true that he once had a sound tooth pulled in order to reassure a lady shrinking from the forceps that it did not hurt at all — but he was capable of such a useless show of fortitude. His drinking bout with Rivington, the Tory printer of New York, probably never occurred precisely as the latter, poking sly fun at the tall gaunt Vermonter in his tattered regimen- tals, tells the tale — yet Allen was certainly not the man t(^ remember over a bowl of punch that he had come to the office of liis vis-a-vis to kill him. ' THE FIGHT FOR LIBERTY. 7 1 There may be some mistake somewhere in the account of his escaping a sergeant and file of Brit- ish soldiers by getting them all drunk, pouring meanwhile his own brimming goblets into the loose neck of his shirt — but there are known instances of equal coolness on his part. There is no doubt that he was in favor of confiscating: the property of his Tory brother Levi and declaring him a traitor, and but little doubt that he refused to fight a duel with Levi when challenged, saying that he would not fight with a traitor. He was not a military genius, but he was a remarkable man. Four weeks before the battle of Lexington the Vermont Committee of Safety had offered to send a strong force of troops to Boston, but had been advised on no account to do so, but rather to sow and plant, not alone for their own necessities, but as much as possible. The wisdom of this advice became apparent in the year which followed the failure of the invasion of Canada. The British ministry well knew the importance of the possession of Lake Champlain, and the Brit- ish general Carleton in 1776 pressed down the lake with a powerful force. Every son of Ver- mont was needed at home to aid in repelling the most dangerous blow that had yet been aimed at the colonies. General Gates was placed in command at Crown 72 THE FIGHT FOR LIBERTY. Point and busied himself in strengthening the works there and at Ticonderoga and in building a rude fleet. The latter was overpowered in the first eneasfement and Crown Point was taken, the de- fenders setting fire to the fleet and spiking their guns before retreating. It was now October, and Carleton, leaving a strong garrison at Crown Point, retired to winter quarters in Canada. In the spring of 1777 General Burgoyne, in com- mand of a strong: force of British and Hessian troops, Tories and Indians, took up, where Carleton had dropped it, the task of opening a road from Lake Champlain to the sea. The newly-formed convention of Vermont, of which more hereafter, sent Warner with all the troops he could raise to assist General St. Clair at Ticonderoga. It was useless to attempt to hold that fort, however, against Burgoyne's force. St. Clair retreated across the lake closely pursued by the enemy, and marched through Vermont to Fort Edward where General Schuyler was stationed with the Colonial Army. A strono: detachment of Burs^ovne's armv under Generals Frazer and Riedesel came up with the American rear Q-uard under Warner and Francis at Hubbard ton. It was on this occasion that Warner Qfave to his men that celebrated order, not found in any work on tactics, to take to the woods and meet him at Manchester. They had been heavily over- THE FIGHT FOR LIBERTY. J 2> matched in the brief engagement and Colonel Francis had fallen. The Green Mountain resriment did reassemble after that bloody and unequal en- counter and when the time came they did valiant work. The main army of Burgoyne had reached the upper Hudson, driving all opposition before it. The invaders only paused long enough to rest a few days while a strong force was sent out toward Bennington on a foraging expedition. The main object of the foray was to secure horses. Bur- goyne gave the German general Baum who was in command explicit directions to bring in " thirteen hundred horses tied in strings of ten horses each so that one man can lead ten horses." But the detachment brought back no horses. Near Ben- nington it met an unexpected obstacle in the shape of a regiment of New Hampshire militia com- manded by John Stark, a veteran Indian fighter. Baum paused to throw up intrenchments and on the third day was attacked by Stark's command. It was on the morning of that historic sixteenth of August, 1777, that Stark made his famous speech : " Boys, there are your enemies, the red- coats and Tories. We must conquer them or to- night Molly Stark is a widow." It was then too that the Rev. Mr. Allen, the intrepid fighting par- son of Pittsfield, distinguished himself. Early in 74 THE FIGHT FOR LIBERTY. the morning this worthy man, who had been im- portuning Warner to hurry up the action, is said to have advanced toward Baum's works and called on the Hessians to surrender to avoid bloodshed. They understood neither his words nor his action, and their only answer was a volley. " Now give me a gun," said the man of God. With such spirit on the colonial side the action could have but one result. Baum's Indians fled, his regulars were dispersed, many were killed and a large number of prisoners taken. On the heels of the engagement came Colonel Breyman with a reinforcement from Burgoyne which had been sent for by Baum. Seth Warner had fought at Stark's side all day, but the bulk of his regiment arrived just in time to meet this second attack. The battle was quite as sharp as the first, and was ended by Breyman's re- treat at dusk. The spoils of that well-fought field were seven hundred prisoners, four cannon and many muskets. The British loss was comparatively heavy; of the colonial troops thirty were killed and forty wounded. The victory at Bennington was won by pluck and determination pitted against military skill and ex- perience. Baum was a good commander, but his troops probably fought tamely and were easily made prisoners. They had no more than the mercenary's ^,^ 4 -"^ll^^ . THE FIGHT FOR LIBERTY. J^J interest in the result of the war and had little taste for heavy blows. It is related of a colonial officer, Charles Johnston, that, coming in the thick of the fight upon a Hessian sergeant and a file of soldiers, he knocked the sergeant's sword out of his hand with a stick, picked it up and compelled the officer at its point to surrender his command. The prisoners taken at Bennington were sent for safe keeping to Massachusetts. All along the way the people flocked to see them, sometimes venting their satisfaction in satirical remarks. One orood dame is said to have remarked on seeinof Lord Napier ragged and unkempt, among the prisoners, that she cared to see no other lord but the Lord Jehovah. The good people could hardly be blamed for ex- ulting somewhat over the prisoners. The victory at Bennington, won by the raw militia of Vermont and New Hampshire, was the turning point in a war where hitherto all had gone very ill indeed. Burgoyne's army, weakened by the loss of a thou- sand men, hampered by lack of horses and provisions and greatly delayed by the defeat, was forced just two months later to surrender. On the plains of Saratoga five thousand seven hundred men and much valuable war material fell into the hands of General Gates, who had succeeded Schuyler in command on the Hudson. The British attempt to yS THE FIGHT FOR LIBERTY. cut the colonies in halves had failed. Had it suc- ceeded the war might have had a far different termination. Three days after the defeat of Baum, Congress passed a vote of censure upon the Legislature of New Hampshire for so wording General Stark's instructions as to permit that officer to act on his own responsibility in the campaign. Stark himself was included by implication in this censure, since he had expressly refused to join the main body of Schuyler which was facing Burgoyne on the Piud- son. The great value to the colonial cause of Stark's victory has usually been considered a com- plete justification for his refusal ; it was neverthe- less hardly excusable on military grounds. As a matter of fact, Stark's withdrawal from the army of Schuyler was due only in part to a desire to pro- tect New Hampshire and Vermont from the Brit- ish; it was due quite as much to that spirit of State jealousy which during the Revolution so often crippled the colonial cause. The troops of New Hampshire and Vermont were capable of a heroic defense when their own territory was threat- ened, but they were quite willing to let New- Yorkers bear the brunt of the attack upon that colony. In this they were neither better nor worse than the other colonies, none of which at any time fully realized that the concern of one was the care THE FIGHT TOR TIBER TV. jg of all. It was scarcely to be wondered at that they should have felt no ardent desire to save New York from the impending blow, considering all that they had suffered from that arrogant colony, yet disobedience of the orders of a military supe- rior in a grave crisis is not justified by pique. As it happened, the forces of Stark and Warner were enabled to render a signal service to the cause, but it might easily have happened otherwise. Had they remained with Schuyler, had Baum carried off his horses from Bennington unopposed, Bur- goyne's defeat would probably still have been accomplished. There was, then, some justification for this censure by the Congress, but to do that body justice, it had not heard of the great victory when the vote was taken. When the olorious news came. Stark was complimented upon his vic- tory and given a major-general's commission. There was not much gold lace in those days about a general, at least a general of Stark's type. Stark lived in a log cabin and Baum's war maps were all the curtains which that structure pos- sessed for some time. The cannon captured from the Hessians have long delighted patriotic eyes at the Montpelier State House, and upon the site of the battle the grateful descendants of the men who there defended the liberties of the people are erecting a stately monument. 80 THE FIGHT FOR LIBERTY. The fall of Burgoyne relieved the colonies from apprehension from the north, but it plunged Ver- mont into new dangers. The people of that much bado-ered section now wished to establish their in- dependence of both New Hampshire and New York. Jurisdiction over them was however still claimed by both States, and in the latter they had a powerful enemy in the colonial councils. The Vermont settlers were left without any pro- tection from the north, and from that quarter they knew only too well what they had to fear. The fate of Jane McCrea told what manner of foes they were who were likely to assail them. That young lady had a Tory lover in the army of Frazer and Riedesel, and to meet him she remained behind when her neighbors fled out of reach of the Indian allies of the invaders. For her trust she was killed and scalped, and her broken-hearted lover, resign- ing his commission, purchased her scalp and retired to Canada where for many years he lived a lonely and gloomy life. It was to elude such a fate as this that the families of the widow Storey and her neighbor Mr. Stevens lived for a lono- time in a cave under the bank of Otter Creek, approaching it only by canoe to avoid being tracked. It was to fend off such savage warfare and protect the people of Vermont from horrid butcheries that the newly formed Committee of Safety resorted to an THE FIGHT FOR LIBERTY. 8 1 expedient which has caused the historians of the State some unnecessary blushes and has furnished the theme for inexcusable attacks upon the memory of its foremost men. It is one of the favorite tales of the Ethan Allen mythology that on one occasion he received a letter from a British general offering him the title of Duke of Vermont and vast landed possessions therein if he would espouse the Royal cause. It is further stated that he responded virtuously that his tempter reminded him of a certain personage who offered our Saviour the kingdoms of the earth, well knowing that he didn't own a foot of it. Alas for the legend ! It was to Ethan Allen, now back in Vermont and wearing the title of Commander-in- Chief of the Militia, that the British Colonel Beverly Robinson wrote in 1780 making distinct overtures for an alliance of Vermont with Great Britain. Allen's first impulse would undoubtedly have been to write an indignantly rhetorical re- fusal, but Governor Chittenden and Ira Allen, of the Committee of Safety, advised other measures. In a word, they resolved to play off the British in- vaders, who could crush them with their military power, against the Congress, which persistently refused to admit them on an equality with the other colonies to the Congressional councils and privi- leges. By affecting to coquet with Great Britain 82 THE FIGHT FOR LIBERTY. they would awaken the jealousy and alarm of the colonies and, at the same time, save their outposts from destruction. This was undoubtedly the intention, yet it speedily became apparent that one half of the plan must be relinquished. To produce any effect on Congress some publicity about the negotiations would be necessary ; but this would have meant the utter ruin of the committee before the people. They could and did, however, succeed in accomplishing with much success the second object of the parley. During the latter years of the war Vermont suf- fered very little from incursions of the enemy. It was not probable that Congress was greatly affected, after the first, by these negotiations. Bev- erly Robinson's letter was indeed somewhat tardily transmitted to that body, but there was obviously little to fear from an intrigue so repugnant to the people of Vermont that a bare suspicion of it almost cost the leaders their places. The temper of the people on this point was pretty conclusively tried in the military operations of the year 1780. In the two previous years a few forts had been erected to guard the northern frontier. This barrier did not prevent an incursion of Indians, who on the sixteenth of October fell upon Royalton with crushing weight. The town was burned, two persons killed and twenty-six prisoners THE FIGHT FOR LIBERTY. ^l taken to Canada. At the same time Major Carle- ton led a force up Lake Champlain which created a panic on both its shores. It avoided Vermont, un- doubtedly by design, but penetrated into New York as far as Ballston, which was burned. Carleton had received instructions to favor the Vermonters in every way, and accordingly he now concluded arrangement for a cessation of hostilities pending an exchange of prisoners. By Allen's insistance the New York frontiers were included in this arrangement, though Carleton was at first very much averse to this. The people of New York, not understanding the situation, became very nervous when, after the agreement, Allen withdrew the militia of Vermont. They ques- tioned and grumbled and they began to mutter that the action was very mysterious. General Schuyler wrote to Washington for ad- ditional forces for the defense of New York. These however were not needed, as the enemy soon re- tired from the lake to Canada, but the retreat set the tongues wagging faster than ever. The dis- satisfaction extended to Vermont where remon- strances were presented to the Assembly. The brief record of that body cites the presentation of the complaints, but fails to specify their nature. Four days later they w^ere withdrawn while curiously enough, a vote of thanks was passed to Allen. 84 THE FIGHT FOR LIBERTY. It was in the preceding March that Allen had received the letter from Colonel Robinson, but it was not transmitted to Congress until March 9, 1 78 1. In his letter to Congress Allen assured that body of his fidelity to the cause of the colonies. But he said that he was " fully grounded in the opinion that Vermont has an indubitable right to ao-ree on terms of cessation of hostilities with Great Britain, provided the United States persist in reject- ing her application for a union with them." It was two months later than this that Colonel Ira Allen crossed the Canada line and spent a num- ber of days in negotiations with the British general Haldiniand. In these and subsequent conferences Britain assumed the role of suitor, Vermont that of the sued. The British officers wanted Vermont at once proclaimed a crown province and two red- coated regiments raised there ; Allen wanted noth- ing but dela)^ and immunit}^ from assault mean- while. He had his way, for the British seem never to have doubted that Vermont's dissatisfac- tion with Congress would in the end drive the peo- ple into a British union. Allen left the British in that belief and received the written commendation of eight equally patriotic citizens for having so conducted the difficult nego- tiations as to deceive the enemy. The men who signed this paper were Jonas Fay, Samuel Safford, THE FIGHT FOR LIBERTY. 85 Samuel Robinson the younger, Joseph Fay, Thomas Chittenden, Moses Robinson, Timothy Brownson and John Fassett. These were all men of repute in the State and patriots to the core. They sanc- tioned the continuance of a policy of deceit to save the people from utter destruction at the hands of an enemy of overpowering military superiority. Yet any one of them would have cut off his right hand sooner than betray the popular cause to the king. Nor was there any doubt which was the popular cause. It had been sufficiently indicated by the murmurs in the previous year, and an untoward incident was now to cause yet louder complaints. While the secret ne- gotiations were in pro- gress some show of military activity had to be kept up to keep the people ignorant of their real nature. In October, 1781, General St. Leger ascended Lake Champlain with a British force as far as Ticonderoga, and General Enos with the Vermont troops allen and runnals. 86 THE FIGHT FOR LIBERTY. watched him from across the lake. Both o-en- erals understood that their campaign was not meant to be a bloody one, but the scouts took it in earnest, and in an " affair of the outposts," Ser- geant Tupper of Vermont was killed. General St. Leger buried Tupper and sent his clothing with a message of apology and condolence to General Enos. He was sorry, he said. But why ? Why was St. Leger sorry that Tupper was killed.^ This query and the reflections suggested by it created Q^reat commotion in Enos' army. An inconyen- lent demand for an explanation was made at Charles- town by Major Runnals of New Hampshire of Ira Allen and Chittenden. The demand came at the very moment that Governor Chittenden was fur- tively perusing the letters of Enos and his chief of staff to see how much of them it would be safe to read to a large and angry-looking throng of patriots who had followed into the very presence of the fiovernor the messeno-er who bore the letters. To divert attention from the letters, Allen affected to get very angry with Runnals and abused that good and brave man unmercifully for eating the substance of the people instead of being at the front. By the time that Runnals had flung himself from the room in a white heat of passion, Chitten- den was enabled to convene the Board of War. Before another demand for the letters could be THE FIGHT FOR LIBERTY. Sj made, new ones had been prepared. From these were omitted certain paragraphs of the originals, whose reading in Vermont might have had an awkward effect. It was a very narrow escape. Had the original letters been read by those not in the secret it would have fared very ill indeed with the Committee of Safety. The surrender of Cornwallis at Yorktown com- ing at about this time must have been a vast relief to the worried and anxious conspirators. The ne- gotiations were continued indeed until peace was declared in the following year, but the war had practically ceased and the Vermonters were nerved to perseverance by the thought that they saw the beginning of the end. General Haldimand and his superiors seem toward the last to have relaxed somewhat their efforts to hasten the slow steps of Chittenden and Allen. So it came about that though the proclamation de- claring Vermont a royal province was actually pre- pared, it was never published. On the news of peace the whole intrigue, having accomplished its object, was dropped forever. The success of these Cincinnati of Vermont in negotiatio-ns of the most delicate and intricate na- ture was somethino; almost marvelous. Chittenden who left the plough to guide the infant State as its first Governor was a farmer, Ira Allen was a land 8S THE FIGHT TOR TIBERTY. surveyor, and these two men, neither of whom could to-day be called well-educated, neither of whom possessed the slightest experience in state- craft, met and solved some of the most diflficult problems which confronted any of the colonies. It is probably not too much to say of them and their associates that they saved Vermont from destruc- tion at a time when the northern frontier was left absolutely unprotected by Congress and when there was not in Vermont itself a sufificient force to repel an attack from the North, Nor was this all. Although intended primarily as a protection to Vermont alone, the negotiations with Haldimand were of great value to the other colonies, and especially to the ancient enemy, the " Yorkers." To have kept off further invasion from the north when all the colonial troops were grappling elsewhere with the king's redcoats was no small triumph for Green Mountain diplomacy, and a great service to the popular cause. It is remarkable that some of the Vermont his- torians who speak with barely-concealed exultation of the overturned haystacks and the whip-scars of the New York partisans in the heat of the boun- dary dispute have never quite forgiven Chittenden, Allen, Fay and their associates for having deceived the British with respect to their wish to declare Vermont a royal colony. I)ut deceit of an enemy THE FIGHT FOR LIBERTY. 89 has always been considered justifiable in war and usually in diplomacy. The Vermonters at no time exceeded in this transaction the rules which have governed nations in civilized intercourse. Their motive was the preservation of the State. They sought no self-advantage. They played a game in which the people's safety was the stakes. It was a difficult one and they played it well, but they took no advantage and used no means which the sober judgment of posterity will condemn as unfair. The Revolutionary period practically closed the public labors of the Green Mountain leaders. Seth Warner, much broken in health, retired from the service soon after the battle of Bennington. His land had been sold for taxes while he was fiehtinsf the king and the last years of his life were strait- ened by poverty and clouded by fits of insanity. Baker had fallen in the Montreal campaign. Ethan Allen survived the war a short time, but he was never again so prominent in public affairs. He died at Burlington in 1789, leaving a memory which will undoubtedly long be held above that of any other man of Vermont. Chittenden and Ira Allen were his superiors in statecraft; Warner and Stark were more able leaders in war; but Ethan Allen was every inch a man. His ready wit, his personal strength, his courage and his rugged honesty made him a popular hero. 90 THE FIGH2' FOR LIBERTY. No county was named for him as for Chittenden; no stream or peak of his home land Hnks his name to the soil he fought to defend ; but for a full cen- tury after his death his name has been both watch- word and rallying cry and regarded as the talisman of popularity. To the boys and girls of Vermont the Green Mountain Boys live in all the heroics of tradition and romance, while even from the earliest days they have grown familiar with Ethan Allen stoves, Ethan Allen ploughs and Ethan Allen machinery of all sorts. There have been Ethan Allen mills, Ethan Allen stock companies, Ethan Allen fire compan- ies and Ethan Allen streets. The name of the daring partisan leader has been used in Vermont much as has that of Washington throughout the Union, and it is likely to continue equally well- remembered, honored and olorified. CHAPTER IV. BUILDING THE STATE. HEN the war for lib- erty broke out, the seat and source of power in the new con- tinent was transferred from the king of Great Britain to the Conti- nental Co n g r e s s . With more confidence, in a fair hearing and a speedy compliance than they had ever felt in lay- ing their case before the distant court of the Georges, the settlers upon the New Hampshire Grants turned with their pleas to the Congress they had helped establish. Here, they reasoned, are men more familiar with our situation and more in sympathy with our wishes than the English king or his patrician councilors could ever be. But thev reckoned J without their host. They were cherishing a con- fidence which was destined to be rudely shaken 91 92 BUILDING THE STATE. in the long and complex negotiations which followed. At the outbreak of the Revolution, the attempts of the New Yorkers to force their jurisdiction upon the people of the Grants relapsed for the time. Heretofore the direction of affairs had been vested in royal governors anxious to enrich themselves and their associates by confiscation of the settlers' property and clothed with plenary power to carry out their wishes. Now it passed, after a consider- able period of indecision between king and colo- nies, to committees of safety. These had hardly more than advisory functions ; they were too much enQ;rossed in their all-absorbino- struQ-o-le with the Tory element in their own colony, and too deep in preparation for meeting King George's soldiers, to waste much time or thought upon the Grants. One result of the hurry and confusion of the time was a little wholesome neglect by which the peo- ple of Vermont were quick to profit. They under- stood perfectly well that the claims of New York were not abandoned, but only held in abeyance. In the early part of 1776 a convention was held at Dorset and attended by delegates representing eight- een of the western towns, to consider how far the inhabitants would submit to the authority of New York. The rio-ht of the kino- was not now rccoc;- nized in the colonics, and the convention resolved BUILDING THE STATE. 93 to appeal from his decision in the boundary dispute to Congress. Dr. Jonas Fay, Captain Heman Allen and James Brackinridge were deputed to present the case of Vermont to Congress " by petition and re- monstrance," The petition which had been pre- pared recited the grievances of the people, and closed with the prayer that Congress would permit them to do duty in the Continental service as inhabitants of the New Hampshire Grants and not as inhabi- tants of New York. It was presented to Congress, but found little favor with that body, and was with- drawn by Allen in June. Another convention was held at Dorset on Allen's return, at which thirty-one towns were represented, and a resolution was passed pledging the lives and fortunes of the people to the common defence. A proposition to ask New Hampshire to form the Grants into a separate district was seri- ously considered, but nothing came of it. In the same month a convention of the eastern towns was held at Westminster and arrangements were made for a joint meeting at Dorset in September, repre- senting the towns on both sides of the mountain. The September convention again repudiated the authority of New York and organized a Committee of Safety, composed of such men as Samuel Chit- tenden, Ira Allen and Jonas Fay. In October the convention met again, but the country was then in 94 BUILDING THE STATE. a fever of excitement over Carleton's invasion and an adjournment was effected to January 15, 1777, no other business being accomplished. The January convention was in session but three days, yet it was a meeting fraught with grave im- portance for the future, for on the seventeenth day of January, 1777, the declaration was passed that the territory known as the New Hampshire Grants " of right ought to be and is hereby declared for- ever to be considered as a separate free and inde- pendent jurisdiction or State." This Declaration of Independence was undoubtedly suggested by that adopted by the Philadelphia convention on July 4, 1776. It is a glowing memory to every loyal son of the Green Mountain State. To this day it is celebrated, not only in the State, but wher- ever from Maine to Texas, from Boston to San Francisco a few Vermonters are gathered together. On the seventeenth of January good children of the State eat butternuts and maple sugar, and pork and beans in honor of the Green Mountain Boys. They devote a few hours to the stirring old stones of Allen and Warner, of the cupidity of the " Yorkers," of the cruel craft of the Indians, and the Hessians' brutality and, above all, they laud the pluck and heroism which enabled the Vermonters of '77 to build the State of which its sons and daughters are to-day so proud. BUILDING THE STATE. 95 The convention in its choice of a name for the new State was at first so unfortunate as to pitch upon " New Connecticut," but before the year was out this was changed to Vermont, a fanciful title derived doubtless from the Reverend Samuel Peters act of christenino^ and from the Green Mountains V sK-j^ll ^ee some- body kvT\Q. , l oi^ vi Reclcfing 15 r\ob Kvr\g I will be Avna myself- which are the State's most notable natural object. The majority of the settlers were from Connecticut and their love of their old home suggested the name, but it was soon apparent that it was hardly a fit one for an independent commonwealth. No one has since regretted that the name was changed 96 ' BUILDING THE STATE. or denied the appropriateness and beauty of the one finally selected. To set forth the claims of the new State another petition was prepared. This was sent to Congress by agents empowered to represent the people, but to the new petition no more favor was shown than to the old. It must not be held altogether to the discredit of Congress that it was not willing to act promptly in Vermont's favor. A large majority of the members were heartily in sympathy with the new State. They hesitated not to assure its dele- gates of this. But they were also mortally afraid of offending New York. That powerful colony was full of Tories whose wealth and influence were cast in the scale against the popular cause. The pos- session of New York was absolutely necessary. With the king in undisputed control of the prov- ince which lay like a wall between Massachusetts on the one hand and Virginia, Pennsylvania and the Carolinas on the other, the war for freedom would be waged at a serious disadvantage. How- ever much its members might sympathize with Vermont Congress could hardly afford to run much risk of alienating New York. It is probable that this risk was overestimated at the time, and that the admission of Vermont to an equality with the other colonies would not have turned New York over to the kino:. The different colonies had how- BUILDING THE STATE. 97 ever but scant information of one another's real condition; it suited the New York agents to rep- resent the situation as extremely critical and Congress, as congresses will, fell into the not inexcusable error of unnecessary caution. Repulsed and discouraged the delegates returned to Vermont. Public interest ran high and sessions of the convention, more representative than any that had met before, were held in June and July. At the July session, which convened at Windsor, the Constitution of the State was adopted, under circumstances that were most peculiar. Burgoyne's advance up the lake and the evacuation of Ticon- deroga had been reported to the Assembly; many members were alarmed for the safety of their homes and families, and on the eighth of July were on the point of demanding an adjournment when a heavy thunder-shower came up. It was while waiting for this to subside that the con- vention passed, paragraph by paragraph, the first Constitution of Vermont. Though adopted with such appearance of haste, the new organic law of the State was well considered. It was admirably adapted to the needs of the times. Many of its ideas were borrowed from the Pennsyl- vania Constitution which had been recommended as a model by Dr. Thomas Young of Philadelphia. Its provisions were moderate and liberal and con- 98 BUILDING THE STATE. trasted quite strongly with tliose of the Constitu- tion recently adopted by New York. That State had limited the franchise by a property cjualifica- tion ; Vermont imposed no such restriction. New York's Constitution affirmed the validity of the Albany patents in the disputed territory ; Ver- mont's as stoutly denied it. The liberty-loving citizens of the Green Mountain State in this nota- ble document gave practical proof of their faith in freedom, for their Constitution prohibited slavery within the limits of the State. Property in man was at that time not only permitted but practised throughout the entire north and to Vermont there- fore belongs the credit of first setting the official seal of condemnation against the evil. For the rest, the Constitution vested the legislative power in an Assembly elected by ballot, one member from each town, while to a Governor, Lieutenant-Governor and twelve Councilors, elected by ballot of the whole State, were entrusted duties mainly of an executive and advisory nature. The first election under the new Constitution was held in the spring of 1778. Thomas Chit- tenden, who had been President of the Committee of Safety, was chosen Governor. The new Legis- lature was at once confronted by grave financial problems. A loan office had been opened the previous year and the people invited to lend money BUILDING THE STATE. 99 upon six per cent, interest. Few however had re- sponded to the invitation. Money was imperatively- needed to carry on the war, and a bill was passed providing for the confiscation and sale of the es- tates of Tories, an example which was followed by all the other States. The Committee or Council of Safety had already seized the personal property of the Tories for the general use. The unfortunate loyalists were now stripped of their lands, and all that they possessed. Not quite all, however; for a certain amount of household furniture, painfully enumerated by hands unused to the pen in the old inventories which have come down to us, was allowed each housewife who wished to leave the State and join her Tory hus- band or friends. Since the war began and the authority of the New York courts had been repudiated, the Grants had been in a chaotic condition that would have merged into anarchy, had it not been for the good sense and good counsel of the people. Until the new Constitution was framed and the provisions made in it for courts and legal processes could be appealed to, the citizens were practically without law, though by the town and State committees a rude but summary justice was administered. The temper of the people was well illustrated in the summer of 1778 by the incidents attending the lOO BUILDING THE STATE. execution of David Redding. This individual had been found guilty of acting as a spy for the enemy and condemned to be hung on June 4, the day appointed for the meeting of the Legislature. Law- yers were scarce in those days, but on the very morning of the execution some one who happened to possess a copy of Blackstone, applied to the Gov- ernor and Council for a reprieve on the ground that Redding had been tried by a jury of only six of his peers instead of twelve. The reprieve was granted, much to the disgust of the multitude. They had assembled to see a spy hung and they were strongly inclined to take the matter into their own hands. When the murmurings were loudest Ethan Allen, just back from imprisonment in New York, spoke to the crowd from a stump. He explained why the execution had been delayed, and added, " You shall see somebody hung, for if Redding is not hung I will be hung myself." No one wished to see the hero of Ticonderoga thus summarily cut off, but the grim humor of his utterance put the people into the best of temper, and they dispersed with confi- dence that Redding would not escape his deserts. A jury of twelve good men and true was promptly impaneled, and one week later upon their verdict the spy was executed. It is to the credit of the people that this was the only serious disturbance BUILDING THE STATE. I03 during the two years when the State was deprived of courts and all legal machinery. One of the first matters with which the new Leg- islature must deal was a petition from sixteen western towns of New Hampshire for permission to join the State. The petition was favorably con- sidered, but New Hampshire, which had until then been very friendly to Vermont, at once became quite the reverse, and for the time that State as well as New York was to be reckoned among the enemies of the Grants. Allen, who had been sent to Congress to represent Vermont as a suitor for admission to the Union, reported this unfavorable condition of affairs. In October the Legislature repaired its mistake and voted that no change should be made in the old boundaries. Proposition and counter proposition for the set- tlement of the dispute met in Congress and de- feated each other. Soon after the petition of the sixteen towns above referred to, a plan was put forward to divide Vermont between New Hamp- shire and New York, giving the lands east of the mountain to the former and those west to the latter. The proposition was satisfactory to New York, it suited the irate temper of New Hampshire, but a piteous wail went up from New Yorkers claiming land on the east side of the mountain. This the New York delegates in Congress would have been I04 BUILDING THE STATE. willing to disregard, but opposition to the division scheme now arose from unexpected quarters. Mas- sachusetts for the moment revived her claim to the territory, apparently only with the friendly object of defeatingr the division scheme, and some of the Southern States, jealous of New York's power and importance, declared themselves unwilling to sanc- tion any arrangement which should confirm its title to either the whole or a part of Vermont. Meanwhile the Legislature was recruiting its lean treasury by regranting townships where the land had already been patented by New York. A scheme for enlarging the boundaries by annexing to the new State not only the western towns of New Hampshire but the northeastern ones of New York was seriously discussed. The eagerness with w^iich it was caught up by those poorer residents of the latter State, who were deprived of the franchise by the property qualification in its Constitution, showed that the people of the Grants had many friends among the " Yorkers." Indeed in the latter part of 1780, the aristocratic Senate at Albany was only prevented from ceding the jurisdiction of Vermont by a threat from Governor Clinton that he would prorogue that body if it persisted. Shortly after this time the proposed union with a number of towns east of the Connecticut and west of the New York line was actually consum- BUILDING THE STATE. 105 mated. The members from these towns were sfiven seats in the Vermont assembly, and Governor Chit- tenden publicly proclaimed the annexation. This bold measure greatly helped Vermont with Congress, and that body was further impelled to consider her wishes by the fear that her people might form an alliance with Great Britain. The letter of Colonel Robinson to Ethan Allen already referred to was in the following March submitted to Congress. It served to deepen the feeling of apprehension, and on the twentieth of August a resolution was adopted. New York alone voting in the negative, stating that an indispensable prelimi- nary to the recognition of Vermont as a separate State should be its explicit relinquishment of the territory claimed by it east of the Connecticut and west of the twenty-mile line. This proposition was eminently reasonable and it is possible that if it had been promptly accepted the State might then have been admitted to the Union. But whether the Legislature feared that Congress would fail to keep its implied promise or was prevented from complying by the belief that it could hold all the territory over which it claimed jurisdiction, the suggestion was not ac- cepted. The opportunity was lost. For when in the following spring a delegation appeared before Congress prepared, by the advice of General Io6 BUILDING THE STATE. Washington, to agree to the terms proposed, that body was again in a timid and dilatory mood and the delegates returned home disgusted and unsuccessful. Meanwhile New York had recovered somewhat from the confusion into which the outbreak of the war had thrown her and the authorities had re- sumed their efforts to establish their sway to the banks of the Connecticut. Governor Clinton (among whose many excellent qualities an iron will was conceded by all in Vermont to be the most promi- nent) lent every encouragement in his power to the Yorkers in the southeastern corner of the State. He appointed civil and military ofificers of his faction in that section and advised them to uphold their authority by force. Colonel Timothy Church, whose commission was Issued by Clinton, was the ruling spirit among the Yorkers of Windham County, as that portion of the State had been designated. Firm in his adhe- rence to New York he forcibly resisted the execu- tion of a judgment rendered against him by a Vermont justice in a civil suit. The Vermont sheriff, thus repelled by Church and his men, com- plained to Governor Chittenden, and Ethan Allen was commissioned to lead two hundred and fift}^ volunteers to ])ut down the " Windham County rebellion." Church, Timothy Phelps the New BUILDING THE STATE. 1 07 York sheriff and others were arrested, and at the next session of the court it was decreed that they should be banished and forbidden to return under penalty of death. Their estates were confiscated to the use of the State. Congress by a close vote on the fifth of Decem- ber adopted a resolution condemning the treatment of Church and Phelps, and ordering the restitution of their property. No attention was paid to the order though it was accompanied by a threat to march troops into the State to enforce it. Event- ually New York recompensed the exiles by a gen- erous tract of land in Chenango County. Church and Phelps returned to Windham County in 1783. Here Phelps endeavored to act as sheriff, but he and Church were both promptly rearrested, as well as a number of their adherents who before had escaped or eluded capture. With these energetic measures the last attempt of the land jobbers to rule the State ceased. The formal declaration of peace in September, 1783, did not decrease or alter the determination of Vermont to uphold its independence of New York. It did however put an end for the time being to its desire to enter the Union. The State was included in the territory whose freedom was conceded by Great Britain, and as New York's claims to authority were no longer seriously urged, Io8 BUILDING THE STATE. its independence was complete. So long as the war lasted there was every reason to desire the union with the other States, to share with them such protection against invasion as the feeble Con- tinental armies could afford, and bear becomingly as an equal a part in the toils and dangers of the common defense. But when the peace was signed and the actual stress of war ended, Vermont's resentment toward the Congress which had for years evaded its plea for admission was reinforced by other and more cogent arguments for holding aloof. The former colonies were bound together into a weak confederacy by a tie that was but a rope of sand. It was a confederacy crushed by a hopeless debt and torn by internal dissensions — a confederacy which Europe confidently looked to see dismembered and of whose permanence the most ardent friends of freedom had often little hope. There was little reason now for Vermont, unencumbered by debt, unvexed by rivalries, grow- ing in wealth and population at an unprecedented rate, and free to choose its own destiny, to desire admission to so uncertain a Union. And so for eight years its people turned their attention to the affairs of the State, sadly disordered by war and controversy. During this period there was absolutely no limit to the powers vested in the Legislature. It was the BUILDING THE STATE. 109 sole ruling power in what was to all intents and purposes an independent nation ; it was a nation in all but name, so far as any power exercised over it by Congress was concerned, yet it did not choose to exercise any authority more generous than that claimed by the other States under the loose federa- tion, and these were indeed quite sufficient for the orderino^ of all its affairs. It fixed its own weio-hts . and measures, established a minor coinage, organized I a militia and set up a post-office department under | a postmaster general, with offices in a few of the ^ chief towns, pony expresses to outside points and a sliding scale of charges varying with the distance but uniform with those of the other States. More important to the pros- ^y^AMLLCN'MONUMCNT perity of the people than all these, was the leo:islation for the sim- plification of the legal tangles that clouded the title of much of the real estate. The natural result of the boundary dispute had been to multiply litigation in ejectment suits, but this litigation was reduced to a min- O fNl. no BUILDING THE STATE. imum by wise and prudent yet radical legislation modifying the severity of the common law. By ancient usage the occupant of land whose title should prove defective no matter how many years he had been in possession, had no redress against the rio-htful owner, nor had he anv means of secur- ing payment for the improvements he might have made. In Vermont, however, special statutes were made in favor of one who in good faith was the occupant. They provided for an equitable enjoy- ment by him of his improvements and of the lands themselves upon a reasonable payment. Singularly enough, Vermont's final admission to the Union was largely accomplished through the agency of her ancient enemy New York. There had always been in that colony a strong minority who favored the Vermonters' claims. Even the most obstinate now beo-an to see that there was absolutely no hope of reclaiming the disputed terri- tory. On the other hand the power and influence of the Northern States in Congress would be in- creased by the admission of another from that section. Kentucky had applied for admission, and her influence, unless counterbalanced by that of a new Northern State, would still further enhance the commanding position of the South. The struQ^o-le between the two sections for the possession of the Federal capital caused New York BUILDING THE STATE. Ill bitter reeret that Vermont had not been admitted to add her vote in Congress to the northern side. The adoption of the Constitution in 1789 removed one strong popular objection to reapplying for ad- mission. Now for the first time in its history the Union seemed to be established upon a foundation firm enough to promise permanence. The Vermont- ers were stanch Federalists. They believed in a strone government and looked with more favor upon the United States, clothed with its new Federal powers, than they had upon the weak confederacy. Standing in this altered position, both parties to the long dispute made a move toward comity. Commissioners from the two States met each other to finally determine the boundary dispute and, after considerable delay. New York agreed, upon the payment by Vermont of thirty thousand dollars as a partial indemnity for the losses which citizens of the former State had sustained, to relinquish all claim to the territory. The Legislatures of the two disputants ratified the agreement, and on the eight- eenth of February, 1791, Congress declared that on the fourth of March next ensuing Vermont should be admitted " as a new and entire member of the United States of America." Thus ended the longest and most bitterly con- tested internal boundary dispute in the history of the country. The effect of the controversy upon 112 BUILDING THE STATE. the people had been marked and it continued to exert its influence upon them and the popular trend of thought for many years to come. So much dis- cussion of grave public questions had made them pre- eminently a people jealous of their political rights, quick in expedients, abounding in public spirit and in devotion to the common cause. They were prone to political discussions and to the study of the law. Of all the learned professions, this has since attracted the largest proportion of Vermont's aspiring youth. The people of the new State had deemed their rights worth fighting for; they had dared and suffered much to maintain them. What had cost them so much they valued and were ready to defend. They were, in a word, ideal citi- zens of a free republic. As was natural in a commonwealth which had just passed through a long and bloody war and had still abundant cause to fear its repetition, the militia of the State was numerous and well drilled. In 1792 it consisted of twenty regiments of infantry, fifteen companies of cavalry and six companies of artillery and must have included nearly all the male inhabitants of suitable ao-e to bear arms. The government of the State at the time of its admission was sim]:)licity itself. There was no capital city and no State House. Each year the Legislature met for a few days in October at some BUILDING THE STATE. 1 13 one of the larger towns designated by vote for that purpose. The members, like the State officials, were generally farmers. The pay accorded to the highest servants of the State was meagre com- pared with modern standards, yet it was not then complained of as insufficient. The Governor re- ceived one hundred and fifty pounds a year; the Lieutenant-Governor was paid fifteen shillings per day while the Assembly was in session, the Gover- nor's Councilors seven shillings a day and the Assemblymen six shillings. The Secretary of State received twelve shillings per day and the Secretary of the Council nine shillings during the few days in the year when actually employed. The Justice of the Supreme Court received one pound seven shillings and the Associate Justices one pound two shillings daily. The year after the admission of the State its constitution was somewhat altered. The test oath prescribed for members of the Assembly was abol- ished, the religious liberty of legislators being secured by a clause which provided that " no relig- ious test shall be required of any member of the Assembly." Provision was made for the future re- vision of the Constitution and laws by the rather remarkable device of a Council of Censors, meet- ing every seven years, the members of which were to suggest changes in the laws and Constitution. 114 BUILDING THE STATE. Thus, at the beginning of the new century, was the Green Mountain State introduced into the sis- terhood of commonwealths. Her preparation had been long, peculiar, perplexing and hazardous. But it had bred in her people a strength of purpose and a practical common-sense that were especially needed for the consistent development of a great, free State. With full popular suffrage, with slavery pro- hibited, with no religious distinctions or disabili- ties, the wisdom of her citizens was emphasized by her lenient laws and Vermont at once took her stand as one of the most liberal and progressive States of the young Union. CHAPTER V. THE PARTIES DIVIDE. Voted O long as her first Gov- ernor lived there was only one political party in Vermont — the Chittenden party. That shrewd and virtuous man had cheated the British bayonets by homespun diplomacy ; he had guided the State safely through the trying times of its independence ; he was spared to see it at last united with the other commonwealths. He was the father of the State and year after year with a single exception he was re-elected by its grateful citizens to the chief ofifice in their gift. In the summer of 1797 failing health forced him to resign the post of Governor and he died soon after full of years and honor. Thomas Chittenden was not a popular hero like Allen. His name is scarcely known outside of the "5 Il6 THE PARTIES DIVWE. State he served. Yet it should rank with those of Adams and Hancock and Morris, for of the great men whom the Revokitionary period called forth to bear the burden of the public safety he was one of the wisest and purest. Chittenden was a genuine Yankee ; he was a typical Vermonten A plain, hard-working farmer with only an average educa- tion he possessed much native keenness of vision, great coolness and almost unerring judgment. His task was one of the most difficult that ever con- fronted a leader of the people and yet it cannot now be seen that he ever made or sanctioned more than one serious blunder. He has been most sharply criticised for that portion of his official career which, more than any other, showed his keenness of insight, his judgment and his devotion to the popular cause. This was, of course, his deceit of the British in the closing years of the war. Th(i charge that he really desired a British alliance need not be seri- ously considered. It has been made, but there is no apparent justification in the facts. His services in that trying period are now generally recognized and appreciated. At the very foundation of the republic the people had divided, on constitutional questions, into two great parties. Of these the Federalists believed in what would now be called a strongly centralized government; they were accused by their opponents THE PARTIES DIVIDE. II7 of a secret hankering after the British fleshpots and the gewgaws of royalty. The Republicans pro- fessed the strongest admiration for France and held that, in home politics, the best government was that which governed least and left most to the States. The virulence of party strife was somewhat allayed by Washington's commanding influence so long as he remained President ; it seemed to rage with even greater fury after his death. In Vermont, as we have seen, the voters were, at the time of the adoption of the constitution. Federalists for the most part ; they so remained during Chittenden's life, though there was a strong and active minority of the French party. The successor of Chittenden was also a Federalist, Isaac Tichenor. He had been Chief Justice. In the absence of a popular choice for governor he was appointed by the Legis- lature, but was thereafter elected to the office for a number of successive years. He was not long, how- ever, to enjoy the support of a Legislature in sym- pathy with his political views. The year 1798 was one of high political excite- ment growing out of the passage of the alien and sedition laws, an act which cost President Adams and the Federalist party the control of affairs. These laws exercised a vast influence upon the early political history of the country but were deemed wholly foreign to the spirit of its free insti- Il8 THE PARTIES DIVIDE. tutions. They permitted the President to expel from the country any alien whose presence here might be thought a source of danger and fixed a penalty for seditious language employed toward those in authority. The first provision was assailed as an invasion of the right of sanctuary upon the soil of America accorded to foreign exiles ; the second was termed a blow at free speech. The Leg- islatures of Kentucky and Virginia passed resolu- tions denouncing /\dams and his laws. To these resolutions the Assembly of Vermont felt bound to make answer by emphatic declamation that "it belongs not to State Legislatures to decide on the constitutionality of laws made by the general gov- ernment ; this power being exclusively vested in the judiciary courts of the nation." This was sound Federalist doctrine, but it was not long to find favor with the people. Another fruitful source of partisan strife was the crreat duel which France and Great Britain were then fio-htins: out on land and sea. In its result the whole civilized world felt so deep an interest that all other nations of any importance were, at one time or another and in \'ar3dng, kaleidoscopic combinations, drawn into the strife. Neither side was at all careful of the rights of neu- trals; the encroachments of each in turn upon American commerce brought forth emphatic re- THE PARTIES DIVIDE. 1 19 monstrances from the people of America. So long as the Federalists held the power in State and nation it was France against which the w^eightiest protests were uttered. In 1 798, Governor Tichenor and the Federalist Legislature " viewed with alarm " the increasing insolence of France and roundly lr\ iKe Green ^'^^'^ abused that new republican power. But a change was at hand. Partly through the hostility to the alien and sedition acts, partly because Great Britain had the power and the will to harm American com- merce more than France, and partly, too, from I20 THE PARTIES DIVIDE. that tendency to vibrate between two opposing parties which usually marks the political course of constitutional governments, the Republicans, or Democratic Republicans, as the French party was called, gained control of Federal affairs just at the beginning of the century. In the following- year Vermont also elected a Republican Legis- lature, though Governor Tichenor was, with a single exception, successively re-elected until 1S09. He was a worthy man with a clear head and a strong will. His chief legacy to his successors was the practice of opening the sessions of the Legislature with a speech or messaQ;e, now common in all the States. He was the first but by no means the last Governor to use these official utterances to belabor his political opponents ; the Legislature replying in kind, the early years of the century witnessed some very bitter disputes. But the business of the State does not seem to have been neglected. The legislators had not learned the trick of making party questions out of matters of public concern really unconnected with political divisions. They did their work promptly and with good judgment and their wrangling with the Governor did little harm so far as can now be seen. The practice of displacing political opponents from office without just cause began in Vermont THE PARTIES DIVIDE. 121 during this period. The first remarkable instance on record was the ousting of Chief Justice Israel Smith in 1798, on the sole ground that he was a Republican. When Jefferson was elected Presi- dent he removed many Federalist United States officials in Vermont and replaced them by good Republicans, and his party in the Legislature began the same work with vigor in 1803. It is probable that these removals then as now often worked in the wrong direction, for the only break in Governor Tichenor's long lease of power was made by the election in 1807 of the deposed Chief Justice Israel Smith to his office. The question of slavery even thus early was one which entered into political divisions. In 1804 Massachusetts, through its Federalist Legislature, proposed a Constitutional amendment changing the apportionment of representatives in Congress. As the Constitution then stood, three fifths of the slave population of the slave States was added to the entire free population to fix the basis of Con- gressional apportionment. The proposal of the Massachusetts Legislature — an eminently fair and just one — was that thereafter only the free popu- lation be reckoned. This proposition was opposed by all the Republican States and favored by the Federalist ones for obvious political reasons. The free North was generally Federalist, while 122 THE PARTIES DIVIDE. the slave States were Republican. Yet had it been possible to so amend the Constitution, the slave power would not have wielded for so many years the commanding power in our national councils which it did. It is even possible that the downfall of the hateful system might have come earlier and cost less. Vermont in this matter went with its party against most of the other free States in opposing the change. This, however, is the only instance on record where, in any important decision, the State sided with slavery. In 1809, the Legislature still remained Repub- lican, and an ardent partisan of that stripe, the Rev. Jonas Galusha, a Baptist clergyman, was elected Governor. It was perhaps this good man of whom the story is related that upon his first appearance in the Assembly, some wag shouted " Now sing ' Mear,' " that being the preacher-governor's favorite hymn. His candidacy must have been a good thing for the Republican party, for its members were often charged with copying the irreligion of the French, as well as espousing their political fortunes, and the nomination of a well-known clergyman was a refutation of this idea stronger in its effect than in its logical cogency. With France and Great Britain fighting in Europe and their respective partisans bickering in America, it was evident that any war waged by the THE PARTIES DIVIDE. I 23 United States with either power must necessarily be a party war, supported only by a majority and sullenly opposed by the party out of power. Such in fact was the War of 181 2 into which the country was finally driven by the increasing insolence of Great Britain. It was not a popular war. It was most strenuously opposed by the Federalists in New England who carried their obstructive meas- ures almost to the verge of secession. Vermont too was found among the opposing States when the war was fairly begun. In the year 181 3, after a long period of uninterrupted control by the French party, Martin Chittenden, a son of the first governor and a stanch Federalist, was elected Governor. The Legislature chosen at the same election was also of that party. Vermont was again in line with the rest of New Enorland and its opposition to a war which, though practically forced upon the country, was in essentials causeless and profitless, was certainly not without some reason. But the Vermonters did not carry their oppo- sition to the war to such a point as to sit passive when an invasion of the State was threatened. As of old the British prepared to cut the Union asunder by sending an army down Lake Cham- plain. As of old, too, the attempt ended in an ignominious failure, and the men of Vermont were found valiantly fighting for their homes and country. 124 'rHE PARTIES DIVIDE. The campaign of 1S13 was brief but not unevent- ful. Early in the summer an American sloop of war, the Growler, was captured by the British gunboats on the upper lake. The Americans after- ward equipped a small fleet and the British sailors were driven back into Canada, but not before they had taken and destroyed the barracks at Platts- buro-, and crossed the lake for an unsuccessful attack upon Burlington. From the latter city an American force set out for the invasion of Canada, but was repulsed at Chateaugay and returned to winter quarters at Plattsburg, In November, 1813, Governor Chittenden issued his order recall- ing to the State a regiment of the militia which had been drafted into the service of the United States. Most of the officers disobeyed the summons and remained in Plattsburg, but the privates generally availed themselves of the opportunity to return home. No enemy was to be feared before spring; there was nothing to be done at Plattsburg save to repair the ruined barracks, and the men probably reasoned that they could find chopping and digging- enough to do at home. It is likely that these homely considerations had quite as much to do with the issuance of Governor Chittenden's order as had his opposition to the war. For several miles below tlie falls at Winooski, the Otter Creek, flowing gently toward the lake, THE PARTIES DIVIDE. 1 27 affords a safe and excellent anchorage for vessels of moderate size. Here during the winter and spring of 18 14, upon the shores of the creek and upon its waters after the ice had melted, was fitted out a fleet which was to win one of the most signal naval victories in a war the most glorious achieve- ments of which were upon the water. The timber for its construction was cut in the surrounding hills; the saw-mills just above sang merrily at their patriotic task ; blacksmiths heated their forges and fashioned nails and bolts from the s^lowino- iron ; cannon and ammunition were brought from the South, naval stores were collected, masts and spars were tapered from native trees and sails were bent to fit them. There had been during the previous year a few vessels upon the lake ; with these and the new fleet there floated upon the creek, when all the preparations were complete in May, rather more than a dozen small craft. These were the flag-ship Saratoga of twenty-six guns, one brig, two schooners and eleven open galleys. In command of all was a quiet man of irregular but pleasing features, who bore the title of Lieu- tenant in the United States Navy. He had served under Bainbridge and Decatur, and stories were told of his prowess by those who watched him day by day as he directed the fitting out of the fleet, and who took much comfort from the quiet confidence 128 THE PARTIES DIVIDE. of his bearing. This man was Thomas McDonough, a name now high on his country's roll of honor.* Once again the stirring nervous times which the graybeards among them remembered so well, when Burgoyne and Carleton came up the lake and Frazer chased the flying militia across the State, seemed to have come upon the Vermonters. A host of men were advancinsf down the lake to crush the Yankee troops at Plattsburg. Rumor greatly maonified their number but it was laro-e enoucrh in fact to justify forebodings. General Prevost had under his command full fourteen thousand men. Some of these were Peninsular veterans who had fouo'ht under Wellino-ton ; some were raw^ levies, but well armed and officered ; some were Indian allies from the Canadian and Western tribes. Rumor did not need to magnify the British naval force. Every schoolboy in Vermont knew long be- fore the glint of the British Commodore Dowmie's white sails were seen in the north that his flagship, the Confiance, mounted thirty-eight guns, that he had one brig, two sloops of w^ar and twelve gun- boats, manned by a force of British tars nearly twice as strono- as McDonoucrh's. So lar^e was Prevost's force that it was already September before he had * " His skill, seamanship, quick eye, readiness of resource and indomitable pluck, are beyond all praise. Down to the time of the Civil War he is the greatest figure in our naval history. A thoroughly religious man, lie was as generous and humane as he was skillful and brave; one of the greatest of our sea-captains, he has left a stainless name behind him." — RoosevcWs " ll^'ar <2/iSi2." THE PARTIES DIVIDE. I 29 completed his preparations and appeared before Plattsburg. The hastily re-built intrenchments of that lake town were manned by less than half the number of Prevost's men, and many of these were raw levies who had never smelt powder in actual conflict. Behind the American intrenchments were to be seen many of the men who had returned to Vermont in the previous autumn at Governor Chittenden's order. They had plowed their fields and cut and stored their crops for winter before the long- expected messengers came riding through the land in every direction crying out as they went that the British were coming and it was time to rally for defense. Catching their muskets from the chimney pieces, the Vermont militia-men gathered from far and near, crossed the lake and took their places behind the rude works of defense which covered the American line. From May till September McDonough's fleet had been awaiting the British onset. But as soon as Prevost's forces were fairly under way, down came the British ships prepared to do battle on the same day that the army attacked Plattsburg. Almost at the bes^innino- of the action a shot from the Con- fiance broke in pieces a hen-coop on the deck of the Saratoga. It was then that an imprisoned cock that had lain in cramped quarters for many a day 130 THE PARTIES DIVIDE. with no better fate In prospect than to be inglori- ously eaten, won undying fame by flying to the bul- wark and crowing a shrill defiance at the invaders. " Hurrah ! " cried some of the crew ; others rudely imitated the outcry of the cock, and the action was continued in a whirlwind of cheery yelling which raised the spirit of the Americans not a little. All took it as an augury of certain victory. In two hours the British fleet was completely routed and Commodore Downie killed. Prevost heard the victorious cries of the Yankee sailors, saw that the supporting fleet was driven back and retreated before the hot fire of the defenders of Plattsburo-. He has been accused of giving up the battle too soon. It is probable that he could have driven away the defenders from the town by sheer force of numbers. It is also possible that, remembering Burgoyne's fate, he did not care to risk the ultimate capture of his entire force, cooped up on the lake with no fleet to assist it. However that may be, he never stopped running until Canada was reached. By that time he had lost, of his fine army, in battle and by desertion, some two thousand men. The victory was, considering the disparity of the forces eno-ao-ed, one of the most brilliant of the whole war. The hot fight on the lake was wit- nessed by thousands of non-combatants from the Vermont shore and the Leijislature of the State O THE PARTIES DIVIDE. 131 was so impressed by the value of McDonough's service in driving back the intruders that the Assembly voted to him a present of a fine farm overlooking the scene of the victory. This was the last time that a British force ever vexed the soil of Vermont. The war closed with the end of the year and Jackson's brilliant victory at New Orleans, which was its last pitched battle, was fought after the declaration of peace, but before the news had reached this side of the Atlantic. Nearly fifty years after the close of the war, in the dark days of the opening rebellion, General Scott said with a feeling tremor in his voice : " Give me your Vermont regiments ; all your Ver- mont regiments. I remember the Vermonters at Lundy's Lane." It was when the army for the suppression of the rebellion was being called to- gether from all parts of the Union, when all eyes were turned on Washino;ton and the Q-rim old sol- dier was bending under the weight of cares and responsibilities too great for his years. The Ver- monters, in spite of Governor Chittenden, had fought with all their old Revolutionary vigor on other fields than that of Plattsburs^. From the ear- liest days they were fighting men when there was occasion or excuse for fighting, and in 181 2 a little difference of opinion about the expediency of the war was not allowed to keep them out of the 132 ^ THE PARTIES DIVIDE. thickest of the scrimmage where the most and hard- est blows could be given and w^ere to be expected. The war meant nothing; it decided nothing. Neither side was victorious, though the advantage in the fight seems to have been on the American side on the sea and with their foe on land. The hostilities simply stopped of their own accord when the allies against France put Napoleon upon Elba in the fond expectation that the " Corsican up- start " would stay there, and the peace of Europe remain undisturbed ; they w^ere not resumed in the brief but eventful campaign which began with Napoleons escape and ended with Waterloo and St. Helena. The Federalists had been right in opposing a war which was caused solely by Euro- pean complications ; the Republicans were right in insisting that British aggressions upon neutral commerce were unbearable. One service, indeed, the war did render to the people of America. It stilled for a time the strife of parties and brought them closer together than they had been since the War of Independence. When the President of the United States was forced to flee from Washino-ton ; when the Brit- ish officers mocked the proceedings of Congress in the vacant hall of the Capitol and then burned it to the ground, the insult brought the people in closer union once more and the Federalists rejoiced THE PARTIES DIVIDE. 133 quite as heartily as did the Republicans over Jack- son's brilliant victory at New Orleans. The Demo- cratic Republican party had declared war as a meas- ure of party necessity at a time when the country seemed almost equally divided between them and their opponents. They came out of it so much strengthened that their candidate for President, James Monroe, received one hundred and eighty- three out of the two hundred and seventeen elec- toral votes in the election of 18 16, and was re- elected in 1820, receiving out of two hundred and thirty-two electoral votes two hundred and thirty- one. The eight years of his administration have always been called the "era of good feeling," be- cause of the lack of political strife, and the kindly regard in which all held the administra- tion. Yet those who fondly imagined that political contentions were permanently stilled were destined to a rude awakeninof. It is hardly necessary to say that Vermont, which went into the war a Federalist State, 134 THE PARTIES DIVIDE. came out of it Republican in politics and supported Monroe both in 1816 and 1820. Martin Chitten- den's term of office was brief and from the close of the war to 1822, that stanch sympathizer with France, the Rev. Jonas Galusha, was successively elected Governor. In the latter year he was succeeded by Richard Skinner, and he in turn gave way in 1823 to C. P. Van Ness who held office for three consecutive years. The swing of the political pendulum had by this time brought New England back to the Federalist allegiance, though not to the Feder- alist name. The old party of Washington and Hamilton and the Adamses had vanished but its lesfitimate successor was that wino- of the ereat Monroe party which followed John Ouincy Adams rather than Jackson when the inevitable division came. It was not possible that the practicallv unanimous election by which Monroe had been chosen in 1820 could be repeated in 1824. Politi- cal questions had risen out of their graves to stand again between two national parties and John Ouincy Adams, though a member of Monroe's cabinet, was the leader under whom the old Federalists who had supported his father ranged themselves for the contest of that year. The clumsy title National Republican was for a while used by the Adams part}^ to distinguish itself from the Democratic THE PARTIES DIVIDE. 1 35 Republicans, but the latter soon dropped half of their distinctive name and became known as Democrats merely, while the former transmitted through the Whigs a great part of their politi- cal creed and heritage to the Republican party of to-day. With New England went Vermont in that momentous and hard-fought Presidential cam- paign which brought the era of good feeling to an end. Adams received the vote of Vermont, but did not control a majority of the electors. He was finally chosen President in the House of Representatives by the help of Henry Clay. From that day to the present, it is reasonably correct to say, the political complexion of Vermont has never changed. The era of party changes within the State lasted less than a quarter of a century. Excepting the brief ascendancy of the anti-Masonic clique, which could hardly be called a political party at all, Vermont has remained steadfast to the National Republican party and to its successors. Political overturns and ups and downs have formed no part of its subsequent history. The only politi- cal changes have been that the dominant force has been known from time to time by different names. It has added new issues born of new events to the old doctrines of the tariff, internal improve- ments and the constitution which the Federalists 136 THE PARTIES DIVIDE. held ; and the minority, cHnging with equal stead- fastness to the doctrines of Smith and Galusha, has in like manner undero;one some chans^es under the stress of new questions and altered conditions. Such instances of political consistency are rare in the stories of the States. The War of 181 2 had been an ever-present menace of disaster to Vermont so long as it lasted, but very little real damage had been done. The British gained no foothold in the State and there were no such Indian outrages and forced levies of horses and forage as made Burgoyne's march memorable. But hot upon the heels of war came an enemy whose ravages w^re far more destructive of property and the cause of not insignificant human want and misery. The famous cold sum- mer of 181 6 was especially vigorous in Vermont where the limit between spring thaw and autumn frost is at best comparatively short. The crops were an utter failure, the winter closed in extraordi- narily early, and a large proportion of the people literally faced starvation until the lengthening days brought some relief from the cold and gave promise of another harvest. The summer of 181 7 was an improvement upon the preceding one, though by no means an average year in produc- tiveness. Since then the earth has failed not to reward the labors of the husbandmen, and the THE PARTIES DIVIDE. 1 37 State has never again passed through such a season of dire distress. The life of the people went on simply and natu- rally from year to year, and not till 1824 was a more exciting topic of conversation furnished than the memory of the cold summer. In that year Lafayette, the friend of Washington and the bene- factor of the young Republic, visited America and passed through a series of popular ceremonials of welcome such as the country had never before seen. The time of his coming, just at the close of the era of good feeling, was auspicious. Men of all shades and no shade of political belief had a kind word and a huzza for the old French patriot; women held up their babies for him to touch or kiss, and delighted throngs of all ages and sexes everywhere gathered to meet him. Ver- mont had the especial honor of Lafayette's pres- ence in the State on the Fourth of July. On that day he was met at Windsor by the Governor and a large number of citizens, who greeted him with an address and cheered his reply to the echo. The veterans of the war of independence and the children from the schools marched in procession before the distinguished visitor; the day was made memorable with public ceremonies. General Lafayette quite won the hearts of the Vermonters 138 THE PARTIES DIVIDE. by securing the release from jail of General Barton, a veteran who had been imprisoned for debt in the common jail at Danville and by laying the corner stone of the new building of the University of Vermont, the old one having been destroyed by fire. Thus the first quarter of the nineteenth century closed for Vermont in the midst of profound peace and prosperity. The next was to witness changes more mighty in the State and nation than human imagination could then have con- ceived. Let us pause on the threshold of the vast social and industrial developments which were to accompany and follow the coming of the canal, the railway and the telegraph, and inquire what manner of people they were who lived in Vermont in the " orood old times." CHAPTER VI. HOMESPUN FOLK. HE first half-century after the settlement of Vermont was the homespun age of the ' State. Her people were the sturdy fron- tiersmen of the time, livino- remote from the civilization of the sea- coast and skilled in all self-reliant arts. It is difficult, indeed, to conceive of the variety and number of occupations then practiced in every household. In addition to those never-ending tasks which go by the comprehensive name of house- work, the women spun, wove, knit, sewed, dipped can- dles and helped in the rude work out-of-doors. Their clothes were home-made. They grew flax ; they raised sheep for wool and geese for down ; they rotted, braked, hatcheled, spun and wove their flax into linen; they put wool through processes almost as complex and laborious ere it emerged as the stout, 139 140 HOME SPUN FOLK. durable homespun. The trousseau of the bride, with its quilts and counterpanes, its store of stout cloth, and yards upon yards of fine linen, was largely the work of her own fair hands. The cloth- ing of the family came from these stores of wool and flax, supplemented in winter by the skins of animals. Gowns of silk or calico were luxuries to which it was within the province of all to aspire, but to which few attained. The men and boys, be- side the work of the farms, were by turns carpen- ters, butchers, masons, woodsmen, coopers, hunters, or even furniture - makers and cobblers. They sat upon home-made chairs or settles; in houses reared by their own hands, they ate upon home- hewn tables from pewter or wooden dishes with horn or pewter spoons or wooden ladles. Silver was not the precious heirloom of all families nor was it always for daily use even by those who had it. The leather of their shoes was home-raised calfskin, cured at home or tanned "on shares" at the nearest tannery. Their mittens were knit of wool and over these they usually wore outer ones of yellow buckskin rudely shaped and sewn toQ^ether with buckskin thono-,s or "waxed end." Often they made from the same in\-aluable mate- rial moccasins after the Indian fashion, the ideal footwear for warmth and comfort. When the weather permitted, no shoes at all were worn by HOMESPUN FOLK. 141 the young of both sexes, and not always by their elders. The lads who used to drive in the cows to be milked on frosty mornings warmed their chilled feet on the ground where the cattle had been lying. Even now it is not so many years since, in many parts of rural New England, it was accounted the height of elegance for pupils to walk barefoot to the schoolhouse door, and there put on their shoes, while dispensing altogether with any foot- covering was even more common. Economy which no one thought a cause for shame was the undevi- ating rule ; thrift and industry were almost the alter- native of starvation ; and none starved. Even the children's toys, for the children were not made dull by all work and no play, were of ingenious home contrivance. The sleds were made of wood by the boys or by their fathers ; as a rule they were built in exact imitation of the bigger ox-sleds — cleft tongue, heavy beams, wooden shoes and all. The girls' dolls were faint reflections of the human likeness rudely fashioned from rags, with undecided features done in ink or charcoal. Then there were skates bound on with long buck- skin thongs, and bows of hickory with cat-tail flags or feathered rods for arrows. There was hunting and trapping for those old enough for such sport ; there was the digging of sweet flagroot in the spring, the gathering of nuts in the fall, the climbing of 142 HOMESPUN FOLK. trees, the wrestling or ball playing at all seasons. There was plenty of sport even in the midst of the hard home-work. In the more serious occupations of the elders many peculiarities were due to the scarcity and cost of iron in all its forms, and the abundance of wood and leather. Their buckets were of wood, with bent wooden handles fastened on by wooden pins. Smaller buckets were lifted by one of the staves which was some inches longer than its fellows and terminated in a rounded handle. For wagons they had at first no need. Their sleds were home-made and were of wood even to the shoes, which were fastened on with wooden pins. Nails, which were wrought by the blacksmith's hand, were quite expensive and were naturally reserved for only the indispensable uses. The frames of houses and barns were always pinned, not spiked, together; wooden pins were used to fasten the boards to the posts of fences ; and even, in very early times, to attach shingles to the roofs or sides of buildings. The latches and hino-es of doors and the fastenino'S of barns were of wood. Yet the most important of the many uses of this invaluable material was that suggested by the great open fireplaces up whose yawning mouths the flames went roaring of a cold winter nis^ht, while in the radiant circle of its lio-ht sat HOMESPUN FOLK. 143 the father of the family with his bullet mold and bar of lead, or perhaps with the dish of melted tallow which he was rubbing upon the boots of the entire household ; within the genial glow of the o-reat fire o-athered, too, all the family — the son with his traps and with his book, the mother with her needle and the daughter with her knitting. THE SINGING SCHOOL. Winter was indeed the chief season of the year. The summer was passed in felling trees which often had been better left unfelled, in pulling stumps, burnino- wood for charcoal and harvestino- the crops by the slow and laborious process of the sickle and the scythe. Autumn's sounds were 144 HOMESPUN FOLK. the pounding of the flails and the rustle of the corn as it was husked. But when the frost came and the snow covered the ground there were entirely new duties awaiting the settler. The latter half of November and the first weeks of December were " butchering time," for then meat could be frozen solid and kept for weeks or months with but little care. The pigs which had been grow- ing all summer for this occasion, were slaughtered and cut up, the hens were sentenced to the block and the fat bullocks and heifers yielded up their lives. Butchering time brought a host of occupations in its train for the " women folks." There were sausages and head-cheese to make, lard and tallow to try out, candles tr mold or dip and brine barrels to prepare for pork. By the time that all these operations were finished, and when the snow had covered a little deeper the surface of the ground, the year's marketing was to be done. The mart of the Western towns was Troy, of the Eastern ones Boston. Great sleds were loaded with bags of wheat, with pork and poultry, butter and cheese, potash, maple sugar and honey, with linen, woollen yarn, mittens, stockings and other products of the farm or household. Drawn by one, two, or three yoke of oxen they went creaking and swaying along the HOMESPUN FOLK. 1 45 country roads to town, the teamster perched a-top of his load when all went well, or running alongside to o-uide his team at difficult turn-outs. Usually several of these sleds went together, for the sake of company and of ready assistance in case of need. The coming of one of these caravans into a quiet Massachusetts town at the close of a winter's day, freighted with the produce and burdened with the errands of half a township, must have been a stirring sight. The cracking of whips, the shouts to the oxen, and the straining and creaking of the great sleds were welcome sounds to the ears of innkeepers and to all people who de- lighted in good company. Not unfrequently a clergyman was of the party, drivino[ his own sled loaded with his household wares, or in his stead a deacon or two to restrain profanity or unseemly conduct. Wholesome mirth was never interfered with nor, it must be confessed, was the frequent tendency to over-much tippling. For, when the hard day's work was done, when the teamsters gathered about the tavern fire to spend a few hours before going to bed in prepa- ration for the morrow's early start greasing their boots, setting all in readiness and chatting as they worked about the day's haps and mishaps, then the wagging tongues were apt to be loosened and the chilled bodies thawed into a glow by generous 146 HOMESPUN FOLK. sips from jug or pitcher as it went the rounds filled with hard cider or with Medford rum. In the "good old days" of Vermont's earl}^ statehood there had been no temperance reform either in the State or out of it. In the New England Farmer of 1831 appeared a letter from Henry Stevens of Barnet, Vt., giving the year's produce and the stock of five farmers of that town who, he said, were about to start for Boston to market a portion of their crops. The letter which has been reprinted in several of the newspapers of the State, continues : W' illiam Bachop has 45 acres of mowing, 22 of tillage and 45 of pasture, valued at $1699. He has four oxen, 17 cows, 20 other cattle, 12 horses, 62 sheep, 10 fat hogs, seven shoats ; has 65 tons of hay, 90 bushels wheat, 275 bushels oats, 175 bushels corn, 12 bushel beans, 900 bushels of potatoes ; has for market 2500 pounds of pork and 1950 pounds butter. Cloud Harvey has 30 acres of mowing, 15 of tillage and 30 of pasturage, valued at $372, exclusive of house and lot ; has two oxen, 14 cows, seven horses, 28 sheep, six fat hogs, eight shoats; has 35 tons hay, 150 bushels wheat, 300 of oats. So of corn, two of beans and 500 of potatoes ; has for market 1500 pounds of pork and 1300 pounds of butter. Moses Bouce has 14 acres of mowing, 34 of tillage, 29 of pasture, valued at $968 ; has seven cows, five other cattle, six horses, 24 sheep, eight fat hogs, four shoats ; has 21 tons hay, 60 bushels wheat, 75 of oats, 50 of corn, five of beans, 523 of potatoes, 12 of turnips and 50 pounds of flax, and has for market 1600 pounds of pork and 600 pounds of butter. William Shearer has 23 acres of mowing, 13 of tillage and 40 of pasturage, valued at $600; has six oxen, seven cows, iS other cattle, six horses, 38 sheep, 10 fat hogs, four shoats ; cuts 35 tons hav, 35 bushels wheat, 300 of oats. So of corn, six of barlev, two of beans and 400 of potatoes ; has 1600 pounds pork, 350 pounds of butter. William Warder, jr., has 26 acres of mowing. i50of tillage, 20 of pasture, valued at $414; has two oxen, six cows, 12 other cattle, four horses, 18 sheep, nine fat hogs and five shoats; has for market 1700 pounds of pork and 500 pounds of butter. HOMESPUN FOLK. lA^"] These figures are not to be considered common by any means. They were given with the express purpose of inducing New England farmers to move to Vermont instead of Michigan, or to stay in Vermont if already there. They may be taken as representing farming in the State at its best under the old conditions. But they do at least cast some light upon the nature of the products most in favor in the days when farmers found a profit in hauling their wares to a market two hundred miles away and selling them at prices considerably below those of the present home markets. By the time the pork and the potash and other wealth of the soil had been exchanged for powder, axes and the few staples of commerce which were needed, the winter was well begun. The remainder, with the month of February as its culmination, was given over to gayeties such as no other season could witness. The young and old attended parties and meetings of all kinds ; they visited distant friends, a whole family crowding into the big ox sled ; they went to singing-school and learned to quaver " China " and to sound the harmonies of " Mear," the young men seeing the maidens home v/hen the moon had risen. Need it be added that it was the time of the year more sacred to courtship than was even the spring.? Then, to most advan- tage and with greatest opportunities of leisure, did 148 HOMESPUN FOLK. the future wise men of the State con their books by the great blazing fires. By day there was always the wood-pile to replenish for another year ; or when this was done the logs were to be got out for the saw-mill, until at last the lengthening days started the sap in the rock maples. Then the sugar-makers — their descendants have learned better — cut cruel eashes in the bark of the trees, stuck chips in the lower corners to guide the sap and set wooden trouo-hs or buckets to catch it as it fell. The boiling of the syrup was done in an open kettle hung by a logging chain from the butt end of a strong pole resting in a notched upright. There was much waste of fuel in this boiling out of doors, a matter not always considered then. The sap was constantly watched ; when it showed a tendency to boil over its foaming rise was checked by dipping into it a piece of pork or a green hemlock bough. The red gleam of the fire did not die out till late at night, and its light served the double purpose of aiding the work of the boiler and enabling him to study his algebra or well-thumbed grammar. The sugaring season was one of hard work and homely joys. When it was over, the spring plowing and seeding soon began the round of another year. Teaming was almost entirely done with oxen, and in winter. Most of the roads were bad until HOMESPUN FOLK. 149 the snow had leveled them ; they were in fact often but bridle paths along which no wheeled vehicle could pass. Grain was carried to mill on horseback or upon the shoulder, the doctor, the clergyman and the lawyer made their rounds in the saddle ; on Sunday those who could not walk went to church on horseback. Not until the beginning of the present century were double wagons used to any great extent, their place in farm work being sup- plied even in summer by sledges. Single road wagons came a decade or so later. Up to that time women made long journeys on horseback to the towns of Massachusetts or Connecticut, carry- ing the youngest child in arms. Where means of transit were so primitive, the bulkier crops could not be marketed to much advantage. It was this fact that forced Ver- monters to feed their grain to pigs and cattle and to market the latter. To transport the grain crop itself would have been impossible, but pork could be hauled and cattle driven at comparatively light expense. The southwestern corner of the State, which was near water communication at Troy, did indeed, up to 1825, raise quantities of wheat for the New York market. This yield in bread-stuffs en- joyed a reputation like that of Western New York thirty years ago or that of Dakota later; but the ravages of the Hessian fly and the competition of 150 HOMESPUN FOLK. broader acres put an end to the industry, and for almost half a century the State has not produced enough wheat to feed its own people. The making of potash, pearl ash and " black salts" was in the early times a considerable source of revenue. The ashes from fireplaces and logging- heaps were carefully saved ; they were first leached and the lye boiled down to a rude potash. This by refinement became the pearl ash of commerce. Thousands of acres of valuable timber were destroyed in this wasteful manufacture. Charcoal burning- was equally destructive, and to get hemlock bark for the tanners still more slaughter of the forests was necessary. The log cabin period did not last so long as in some other States, since water power was plentiful and saw-mills were everywhere built at the time of settlement. But through the years of hardest strug- gle with the wilderness the picturesque log huts sheltered many a family and gave way but slowly to their clapboard successors. Long after the saw- mills were doing their useful work it was still the custom to rive shingles out of cedar or pine "bolts" and laboriously finish them with the draw- shave, a few hundred a day. There was a limited market for these and for ash hoops and barrel staves. The raising of V\'ool was greatly encouraged by the tariff of 1828, and by the opening of the HOMESPUN FOLK. 1 53 Champlain Canal. From this latter event the dairy interests of the State received o-reat encourao-ement. Manufactures were for many years crude and few. Starch factories were early built to make an outlet for the potato crop, which was too bulky to transport to market. Fulling mills for finishing- domestic woollen cloth were common; smelting furnaces began to work the iron of the State be- fore the first years of the present century. Boat- building became an important art with the opening of steam navigation on Lake Champlain in 1808, just one year after Fulton's Clermont ascended the Hudson. Until the opening of the canal the quar- ries of the State, since so rich and promising, lan- guished for lack of transportation facilities. Wild animals were at first numerous. Venison agreeably varied the monotony of salt pork in the settler's bill of fare and the rivers were well- stocked with fish. Noxious animals troubled the settlers greatly, by making havoc among their flocks and herds, but did not often assail people except under the provocation of extreme hunger. In the early days of Bennington Catherine Mason was killed by wolves while on her way home from an evening's merry-making. During the Revolu- tionary War as Captain Stephen Goodrich was hurrying to a place of safety on a lonely night journey, he encountered these assassins of the forest. 154 HOMESPUN FOLK. and escaped death only by incessantly flashing powder in the pan of his musket. Catamounts and bears were among the enemies of the early settlers, but soon became rare, though occasional specimens are still seen. The fur-bearing animals, the mink, otter, musk-rat, beaver and fox, were plentiful and added somewhat to the resources of the State. The gloom of the woods, the hard conditions of life, the danger from wild beasts, the serious aims and occupations of the people were favorable to grave reflections and religious steadfastness. From far and near the people on Sunday gathered to the church, where they sat in their pews and listened to healthy doctrine in liberal measure. For the most part the services were simple and wholesome, but religious vas^aries were not uncom- mon in the early part of the century, perhaps as a natural reaction from the irreligion so much affected at the time of the French Revolution. One of these Q-rew under other skies into the famous system of Mormonism. Others died a natural death, meeting little encouragement from the hard common-sense of the people. The leading denomination was the Congregationalist, though others were vigorous, and increased even more ra])idly in numbers. The church buildincrs, of whatever denomination, HOMESPUN FOLK. 1 55 were plain and unpretentious structures usually of wood. They were not large, had high-backed pews, and lofty pulpits from which the Word was preached morning and afternoon. In winter their fireless rigor was alleviated only by the foot-stoves which, filled with live coals, were brought to church, and by thick and warm clothing. There was at first no instrumental music, but there were always strong and clear voices to lead the rest in hearty con- gregational singing. Round about each church were scattered the graves of those of the con- Sfre^ations who had orone before. Schools and newspapers came to these new com- munities almost as soon as the churches. Two vigorous colleo-es were founded in 1800, and before that time schools and academies had long been in beneficent operation. The first newspaper was founded in 1778, at Westminster. It was short- lived. In 1783 the Vermont Gazette or Freeman's Depository was founded at Bennington. It lived considerably more than half a century. The Windsor Journal, still living, claims the same date. The Rutland Herald dates back to 1794, the Montpelier Watchman to 1806, the Danville North Star to 1807, the Montpelier Argus to 18 19, the Burlington Free Press to 1827, the St. Albans Messenger to 1833, the Brattleborough Phoenix to 1837, the Middlebury Register to 1836. All of these 156 HOMESPUN FOLK. are still published. Wherever newspapers were printed, books were made. Bennington and Bur- lington, Montpelier and Brattleborough have always been centres for the publication of more or less ambitious works. The industry was well established at the beginning of the present cent- ury. Libraries were early founded in the large towns. One was established in 1797 in Pittsfield, which illustrated to posterity the value in which good books were held and the detestation of their abuse by adopting the following scale of fines for damaged volumes: 1st. For each blot or entire obscuration of print of the superficial area of one lialf inch square and so in proportion for any other dimention . 12 cents 2d. For each grease spot of like dimenti(jn . . 8 cents 3d. For every blur ....... 3 cents 4th. For every leaf folded down .... 6 cents 5th. P'or each Tear in the print of one half inch and so in proportion . . . . . . . 12 cents The political, like the religious, domestic and social characteristics of the times were simple, direct and sincere. Public office was a public trust. Two of the great occasions of the year — more im- portant indeed than any except " training day" — were freeman's meeting in September, as election dav was called, and town mcetino- in March. The latter was by far the more important of the two alike in fact and in estimation. HOMESPUN FOLK. 157 This notable assemblage of freemen, a lineal de- scendant of the Saxon witenagemote, settled, as it still does, all questions of town government. It held the purse-strings and made each year the necessary appropriations. It authorized new enter- prises by vote, and elected the town officers. The money of the people was economically spent, for every citizen was well informed upon town affairs, and the public officers were held to a strict account- ability. It was a system which impressed all the citizens with a sense of their personal responsi- bilities ; it bred politicians in numbers and states- men not a few. Men like Chipman, Seymour, Bradley and Pren- tiss were taught in the school of the town meet- ing. Young men prof- ited by the free discus- sion and impartial de- cision of affairs and carried their Yankee ways to the newly form- ing States in the West. Not the least amono- the influences which have helped Vermont from the earliest time up to the present must be borrowing fire. 158 HOMESPUN FOLK. reckoned the simple democracy of its local govern- ment. This, by bringing the decision of the most important questions to the direct vote of the people, has acted at once as a safeguard and a means of political education. Neighbors were neighbors in the homespun days. They appreciated those kindly acts of mutual helpful- ness which make life sweet and wholesome. Before matches were invented, they " borrowed fire " of one another, running briskly from house to house with the smoking brands. The buckskin thong which served as a latch-string always hung outside the door, and any one was free to enter. Tools served a neighbor as well as the owner, and there was always a chance to return a favor in kind. There were " bees " on all possible pretexts and occasions. Logging bees cleared fields like magic; husking bees served for rare frolics on autumn evenings ; chopping parties made light work of the minister's woodpile. Of afternoons quilting bees brought together the matrons of a neighborhood who talked as they worked, sometimes of other things than the intricate patterns before them. Strips and squares of brightly colored cloth were sewed together in various com- plex figures, bearing such fanciful names as Albums, Blazing Stars, Baskets, Twin Sisters, Irish Chains, Windmills and Sunflowers. When enough of these had been collected, the neighbors were invited to HOMESPUN FOLK. 1 59 help finish the quilts. Each quilt was stretched upon four poles ; these were rolled inward as the work progressed toward the centre. The stitches which the good woman employed in quilting were as complex and various as the patterns themselves. This seems now to have been work with little purpose, yet at least it served the purpose of bring- ing together good friends for social enjoyment at a time when the formal call of a few minutes would have been scouted as preposterous. When a guest came to the household she brought her knitting work or sewing and stayed till nightfall, certain of a kindly welcome. In honor of the visit the bucket with its jangling chain was sunk from its high sweep to the bottom of the well and was brought up filled with clear cold water ; the pot upon its blackened crane, soon bubbled over the fire on the hearth ; the household stores were ransacked for good things to eat which might be brought forth without ostentation, but with justifiable pride in the housewife's foresight. What the quilting bee was to the women a " raising" was to the men. It was impossible for a small force to lift the ponderous bents which went into barns and houses, and appliances for hoisting them were not in common use. So when the car- penters had framed and fitted the parts together, the neighbors all came with their pikepoles; with l6o HOMESPUN FOLK. much shouting they Hfted the bents one by one into the air until the tenons sank to their places in the sill-mortises and all stood upright. Until the temperance revival, liquor was always served on such occasions and many a sturdy young man "shinned up" the newly hoisted bents to drive the pins in the braces or handle the rafters away aloft whose head was not so steady as it might have been ; deep potations were the rule, and accidents from this cause were not unfrequent. Occasions of graver import brought the people together from far and near. Half a township would show respect to the dead by its presence at a funeral or would gather to offer hearty congratulations to the newly- wedded pair. Life as it was lived before the days of the rail- road was lonely, yet to busy and contented people there was some compensation for the infrequent sight of one's fellows in the human interest their occasional entrance upon the field of vision excited. The forest is not more lonely than that wilderness which is called a great city. Those thought them- selves well off who lived near a public road where some one passed by almost every day. Sometimes it might be the postman pushing his hard-worked horse through spring mud or winter snow on his weekly trip ; sometimes it was the doctor, spurring to the bedside of a patient, sometimes a neighbor HOMESPUN POLK. l6l on his way to mill, sometimes the judge or the attorney jogging along to court with his law books in his saddlebags, sometimes the minister on his pastoral rounds. With such glimpses at the com- ings and goings of other people, with trips to church, with the training day and the interchange of neighborly hospitalities they were quite content. They were indeed good old times when people lived thus; better times, some say, than the railroad and telegraph have brought us. Yet the State to- day is a better State in most respects than it was. The temperance reform has purified it of a host of evils ; the diversity of industries and the introduc- tion of machinery have shortened the hours of labor; better means of communication have given new facilities to trade, to agriculture and to educa- tion ; a wiser economy has husbanded the resources of the people. The heroic spirit with which the Vermonters of old faced the hard conditions of their lives is worthy the pride and admiration of their descendants, but it is only a disparagement of their virtues to deny that they had any disadvantages to labor with. We may praise their pluck and energy yet need not covet the struggles by which these qualities were developed. The agencies which wrought such mighty changes in the State and whose influence we are now to consider were on the whole agencies 1 62 HOMESPUN FOLK. for good. Rude beginnings are but the stepping- stones to progress. From hardship and from con- tinuous toil has success been formed. But he who sighs for those distant days of effort and of meagre facihties imagining them to be purer and more genuine than his own time is as unthinking as he is unpatriotic. Every age has ahke its responsi- biHties and its advantages. Not many, even of those whose admiration of the "good old times " is expressed in the loudest terms, would willingly go back to them and fight over again the hard battle that the pioneers waged w^'th the wilderness. CHAPTER VII. THE GREAT WEST HE half-century fol- lowing the close of the Revolution was a season of rapid growth and development in Vermont. In 1760 her people had been but a handful. In 1790 when the first census was taken they had increased to 85,425. Thenceforward for sev- eral successive censuses the figures were: 1800, 154465; 1810, 217,895; 1820, 235,966; 1830, 280,652, In a half-century after 1830 the popu. lation did not increase so much by i 7,000 as in the single decade following the admission of the State, though in the Union as a whole the increase was marvelous. Out of that western country which was in 1830 a trackless waste, new States have been carved which have passed Vermont by in the race for people and for wealth. This would 163 164 THE GREA2' WEST. inevitably have been true in any case, since the newer States have many times the territory of Ver- mont, but there were special causes controlling the earlier and more rapid as well as the slower recent fjrowth of the Green Mountain State. In the old days following the Revolution Ver- mont was the West of New Enoland. Immio^ra- o o tion had been kept out of it by the wars with the French and Indians and somewhat impeded by the alarms of the Revolution; but when with the coming of the long peace the last obstacle to its settlement was removed, people from Massachusetts, New Hampshire and Connecticut flocked into the State, finding there an abundance of rich and cheap land, valuable timber, good advantages of church and school, a popular government in which all shared and a climate no more rigorous than that to which they had been accustomed. No one then supposed that thriving cities would one day spring up and vast States be developed in the valley of the Mis- sissippi, and even if the pioneers had been gifted with prophetic powers to see the future greatness of the land, the way to it was one of incredible hard- ships and of dangers not a few. Vermont possessed precisely the attractions which the West has since presented ; it profited by them as the West has done. As early as the beginning of the present century it was a source of emigration, a goal of immigration. THE GREAT WEST. 165 Silas Wright, afterward to become one of New York's greatest governors, graduating from Middle- bury College shortly after the War of 181 2, followed the adventurous pioneers of his State into Northern New York, then almost a wilderness. That sec- tion of the Empire State was practically settled by Vermonters with an intermixture of people from the Mohawk Valley and lesser strains from other sources. A few years later, the sons of Vermont were settling in the rich valleys of Western New York or pushing even further toward the setting sun. They were the pioneers of a movement which in years to come was to check almost completely the peopling of their own State. For the present, however, the loss was more than made good by immigration. Just when the tide of travel to Vermont was at its height, the puny beginnings of a flood whose mighty volume in the future no one then foresaw began trickling through the mountain passes into the broad lands of the Middle West. The ordi- nance for the government of the Northwest Terri- tory was framed in 1787. That vast region which had in 1880 eleven million souls and which em- braces the States of Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Michi- gan and Wisconsin, had then but a few thousand venturesome inhabitants. Kentucky, the first State beyond the Alleghanies, was admitted to the Union 1 66 THE GREAT WEST. in the same year as Vermont. Public attention was directed to the West by these acts and the stream began to slowly swell in volume. Tennessee fol- lowed in 1796 and Ohio in 1802, but when the War of 181 2 broke out and put the frontier settlements again in peril of the Indians there were not more than one third so many people in the entire region beyond the mountains as now live in Ohio alone. For migration was no easy task in those days ; it was full of delays, of dangers and difficulties. The streams of travel flowed along the rivers or sought outlets through the mountain passes. Pennsylvania and Virginia were great colonizing States and the former of these seems to have sent to the West as many of her children as all the New England States together. They followed the old military roads to Pittsburg and thence floated down the Ohio to their more or less chstant destinations in flat-boats whereon were loaded their household possessions, their families and often their cattle. Long and hard as was this winding way, it was easy by com- parison with that which must be followed by the uneasy spirits of the Eastern States. These might seek the Hudson and follow it to Albany, ascend the Mohawk with its frequent falls and rapids, strike the lake at Oswego and thus continue on their way West; they might push straight across the State to P)uffalo and there embark ; or, quite THE GREAT WEST 167 as frequently perhaps, cross New Jersey and fol- low the Pennsylvania trail to the Ohio Valley. The difificulty of the route deterred many and sent them to the nearer woods and mountains of Maine, New Hampshire and Vermont, and to some extent westward by way of the St. Lawrence. A QUILTING BEE. In 1825 the Erie Canal was opened to traffic and an instantaneous change came over the prospects of the West. The opening of water communi- cation from the lakes to the sea was of incalculable benefit to the State of New York which accom- plished the mighty task, but its value to the West 1 68 THE GREAT WEST. was even greater. It was now possible for the sufferer from Western fever to go by water from New York City to Buffalo and thence on to Lake Superior without vexation from muddy roads or adverse currents. The trip was shortened and cheapened ; it was rendered more endurable to women and children. There was something almost approaching the modern luxuries of travel in the packet boats of the day with their comfortable cabins, regular meals and unlimited capacity for stowage. In Northern Ohio was built up a new Connecticut; Northern Illinois began to receive the freedom- loving population which was in Lincoln's time to overbalance the slavery sympathizers who were already pouring into that State from the South ; Michigan and Wisconsin then became something more than names. Detroit awoke from its slum- bers ; Chicago, Milwaukee, Cleveland, Toledo and a hundred other cities and towns sprang out of nothing and became thriving aspirants for future commercial importance. Steam power made the navigation of the lakes easy and certain ; it worked with the canal in building up the great Northwest. Farmers, mechanics and professional men followed where the hardy pioneers had sliown the way and laid the foundations of new commonwealths. Had not the youth of Vermont themselves been THE GREAT WEST. 1 69 drawn into this westward tide the State would have continued to grow fast enough in population by the natural rate of increase, but the Vermonters bore their part in building up the new States. The mountains at home were more difficult of cultivation and the winter rigors made the hus- bandman's task seem less easy than on the mellow plains of the West. The rapid increase of popu- lation in the new State had occasioned a natural rise in the price of land and this removed one source of attraction which Vermont had possessed. In 1830 many of its farms were held at a higher value than now, and the prospect of winning new homes among the cheaper acres of the West lured by the thousand from their native soil, young men and women who were to carry home ways and home influences to be the leaven of new common- wealths. The old post road from Bennington to Troy and the canal from Whitehall westward were crowded with Vermonters seekinof to travel the easy new road to that bounteous West of which they had heard such marvelous tales. It requires no fanciful imagination to con- ceive that the opening of the Erie Canal was an agency which did more than almost any other to curb the power of slavery. Hitherto in the migration to the West there had been a far greater element of slavery sympathizers from the 170 THE GREAT WEST. South than of Northern men, and these settled largely in the southern portion of the Northwestern Territory lying along the Ohio River. With the opening of the canal, Northern men began to cross the mountains in even greater numbers until they formed a majority in every Northwestern State ; as much by weight of influence as of numbers they made that section in the dark days of 1861 as loyal as New England itself. But in the work of peopling the new States the canal was only the pioneer. Great as were its accomplishments it was followed, aided and in time almost superseded by an agent even more powerful. In the year 1830 the venerable Charles Carroll of Carrollton, a signer of the Declaration of Inde- pendence, a patriot whose great age, command- ing personality and prominence in the history of his State and country made him a fitting link between the old order of things and the new, was the central figure in a significant ceremonial. The day was big with import, portending results in the near future more vast than any one then had dreamed of seeing realized. It was the celebration of the opening of the first section of the Baltimore and Ohio railroad to traffic. The white-headed old man whose boyhood, youth and early man- hood had passed under the king, who had sat in the council which guided the nation to its deliver- THE GREAT WEST. 171 ance and who so well remembered when all the land beyond the Alleghanies was an unexplored wilderness, stood up among the younger men to deliver the chief oration, bidding the new enter- prise godspeed. A few months later in the same year, Lord Brougham, himself almost as much a figure of the past, performed a like service for the Liverpool and Manchester railway, the first completed steam line of the world. It almost passes belief, looking upon the mighty railroad systems of the present time, that they should have been developed within a trifle more than half a century, and that men not yet old can remember when there was not a single steam car on the continent. Measured by later standards those early rail- roads were rude and primitive. The passenger coaches were something like a Concord thorough- brace in general appearance ; the engine was a tiny affair of uncouth shape, too small to afford the engineer a shelter from sun or rain. The speed was about that of a smart carriage horse. The first rails were of wood with thin straps of iron spiked along the top, and it was some time before these were replaced by rails of solid iron, which were in turn to give way to heavier ones of steel. It was not supposed that the locomotives could pull a load up a hill. The first sections of the 172 THE GREAT WEST New York Central were built on nearly a dead level ; on what is now the heavy grade near Albany, was a steep incline up and down which the engine- less cars were run by cable and pulley. The Bald- wins of Philadelphia announced by advertisement that their steam engine, the first but not the last by some thousands of their construction, would be run on fair days, but that when it rained horses would be used. When the sun shone multitudes came to see the marvel. Shrewd men saw, after a very brief trial of the new motor, that the world's heavy traffic would henceforth be carried by steam power. Almost simultaneously in all the more thickly settled por- tions of the Union rails were laid down, often against emphatic protests and in the face of solemn warnings; locomotives of constantly increasing power and cars of ever niore generous dimensions carried more and more of the freight of the countr}^ Boston, Albany and Buffalo were soon connected b}' lines of railroad reaching from the great lakes to the sea. Before 1840 a road had been built from Boston to Concord, and Vermont roads were soon stretched out to meet it. The road from Burlington to Windsor was opened for traffic in 1S49, from Rutland to Bur- lington in the same year, from Rutland to White- hall in 1850, from Essex Junction to Rouse's Point > ^\*i THE GREAT WEST. 1 75 in 1850 and from White River Junction to St. Johnsbury in 185 1. These roads gave Vermont outlets in three directions : to Ogdensburg via Rouse's Point, to Albany via Whitehall and to Boston via White River Junction. These systems were in time consolidated under the management of the Vermont Central Company. This now has practical control of the railroads of the State. Other lines followed promptly enough and within a comparatively few years the main railroad arteries of the State were reasonably complete as they have since remained. Only short connecting spurs or branches have been found necessary for some years or are likely to be for years to come. It is a curious and interesting fact that the main railroad lines of Vermont follow closely the old Indian trails — down the east shore of the lake, along the Lower Connecticut, up the Onion River, or across the State diagonally by the Winooski and White Rivers. The Indians were o-ood en- gineers; with their unaided eyes and instinct they solved their engineering problems in a manner with which the level and chain can find no fault. Such an entire revolution in the transit systems of the country could not but mightily affect the course and manner of its development. The stream of Western migration which had begun to flow feebly toward the close of the last century, which 176 THE ORE A 2' WEST. had deepened and broadened its current when the Erie Canal was opened, now became a mighty tor- rent. The mid-Western States were built up with marvelous and unexampled rapidity ; those of the East felt the effects of a constant drain upon their population, while immigrants from Europe took the places of those who had gone. It was not alone the growth of the West which now began to call away the rosy-cheeked country boys from their homes. The development of the great cities of the lakes and the seaboard was a natural consequence of the growth of railroad traffic, of the export and import trade and of man- ufactures. The leading business men of New York, Boston and Chicago, the merchants, lawyers, manufacturers and railway magnates, in unnum- bered instances have been those who were the Yankee farmers' boys of the last generation. Both movements — the exodus to the West and the tendency to flock to the large cities — militated against the continued growth of Vermont in wealth and population; she had no seaports or other large cities and few advantao-es to offset the attractions of the new States. The census indeed showed in 1850, 314,120 inhabitants in the State where in 1840 there had been but 291,948; this considerable increase, however, was undoubtedly due in part to the checking and chilling influence of the panic THE GREAT WEST. 177 of 1837 upon the Western States and upon the o-reat cities. In the next decade — which included the o-old excitement in Cahfornia and the flockinof of freemen into Kansas to save her from the fate of slavery — Vermont's population grew less than one thousand larger. In i860 the census count showed but 315,098 inhabitants. Yet the State's prosperity did not suffer in all directions from the new modes of transit. Three years before the opening of the Erie Canal, a canal had been opened from the Hudson to Lake Cham- plain. This proved of great benefit to the State by facilitating the marketing of its bulkier products; by its means and by the prompt completion of the main railroad arteries, industry was developed and trade stimulated very materially. In spite of the fact that population remained sta- tionary during the decade following the completion of a railroad through Vermont, considerable ad- vances were made in wealth, and agriculture and manufactures prospered as they had not done before. It was a time of comparatively low tariff. This was no more popular then than now in Ver- mont, yet the number of adults engaged in manu- factures increased from 8,445 i^^ 1850 to 10,497 '^^ i860; within the same period the annual value of manufactured products rose from $8,570,920 to $14,637,807. Unless the figures were grossly inac- 178 THE GREAT WEST. curate, the value of manufactured goods had in- creased in ten years more rapidly than the number engaged in making them. This result may have been largely due to the introduction of better machinery and more efficient modes of production and to the bettered facilities for travel, observation and the exchange of ideas. Even more rapid was the advance of the quarry industry. This important branch of the State's activities practically owes its birth to the canal and the railroads. The first opened a market to New York ; the latter gave one in every direction. The beautiful marble of the State and its rich deposits of slate thus found an outlet and these deposits were everywhere worked by private individuals and by corporations whose keen competition led to the dis- covery of new mineral wealth before unsuspected. The value to the State of the industry thus begun has since been enormous. In 1880, of all the larger States only two surpassed Vermont in the value of their quarry products or in the capital invested. In agriculture the improvement following the canal and railroads was no less marked. Although the acreage of improved land did not greatly increase, the value of the farms of Vermont rose during the decade before the Civil War from sixty- three millions to ninety-four millions, or about fifty per cent., while most crops produced showed an THE GREAT WEST. 179 increase in quantity and value. Wheat continued to decline, but the more bulky crops — barley, oats and potatoes — held their own. The wool clip decreased somewhat, owing to the competition of Western wool growers, but the Vermont farmers soon dis- covered that they could make more money by breed- ing the finest sheep to sell than by raising wool themselves. It was found that sheep in milder climates tended to deteriorate in wool-bearing qualities unless the tendency was counteracted by infusions of better blood, and the Vermont growers of fancy sheep made good profits by breeding and selling very fine and heavy fleeced animals. The price for a single sheep frequently rose to thousands of dollars. After making this discovery the Vermont farmers cared very lit- tle for the number of pounds of wool they raised, and even less for the mutton they marketed. The hay crop increased greatly, and with it butter and cheese. These prod- ucts had been difficult R n i'fe I So THE GREAT WEST. of transportation under former conditions, and were apt to deteriorate on their slow way to mar- ket in hot weather. The railroad enabled dairy farmers to market their butter and cheese in Boston and in New York in the best of condition and the importance of the industry rapidly increased. In early days, when the drovers used to collect herds and drive them along the country roads all the way to market, cattle had been valued in pro- portion to their beef qualities, but with the growth of the dairy interest the milk-producing strains found more favor, and the grade of cattle of the country was improved by the intermingling with better stock. Fruit of all kinds which would bear the cli- mate was grown in increasing quantities where the soil permitted ; former methods were improved by study and through the competition aroused by the agricultural societies. The horses of Vermont have always borne a high reputation. The Mor- gan and Messenger strains have been pronounced unsurpassed for general purposes, and the progeny of Black Hawk and other noted sires proved their value in many capacities. Horses were sold from the State in considerable numbers annually, yet their number increased with the bettering of the roads, and that of working oxen has as steadily diminished. Where there were forty-eight thou- THE GREAT WEST i8i sand in the State in 1850, there were but forty-two thousand in i860 and these have decreased to less than fifteen thousand in 1888. The oxen had been very useful in the rough work of clearing the State and rendering it fit for cultivation, but in the actual processes of agriculture, the faster pace of horses brouQfht them more and more into favor. Up to the railroad epoch labor-saving farm ma- chinery can hardly be said to have existed, but its introduction greatly lessened the labors of the farm after 1850. The first mowing machines were more than twice as heavy as the improved patterns later in use; they were very hard upon the horses which pulled them, but they were a great improvement upon the scythe. The early horse-rakes were equally rude, a common pattern being a flat double rake of wood, which the driver, walking behind, overturned with much labor at each winrow, but the worst were a long step in advance of the hand- rake. The hay crop gained greatly in value when it became possible to cut and harvest it rapidly instead of allowing the last of each year's cut to " go to seed " and grow dead and wiry. Improved machinery upon the farm, as well as in the shop, rendered possible a much greater production in proportion to the numbers employed. A corresponding advance was made within the household. The domestic manufacture of wool 1 82 THE GREAT WEST. declined ; the ponderous beams of the loom became lumber in the attics; the flax wheels and hatchels kept them company. Factory-made cloth took the place of homespun and the girls of Vermont fami- lies had more time to go to school. Many of them went to the factory towns of Massachusetts to work as cotton spinners, and at a time when the mill girls of Lowell and Lawrence were among the most intellectual and cultured members of their sex, the sharpening of wits which ensued from such companionship was no less valuable than the wages received. The ability to earn money always commands respect. There can be no doubt that the factory system of the New England States was in those days at least a blessing to the women, and in many ways improved their condition. Home life in Ver- mont also presented many changes. Machinery came to aid in the labors of the housekeeper, though to a considerably less extent than out of doors. Better furniture, table ware and clothing, more pictures and books, more pleasant surround- ings in many ways, were the natural results of increased wealth, cheapened production and new facilities for travel and comparison. To trace the effect upon Vermont of the coming of the canals and of the railrtmds we have followed its industrial development up lo the very opening THE GREAT WEST. 183 of the civil war. We must now go back to the " era of good feeHng " and take up where we dropped it the story of the State. The period between the era of good feeling, when North and South were in harmony and people fondly hoped that political troubles were over forever in the new Republic, and the civil war which convulsed the nation in 1 86 1 was one of vast importance to Vermont as well as to the nation at large. Let us consider what was happening within the State and whither it was tending morally and socially during the years whose marvelous material developments have been so briefly sketched. CHAPTER VIII. HOME HAPPENINGS. THE STATE MOVASE^ (§V /^ONTPEUER. "-'"iiirf 1 I t ^ j P !i n '' t. HE era of political good feeling was either too good to last or else a blessing of doubtful value. From whatever standpoint we view it — whether we hold with those philosophers who ex- tol the even division of parties as a blessing, or with those who condemn it as a curse — the fact that it did not last need not now excite so much surprise as that any one then seriously expected that it would last. Whether a popular government without party divisions would be desirable is hardly worth inquiring. Such a state of affairs is not a possibility with human nature constituted as it now is. The history of Vermont in the "thirties" shows that where better issues of political war are wanting people will divide upon questions wliich look in the retrospect 184 HOME HAPPENINGS. 185 anything but worth quarreling about, and that poUtical controversy loses none of its bitterness when based upon issues of minor importance. The Anti-Masonic Movement originated in the mysterious disappearance in Western New York of a man named Morgan. Him the fraternity of Free Masons was accused of murdering or making away with as a punishment for revealing the secrets of the order. It cut a very wide swath in Vermont, and was more successful there than in any other State. The electoral vote was given in 1828 to Adams against Jackson. In the same year Samuel C. Crafts was chosen as governor by the Adams party to succeed the Rev. Ezra Butler who had served two terms. In the year 1830 the Anti-Masonic party put up for the first time a candidate of their own for governor. This was William A. Palmer. Gover- nor Crafts was the incumbent and Ezra Meech the Jacksonian candidate. Crafts received a plurality of the votes, but not a majority, and the elec- tion was thrown into the Assembly where Crafts was finally chosen. The next year the same can- didates ran. There was no popular election, but this time Palmer carried off the prize in the Legis- lature. Crafts was the Masonic candidate, and his defeat for this reason alone shows to what a height party feeling rose on this curious issue. 1 86 HOME HAPPENINGS. Tlie prejudice against the Masons at this time compelled the disbandment of many of their lodges throughout the State, the Grand Lodge of Ver- mont among them. In 1832 Palmer was again elected by the Assembly, there being no choice at the polls. In this year Jackson and Clay were the Democratic and Whig candidates and they re- ceived 7,870 and 11,152 votes respectively, the Whigs as before, keeping ahead of the Jacksonians in spite of the disturbing influence of the Anti- Masonic party. For that party had a candidate for the Presidency, and a very good one, in William Wirt. He had a useless but substantial following of men who " voted in the air." He received no electoral votes except the seven of Vermont. Jack- son had 219 of the whole number and Clay forty- nine. It is difficult now to see precisely what the Anti-Masons expected Wirt to do for them if elected, but they were undoubtedly sincere in his support. In 1833 and 1834 Palmer was re-elected, quite as much because of his character as an executive as on account of the Anti-Masonic movement which fell away tremendously in the " off year" following- Jackson's re-election. Silas H. Jennison served as governor for the remainder of the decade. In 1840 Van Buren was the successful candidate for the Presidency. He received in Vermont 14,037 votes ; HOME HAPPENINGS. - 187 to Harrison the Whig leader were given 20,991. Charles Paine, John Mattocks and William Slade were respectively elected governors in 1840, 1843 and 1844. The latter was the compiler of the in- valuable State Papers of Vermont, which contain so much material for the historian and student. The vote of the State in the important Presidential election of 1844 was cast as follows: Clay, Whig, 26,770; Polk, Democrat, 18,041; Birney, Aboli- tionist, 3,954. The Birney vote was a new and portentous appearance upon the field of politics. The same candidate had received but three hun- dred and nineteen votes in 1840, and this increase illustrated the growth in the State of that senti- ment against slavery whose results a future chapter will chronicle. The years whose political character has been thus briefly summarized were signalized by a num- ber of important events affecting Vermont in com- mon with other States and by not a few peculiar to itself. The period opened with the vigorous agitation for a series of canals to connect the Connecticut and the lake. This project it is needless to say was not carried out. The mount- ain chain which extends north and south throus^h the State was an almost insuperable obstacle to such a canal. The great floods of 1828 and 1830 caused wide-spread destruction in the Connecticut iS8 HOME HAPPENINGS. Valle}^ and along the channels of the swollen streams. In the latter 3'ear fourteen people were swept away and drowned in the township of New Haven on the Otter Creek. Hundreds of thou- sands of dollars would not have repaired the prop- erty loss there and elsewhere throughout the State. In 1S32 tlie Legislature authorized the con- struction of a new capitol building at Montpelier and appr()i)riated $2P-''^^'^ ^^^ that purpose. This sum was found totally insufficient for the work and in the end, at an expense of $140,000, a very credit- able State House was erected. The constitution HOME HAPPENINGS. 1 89 of the State was revised and amended in 1836 and more radical changes made in it than at any former revision. The Council of Censors was retained but the Governor's Council was abolished and in its place was put a senate, with powers substantially the same as the corresponding body wielded in the other States. The members were to be chosen annually, were not to be less than thirty years of age, and their number was restricted to thirty. Each county was entitled to one senator; the remainder were apportioned among the counties according to their population. This apportionment was to be revised after each census report. The same constitutional change which established the senate gave the governor the power to veto bills but provided that a bare majority of both houses should be sufficient to pass laws over his veto. In the following year, 1837, the most dangerous financial panic which had ever yet afflicted the country broke in full force. It disastrously affected all industries in Vermont and elsewhere. The panic was the direct result of natural causes and might have been foretold for some time before- hand. The country, under the influence of the great Western migration, had expanded too rapidly and strained credit too severely. Money was very scarce in the new States and territories and the need of a circulating medium was in a measure I go HOME HAPPENINGS. supplied by numerous State banks which poured upon the country a flood of paper notes, often irredeemable because of the wild speculations in which their capital was sunk and not unfrequently backed by no capital whatever. Men were so full of abidins; faith in the future of their country that they were ready to put their money, and money borrowed from other people, into the craziest of schemes. Land speculation was almost universal. Railroads and canals were seriously projected which could not if completed have paid their running expenses for years to come. States were drawn into the tide and plunged reck- lessly into debt to promote internal improvements. Industry suffered w-hile speculation throve. Rents became high, interest on loans reached in many cases two or two and a half per cent, per month and the prices of all manner of commodities advanced out of all proportion to the earning power of labor- ing men. The w^heat crop of 1836 and 1837 w^as almost a failure and grain was imported from Europe. Flour rose to such a price that " bread riots " in New York City emphasized the danger of the day. The leader of one of these riots said to the noisy rabble who were applauding a harangue, " Let us go to • and offer him eight dollars a barrel for flour. If he refuses we will take it." In an hour HOME HAPPENINGS. 191 thousands of barrels were scattered in the streets. The laree cities were at that time without poHce pro- tection ; the " bread mobs " were ahnost unopposed in their work of destruction. Strikes, till then unknown in the country, became common. Social- istic doctrines for the alleviation of the evils from which the people suffered found ready believers and agitation of impracticable schemes of social reform was rife. The commercial distresses were complicated by political differences upon fiscal matters. The Bank of the United States had in 1791 been chartered by the Federalists for twenty years. The limita- tion expired in 181 1 and the Republicans who were then in power, refused to renew the charter. In 181 6, however, the Republicans found it necessary to re-establish the Bank and since that time it had fallen again into the hands of the Federalists whose naturally it was. In 1832, the Democrats being then in power, the friends of the Bank began to advocate the renewal of its charter, though it was not to expire until 1836, and passed a bill for that purpose which President Jackson vetoed. Jackson's re-election caused the directors of the Bank to see very plainly that all hope of securing a renewal of the charter was out of the question. Naturally they began to contract and realize upon their loans for the purpose of settling up their 192 HOME HAPPENINGS. affairs. Benton and others have held that this was done purposely to create a panic and compel a renewal of the charter; the possibility of this result may have influenced the directors, for much distress was caused by their action, but it was nev- ertheless justified by sound business considerations. In 1833 Jackson issued a circular to the agents of the Government directing them thenceforth to deposit no money with the bank or its branches, while the money then in its custody was gradually to be withdrawn to pay current expenses. From that time the bank daily prepared to go out of business. This it actually did some time before the expiration of its charter. It was afterwards char- tered as a State bank by Pennsylvania, but went finally out of business in 1839. Whatever may have been the faults of the Bank of the United States politically, it was at least sol- vent. It was well managed financially and exercised something of a good influence in a day when it was sadly needed. Things went on from bad to worse. The currency of the State banks was never very eood ; it was often w^orthless. Little of the best of it would circulate at par fifty miles from the place of issue ; trade was hampered and merchants put to no end of annoyance by perpetual losses from bad money and l^y the elaborate system which they were forced to adopt for its detection. This was HOME HAPPENINGS. 1 93 the situation when President Jackson in 1836 directly precipitated the panic by issuing a circular to the agents of the Government, directing them to accept nothing but gold and silver in payment for the public lands or of customs dues. This action at the close of Jackson's term brought the panic upon Van Buren, his successor, at the very opening of his administration. The storm broke in March. So violent was it that a strong deputation of bankers went to Wash- ington to beseech Van Buren to withdraw the specie circular. This he firmly refused to do and by the tenth of May all the banks had suspended specie payment. The year which followed was one of total collapse in the business world and of great suffering among the people generally. Special bankruptcy laws were passed for the relief of the situation and after a year of sitting in sackcloth and ashes for the financial sins of a decade, the country was ready to resume business again. In- solvent merchants had compounded with their creditors ; these again had compromised with other creditors until the swollen scale of prices sank to the normal. The tense situation was practically closed by the action of the New York banks on the fifteenth of May, 1838, in resuming specie payment, an example which was soon followed by all the other banks in the vicinity which were still alive. 194 HOME HAPPENINGS. President Jackson has been often blamed by his political opponents for causing the panic by the issuance of the specie circular, even as the Bank of the United States had been charged with inducins: the less serious stringency of 1833 by curtailing its loans ; but neither the one nor the other caused the panic. Jackson's circular though its occasion, was no more than that. The real cause was the feverish speculation of the preceding years. The suffering of Vermont by the panic was en- tirely out of proportion to its responsibility. It had not been one of the chief sinners against finan- cial laws, yet it is probable that the State fared far better than the Western States on the one hand and the great money centers on the other. The failure of the wheat crop was very disastrous, for it had been up to that time one of the most important sources of wealth ; but speculation was much less feverish than in the newer portions of the country, and the Legislature had not been prone to sanction enormous expenditures of money to forward extrava- gant public works. The people however suffered from the sins of their brethren in the West. The banks felt the blow with the rest and suspended and resumed specie payments when these move- ments became general. They were not numerous ; the history of banking In Venr.ont was practically covered at that time by thirty years. ',n3^^n. ,=j^^r^ SUGAR-MAKING : THE CRITICAL MOMENT. HOME HAPPEXTXGS. l^-J In iSo6 a State bank had been chartered, at first with two branches and afterward with four, but it was unsuccessful and was finally wound up at con- siderable loss. Since i8ii,when the State bank became a confessed failure, a number of private banks had been chartered by the Legislature. Not more than two or three of these failed to survive the panic, and in 1841 when it was well over, there were in all seventeen banks, with a capital of one million, seven hundred and thirty-five thousand dollars. A branch of the Bank of the United States had been established in Burlington in 1830, and this of course ceased operations with the parent institution, leaving the State apparently well supplied with private corporations. Of sa\ings banks there were none in those days. The virtues of thrift and frugality were however not less common than now, when the savinsfs-bank deposits make such a creditable showing. At any rate, the State recovered from the depression with all the elasticity of a thrifty, agricultural community. It soon became as prosperous as ever, though the West did not fully recover for almost a decade. There were farmers not a fev\- who had mortgaged their land to get money for speculation and these found then, as usually, the folly of such a course. In the universal smash of interdependent credit merchants failed bv the hundred, but most of them 198 HOME HAPPENINGS. soon re-embarked in business and industries flour- ished upon a sounder basis than before. The lesson of the panic clearly was that economy and industry are better avenues to wealth than spec- ulation. It was so generally heeded, not only in Ver- mont but throughout the entire Union, that it is not at all impossible that the panic was a blessing in dis- guise. The lesson was a costly one ; but it was needed and the country profited by it. In the winter of 1837-38, in the midst of the panic came the "patriot " movement for the con- quest of Canada. It enlisted the sympathies and in- terest of the American people to an unprecedented extent; it led to violent disturbances along the northern frontier from Vermont to Michigan and came near involving the country in war with Great Britain. For some years there had been a great deal of dissatisfaction in Canada with the govern- ment of the Province. With some this took the shape of a desire for joining the American Union. Others wished to see Canada's government over- turned and a more liberal but independent one established ; but the majority of the disaffected would probably have been satisfied with such reasonable reforms as were afterward accorded. The dissatisfaction finally assumed the shape of an armed revolt under the lead of one McKenzie, a born agitator and a man of some literary ability HOME HAPPENINGS. 1 99 but apparently with little talent for military leader- ship. McKenzie went to Buffalo early in Decem- ber ; public meetings of sympathizers were held and one Thomas Jefferson Sutherland undertook to' raise a force on the American side of the line to aid the insurgents. His definite project was to seize Navy Island, near the British shore of the Niagara River, and there raise the standard of an invading army. His plans were fully known, for he had no more discretion than to march troops through the streets of Buffalo to military music, openly pro- claiming; their destination. There was no one to oppose him, however, save the half-armed Canadian militia, and he occupied the island with twenty-four men. The force afterward increased to some hun- dreds, and was placed in command of Rensselaer Van Rensselaer, the dissipated son of a prominent New York family. The invasion would have been of very little moment had it not been the cause of trouble between the United States and Great Britain. President Van Buren had at the beginning of the movement issued a strict neutrality proclama- tion, but on December 29 a wanton outrage was committed which greatly complicated matters. The American steamboat Caroline which had been run- ning to the island with supplies of arms and pro- vision for Van Rensselaer's army was on that night 200 HOME HAPPENINGS. destroyed b}^ a force of Canadian troops while lying at her dock on the American side of the river. In the struggle for her possession five or six per- sons were killed. For the murder of one of these, a Canadian soldier named McLeod was tried, but acquitted for want of evidence. Had he been hung the consequences might have been serious. As it was, the burning of the Caroline greatly inflamed the excitement along the border. One party of invaders occupied a stone windmill on the Cana- dian side of the river near Prescott, and was dis- lodged with considerable loss of life by the Loyalist troops. In Vermont public meetings of the sym- pathizers were held throughout the State to some extent and especially in its northern portion. The most unpopular act of Governor Jenison's long official career was undoubtedly his issuance of a proclamation warning the people not to violate the rules governing neutrals nor to aid in an attack upon a government with which the United States was at peace. The common sense of later times has of course endorsed the act as proper and necessary, but it was at the time bitterly assailed by the press and public. A number of insurgents from Canada, escaping into the State, undertook to raise a force to invade the province. Preparations were made to set out HOME HAPPENINGS. 20I from Alburgh. The militia under command of Gen. John E. Wool of the United States Army did not, however, permit them to form within the State, and the members of the "army " straggled across the line and formed upon the Canadian side. They were badly-managed, badly-ofificered and not well- armed. When the intellio^ence was brouoht that sixteen or seventeen hundred troops were marching against them the leaders of the little band were for returning into Vermont. There of course they could not be pursued, but General Wool was as prompt in this as in the preceding emergency. He invited the army of invasion to surrender to him. If they did this all would be well, but if they at- tempted to march across the line in military order he announced that he would direct the militia to fire upon them. This alternative left the invaders nothing to do but surrender, to give up their arms and go home. Thus the " war " ended, but a great deal of hard feeling grew out of the campaign. Until the hotly-contested presidential election of 1840 gave the people other issues to discuss, the invasion and the action of the governor in this bor- der trouble were fruitful themes of controversy. The winter of 1842-43 was an exceptionally cold one and a number of cases of freezino- to death were reported. These were not the worst feature of the season, however ; in its later months there 202 HOME HAPPENINGS. broke out an epidemic of skin disease somewhat resembling erysipelas which numbered its victims by the dozens in almost every township. The un- exampled severity of the weather and the number of the dead prevented the interment of their bodies in the consecrated ground of the churchyards, and at many places that winter could be seen temporary roadside tombs where the forms of the dead were laid away to await a final burial in the spring. When the ice left the rivers broke up ; the melt- ing snow caused the vast floods which usually fol- lowed a severe winter, and the disease was checked. It soon disappeared completely, but not for many years thereafter were its ravages recalled without a shudder. Even to this day 1842 is known as "the year of the epidemic." The period following the great panic was one of considerable legislative activity in Vermont. It was at this time that plank road companies began to apply in considerable numbers for incorporation. The roads of the State were almost uniformly bad, being especially heavy and muddy along the lake shore. The device of surfacing some of the more important ones with a continuous flooring of planks, making a firm, hard roadway in all weathers, found common acceptance at this time throughout the State as well as in some of its Northern neighbors. Until their place was taken by the railroads the HOME HAPPENINGS. 203 plank turnpikes greatly lessened the difficulties of travel. It was at about the same time that legislative en- couragement was extended to the industries of the State. A bounty to foster the raising and manufac- ture of silk was authorized in 1838, but soon abol- ished. In 1843 a law was passed making conditional appropriations for the establishment of agricultural societies. The following year the bounty was ex- tended to domestic manufactures and the mechanic arts. Great good has resulted to the State from the operation of this and subsequent legislation. The time was fruitful in changes, and in none did the altered conditions of life more strikingly mani- fest themselves than in^^-v r, W Ken' everj^ ma-n the altered habits of the people. The time when every man was his own cobbler, cooper and harness maker vanished with the coming of the r a i 1 - road. The great event in- troduced the State to its iron age, and that of wood and leather ended. Co Lyer. 204 HOME HAPPENINGS. The increasing scarcity of timber and the diffi- culty of obtaining it, coupled with considerations of convenience robbed the fireside of some of its picturesqueness. The old fireplaces, greedy of fuel but generous of comfort, gave place in most in- stances to stoves. The econom)^ of labor was one reason of the change ; still another was the rapid decrease of the timber of the State which had a new value given to it by the stimulus which the canal and railroads had afforded to the lumber and wood- workinof industries. Such however is the force of habit, that many who began to use stoves for heat- ing purposes retained the old-time fireplaces for cooking for years, but usually all went together, and the great chimneys were torn out of the houses to make room. In such cases, and in most of the new houses built at the time, the chimneys were started, not from the foundation, but from a stout shelf in the attic. To this, with many sinuosities, the stovepipes ran through the rooms of both stories. It was an arrangement productive of the utmost economy of heat, but proved the cause of many fires, and was valueless for ventilation. The exterior appearance of the houses had chano-ed also. The rao-e for classicism, at this time, devastated almost the entire country. It filled Vermont also with stately houses modeled after the Parthenon — the upper stories shaded by their HOME HAPPENINGS. 205 Grecian pediments and the fluted columns a stand- ing invitation to the jack-knives of mischievous boys. Whatever their external appearance, the homes of the people certainly, upon the average, grew more spacious, convenient and comfortable as the makeshifts and vexations of the backwoods period of existence drifted further and further away. The loft to which one climbed by a ladder became a matter of tradition alono^ with the tin oven and the saddle pillion. The common type of barn also underwent a considerable chano-e. In the early period all that the most prosperous farmer needed was a structure perhaps thirty by forty or twenty-six by thirty-six feet in size and twelve feet high at the eaves. It afforded space upon one side of the central driveway for a deep haymow and gave, upon the other, stabling for a yoke of oxen, a team of horses and three or four cows. And with this the farmer had been satisfied. But the growth of the dairy business greatly in- creased the number of milch cattle. For these space must be provided, and the extra fodder they required needed shelter. The former necessity might be met by building an unsatisfactory " lean- to " or a new barn precisely like the first ; the latter could be evaded by stacking out of doors a good portion of the hay and straw after threshing, to be hauled where wanted when winter came. 2o6 HOME HAPPENINGS. Both needs however could be squarel}^ met by the erection of an entirely new type of barn big enough to house all the stock and crops and con- veniently and compactly arranged. This was done and ever since has been continued in increasingly numerous instances. Experience has led the Vermont farmer to seek the desired objects by increasing all the dimen- sions of his barns and, in perhaps a majority of instances, by building them against sidehills and making use of the semi-basements as stables and root cellars. In many of these barns the drive- ways are placed above the "big beam," the roof being hipped to give more room, so that all un- loading shall be downward and not up. Where this arrangement is impossible or deemed inadvis- able the horse-fork is used to unload hay or grain from the level. These and other improvements have been the natural result of the de\'elopment of the dairy interest and they can nowhere be studied to better advantage than in Vermont, whose long cold winters render excellent barns a matter of prime necessity. The altered habits and conditions of the people were manifested no less in their mental and moral than in their material activities. The period which witnessed the coming of the railroads and the most marked increase of the industries of the State was HOME HAPPENINGS. 207 distinguished, among a number of less notable movements, by two which must be described in some detail. The fifth and sixth decades of the century will be ever memorable in Vermont no less than the rest of the Union, as the date of the great anti- slavery uprising. In a peculiar degree also to Ver- mont in common with comparatively few of the other States it will be remembered as the era of the temperance reform. The part which the peo- ple of the Green Mountains bore in the temper- ance and anti-slavery crusades forms one of the brightest passages in the story of their State. CHAPTER IX. THE TEMPERANCE REFORM. N the early years of the present century the United States was a drunken and disso- lute nation. This fact is so forced upon us by unimpeachable tes- timony that escape is impossible, no matter - how reluctant we may be to 2:ive it credit. It was a time of vio-orous physical activity but of low moral standards in many ways. Liquor was plentiful and cheap; almost every man drank, nor was it counted shame- ful to indulge to excess. The host of evil con- sequences which always follow in the train of drunken habits were everywhere lamented by the few and accepted by the many as inevitable. Brutal and degrading sports flourished, political contro- versies were waged upon a low level and the most sordid vices were probablv more common, certainly 208 THE TEMPERANCE REFORM. 209 less concealed in the gratification, than is now the case. The United States was not alone in this unfor- tunate condition, and the reformatory impulse which dignified the second quarter of the century was not confined to any one country. In England the corrective agencies which are usually most stimulated to activity when evil forces seem trium- phant busied themselves largely in temperance agi- tation, in improving the condition of prisoners, in factory and mining legislation and in shifting the burdens of taxation partially from the shoulders of the very poor to others better able to bear them. On the Continent was secured the abolition of torture, injudicial processes, and an amelioration of the condition of the peasant classes ; of this latter the liberation of the Russian serfs was the crowning triumph. America joined the world-wide current of reform by a:ttempting or effecting a large number of greatly needed changes. None of these was more important than the temperance movement ; with this, indeed, all the others were intimately connected. Without some reference to the general campaign for temperance in America the story of the passage of the prohibitory law in Vermont cannot be ade- quately told. Vermont has carried the reform further than most of the other States ; she proba- 2IO THE TEMPERANCE REFORM. bly profited more by it; but the agitation by means of which this was effected was not confined to any one locaHty. A national temperance society was organized at Saratoga in 1808, but seems to have made little progress against the current. In 1826 the American Temperance Society was formed at Boston. It is worthy of note that the first tem- perance advocates did not dream of seeking pro- hibitive leg^islation ; thev counseled moderation in drinkino: and the substitution of beer and ale for stronger liquors. The members of the Temper- ance Society actually built a brewery near Boston to give force to their suggestions in this latter respect. By about 1835 or 1S40, however, the total abstinence theory had gained a firm foothold; with it came naturally the idea of repressive legislation. The American Temperance Union was formed in 1836 at Saratoga. In 1840 the Washington Band of Reformers, probably the most powerful temper- ance agency of the century, organized at Baltimore. The good which was accomplished by these or- ganizations was vast beyond calculation ; they reacted favorably upon national life and manners in many other respects but remotely associated with the good chiefly aimed at. Maine was the first State to pass a prohibitive ordinance in 1846, but Vermont was not far behind. The powerful and growing temperance sentiment THE TEAIFERANCE REFORM. 211 in the State forced some recognition in the Legisla- ture even earlier. In 1844 a law was enacted fix- ing a minimum fee for licenses and appointing county commissioners to issue them. In 1846 pro- vision was made for a popular vote on license or no license. In 1850 the selectmen of the towns were authorized to empower agents to sell liquor SIGNING THE PLEDGE. for chemical, medicinal or mechanical purposes and also to license victualers to sell small beer or cider ; the licenses of any who were found dispens- ing hard liquors to drink were to be taken away froni them. In 1852 what has generally been called the pro- 212 THE TEMPERANCE REFORM. hibitive enactment was framed-. This was really the most important step in a series of such en- actments. It provided that no person should be allowed to sell or give away any intoxicating drink except for medicinal, chemical or mechanical pur- poses, agents for such sale being named by county excise commissioners. In 1853 the use, manu- facture and sale of cider was permitted but not its sale in places of public resort or to drunkards. In 1854 the severe penalties of the law were extended to any one owning or keeping liquor with evident intent to sell; in 1855 still more restrictive legisla- tion followed; in 1856 penalties were provided for railway, stage or express agents who transported liquor intended for illegal sale and in 1858 its use at "raisings" was expressly prohibited. Since then the law upon the subject has been frequently changed, but its spirit has remained much the same. The sale of liquor except for the purposes specified has been for over thirty years tabooed. Whether such absolute restriction is wise, beneficial and judicious is yet a controverted point. Its bitter opponents have never ceased to reiterate that in Vermont and Maine the law has proved worse than useless, but in both these States the large majority say most emphatically that it has been an inesti- mable benefit, and it is quite probable that they are in a position to know. THE TEMPERANCE REFORM. 213 The long-continued agitation of the temperance movement, which had made hard drinking unfash- ionable and drunkenness a disgrace, would certainly have accomplished much for the State unaided by any legislation whatever, but whether owing to this, or to the prohibitory law or in a measure to both, it is certain that the condition of society has been greatly improved in this respect. Where drunkenness was once common it became uncom- mon. The confirmed habits of adults were not always affected, but the removal of temptation from the young led to a gradual and beneficent change. The habits of the people became more industrious as well as more temperate, and all good movements felt the impulse of the funda- mental reform. The schools flourished as never before, the churches maintained themselves with viQ;or ao-ainst the unfavorable effect of emigration, libraries were founded, lectures and debating socie- ties took the place of gatherings of more question- able advantage. The law to abolish imprisonment for debt came during the temperance agitation. Later on, the passage of a law to prevent cruelty to animals, the steps taken to provide for the care and educa- tion of the dependent and defective classes and the ineffectual yet persistent efforts in behalf of arbitration as a means of settling disputes between 2 14 ^^^ TEMPERANCE REFORM. nations indicated the drift of public sentiment. That the reform instinct gathered too great impe- tus in its successful course, and that absurd and chimerical schemes for the amelioration of society were discussed along with others of a positively baleful menace does not detract from the value of the original impulse. It has ever been the fate of great and worthy movements to be condemned to drag thus at their skirts the lesser and unworthy ones it has inspired, or those which are too far in advance of the times. The period of the temperance reform was that which saw the visionary attempt of such pure and high-minded men and women as Ripley, Haw- thorne and Maro-aret Fuller to establish an ideal community at Brook Farm. It was the period too when the reasonable demand for the reform of the dress of women, in the interest of health, economy and convenience, found sporadic expression in the ugly and impossible Bloomer costume. And in the same anxious years the revolting doctrine of free love found not a few adherents, some of whom liad so far the courage of their convictions as to practice what they preached. Time has corrected manv of the cxtravas^ances born of the yeasty ferment of the age of reform, but it has left untouched the effects of most move- ments worthy of success. The temperance reform THE TEMPERANCE REFORM. 21 J in other States has transmitted to the descendants of the men who fought the fight of the "forties" only the altered conditions which make the liquor habit a reproach. In Vermont the prohibitory law has survived for over thirty years and seems as far from repeal as ever. It will be of interest here to anticipate somewhat and seek testimony as to its value to the State in more recent times. Its best friends to-day do not claim that it is always and everywhere enforced with equal strictness, but they would claim that, even where enforcement is most lax, drinking is less public and temptation less insistent than in places where the liquor trade has full license. Upon this point let us hear the testi- mony of a professed enemy of the system. The Hon. Justin McCarthy, M. P., said in an article on "Prohibitive Legislation in the United States" in the Fortnightly Review in 187 1 : " In Rutland, Vermont, there was great agitation during the winter of 1870-71 because of the abuses of the hotej system. The bars were allowed, people complained, to become carousing dens for the common tipplers of the town. The authorities began a crusade to put down all selling of drink by the hotel-keepers. The hotel-keepers declared that if restricted they would close their houses, and thus drive all strangers away from the city, and ruin its trade. The authorities persevered, and the hotel-keepers did actually shut up their houses for several days. But the puritanical blood of Rutland was up and the leading townspeople actually converted their own houses into caravansaries for all strangers — actually had servants at the railway stations to receive every new-comer, and quarter him according to the previously arranged billet. This odd struggle ended in the discom- fiture and surrender of the hotel-keepers. They ' caved in,' promised to obey the laws implicitly, and reopened their houses. Yet I have to add my little commentary of personal experience. I arrived in Rutland within a 2l8 THE TEMPERANCE REEOKM. week after the ti'iuni])li of pul)lic opinion, and tlie unconditional surrender of the hotel-keepers. I found no more difficulty in getting brandy at my hotel in Rutland than if I had been at the St. Nicholas in New York. I asked for it openly, purposely, ostentatiously ; it was brought without a word of comment or a hint of concealment. In Burlington, in the same State, a day or two after, I stayed at a hotel where there was an open bar with a crowd of idlers, evidently nut travelers, lounging and smoking and drinking around it." This was written some time ago and the con- dition of things in Burlington and Rutland may have changed much since 1871, but it is not every year that a British Member of Parliament comes to America to break the laws and speak of his success as a reason why such laws should not be enacted. It is worth remembering that Burlington is the largest. city in the State; it has a considerable float- ing population while Rutland is the centre of the quarrying region and naturally attracts from without the State many laborers who are unused to its re- strictions, as well as a large number of travelers. Mr. McCarthy would certainly have found matters very different in the smaller villages, by which the success of the law could be better and more accu- rately tested. We need not further comment upon his experience than to point out what a contrast his narrative presents between the zeal and self- sacrifice of the "leading townspeople" who did so much for the law and the contemptible action of the hotcl-kccpers who held their promises so lightly. It is evident enough from these experiences that THE TEMPERANCE REFORM. 219 the people had no doubt whatever of the value of the law, even when imperfectly enforced, and so it would be to-day. No better evidence of the temper of the people on this subject could be found than that furnished by the legislation of recent years. We have seen how the prohibitive law was enacted so long ago as 1852. More than thirty years after its enact- ment, the legislators were still hedging in the whisky power by further enactments. •At a time when in many other States both polit- ical parties seemed to be vying with each other for the favor of the vast vote which the saloons con- trolled, the Vermont Legislatures of 1882, 1884 and 1886 were passing various acts relative to liquor of which a few examples will show the purpose and intent. One of these laws provided for the study in all public schools of physiology and hygiene with especial reference to the effect of liquor and narcotics upon the h u m a n system. It was the intent of the A BLOOMER. 2 20 THE TEMPERANCE REFORM. framers of tlie law that the subject should be taught as thoroughly as grammar or geography, that all the pupils of the State might in order under- stand the physiological meaning of drunkenness and kindred excesses. Another act was designed to compel every person convicted of intoxication to tell where he procured liquor. Another provides that while a man is in jail for any crime committed while drunk, his family can by legal process collect two dollars per day from the seller of the liquor. Another lays down the penalty for the third offense of intoxication as a fine of twenty dollars and one month's imprisonment. The men who make these laws do not seem to doubt the efificacy of prohibi- tion but rather to do all in their power to aid the purpose of the law's framers. Is the law enforced } Certainly not with com- pleteness. The records of every local court are as conclusive upon this point as they are incontro- vertible evidence of the intent to enforce the law so far as possible. The trial of liquor-sellers forms a considerable share of the criminal business of the State, and the penalties imposed are so severe and so seldom escaped by the guilty that the trafific is compelled to hide in corners out of the way of public vision. Whether because or in spite of prohibition crime is not common. Magrant offenses against decency THE TEMPERANCE REFORM. 22 1 and crimes against the person are rare, and even more so are serious offenses against property rights. It is not only possible but habitual over many parts of the State to dispense with bolts and bars with- out fear. A community without saloons has few at- tractions for " tramps " or those other idle people who live constantly on the verge of crime and need only a slight impulse to become serious offenders. The prisons and asylums of the State compare most favorably with those of other communities, and its thrift and economy are notable. In other parts of the Union, too, the Vermonters have borne witness to their belief in the efficacy of prohibition. The tremendous influx of immi- o-rants from the Green Mountain State to Michio-an in the " thirties " was one of the impelling causes of the passage of a prohibitory law there in 1850, and in Iowa, Wisconsin and other Northwestern States the large element of settlers from Vermont has been pretty constantly on the side of the restriction of the liquor traffic. The advisability of prohibition is yet a debated question, but it cannot be denied that in the majority of the people of Vermont it has strong advocates of the affirmative. Not more important perhaps in its ultimate re- sults than the temperance movement, but certainly far more creditable to the generous sentiment of the people of the State, since those for whom it was 222 THE TEMPERANCE REFORM. waged were not their own sons but a nation of black men half a thousand miles away, the anti- slavery cause merits the place of honor in any con- sideration of the epoch of reform in Vermont. And in that all-important and trying crisis the peo- ple conducted themselves with so much wisdom, boldness and humanity that their record will ever remain a fit source of pride to their descendants. Let us examine it. CHAPTER X. THE ANTI-SLAVERY CRUSADE. HEN in November, 1777, Captain Ebene- zer Allen with a party of Green Mountain Boys took possession of the British works at Ticonderoga, he cut off the rear guard of the flying enemy, tak- ing among the num- ber, Dinah Morris, the negro slave of a British officer, and her child. Allen being, as he wrote, "conscientious that it is not right in the sight of God to keep slaves," gave the woman a written certificate of freedom^ which unique document was recorded in the town clerk's office at Bennington. Slavery was at that time legal in New York, Of this province Vermont was nomihally a part but the people had no more love for the system than Allen, and one of the first acts of their indepen- dence was to prohibit human servitude except for 223 2 24 THE ANTI-SLAVERY CRUSADE. crime. But though the people would have none of slavery within their own jurisdiction it was not till well within the present century that slavery became the overruling political issue of the Republic, or the question of its ultimate fate a matter for burn- inor discussion. In the year 182S a slender young man with hazel eyes, fair complexion and dark brown hair, and wear- ing constantly a pair of spectacles, made his appear- ance in Bennington. He was the editor of a paper which was in that year established to advocate the election of John Quincy Adams. His name was William Lloyd Garrison. He had been selected to conduct the new organ because of his practical acquaintance with the art of printing and his ability as a writer. He stipulated, upon assuming the editorship of the Journal of the Times, that he should be free to advocate, besides the principles of the Whig party, Anti-Slavery, Temperance, Peace and Moral Re- form, and no objection seems to have been made to this rather extensive programme. Adams re- ceived an overwhelming majoritv in Vermont, but his rival Andrew Jackson was elected. In the very heat of the campaign Garrison never lost sight of his pet reforms, and after the election he prepared and circulated, through the postmasters in the vari- ous towns, petitions praying for the abolition of THE ANTI-SLAVERY CRUSADE. 225 slavery in the District of Columbia. These were signed by no less than two thousand three hundred and fifty-two people. No such objection was made to this use of the mails as was afterward offered by Amos Kendall, Postmaster-General under Jackson, who openly encouraged postal agents not to for- ward abolitionist mail matter of any sort. The evil days were coming, however, even in Vermont. Garrison's paper was short-lived and the young editor went elsewhere to finish his career of suffering and achievement, but the active propa- gandism of anti-slavery sentiments still continued. Factional opposition rose higher and higher until in the year 1835 the Rev. Samuel J. May, who had been invited to speak for the Vermont Anti-Slav- ery Society, was insulted and almost mobbed in Rutland and Montpelier. The better sentiment of the State was even then crystallizing in favor of the restriction of slavery, and from the year 1837 until the war, Vermont was practically a unit in demanding that human bondage be confined within existing limits. For up to the very opening of the Rebellion the restriction of slave territory was all that the great mass of Northern Whig and Repub- lican voters hoped to accomplish. We have seen that Vermont was admitted to the Union in 1791. Almost from that time on to the opening of the war the admission of new States 2 26 THE ANTI-SLAVERY CRUSADE. was governed by political considerations based upon slavery. In order that the balance of power between the North and South might remain un- changed free and slave States were admitted in equal proportion. From the first the North greatly exceeded the South in population ; it had a larger representation in the lower House of Congress, but for three quarters of a century the South managed to keep the balance in the Senate unchanged. Vermont's admission was followed in 1792 by that of Kentucky, a slave State. Tennessee came in 1796 and Ohio in 1802. Louisiana in 181 2 and Indiana in 18 16 were the next pair, and they were followed by Mississippi in 181 7 and Illinois in 18 18. In the nc-xt year Maine and Missouri were admitted together, in 1836 Michigan and Arkansas, in 1845 Iowa and Florida. So far just as many slave as free States had been taken into the Union. Prior to the latter date, however, Texas had wrested its independence from Mexico and was seeking admission as a slave State, and the question of the abolition of the slave trade in the District of Columbia had become a burning one. The Le2;islature of Vermont transmitted to Con- gress a strono: resolution in favor of this latter measure in 1837 and 1838. In the latter year it also passed a resolution declaring that the adoption by the House of Representatives of a rule that all THE AN7T-SLAVERY CRUSADE. 227 petitions on the slavery question be laid on the table imprinted and unread was " a daring infringe- ment of the right of the people to petition and a flagrant violation of the Constitution of the United States." In 1839 similar resolutions were passed and in 1840 a law was made providing that any DINAH MORRIS S CERTIFICATE OF FREEDOM alleged fugitive from slavery should have the right of trial by jury when claimed in Vermont by an owner from a slave State. There was little doubt what the verdict of a Vermont jury would be. In the same year Harrison the Whig candidate for president received a great majority over Van Buren, 2 28 THE ANTI-SLAVERY CRUSADE. and for Birney, the Abolitionist candidate, were cast three hundred and nineteen votes — not an alarming number certainly, yet it portended much. In 1 84 1 and 1842 the Legislature passed yet more vigorous anti-slavery resolutions, protesting aeainst the admission of Texas as a slave State and demanding that the District of Columbia be made free territory. In the latter year Vermont declared that Congress ought to prevent the inter- State slave trade and that the Constitution should be amended so as to prohibit slavery everywhere. This was very advanced ground for the times. The election of Polk in 1844, partly through the secession of the Birney vote which had grown to nearly four thousand in Vermont and in other States held the balance of power, rendered the admission of Texas inevitable, but Vermont ceased not to protest. In 1843 the Legislature had for- bidden courts and magistrates to issue warrants for the arrest of escaping slaves in accordance with the provisions of the old fugitive slave law^ of 1793. In 1844 it again protested against the admission of Texas and declared the system of slavery " a mon- strous anomaly in a free government and the source of intolerable evils." In 1S45 still another ineffectual protest was sent to W'ashington, only a short time before the admission of Texas. The war with Mexico which was the direct result THE ANTI-SLAVERY CRUSADE. 229 of that admission and the dispute about the south- western boundary of the new State found no favor in Vermont. It was fought almost entirely by Southern soldiers. It added another to the list of slave States and postponed the day of final reck- oning with the hateful system. In 1848 General Taylor was elected President, receiving a plurality of the votes of Vermont, though Van Buren the Free Soil candidate had 13,837 votes in that State. The Free Soil party was the natural refuge of many of the more outspoken anti-slavery men. It was led by and recruited from Democrats who had been driven from their party by the subservience of Polk to the slave oligarchy. Its appearance in the field boded no good to the continuance of that power. Taylor's administration was embarrassed with the problem of providing for the government of the vast territory won from Mexico. This was finally accomplished by the compromise measures of 1850, which included the admission of Califor- nia as a free State, the organization of New Mexico and Utah as free territories and the abolition of the slave trade in the District of Columbia, while the slave power was conciliated by a more stringent fugitive slave law which aroused the deepest hostil- ity in the North, especially after Chief Justice Taney's celebrated opinion in the Dred Scott case. 230 THE ANTI-SLAVERY CRUSADE. The voice of Vermont had not been silent through these controversies. In 1849 the Legis- lature pronounced slavery " a crime against hu- manity " and declared for free territories and the suppression of the slave trade. The State's attor- neys in the several counties were in 1850 by law in- structed to conduct the defense of escaped slaves claimed by their former masters ; the Legislature protested in the most bitter language against the new fuo-itive slave law. The election of Pierce, a " Northern man with Southern sentiments," in 1852 brought into exist- ence the Republican party. The name appears to have been used first in the local campaigns of 1854; it was universally applied when in 1856 John C. Fremont ran as its first Presidential can- didate. The " Pathfinder," as Fremont was called, received in Vermont 39,561 votes against 10,569 cast for Buchanan, the successful Democratic candidate. The new party was made up in Vermont as else- where of the most diverse elements. The largest single ingredient was from the old \Miig party. This was reinforced by most of the P^ree Soilers, by a large number of new voters casting their first ballots and by the Birney Abolitionists. From the start the new })arty had things all its own way. Its moderate aims — for it looked for nothini;- more THE ANTI-SLAVERY CRUSADE. 231 radical than the territorial limitation of slavery — recommended it to the great body of moderate men and the more pronounced fell into its ranks because it was marching in something like their own direction. President Buchanan aided, as Pierce had done, every wish and effort of the pro-slavery leaders. By giving them all he sealed their fate ; the time of their greatest triumph was that also of greatest danger. The supine acquiescence of the adminis- tration in the efforts of the Missouri border ruffians to force slavery upon Kansas disgusted the North. In Vermont the armed invasion of Kansas was denounced by the Legislature as an act of atrocity unparalleled in the history of the country ; the non-interference of the Federal goverument was declared to have rendered it unworthy the confi- dence and respect of free men. The Legislature of 1856 appropriated, by a law repealed the following year, twenty thousand dol- lars for the relief of free State men in Kansas, and in 1858 crowned its record of bold and spirited legislation by declaring that every person who had been a slave in another State should be free upon coming to Vermont. " When the government or judiciary of the United States refuses to protect citizens when in another State or territory," de- clared these sturdy freemen, " it becomes the duty 232 THE ANTI-SLAVERY CRUSADE. of the States to protect their own citizens at what- ever hazard or cost." These were noble words and they may fitly close the record of twenty years of lesislative action and ao;itation for freedom — action and agitation which will be in all future time the pride of the people of the State. When the nominating conventions met in i860, the Democrats divided upon the irrepressible ques- tion of slavery. After a political struggle of un- paralleled bitterness three candidates were placed in the field. Douglas representing mainly the moderate pro-slavery Democrats of the North, Breckenridge, who was the candidate of the ex- treme pro-slavery leaders of the South and Bell, who commanded the support of that insignificant element which believed that slavery could still be ignored in American politics. Democratic division was Republican opportunity and Abraham Lincoln, the candidate of that party, was elected President of the United States. In Vermont he received an overwhelming majority, 42,419 votes being cast for him against 6,849 for Douglas and about 2,000 divided between Bell and Breckenridge. The election of Lincoln was by the hot-headed secessionists of the South construed to mean that their "peculiar institution " was in danger, though neither Lincoln nor the Republican party had at that time any intention of interfering with slavery A BASE BALL CLUB VOLUNTEERING FOR SERVICE, THE ANTI-SLAVERY CRUSADE. 235 except by preventing its extension by peaceful and constitutional means. Between the election of Lincoln in November and his inauguration in March, the secession plot grew and ripened unchecked by Buchanan. Forts and arsenals, the property of the United States, were seized, custom houses were closed, the Federal authority repudiated over wide regions and many of the Southern sympathizers in the civil and mili- tary service of the country resigned their places to o-o " with their section." o Hardly more than a month after President Lin- coln's term began, the fall of Sumter under rebel guns incensed the free North, and the President's call for seventy-five thousand men was issued. No- where was it responded to with more alacrity than in Vermont. The Green Mountain Boys did not rest content with passing resolutions against slav- ery and denouncing disunion from a safe distance. The time had come to tight, and Vermont saw that it had come. Thenceforward, during the bloodiest and costliest war of historv, its sons so bore them- selves on many hotly-contested fields that the troops of no other State can challenge comparison, num- ber for number, with them. They had been men of peace for more than a generation, but the blood of fighting forefathers ran in their veins and patriot- ism was the earliest lesson they had learned. 236 THE ANTI-SLAVERY CRUSADE. The Green Mountain Boys at the outbreak of the War of the Revolution had pledged to Congress " more than five thousand hardy soldiers capable of bearing arms in defense of American liberty." That was before the days of the census, and it is probable that the zeal of the Vermonters in a good cause led them to promise more soldiers than their entire adult male population at the time. Cer- tainly no such number took the field. Of the resources of the State in 1S.60 and of its prowess in the War of the Rebellion we have more exact knowledge from the census and from the military records. " Vermont alone of the free vStates," says Benedict, " sent to the war ten men for every one hundred of its population, and out of a total enrollment of thirty-seven thousand men liable to do military duty, stood credited at last with nearly thirty-four thousand volunteers." No Vermont regiment lost its colors in battle. The soldiers of no other Northern State took so many Southern flags in proportion. No other Northern State had anything like so high a percentage of killed and wounded. The organization and equipment of such a host was a matter of the utmost difficulty for a small and poor commonwealth. Its military record was a glorious one and its traditions were well preserved, but the population of the State was nearly station- THE ANTI-SLAVERY CRUSADE. 237 ary, its young men were drawn into the tide of emigration which was peopling the West, and the forest conditions which liad made every Vermonter in earlier years an arms-bearer and marksman had entirely changed. For years after its admission as a State the militia of Vermont had comprised all the able-bodied men between the ages of eighteen and forty-five. In i860 this had dwindled away to nothing. For some years there had been absolutely no militia. Since 1856 only a few small and poorly-armed companies had represented the power of the State. They were without proper equipments, there were inferior arms — smooth bores of a past generation — for only a part of the thousand men or so en- rolled, and the " uniforms " of the different com- panies were anything but uniform. The splendid army which Vermont sent to the South was prac- tically built from new foundations. Early in 1861 war began for the first time to seem possible to Northern eyes. In January an order was issued to the captains of the various com- panies directing them to ascertain whether any of their men were unable or indisposed, if need be, to respond to any call which the President might make for troops. Only three hundred and seventy- six men were reported as armed and ready for ser- vice. Some captains replied that their men had no 238 THE ANTI-SLAVERY CRUSADE. fit muskets, and one made answer that he did not recognize the President's authority over the miHtia of Vermont, but that he and his men would be ready if needed. This the event proved. The President's call to arms came at last. It was flashed by the telegraph throughout the North, thrilling every heart and arousing a wild popular enthusiasm for the Union which swept everything before it. No State executive was prepared to act more promptly than was Erastus Fairbanks, the " war Governor " of Vermont. His proclamation callino: for a reg^iment for active service and con- vening a special session of the Legislature to take the necessary measures of preparation was issued on the same day with President Lincoln's call. On the evening of April 19, four days after, the militia officers of the State met and selected the Bradford, Brandon, Burlington, Cavendish, Middle- bury, Northfield, Rutland, St. Albans, Swanton and Woodstock companies to make up the first Ver- mont regiment. Its life as a regiment was short, the men only enlisting for three months, but at the close of that period five sixths of them re-enlisted, and before the close of the war, a large proportion held officers' commissions either in V^ermont com- mands or in those of other States. The period was one of intense public excitement. Meetings were held everywhere, and preachers left THE ANTI-SLAVERY CRUSADE. 239 their pulpits, farmers their ploughs, merchants their desks and lawyers their clients to enroll themselves in the new regiments for which the Legislature soon called. Several banks placed one tenth of their capital at the disposal of the Governor for war pur- poses and citizens and former citizens of the State made large private contributions. The railroads offered to transport men and material free of charge. The students at Burlington and Middlebury began drilling, and most of them went to the war. The game of base -ball had been very popular in Vermont and there were large numbers of clubs organized in 1861. Now most of these clubs be- came the nuclei of companies of soldiers. The firemen of the differ- ent villages were not behind the base-ball players. Every c o n - ceivable club or organ- ization of active young men became a feeder of the patriot armies. The special session of the Legislature voted the relatively enormous sum of one million dol- lars for war expenses, provided for arming n 2x 240 THE ANTI-SLAVERY CRUSADE. and organizing six more regiments, added seven dollars per month to the Government's pay of sol- diers, and laid a war tax to meet these expenditures. Provision was made for the families of soldiers who might be killed or disabled, and the various mili- tary departments were thoroughly organized. In these patriotic acts there was no distinction of party. The few Democratic members of the Legislature had met in caucus and resolved to follow the advice of one of their number who said: " If the Republicans propose to raise five regiments, do you go for raising ten. If they want half a million for troops, do you move to make it a million dollars." There were a few Copperheads in Ver- mont but none of them seem to have been in that Le2;islature. In tlie extreme event of the State becoming bankrupt under these new and extraor- dinary expenses and failing to pay the extra seven dollars a month to the soldiers or to look after the families of the slain many of the towns provided by a separate guarantee of these promises to all of their citizens who enlisted. It was thus that the troops of Vermont joined the movement which, originating in every hamlet of the North, and pouring on with resistless energy made the national capital resound with the tread of marching regiments, and piled up against secession the mightiest armies of history. THE ANTI-SLAVERY CRUSADE. 241 As they gathered to the defense, tlie Green Mountain Boys were conspicuous among the crack regiments of other States for their fine appearance, soldierly bearing and sober demeanor. The uni- versal testimony of the time is that they were model soldiers in appearance as they afterward proved to be in actual conflict. To tell the story of their part in the civil war would be to recite the history of the war itself, for wherever there was hard fighting to be done the Vermonters were found in the front. It will be impossible in the compass of a single chapter to more than glance at some of its more salient and dramatic crises. CHAPTER XL IN THE FIELD. ^T was April when Sum- ter was fired upon and the War of the Rebel- lion became inevita- ble, but there was great delay before the Northern and South- ern armies were set face to face in the field. Few if any of the Northern States were any better prepared for the war than Vermont. Beyond throwing a few hastily equipped regiments into Washington to save the city from capture, little could be done until the armies were gathered, organized and drilled. There were those in the South who confidently predicted that Washington would be in the hands of the Confederate armies in a month, that the Yankees would not fight, and that independence would be established before the end of the year. 242 IN THE FIELD. 243 There were those in the North who expected Rich- mond to be taken within six weeks by raw mihtia. On neither side was there any adequate conception of the length and desperateness of the coming combat. The freshly organized troops of the North gathered from far and near, were encamped and drilled into some semblance of military form during the hot summer months of 1861, and it was not till past the middle of July that the first pitched battle of any consequence was fought. The coun- try was in a state of intense excitement when it was finally known that the army of the Potomac was moving to the front. The issue of battle was joined at Bull Run Creek on the twenty-first of July, and the Northern army sustained a decided thouo'h not a crushino' defeat. The news of that defeat caused unutterable dismay in the North and short-lived exultation in the South. Men even began to doubt the final triumph of the Union cause and for a time the utmost de- jection prevailed. But the ultimate effect of the defeat may have been more beneficial than victory. It cast the North into profound gloom but made its people realize at last the magnitude of the task set before them. New res^iments were oro-anized and sent to the front, new resolution came after the first shock of disappointment had passed, and the unalterable purpose of the North became more 244 ^^ THE FIELD. firmly fixed than ever, while those who had Imag- ined that the war would be a mere holiday excur- sion received a rude but salutary awakening. But one Vermont regiment took part in the battle. The First Regiment was enlisted for but three months, and was only concerned in the com- paratively trifling engagement of Big Bethel, spend- ing the entire term of its enlistment in camp duty. It did not participate in the battle of Bull Run and was disbanded early in August, most of its mem- bers re-enlisting. The Second Regiment, organized in May, reached Washington on June 26, less than a month before Bull Run. This was a splendid command. Taken for all in all probably no finer body of men entered the Union armies or one that performed more valiant service. Abundant proof of its high character was given even on the disastrous field of Bull Run, for the Second Vermont took and held an advanced position in the enemy's front long after the rest of the army was in full retreat. When the fact of their isolated position dawned upon the men they withdrew in good order. Even then, though the Vermonters knew that there had been a retreat, there was no panic. Not until they came upon the heels of the rout and saw its character did they join in the mad panic of flight. Their loss during the day had been considerable, but up to that IN THE FIELD. 245 hour they had conducted themselves with remark- able coolness. There were others besides the fight- ing men who showed the same qualities. Two at least of Vermont's non-combatants showed the courage that was in them that day. One was Assistant-surgeon Carpenter, who was left in charge of a number of wounded men. He had no means of getting them back to the rear and saving them from falling into captivity. This dilemma he solved by standing in the road, pistol in hand, and compelling every panic-stricken wagon- driver who came along the dusty road, urging his panting horses to their utmost speed, to take up a portion of his charges, until all had been removed. The other was John C. Thayer. He was a theo- logical student and had desired to accompany the Second Vermont to the front, but on account of a stiff wrist had been rejected by the examining phy- sician. He was determined to serve the army in some capacity and chose the humble one of cook. In the half-deserted camp, on the day when Bull Run was fought he listened as long as he could to the battle music in front; when he could bear it no longer he borrowed a musket and started toward the sound of the firing. He must have passed without knowing it the disorganized Union lines for presently he came upon a Confederate of^cer and file of soldiers who ordered him to surrender. 246 IN THE FIELD. Instead of doing this Thayer shot the officer, leaped upon his horse and rode off home in safety, having exhibited much the same spirit as those of his com- rades who had on that day brought their colors safely off from a place of the utmost danger. The remainder of the year was passed in unim- THE SLEEPING SENTRY. portant military duties, in minor engagements and on picket Awiy. In the fall of 1S61 the Third, Fourth, Fifth and Sixth regiments were formed and united with the Second in the famous First Ver- mont brigade. Not one of these regiments but could show its record of at least twenty-five pitched IN THE FIELD. 247 battles. Their loss of men killed outright in bat- tle reached the appalling number of 6.55 per cent, of the whole, the general average for the entire Northern armies being but 2.88 per cent. Such a tremendous record meant hard and constant fioht- ino; throuQrhout the war. Only a few of the more signal achievements of the Brigade can be even mentioned here, but these will serve to show better than can any statistics the kind of men Vermont sent to the front. As a fitting prelude to the sterner facts of the war may be briefly recited the story of William Scott, who was condemned to death in the spring of 1862 for sleeping upon picket duty. Scott was a mem- ber of the Third Regiment; his excuse for falling asleep was that he had been without rest for two nio^hts servino- for a sick comrade, but he was chosen as an example to the army. Such cases had become too numerous, and the further exercise of mercy was deemed prejudicial to discipline. So the young soldier would have died an ignoble death but for President Lincoln who, on the morning when he was to be shot, rode ten miles to see that he should not die. Scott's case was quite forgotten in a day or two in the presence of vast military movements and bloody encounters. It was not generally recalled until the day when the First Brigade charged upon the rebel rifle pits at Lee's 248 IN THE FIELD. Mills. Among the most intrepid of the men who advanced in that storm of pattering bullets was the young recruit. When he fell struck by a rebel ball, with his dying breath he blessed the President for giving him the chance to die like a soldier. Some of the hardest fighting of the war was done in that spring campaign in which McClellan at- tempted to reach the capital of the Confederacy. At Lee's Mills four companies of the Third Regiment were thrown across a small stream, drove the rebels out of the first line of rifle pits and held them against overwhelming odds until they were with- drawn b)^ an order from headquarters. Later in the day four companies of the Sixth were ordered to attack precisely the same position but were driven back. The frightful losses suffered by these two detachments seems to have been a mere waste of hiuman life. The brigade took part in the rapidly-succeeding engagements of tliat sharp cam})aign which was expected to end in the capture of Richmond, but which did end in McClel- lan's failure and downfall. At Savage's Station the Vermont troops, prac- tically alone, guarded the retreat of the Union armies in a memorable engagement, which has won the highest praise from military critics. In the fierce fight the Fifth Regiment alone lost two hun- dred and six killed, wounded and missing, and the IN THE FIELD. 249 other regiments suffered severely. At Crampton's Gap the Fourth and Second regiments made a memorable charge, carrying an important position. At Antietam the brigade, under the command of Gen. W. H. T. Brooks, took, with the Maine resfiiTients of Smith, the " historic cornfield " whereon the fiercest strug^o-le of that indecisive battle had raged. At the first battle of Fredericksburg, though it made no dashing charge, it was under fire for many hours with heavy loss. When the campaign of 1863 opened, the Ver- monters again showed their mettle by the spirited storming of xMarye's Heights at Fredericksburg, than which there was no more brilliant feat durino- the war. This attack was shared in by soldiers from Maine, New York and New Jersey, but the Vermont regiments were about half of the whole command. Crossing the stream they swarmed up the steep heights under a terrible fire and fairly drove the Confederates from their almost impreg- nable position. At that time the Vermont boys had now been in the field more than a year — many of the individual soldiers much longer. The brigade, with which one New Jersey regiment was now a part, so that it was not wholly composed of Vermont men, had by hard fighting on many fields won a reputation which even this feat of arms could hardly enhance. 250 IN THE FIELD. The veterans had won much glory and what was of infinitely more importance, they had done their duty well, but the credit of striking the decisive blow at the decisive moment of the hard-fought and important battle of Gettysburg, the turning- point of the civil war, belongs to the Second Ver- mont Brigade, then a comparatively new and untried body of men. The second of July, 1863, was the second day of the great battle, the only one fought on Northern soil. General Seds^wick commanded the famous Sixth army corps. Of this the veteran Vermont regiments were a part. On that day he was ordered to march thirty miles to Gettysburg in the signifi- cant words : " Put the Vermonters ahead and keep the column well-closed up." The First Brigade was good at forced marches as well as fighting. The corps reached the field at evening while the battle was still in progress and was placed in a position on the Union left of great importance, but comparatively little danger, as the event proved. On July 3, the final day of the battle, came the magnificent charge of Pickett's division upon the right centre of the Union army. The battle had raged for two days without decisive result. The arri\'al of the strong Sixth Corps on the previous evening after its famous forced march had greatly increased the effective strength of Meade's army, IN THE FIELD. 25 1 and General Lee who commanded in person the Confederate troops felt that upon this magnificent charge depended the day. The attack was pre- ceded by a continuous cannonade of one hundred and forty heavy guns, converging for two hours upon the point selected. When at last Lee judged that the Union lines were sufficiently demoralized by the fire and that the ammunition of their bat- teries was likely to be low, the great charge was made. Seventeen thousand men were flung in a solid mass against the Union lines in an unavailing attempt to break them. That magnificent army was the flower of the Con- federate troops, fresh from victorious fields and in- spired by the genius of the greatest military leader of the South. As it swept across the intervening half-mile between the two lines, a part of the Union artillery was silent, the ammunition being exhausted in the long cannonade, but from the left centre of Meade's position a destructive fire came rattling. The rebel advance had at first been straight upon the place occupied by General Stannard's Second Vermont Brigade, but under this heavy fire the first portion of the attacking force slightly changed its direction exposing its right flank to Stannard's command.. It w^as a crisis big with importance. The Vermont troops of the Second Brigade were not seasoned veterans like those of the First. They 252 IN THE FIELD. were " nine months men " with but little experience in field duty ; but at the word of command the Thir- teenth and Sixteenth regiments fell upon the Con- federate flank with instant effect, leaving the rest of the brigade to guard its former position. The Con- federate line was thrown into utter confusion by this flank charge, and by the stout resistance of the Union right. Meanwhile the second section of the Confederates* charging force, which had not been deflected like the First, was bearino- straio-ht upon the Fourteenth Vermont, which for the time being was holding the place in line of the entire brigade. It was a moment full of danger, but the Sixteenth Regiment, perceiving the situation, re- formed and charo-ed aoain, this time bearinfj back upon the left flank of the Confederates. Tearing a road through their lines, they took the colors of the Eighth Virginia and the Second Florida, and fairly forced a large body of the rebels into the Union lines where they were promptly made pris- oners. The charge was broken, the army of Lee driven back into Virginia, and the loyal State of Pennsylvania saved from invasion. The importance of the battle of Gettysburg can- not be overestimated. The North had been pro- foundly moved by the invasion of Pennsylvania, which had seemed the most dangerous blow yet struck at the Union. The war had lasted two '^'^ irfffeiiiiniff'"*"'*'*^-^ IN THE FIELD. 255 years and had cost much blood and treasure, yet the Union forces seemed to have made but little headway, and when the news came that Lee had struck the boldest blow of the war, the North was in an agony of suspense. It proved to be the proverbial darkest hour before the dawn. The victory at Gettysburg drove the Confederate forces back to the defensive, it inspired the North with confidence, it was the beginning of the end. Grant had already won his great victories along the Mississippi. The Confederacy was hemmed within narrower limits. Its power to harm and its resources for resistance were lessened. To have rendered so signal a service as did Stannard's brig- ade on that day so big with fate is something to be remembered. No battle of the war has been more discussed and of none are the details more contro- verted. It is even a matter for controversy whether General Hancock or General Stannard gave the command to charsre at the fateful moment, but no one has denied or is likely to deny the value of the " nine months men " from the Green Mountain State at the critical moment on that hard-fought field. To the Vermont reo-iments of the First Briorade was assigned, just after Gettysburg, the peculiar duty of repressing the disloyal acts of mobs in New York State. The hour of the country's greatest 2S6 IN THE FIELD. peril had roused into hopeful activity those who at the North were secretly endeavoring to aid the South to success ; the drafting of soldiers had aroused the keenest resentment on the part of the rabble of a number of Northern cities and espe- cially New York. To hold these in check and give them if necessary a severe lesson the veterans of Vermont were sent North, as men who could be relied upon to behave themselves in the face of new temptations and act with sobriety and good judg- ment in a duty of more than usual delicacy. This was an agreeable interruption of the more danger- ous work at the front, but it was soon over and the Vermonters were again in Virginia in the autumn of 1863, with the hardest part of their bloody work still before them. When General Grant was called from his vic- torious career elsewhere to lead the Army of the Potomac, the war assumed an aspect even more ter- rible than it had yet put on. Grant was a com- mander who possessed above all others the quality of o-rim and doQ;2;ed determination. His business was to win victories, to reach Richmond, to end the war, and he rightly judged that any sacrifice which should accomplish these objects must be borne without flinching. The first great sacrifice was offered up at the battle of the Wilderness. Into the details of that IN THE FIELD. 257 fio;ht we need not enter. The First Vermont Hrio- ade was again placed in a position of the utmost importance, that known to students of miHtary his- tory as the " old Brock road." Here a thousand men fell killed or wounded the first day. Here the trees were felled by cannon balls and the thickets torn by bullets until the very aspect of that tat- tered forest suggested the apparition of gashed and mutilated human forms. Here came the fierc- est assaults of Lee's forces, strus^orlinQr throuo;h the heavy forest growth, to cut Grant's army in two. Here fell Colonel Stone of the Vermont Second, shot through the thigh. He went to the rear and had his wound dressed and returned to the front only to fall dead not long after. Lieutenant-Colonel Tyler who took his place received a mortal wound. Lieutenant-Colonel Lewis of the Fifth was seriously wounded. Colonel Barney of the Sixth mortally, Colonel Pratt of the Fourth received a disablino- bullet in the thigh. Of five colonels of the Ver- mont troops three were fatally injured and but one was left unhurt. On the following day, not disheartened by the terrible loss they had sustained, the same troops defended against one of the fiercest and most determined charges a position of the utmost im- portance. In the two days' fighting three fourths of the officers were killed or wounded. The hard 258 IN THE FIELD. fighting did not stop with the battle in the Wilder- ness. At Spotsylvania the First Brigade suffered heavily as usual. At Cold Harbor all the Vermont regiments were engaged. At Petersburg nearly four hundred men were taken prisoners, more than half of them to die in the rebel prisons. One at least was torn to pieces by bloodhounds while seek- ing to escape. Of those who survived the fearful imprisonment many were mere wrecks of men. It was when, just after this sad capture, the Ver- mont troops had been ordered to Washington to meet Early's raid, that President Lincoln made one of those remarks which so endeared him to the men in the ranks. He had gone to the dock at Washino-ton to meet the steamer on which the brigade had been expected to arrive, but was in- formed that it brought no troops ; only Major-Gen- eral Getty and his staff. " I do not care to see any major-generals ; I came here to see the Vermont Brio-ade," was the President's comment. When the regiments finally came, Mr. Lincoln was at hand to witness their disembarkation. Then came the famous Shenandoah campaign of Sheridan, in which the Vermont troops were again engaged and in which the Eighth and Tenth regiments distin- guished themselves, the former by a bayonet charge at Winchester, the latter losing its commander and sixty men in the same brilliant and bloody battle. IN THE FIELD. 259 The campaign of 1865 saw the final defeat of the Confederacy. Grant's genius had for the first time brought success upon the operations of the Army of Virginia, navigation on the Mississippi had been opened to Union vessels, the Confederate ports were blocked, Vicksburg had fallen, Gettys- burg had been w^on, Sherman had made his famous march to the sea. The final defeat of Lee's army meant the downfall of the Confederacy. Vermont troops were again found leading the van in the great charge upon Petersburg which was the decisive blow of the campaign, and Captain Charles G. Gould of the Fifth Vermont Regiment was probably the first man to enter the rebel lines. This was not an accident. It was not an accident that the same troops had been placed at the post of greatest responsibility and loss in the battle of the Wilderness. Grant was a commander who did not allow chance to win his battles for him. The men of General Wright, who had suc- ceeded upon Sedgwick's death to the command of the famous Sixth Corps, were selected to lead the assault on Petersburg. Getty's division was as- signed for the assaulting column, and Getty put the Vermont briorade in the van. There was no chance in these arrano^ements. The brigade was marched a mile along the line past many other good regiments, to a point oppo- 26o IN THE FIELD. site the portion of the works selected for the attack, and was stationed in the darkness at a point just opposite a ravine which broke the enemy's work. In the early morning they prepared in silence for the assault, well knowing that for many of their number that day would be the last. So soon as it was light enough to dimly distinguish objects near at hand the advance was ordered. The men had been under arms in the dark and cold for hours. They knew what their orders were -^ to charge without firing, to carry the works and to re-form and hold their position. Silently until the first half of the distance was traversed, then with ringing cheer upon cheer as the shots of the rebel pickets dis- closed their position, the brigade dashed up the slope, the entering wedge of an arm)' of fourteen thousand men. The artillery along the Confeder- ate line was turned upon them until they passed out of range, then the sharp rattle of musketry tore great gaps in their ranks, but nothing could stop them. They gained the works, carried them and turned the guns upon the flying rebels. They even followed in pursuit of them, in disobedience of orders, and were with difficulty checked and re- formed. They captured two rebel regimental fiags in the assault and a large amount of war material — Vermont troops secured many banners during the war, but lost none. IN THE FIELD. 26 1 The charge of the Sixth Corps was but a part of the day's action. Other commands were engaged at other points and all manfully did their part in achieving the signal victory. At Appomattox Court House a few days after Lee finally surrendered to Grant, and the war was practically over. The Sixth Corps was detained in Virginia for some time but in June it was disbanded and the Vermonters, like the other soldiers North and South, went home to meet a welcome such as never men received be- fore. Only the Seventh Regiment was detained on duty in the Gulf region for about another year. The account which has been thus presented is but fragmentary and incomplete, neglecting wholly many important engagements and scarcely more than mentioning others of the utmost importance. Nor does it refer to the excellent service of Ver- mont men in other departments during the war, in the artillery, the cavalry, the navy in the civil ser- vice, or of the women in the hospitals. The full and complete story of any one of the States in the Civil War is of itself matter for a vol- ume. So far as it relates to Vermont, the whole subject has been covered by the historians of that great struggle. Benedict's " Vermont in the Civil War," is the authoritative record of the troops of the State. Vermont had furnished to the Union armies no division commander, no 2 62 IN THE FIELD. tactician of acknowledged supremacy. None of its generals reached the highest grades in the ser- vice, but its private troops were the best that fought in the war on either side, and its re2:imental com- manders numbered many men who were spirited and judicious leaders, and may have lacked only opportunity to demonstrate the possession of still higher and more valuable qualities. If there was heroism with the troops of Stannard, of Brooks and of Phelps at the front, there was equal heroism at home. Scarcely a family but had sent some member to the front; scarce one in the sad later years of the war but mourned the death of friends or relatives. The cost was 2:reat, but there was no shrinkino- from it. The crushing weight of taxes was the least of the ills to be endured. In the absence of the stronger workers, old men who wished they were again young enough to fight for their country and lads who counted the years until they might be old enough struggled along with the women as best they could in the work of farm and factory. In preparing supplies for the soldiers, in knitting and sewing, by nursing in the hospitals, by that hardest task of all, which was to bear the loss of their nearest and dearest ones without repining and try to think that it was all for the best, Vermont's daughters showed no less fortitude than her sons. There was IN THE FIELD. 263 grief everywhere, but little faltering from the stern task which had been set for the people of the North. Vermont's entire quota for 1862 was filled with- out recourse to the draft. By 1863 the number sent to the front had reached eighteen thousand two hundred and twenty-four. In that year, the virtual crisis and turning point of the war, the Dem- ocratic State Convention fell under Copperhead in- fluence. Vermont Democrats as a rule were as strong Union men as the Republicans, but in that Convention a platform was adopted which declared that the liberties of the people were endangered by the administration of martial law in loyal States. It was the time of provost - marshals and drafts, and this plat- form voiced a senti- ment which was not at all uncommon in the North. The Republi- cans retorted with the declaration that North- ern traitors were de- serving of greater re- proach than Southern rebels, the Democratic candidate was snowed for the soldiers, 264 IN THE FIELD. under by a majority exceptional even in war times, and from the soldiers at the front came an indignant and unanimous protest. Southern sympathizers were not popular in Vermont in that anxious time and even such comparatively mild censure of the conduct of the war was bitterly resented. It might have been supposed that Vermont, separated from the South by hundreds of miles of loyal territory and from the sea-coast by the width of a State, was not likely to feel the touch of actual warfare, yet something much like it visited St. Albans in 1864. It was the very crisis of the re- bellion and the active men of the town were at the front. In addition to this the Legislature was in session at Montpelier; and an important court was sitting at Burlington. Many of the town's remain- ing citizens were at one or the other of these places on the rainy Wednesday when the famous St. Albans raid occurred. It was the nineteenth of October, a date long remembered in Northern Vermont, The raiders were only twenty-two in number, and they did not descend upon the town in a body, but came one or two at a time, registering quietly at the hotels and finding out the resources of the place for plunder and the means of escape it afforded. At three o'clock in the afternoon, the raiders simultaneously IN THE FIELD. 265 entered the St. Albans, Franklin County and First National banks and compelled the cashiers at the pistol's mouth to sit quietly by while they searched for the available funds, in their hurry leaving quite as much as they found. One of the cashiers was locked into his own vault. Meanwhile a number of the party kept guard upon the street, aiming to prevent all knowledge of the raid from becoming- general. Not far away hundreds of men were at work in the machine shops of the railroad, and it was necessary to the purpose of the raiders that they should not be apprised. By degrees upon the village green assembled quite a number of the citizens who had come along the street and been ordered to stand there until released. One man when commanded to stop took the matter as a joke and was slightly wounded by a pistol bullet. When all was ready the raiders went to the livery stable nearest at hand and im- pressed horses for their flight. By this time the alarm had been sounded and men were runnino- to the spot armed with clubs and rusty guns which would not go off. One of them wounded a raider' with a rifle-ball, and in a volley from the band E. J. Morrison, a builder, was fatally wounded. Away then flew the marauders, carrying with them over two hundred thousand dollars in money to enrich the coffers of the Confederacy. It was a 266 IN THE FIELD. full hour before pursuit was organized. The men were followed to Canada, and after very long and vexatious litigation only a part of the money was recovered. The pursuing party had actually se- cured a portion of the money and taken a number of the raiders, but were obliged to liberate their cap- tives and restore the plunder by the Canadian court, that tribunal announcing that the money was taken in actual warfare, and not recoverable on neu- tral ground. Exaggerated reports of the descent were tele- graphed during its progress to other parts of the Union and aroused a fever of alarm, partly justified by the fact that similar raids had been attempted, and were feared elsewhere along the border. It is reasonably certain that the Confederate authorities sanctioned these plots, and among the men impli- cated in that at St. Albans were a number of young- men of prominent Southern families. The inevitable humorous incidents which accom- pany graver events were not lacking in the St. Albans raid. In one of the gutted banks was sit- ting an old man. With senses somewhat blunted by years he remained unmoved during the transfer of the bank funds and placidly inquired after the raiders had left the room "Who were those gentle- men } " i\ farmer coming to town that afternoon astride a fine horse was spied bv one of the raiders IN THE FIELD. 267 who was In hot flight upon a jaded steed. A hasty and enforced exchange of mounts ensued. Proceed- ing on his way to town the farmer soon saw the fran- tically-riding pursuers, and, taking them to be an- other section of the party that had robbed him, set out across the fields at the top of his speed. The mistake was mutual and the pursuers, supposing him to be one of the robbers, fired at him until he was out of sight, fortunately without doing him any injury. The close of the war was nowhere welcomed more gladly than in Vermont, for nowhere had greater sacrifices been made. The State had lost men and spent money far out of proportion to its size and wealth ; its liberal provision for the sol- diers had entailed a heavy tax rate, while of the ^3,600,752.52 spent during the war, more than half remained as bonded debt bearino- a high rate of interest. The farms had been almost stripped of their tillers by war and emigration, and industry of all kinds had been dealt a heavy blow. The return of the boys in blue and their resump- tion of peaceful pursuits with the impetus which was given to every branch of production after the termination of the war soon began to repair the ravages of the long conflict. The people set to work with a will, and with such success that the census of 1870 showed marked advance and improve- 268 IN THE FIELD. ment over that of i860 in the moral and material resources of the State, while the population, in spite of the number of soldiers who had perished during the war and the emigration which recommenced after its close, increased over fifteen thousand. Though the panic of 1873 and the succeeding years gravely interrupted the prosperous course of affairs, the State has continued in the main to thrive in the two decades which have passed since the War of the Rebellion closed. CHAPTER XII. SINCE THE WAR, HE heroism of war seldom fails to win admiring comment and appreciation. { Songs are written upon it, stories told of it, grave historians ex- amine each minute de- tail, and every well- fought battle, desper- ate charge or stout resistance goes upon record for the most remote generations. The heroism of peace is taken as a matter of course and few trouble themselves to inquire into it or tell its story. No flags are waved over it, no bugle blasts inspire it, the newspapers do not publish highly-colored ac- counts of it under flaring head-lines. Yet it is none the less heroic. There was nothing in the conduct of the civil war on either side that more significantly displayed the spirit and courage of the people than the way 269 270 SINCE THE WAR. in which those great armies which had faced each other for years dissolved again, and the soldiers dispersed to their widely-scattered homes and took up their unaccustomed tasks. Not only was this done without complaint or serious disorder, but such energy was displayed, such hard work done, such faith in the finality of the solution of vexed problems shown, that the material ravages of war were effaced and its frightful waste repaired in far less time than would have seemed possible. The qualities by which this mighty task was accom- plished were no less heroic than those which the soldier displayed in battle. There was no State in which circumstances made the task harder than in Vermont, and none in which it was faced with more zeal and accomplished with greater relative success. The generosity of the State in dealing with its soldiers had saddled it with a heavy debt, bearing a high rate of interest. The yearly expenses of the Government were not large, but in addition to these charges Vermont had to bear its proportion of the enormous national indebtedness. Taxation en- hanced the price of most commodities bought by the State and of few that it sold. The necessities of the general government, and the imperative de- mand for money to meet its obligations compelled the imposition of a heavy duty and the raising of SINCE THE WAR. 271 money by numerous vexatious internal revenue taxes since dispensed with. A depreciated currency unsettled trade and prompted to wild speculation. Simultaneously with these disadvantages were others peculiar to the State, and scarcely shared in by its neighbors. For over thirty years its popula- tion had grown but slowly and the more vigorous of its young men and women had been constantly leav- ing it for the cities and the West. In many coun- try districts the population was scarce half what it had been in 1840. War had completed the work of emigration. The troops of Vermont had suffered as no others had done and the hands that had guided the plow and plied the hammer were sadly missed. The tide of migration to the great West not only remained unchecked during the period following the war. It was accelerated by the bountiful home- stead act which gave free land to every settler who asked it, and by the extension of Government aid to the Pacific railroads. The astounding develop- ment of the land-grant railroads brought into direct competition with Vermont the countless acres of the West beyond the Mississippi, as the canal had done for the nearer West. Never was compe- tition more unequal. The plain against the mount- ains, a mild climate against a severe one, cheap land against dear land, the ranch against the farm. Even 272 SINCE THE WAR. the one element that favored Vermont — Its com- parative nearness to the markets on the Atlantic seaboard — was largely offset by the favoritism of the competing trunk lines of railroad, each eagerly striving to secure its share or more of through traffic and taxing local freight to furnish the sinews of destructive cut-rate wars. The wool grower of Ohio or Texas, the dairy farmer of Michigan, the corn raiser of Illinois, the wheat farmer of Dakota and Minnesota and the cattle herder of regions even farther West were largely relieved by this railroad rivalry from the legitimate disadvantage of their position. That the people of Vermont should have made head against these odds at all was sufficiently to their credit. But they have not only done this ; they have made material advance in almost every direc- tion. It has been done by the utmost economy of production, by the free use of improved appliances and by especial care to better the quality of goods marketed — in a word, by the exercise of Yankee thrift and shrewdness. Ao:riculture has remained the State's chief in- dustry and has thriven beyond all others. The total value of the farms of the State has not greatly increased since i860, but the value and quantity of annual product has grown larger. Milch cattle in- creased in number from 174,66710 217,033. The SINCE THE WAR. 27. yield of butter in 1880 had more than doubled since 1850, and that of cheese greatly decreased, the total value of the two being much larger. Vermont was the thirty-second State in the order of her popu- lation in 1880, but the value of her milk products was only surpassed by twelve others. This result NIVnnSITY-VERnojXfT^BviLDiNQ was unquestionably largely the result of the factory system — practically a development of the period since the war. It has been found by experience that factory-made butter and cheese command a higher price than domestic, and there is far less cost and waste in 2 74 SINCE THE WAR. their manufacture. Those farmers and farmers' wives who still continue to make butter and cheese at home are the exception rather than the rule. At the factory all the hard work is done by ma- chinery, and the milk of from four hundred to twelve hundred cows is cared for easily. Thus one of the most important industries of the State has become an exact science to its great advantage in many ways; not the least of these is the lightening of tlie labors of farmers' wives and daus^hters. The man- ufacture of butter and cheese has been injured of late years by the introduction of spurious imitations, but it is hoped that repressive legisla- tion will give honest dairy products. The formation, in the early part of 1888, of a State Board of Trade in the interest of the makers of butter, cheese and maple sugar is another agency from which good results are expected. The adul- teration of maple sugar has been a serious blow at one of the chief industries of Vermont, and one that has increased in value under improved methods even more rapidly than the dairy business. The quantity of sugar made has about doubled since 1850; its estimated value was in 1888 one mil- lion two hundred and fifty thousand dollars or forty-two dollars to each farm in the State. The wasteful methods of old-fashioned sugar- makers have been entirely replaced by better ones. SINCE THE WAR. 275 The trees are tapped sparingly with small auger holes, buckets of tin and spouts of tin or galvanized iron are used and the sap is boiled under shelter in flat evaporating pans, with much saving of fuel. The lumber product of the forests of the State was very large during the period we are consider- ing, and Burlington has remained one of the chief lumber centres of the Union. Only eighteen States surpassed Vermont in the quantity and value of lumber cut in 1880. The wool clip of Vermont has decreased since 1850, but the value of the sheep of the State has in all probability advanced. The choice breeds of fine wooled sheep raised in Vermont are surpassed nowhere in the world, if indeed they are anywhere equalled. They have found a market at fancy prices all over the United States and even at the antipodes. The earliest consignments of them to Australia were refused admittance on the pretext that they were diseased; the real reason probably being that the local breeders were jealous. Subse- quent importations however, were more hospitably received. The wool and sheep-breeding industry suffered somewhat by the tariff revision of 1883 and the farmers have never ceased to demand the re-enact- ment of the Morrill tariff of 1867 and to resist any advances toward placing wool upon the free list. 276 SINCE THE WAR. A few sheep have been sent to South America. To the same distant quarter of the woricl Vermont horses have also been consigned. The number of horses sold from the State has always been large. The census of 18S0 showed an increase of about six thousand in the number since i860, but the business of horse-breeding has greatly increased since the census year in consequence of the low price of butter and cheese. Fine-blooded cattle also represent a large and growing value in the State. Minor agricultural products are numer- ous. The State is seventh in its yield of hops, though it has no breweries. Bees are kept in large numbers and considerable honey is sold. Oats, barley and potatoes are raised in abundance ; the coarser vegetables are produced for consump- tion by cattle, the finer varieties for table use and cannino:. Vermont's fruit is limited in variety bu-t plentiful, especially west of the mountains ; the State in this respect being rather better off than the average. Manufactures also increased largely in the years which followed the war. The total number em- ployed rose from 10,497 i^"* 1S60 to 17,540 in 1880, and probably in about the same proportion after that date. The increase in the value of the product was more than one hundred per cent. As might be expected of a State where agriculture is so success- SINCE THE WAR. 2"] J fully carried on, the manufacture of improved farm- ing and dairy implements is a thriving one. Fac- tories of parlor organs and scales, of sash and blinds and wagons, iron foundries, machine-shops and paper mills are among the most prominent. Steam has supplemented the water power, without supplanting it, and these industries are in a nor- mally healthy condition with every promise of future prosperity. Akin to the manufactures are the quarries. These have grown so enormously since the canal and railroads began to furnish transportation that in 1880 only two States, New York and Pennsylvania, surpassed Vermont in the capital invested and the value of annual product. Since that year the ratio of increase has been well maintained. The political history of the period since the war has been singularly uneventful. It can almost be summed up in a sentence. There has been for twenty-eight years no Democratic Governor elected and but one Democratic Congressman, while for every Republican Presidential candidate an over- whelming majority has been cast. The State has been admirably represented in the United States Senate during practically the whole period since the war by Morrill and Edmunds. In the lower House it has placed such men as Willard, Hendee, Denison, Joyce, Tyler, Grout, 278 SINCE THE WAR. Poland and Stewart. The representatives of Ver- mont have borne a conspicuous part in national legislation and the two senators especially have exercised far more influence than is usual with the representatives of so small a State. Senator Edmunds was in 1880 and again in 1884 pressed as a Presidential candidate for the Repub- lican nomination. On both occasions he had the support of a united delegation from Vermont and a strong following from other States. Had Ver- mont been a larger State, or a "doubtful " one, its claims upon a nominating convention might have met with more success. Though in so evident a minority, the Democratic party of the State is a vigorous and active body of men. The victory of that party in the Presidential election of 1884 brought many representative Ver- mont Democrats into the service of the Government. The most prominent of these was Prof. E. J. Phelps, appointed to the most important foreign mission in the gift of the President, that of Minister at the Court of St. James. The legislative history of the State since the war is full of interest. It gives the key to the character of the people and their law-makers. The greater portion of the legislators are to-day, as the}' have always been, farmers. They are plain, straightfor- v/ard men and, as the record shows, do the business SINCE THE WAR. 279 for which they are elected in a creditable manner. The work of the legislative session is always fin- ished in about half the time consumed in Massa- chusetts or New York, even since the sessions were made biennial by the last revision of the Constitu- tion ; the session laws for two years, though in- cluding a deal of important legislation, are easily comprised in a modest volume. The law-makers of the State have faced the problems which have con- fronted them in a manner usually bold, commonly sensible and always well meant and carefully con- sidered. They found Vermont burdened by a heavy war debt and its credit impaired ; they so restored public confidence in their purpose and ability to pay that when, in the panic of 1873, the Secretary of the State desired to buy its bonds he could find a willing seller no nearer than Baltimore; a few years later the debt was practically paid. After the panic and the shrinkage of values caused six years later by the resumption of specie payment, the expenses of administration became onerous ; they were promptly cut down. The de- nuded hills demanded notice ; they received it from a Forestry Commission organized by the Legis- lature, whose duty it was to consider how the evils caused by the destruction of timber were to be remedied. Child labor in factories forced itself upon attention as a growing evil ; it was speedily 2 So SINCE THE WAR. prohibited. Illiteracy became in some measure a reproach, mainly owing to immigration ; a stringent compulsory education act was passed which is expected in time to effect a great im- provement. The morals and education of young criminals needed special care ; a State Reform School was established. The frequency of divorces commented upon the unsatisfactory nature of the laws governing the subject ; these were amended to such purpose that in 1S87 the number and pro- portion of divorces had greatly decreased. The increase of the practice of counterfeiting butter and cheese and of adulterating honey with glucose was met with repressive legislation. The altered conditions of modern life evoked laws in- creasing the property rights of women. The pro- tection of (jame and fish from total extermination was made the object of a series of enactments, the planting of shade trees was encouraged and a pre- mium was placed upon thrift by the exemption from taxation of savings-bank deposits up to the value of fifteen hundred dollars. In 1869, in accordance with the curious provision of the old Constitution, the Council of Censors met and proposed amendments to the Constitution to be considered by the convention held the following- year. One of the proposed amendments which was not ratified was the followino": "Hereafter 4 %, \ r r \ Tl SINCE THE WAR. 283 women shall be entitled to vote and with no other restrictions than the law shall impose on men." Other amendments fared better. The organic law of the State was amended in several important particulars, the most noticeable being the provision already referred to that thereafter the State elec- tions and sessions of the Legislature should be bien- nial and held on the even years. The Council of Censors was abolished and a provision substituted that every two years the Legislature might pass an amendment which should become part of the or- ganic law upon its re-passage by the succeeding Legislature and its indorsement by the people at the polls. This provision is sufficiently conserva- tive ; it places nearly four years between the pro- posal of an amendment and its final adoption, while it is at the same time sufficiently elastic to suit the needs of a progressive people. The plan for the biennial sessions of the Legislature works admirably; already it has been favorably urged upon the consideration of other States. Two constitutional amendments were adopted under the new plan in 1880, one providing that United States officials should not be elioible as legislators, the other that the Secretary of State should thereafter be elected by the people instead of by the Legislature, as had been the custom from the earliest time. The legislatures of 1884 and 284 SINCE THE WAR. 1 886 passed, in addition to the measures already referred to, a law compelling the presence in court of the libelee in divorce proceedings, another re- quiring the attendance of the State's attorney to represent its interests, another raising the Gov- ernor's salary to fifteen hundred dollars per annum and still another appropriating money for the pur- chase of land and the erection on the field of Gettysburg of a monument to the courage of Ver- mont's sons. They petitioned Congress for the enactment of an inter-State commerce law, passed almost unanimously a resolution favoring the policy of protection to American industries and author- ized the establishment of kindergartens in public schools — acts whose character may serve to illus- trate the trend of opinion and action in the State. The population increased very slowly from 1S70 to 1880, It gained in those ten years less than two thousand, and there is no reason to suppose that there has been any marked increase since the enu- meration.* The same census, however, cast a flood of light upon the cause of this slow increase. Vermont has done proportionally more than any other State to people the West and the cities. In 1880 there were 332,286 people in the State, 251,112 of whom were native Vermonters, and ♦The estimate for iSSS supplied by the Governor of the State showed a population of 336,000 as against 332,286 in iSSo. — Ed. SINCE THE WAR. 285 81,174 natives of other States or countries. But there were no less than 177,576 natives of Vermont living in other States, making the total number of people of Vermont birth in the Union 428,688, and showing that the State has yielded up to other localities one hundred thousand people in excess of its gain by immigration. Forty-one per cent, of those of Vermont birth were living in other States, New York having 31,130, Massachusetts 26,869, Illinois 14,568, Michigan 12,588, Wisconsin 12,553, Iowa 12,288 and other States and Territories in smaller numbers. The character of these emigrants to other States cannot be better illustrated than by the fact that in the Fiftieth Congress, in which Vermont was en- titled by appointment to but two Representatives, no less than five men who were born in Vermont sat as Congressmen from other States. Of these former Vermonters one was from Minnesota, two from New York and two from Wisconsin, the latter State being also represented by a Senator born in Vermont. In the States where men of Vermont birth are most numerous, they are found in places of high regard and usefulness. Yet the wealth of the State has grown in spite of the continual drain. The Les^islature of 1882 passed an act requiring assessors thereafter to re- turn real estate at its actual value. The new total 286 SINCE THE WAR. of real and personal property — still an under- estimate, especially with respect to the latter class — gave the property in the State as $164,063,689. The census returns of 18S0 showed that there were more holders of Government bonds in Vermont than in many larger States, ten only surpassing her. And the savings bank report of 1887 showed that on June 30 of that year there were 53,810 deposits aggregating $15,587,950.93 — an average of $289.67 per deposit, or over forty dollars for each person in the State. Vermont, too, holds the proud position of being burdened with no State debt, where other commonwealths have crowded their indebtedness away into the millions.* The increase in wealth is wholly in the cities and larger villages, the value of the farms having in many instances greatly decreased since 1830. The estimates of the value of new buildings erected in a number of the larger places for 1S86 and 1887 ran about as follows : Brattleborough, $400,000 ; Bellows Falls, $350,000; Barre, $200,000; Rutland, $400,000; Bennington, in 1887 alone, $100,000; Burlington, $225,000 in 1886, and $400,000 in 1887. These figures may fall far short of absolute cor- rectness, but it is safe to assume from them that these and other towns have enjoyed a very material *Tn 1SS8 but lliree States in the Union wore free of debt — Illinois, Wisconsin and Vermont. SINCE THE WAR. 287 increase in wealth and business. The progressive character of the larger villages was during the same period illustrated by the introduction of systems of public water supply and sewerage and by their ready adoption first of gas and next of electricity as a means of lighting the streets. Village improve- ment societies have played an important part in educating and directing public taste and securing the wise expenditure of money in planting trees, laying out parks and otherwise improving the appearance of the villages. The virtue of patriotism has not been forgotten. The militia has been decreased in recent years to a single regiment, which yet is wholly adequate to the task of preserving order within the State. Should any occasion for national defense arise, the people would be found as willing to respond to it as they were in 1861. Their appreciation of the valor of the Green Mountain Boys was proved in 1877 at the centennial anniversary of the battle of Bennington, when so many thousands of them gathered to witness the imposing ceremonials of the celebration of that event. Arrangements have been since perfected and money collected to erect a mon- ument on that historic battlefield. In the entire period since the war there has been no serious riot or disturbance except the threatened Fenian inva- sion of Canada in 1870. 288 SINCE THE WAR. Educational matters continue to attract much attention. The schools and colleges have pros- pered since the war, and the expenditure of public money for instruction has been upon a liberal scale in proportion to the State's resources. In the farming towns the schools suffer from the de- crease in the number of pupils, but on the whole they are fairly well supported. In the larger towns seminaries and academies supplement the work of the common schools, nor is it necessary, even for a collegiate education of the very highest rank, to send the children of the State beyond its bound- aries. Middlebury College, founded in 1800 by the Con- gregationalist denomination, is one of the oldest and most useful institutions of learning in the country. It had graduated in the classical depart- ment, up to 1888, twelve hundred and ninety-two students, among wliom were such men as Governor Silas Wright of New York, the Rev. Dr. Stephen Olin, Joseph Battell, the donor of Battell Chapel, Yale College, Dr. Henry Smith of Lane Seminary, John G. Saxe the poet, the Rev. Dr. Post of St. Louis, Henry N. Hudson, the Shakespearean editor, Edward J. Phelps, United States Minister to Great Britain, Stephen A.Walker, United States District Attorney of New York City, Railroad Commis- sioner Aldace F. Walker and J. S. Grinnell, }niblic SINCE THE WAR. 289 prosecutor of Chicago, whose memorable trial of the anarchists will be long remembered. The college has about two hundred and twenty- five thousand dollars in productive investments, good buildings and a fine library and has a consid- erable income from tuition fees. Its future, to quote the words of President Ezra Brainerd, "is looking better than it has at any time since the Civil War, when most of the students enlisted." A law school is connected with the college. The State University at Burlington was opened also in 1800, though it is to the credit of the people of Vermont that it was projected long before. A portion of land from each town grant was reserved for its benefit as early as 1778, but during the discussion of the project for uniting a portion of New Hampshire to Vermont, Dartmouth College was considered the State University. Though the University had at the start a handsome endowment of money and some twenty-nine thousand acres of land it did not prosper uniformly. Bad luck pursued it. The buildings were occupied by the United States army during part of the War of 181 2 and the sessions wholly interrupted. The school did not for some years recover the standing which it should have enjoyed, and in 1824 its main build- ing was burned. Lafayette laid the corner stone of the new building during his memorable visit in 290 SINCE THE WAR. 1825 and since then the school has thriven more in proportion to its merits. A medical college was established in connection with the University in 1822 and an agricultural course of study, added since the war, offers training of a special value to farmers. In the winter courses of lectures on agriculture are given to the farmers of the State as well as to the students and these through intelligent newspaper reports are made public property. A farm and experiment station recently authorized by the Legislature and pur- chased in 1888 is the most recently acquired ad- vantage which the University offers. It numbers among its graduates such men as Zadock Thompson the historian, Alden B. Spooner, Governors Redfield and Dillingham and Benjamin H. Smalley. In the work of education there are other agen- cies scarcely less potent than schools and colleges. Among these must be reckoned a shrewd and en- terprising newspaper press, alert in the discussion of public problems, and this advantage Vermont enjoys. It has numerous libraries also.- The State Library at the Capitol was in 1886 completed, with space for seventy thousand volumes ; the Brooks Library at Brattleborough was opened in 1888 and there are many others of even longer usefulness. The churches, too, are well supported. The Catholic denomination is not so numerous as in SINCE THE WAR. 291 New York or Massachusetts, but includes practi- cally all the growing French-Canadian element. Of the Protestant denominations the Congregational was the first to obtain a footing in the State and is still the most numerous. Next in order come the Baptists and Methodists, with Universalists and Episcopalians in about equal numbers and other sects in smaller proportions. In many of the farm- ing towns the decrease of the population and the effect of sect hostility in keeping four or five churches barely alive where one or two might be better supported, have unfavorably affected relig- ious interests, but on the whole the condition of the churches is eminently satisfactory. A popular phrase which is not quite just to New England refers to that part of the Union as "a good place — to go away from." This saying, born of the arrogance of rapid material growth in the newer States, is sometimes echoed even by New Englanders. Narrowing the inquiry to Vermont, is it true ? Is not that State a orood one in which to live, to bring up children, to make business in- vestments ? What are the advantages which the State offers to its people ? In the second century of its Statehood, is it to continue to grow in pros- perity and attractiveness } What promise does the present give of future usefulness } The Vermont of to-day is in many ways an ex- 292 SINCE THE WAR. ceptionally favored State. Even in material things it faces a future bright with promise. It will never attain the enormous aggregate wealth of such States as New York and Pennsylvania, but its wealth is well distributed. There are relatively few of the very rich and of the very poor. The people are mostly of that great middle class which, removed from the fear of penury on the one hand and from the temptations of afifluence on the other, forms the hope and stay of any republic. The property owned in the State is increasing slowly but surely, and year by year the advantages and conveniences which the general prosperity rather than individual affluence affords to a commonwealth are more widely extended. The farming population of the State is growing less numerous, but this in itself is no cause for sur- prise or possibly even of regret, since in spite of it the farm productions are increasing. It does not take so many men to till the acres of the State as before the introduction of the mowing-machine and horse-rake and before tlie substitution of dairy farmino- or breedino; for o-rain raisino-. The de- population in the rural districts must move more slowly in the future; at no distant period it must cease altogether. Alrcad\' tlie choicest portions of the Western country arc occupied and land is sold at prices as high as those obtained in Vermont. SINCE THE WAR. 293 The principle of the regulation of the freight charges of railroads by the Government, established in the Inter-State Commerce law and certain to be extended in future legislation, will give the East as compared with the far West just freight rates to the markets ; the increasing number of farmers in the State who find more profit in cultivating a few acres well than a large number in a careless and wasteful fashion is another agency tending to counteract the lessening of farm population. The manufactures of the State are in even more promising condition than its agriculture. Ver- mont's pure and healthful climate, the abundance of transportation facilities, the cheapness of land for sites of factories and operatives' homes and the low cost of stone and lumber for build- ins; are all elements which promise contin- ual growth of the man- ufacturing industry, particularly in the direction of workino- up the metal and wood products of the State. Its mineral wealth in marble and limestone, k^ke (^ k^J^vBl^iTx 294 SINCE THE WAR. in granite, slate, talc, soapstone and iron is in no danger of lacking capital for its development, so manifest are the attractions offered. The natural advantages of the State have of late years brought to it an increasing number of city- people in search of quiet and congenial homes in the country, either for the whole year or for the summer months. These residents bid fair in time to add no inconsiderable element to the popula- tion of the State and to measurably increase its resources. In common with those in the Berk- shire hills of Massachusetts Vermont farms are purchased in considerable numbers to form fine country places; some rise in the value of land from this cause is in the more favored spots to be expected. The State is indeed singularly adapted by nat- ure for the residence of people of refined tastes and a liking for natural beauties. Its death rate is low, its lake and river valleys present glimpses of pict- uresque beauty, while its mountain scenery, every- where fine, rises to the pitch of grandeur at Mount Mansfield, than which New England has no more beautiful peak. The hills of the State in many places suffered greatly in appearance and useful- ness by the shorsightedness of many of the early settlers who cut the trees bare from their rounded tops, only to find after years of sad experience that SINCE THE WAR. 295 the wealth of the soil on their steep slopes leached away in the heavy rains, leaving the ground arid and unfruitful. The evil is one that tends to cor- rect itself, however, and many of the hill tops are reclothinor themselves with the forest under the wholesome nes^lect of the owners. In many parts of the State fewer acres are under cultivation than in 1840, not at all to the ultimate disadvantage of the people ; not a few towns and settlements, early planted on commanding hill- tops, have been removed bodily to more sheltered positions in the valleys, leaving their former sites to be ao;ain covered with trees. The streams of the State, broken by picturesque falls and rapids, its springs of pure, sparkling water, its lakes, its mingled forest and meadow and intervale, its pure air, clear sky and tempered summer heat make it, for at least a great portion of the year, a place rich in delights. Even the winters, though severe, are wholesome and enjoyable to those in vigorous health. The dry air renders a like degree of cold much less dis- agreeable than on the sea-coast, so that the low readings of the thermometer do not indicate a cli- mate at all rigorous. The hills break the force of the wind which causes such fearful havoc in many parts of the country; the snow and ice facilitate rather than impede the work of farm life, besides 296 SINCE THE WAR. lending themselves to healthy winter amusements. The story of Vermont since the Civil War is a long and interesting one. A single chapter can but hint at what has been done and what has hap- pened in a few of many directions. Some of the events of the period are too recent to need recount- ing, others cannot be adequately discussed until time has shown their full effect, and yet others might be told were space not lacking. But the passing glimpse which we have taken of its latest years do not show it as a stagnant or an unprogressive commonwealth. Though almost stationary in population, of slow growth in wealth, and lying remote from the nation's great arteries of trade and centres of arts and commerce, Ver- mont has made itself felt in the union of States by a quiet example, honest methods and stalwart men. In all estimates which are based on comparative bigness it is and will be quite overborne by giants of younger and lustier growth, but its people are, as they have always been, among the most intelli- gent and progressive citizens of the Republic. Whether within the State upholding its indus- tries and building its institutions, or transplanted -to others and there leavening the heterogeneous mass of raw humanity with the homely virtues, quick intelligence and sturdy energy of the Green Mountains, the children of Vermont are its chief SINCE THE WAR. 297 pride and possession. They, and their children learning from them of their birthplace, have per- petuated wherever they have gone the traditions of the State and have retained its blunt honesty and unshaken patriotism. For wherever their land or lot, they carry ever in their hearts a deep-rooted affection for the home of their fathers — the rugged, picturesque and fruitful Commonwealth which, from the fair shores of Memphremagog to the Massachusetts line, is alive with stirring memories of the days gone by, when men and women of unsullied name and homely ways counted for so much in the building of a nation. The people of such a State are its best gift and product to the world, and their future achievements like their past, will fill the bright- est pages of the story of Vermont when it is told to the end. THE STORY OF VERMONT. TOLD IN CHRONOLOGICAL EPITOME. There is scarcely a State or section of the American Union that does not disclose under the careful study of the archaeologist evidences of great antiquity. The Green Mountain State is no exception. THE ERA OF BEGINNINGS. Far back in the misty and prehistoric past Vermont was the home of busy workers. They antedate the roaming and fighting Indian tribes ; they link the present to the days of monstrous beasts and vast geologic up- heavals. Discoveries of pottery and rude weapons in the State are, as the Marquis de Nadaillac observes, "the imperishable witnesses of men, the very memory of whom has been completely lost to those who succeeded them." These successors were, without doubt, the so-called "Mound- Builders." The great vases that have been unearthed, some of them capable of holding over six gallons, the copper tubes, skillfully beaten and rolled, disinterred from the remains of dead forests at Swanton and the sculptured stones also found at the same place indicate the occupation of Vermont by those patient and indefatigable workers of the long-ago. When they were scattered and driven westward by the assaults of a relentless savagery to them succeeded the thousand years of Indian occupation, during the closing days of which time Alogonquin and Iroquois made it the dark and bloody ground of savage war. THE ERA OF DISCOVERY. That the American continent was probably visited by European navigators before Columbus is now generally conceded by those who have examined the evidence. That Hudson was not the first to enter New York bay is as certain as it is likely that Cartier was preceded by other white men in ex- ploring the Northern waters. But though the coast of the whole continent and many of its navigable bays and rivers had been seen by adventurous mariners from across the Atlantic, by Spaniards, Frenchmen, Dutchmen and Englishmen, no European explorer it is asserted penetrated far enough into the wilderness to reach Vermont until well within the seventeenth cent- ury. What the State then became to the whites it had long been to the native tribes, the scene of desperate combat, sudden surprises and bloody 299 ERA OF COLONIZATION. reprisals rather than of permanent residence. It was debatable ground, a dangerous frontier between hostile tribes. So Champlain found it ; so, tra- dition ran among his Indian friends, it had been for many years before his coming. With Champlain the history of the State really commences, though it was a part of the territory claimed for the King of France by Cartier in 1535. i6og. Samuel de Champlain explored the lake named for him and upon its western bank defeated the Iroquois — July 29. Henry Hudson explored the North River to Albany. 1620. Landing of the Pilgrims. 1623. Settlement of Albany. 1627. Grant to Massachusetts colony of land reaching westward to the Pacific and including much of New Hampshire and Vermont. 1629. Grant to Mason of New Hampshire covering a portion of the pre- ceding territory. 1636. Settlement of Springfield, Mass. 1650. Provisional settlement of New York's Connecticut boundary in- volving that of Vermont. 1654. Northampton, Mass., settled. 1656. The Connecticut boundary arrangement ratified by Holland. THE ERA OF COLONIZATION. 1664. New York conquered by the British. The grant to the Duke of York, afterward said to include Vermont. The claim eastward to the Con- necticut River abandoned so far as concerned Connecticut colony. (The line was afterward the subject of dispute and rearrangement, but was not greatly changed until 1700 and 1731.) 1670. Deerfield settled. 1690. The raid on Schenectady. 1697. The peace of Ryswick. 1702. " Queen Anne's War" begun. 1704. The raid upon Deerfield and the retreat through Vermont. 1709. Failure of Montreal expedition. 1713. The peace of Utrecht. 1714. Northfield settled on the Vermont boundary. 1715. " Equivalent lands " in Vermont granted by Massachusetts to Connecticut. 1724. Building of Fort Dummer in Vermont by Massachusetts. 1730. French settlement at Chimney Point, Addison, Vt. 1731. Building of Fort Frederic (Crown Point) by the French. 1736. Township No. i (Westminster) granted by Massachusetts. 1739. Grant of Walloomsack. 1740. The southern boundary of New Hampshire fixed, after more than a century of dispute, as it now stands. This involved the southern boun- dary of Vermont also in after disputes. ERA OF DISPUTE. 301 1741. Benning Wentworth made Governor of New Hampshire with power to make grants west of the Connecticut. 1744. " King George's War " with France. " Fort Massachusetts " erected at Williamstown. 1745. French and Indian raid upon Saratoga. Capture of Louisbourg. 1748. The treaty of Aix la Chapelle. THE ERA OF DISPUTE. 1749. Grant of Bennington to speculators by Governor Wentworth. 1750. Gov. Clinton of New York protests and an arrangement is made to submit the boundary question to the king. 1753. The New York and Massachusetts boundary disputed. 1754. The French and Indian war begun. 1755. Military expedition against Nova Scotia. Braddock's defeat. Gen. Johnson defeats Dieskau with much loss on both sides and erects Fort William Henry at the foot of Lake George. 1756. The formal declaration of war. Montcalm captures Oswego. The summer wasted by the British. 1757. The capture of Fort William Henry and massacre of a portion of its garrison. 1758. Louisbourg again captured. An unsuccessful attempt to drive the French fi^om Lake Champlain. 1759. Ticonderoga and Crown Point taken. Wolfe captures Quebec. Niagara taken by the British. 1760. Montreal taken and war practically closed. 1760 — 1763. Many grants of townships made by Gov. Wentworth. 1761. Bennington settled. Pioneers pouring into Vermont very rapidly under the authority of New Hampshire. 1763. The formal peace between England and France. The northern boundary of New York with Canada (involving Vermont's) fixed at 45 degrees north. Colden puts forth the claim of New York. 1764. The king finally decides the Connecticut " to be " the eastern boundary of New York. Quibble upon the words " to be." 1765. Lieut. Gov. Colden's proclamation annexing Vermont to New York. The issuing of New York patents begun. The Stamp Act goes into effect — November r. 1766. The Stamp Act repealed. The New Hampshire grants settlers send Samuel Robinson of Bennington to England. Cumberland County set apart by New York (now Windsor and Windham). 1767. The king forbids New York, until authorized, to grant any more land in Vermont — July 24. Death of Robinson — October 27. 1769. Death of Gov. Moore of New York. Lieut. Gov. Colden disre- gards the king's orders in council. The raid on Brackenridge's farm. 1770. Gov. Dunmore arrives in New York and endeavors to wrest from Colden his land fees. More Vermont lands granted. The ejectment suits 302 Era of dispute. at Albany decided against the settlers. Ethan Allen appears as defendants' council. Mr. Robinson and others indicted for riot. Gloucester County, north of Cumberland, constituted. 1771. Gov. Tryon appointed. He continues the illegal granting of Ver- mont townships. Sheriff Ten Eyck and posse attempt to take Bracken- ridge's farm, but are driven off by a show of force. The townships form committees. Organization of the Green Mountain Boys. Surveyor Cock- burn frightened away from Socialborough. A reward offered for the arrest of Allen, Baker and others. 1772. Jehiel Hawley and James Brackenridge repair to England to petition the king. Tryon ceases the grants. The British Board of Trade condemns the land jobbers. Justice Munroe's capture of Remember Baker and his rescue by neighbors. The Fays sent to New York to negotiate a truce. Charlotte County constituted by New York, lying on both sides of the lake. 1773. Col. Reid's tenants driven from Otter Creek. The " Durham (Clarendon) Rebellion " dealt with by the Green Mountain Boys. 1774. Reward offered for Allen, Baker, Warner and others concerned in the Durham disturbance and other acts of violence. Counter proclamation by settlers. Congress of delegates at Philadelphia. Tryon goes to England. 1775. Benjamin Hough whipped — January 30. The Westminster mas- sacre — March 13. Battle of Lexington. — April 19. Capture of Ticonde- roga — May 10. Assembling of Continental Congress — May 10. Forma- tion of Committees of safety. Gov. Tryon issues patents for 63,000 acres of land from his ship in New York harbor. Regiment of Green Mountain Boys formed. Invasion of Canada. Allen captured — September 25. Capture of St. Johns. 1776. Retreat from Canada. Meeting of Vermont convention and adop- tion of petition to Congress. Westminster convention — June 21. Decla- ration of Independence — July 4 Dorset Convention — July 24. Dorset joint Convention — September 25. Carleton's aimless expedition down Lake Champlain. 1777. Westminster Convention — January 15. Declaration of Indepen- dence — January 17. Petitions to Congress by both New York and Massa- chusetts. Windsor Convention — June 4 also July 2. Constitution adopted — July 8. Slavery prohibited. Council of safety named. Burgoyne's in- vasion. Evacuation of Ticonderoga — July 6. Battle of Hubbardton — July 7. Loan office opened. Property of Tories sold. Battle of Benning- ton — August 16. Stark censured by Congress — August 19. Gates suc- ceeds Schuyler. P>urgoyne's surrender — October 17. George Clinton, an enemy of Vermont, becomes Governor of New York. 1778. Building of frontier forts by the Vermonters. British raiders on the lake among the farmers. Thomas Chittenden elected governor. Legis- lature meets at Windsor — March 12. Confiscation of Tory lands. Ethan Allen's return from prison. Redding hung as a traitor — June 11. Union of western New Hampshire towns with \'erniont proposed. ERA OF FORMATION. 303 1779. A code of laws adopted. Officers of New York regiment raised in Vermont arrested and fined. Legislature meets at Windsor — June 2. Congress appoints a committee to e.xamine into the boundary dispute. No action follows. New Hampshire renews her claim to Vermont. Massachu- setts makes a similar claim. Congress, as before, is afraid of positive action. Vermont sends agents to Philadelphia. Vermont's " Appeal to the World " published. 1780. New York and New Hampshire plan to divide Vermont. Ira Allen and Stephen R. Bradley sent to Philadelphia. Caileton comes up the lake with a British force and takes Fort Ann. Ethan Allen calls out the militia. Sack of Royalton — October 16. Allen's truce with Carleton. Vermont begins a counter movement for a union with New York and New Hampshire towns. 1781. Allen submits to Congress Col. Robinson's letter of March 30, 1780. Gov. Chittenden's proclamation anne.xing the new towns — July 18. Congress declares it an " indispensable preliminary " to Vermont's admission that she give up the new towns. Vermont demurs. New York protests against the admission of the new State. Ira Allen sent to Canada to treat for exchange of prisoners. The intrigue with the British. The killing of Sergeant Tupper and the British general St. Leger's message of regret cause popular suspicion. The British general Haldimand presses to proclaim Ver- mont a crown province but is put off by the Vermont agents. Chittenden appeals to Washington — November 14. Conflicts of authority between Vermont peace officers and those of New York and New Hampshire. The fall of Yorktown — October 19. 1782. Washington writes to Chittenden, advising Vermont to give up an- nexed New York and New Hampshire towns — January i. The Legisla- ture complies, a committee of Congress favors the admission of Vermont, but the consideration of the report is postponed. The " Windham County Rebellion," arising from the commissioning by New York of civil and mili- tary officers in Southeastern Vermont. Their conflicts of authority with New York officers put down by Allen and the militia. The offenders ban- ished. The negotiations with the British languish. Congress condemns the severity of Vermont toward the Windham County '" Yorkers " — Decem- ber 5 — and orders the return of their property under pain of military inva- sion. The order disregarded. 1783. Vermont protests against the December resolutions. New York calls for their enforcement and Washington objects to the use of the army for that purpose. The Windham refugees (Church, Phelps, Shattuck and others) return to Vermont and are rearrested. Peace with Great Britain — September 3. THE ERA OF FORMATION. 1784. Congress Committee reports against New York — May 29. Ver- mont ceases to press for admission to the Union. A State post-office es- tablished. Death of Seth Warner — December 26. )°4 ERA OF- DEVELOPMENT. 1785. Legislation passed to quiet land titles in dispute. State coinage begun and a mint founded at Rupert. 1786. Final settlement of New York's Massachusetts boundary. Ver- mont constitution revised. 1787. Bill to cede jurisdiction of Vermont passes New York Assembly but fails in Senate. Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia. 1788. The National Constitution ratified. Kentucky applies for admis- sion and Northern States desire admission of Vermont as a counter movement. 1789. Death of Ethan Allen — February 12. A bill providing for com- missioners to negotiate with Vermont passes New York Legislature — July 14. Vermont likewise creates a commission — October 23. 1790. The joint commission meets in New York — February. The act of appointment of the New York commissioners proves defective. A new act passed — March 6. October 7 the commissioners make a provisional arrangement. Vermont's Legislature ratifies the agreement — October 28 — and appropriates $30,000 to pay New York's claims in full. 1791. U. S. Constitution ratified — January 10. Congress passes act of admission. Vermont becomes a State — March 4. 1795. George Clinton's term as governor of New York ends. 1797. Death of Gov. Chittenden — August 25. 1800. Removals of Federal officials. Middlebury College founded. University of Vermont opened. 1801. Thomas Jefferson, President. The republicans, or French party, gain control of the Legislature. 1802. Ohio admitted to the Union. 1803. Proposed banks for Windsor and Burlington defeated. 1804. President Jefferson re-elected. The Massachusetts amendment limiting representation of slave States defeated in Vermont. Judges charged with exacting illegal fees. 1805. The accused judges declared innocent. Montpelier designated as the State capital after 1808. i8o5. State banks at Woodstock and Middlebury established. 1807. Penitentiary at Windsor authorized. Israel Smith, Republican, governor. THE ERA OF DEVELOPMENT. 1808. Legislature meets at Montpelier. James Madison elected presi- dent. Fight with smugglers on the lake. One of them hanged. National Temperance Society founded at Saratoga. Steam transit on Lake Cham- plain. 1809. Jonas Galusha, governor. 1810. Bills of Bank of U. S. made legal tender. State banks prove a failure. 181 1. Remarkable floods. Renewal of U. S. Bank charter refused by Republicans. Private banks chartered in Vermont. ERA OF DEVELOPMENT. 305 1812. Madison re-elected president. War with Great Britain. Death of Robert Cochran — July 3. The State pledges its support to the war, de- clares non-intercourse with Canada, and levies a war tax. 1813. Chittenden elected governor by the Legislature. The Federalists' brief triumph. The war measures repealed. The Growler and Eagle taken by the British — June 2. The British at Plattsburg — July 30. Governor Chittenden orders the militia home — November 10. McDonough in win- ter quarters — December 19. 1814. Death of Ira Allen — January 7. British repulsed from Otter Creek — May 14. Battle of Plattsburg and Lake Champlain — Septem- ber II. 1815. Peace declared. Act granting monopoly of steam navigation passed and declared unconstitutional. The Republicans in control. 1816. The cold summer. The charter of the U. S. Bank renewed. James Monroe elected president. The " era of good feeling." 1817. Monroe visits Vermont. Another bad summer. 1818. Death of Dr. Jonas Fay— March 6. 1820. Madison re-elected. The " era of good feeling" continued. Pro- test against the admission of Missouri as a slave State. 1822. Lake Champlain canal opened. State Medical School founded. Death of John Stark — May 8. 1823. Act prohibiting horse racing passed. 1824. End of "era of good feeling." The Monroe party divided. Lafayette visits America. Burning of the University building. 1825. J. Q. Adams, president. Lafayette lays corner-stone of New University building — June 29. Lafayette at Windsor — June 28. Board of Canal Commissioners appointed. Erie Canal opened. --^ 1826. American Temperance Society at Boston founded. 1827. General school act passed. 1828. William Lloyd Garrison comes to Bennington. New tariff passed which greatly encourages wool growing. Andrew Jackson elected president. 1829. Censure of Nullification doctrine. The Anti-Masonic party organized. 1830. U. S. branch bank founded in Burlington. Great floods. Anti- Masonic party in Vermont. Death of Stephen R.Bradley — December 9. The first railroad opened in England and America. 1831. Railroad and bank charters issued in Vermont. Anti-Masonic governor, Palmer, elected. 1832. New State House projected. Anti-Masonic party still controlling the State. U. S. Bank tries to get its charter renewed and fails. Jackson elected president. Vermont electors for Wirt, the Anti-Masonic candidate. 1833. Palmer still governor. Great distress caused by withdrawal of \ bank loans. Beginnings of Temperance legislation in Vermont. 1834. Last year of Anti-Masonic control. Slavery question discussed. 1835. The Rev. Samuel J. May and other anti-slavery speakers mobbed in Vermont. 3o6 ERA OF PROGRESS. 1836. Constitution amended. The wheat crop fails. Jackson's specie circular issued. American Temperance Union founded at Saratoga. 1837. The panic begins. Van Buren, president. Specie payment sus- pended. The wheat crop again a failure. The patriot movement in Canada. Legislature adopts anti-slavery resolutions. THE ERA OF PROGRESS. 1838. End of the panic. Specie payments resumed — May 15. Silk cul- ture encouraged by the Legislature. Governor Jenison's warning to the patriots. Surrender of the patriot army — December 29. Death of Isaac Tichenor — December 11. 1839. Revised statutes adopted. Legislative protests against the slave trade in the District of Columbia. 1840. Washingtonian Temperance movement begun in Baltimore. Act to give escaped slaves a trial by jury passed. Harrison, the Whig candidate, receives Vermont's vote and is elected. 1841. The Legislature protests against the admission of Texas. 1842. More protests against the admission of slave States. The cold winter and the epidemic. The Legislature calls upon the Government to abolish slavery. 1843. The issuance of warrants for escaped slaves forbidden by law. Appropriations made for agricultural societies. Death of Nathaniel Chipman — February 13. 1844. A license law passed. More anti-slavery protests. James K. Polk elected president. Vermont's vote cast for Clay. 1846. A local option law passed. Maine passes a prohibitive law. Ver- mont votes on the license question. War against Mexico begun. 1847. End of Mexican War. Burlington Savings Bank chartered. 1848. General Taylor elected president. Protests against slavery by the Legislature. 1849. Slavery declared a crime against humanity. Burlington and Windsor and Rutland and Burlington Railroads. 1850. The sale of liquor for medicinal purposes entrusted to public agents. The compromise measure adopted by Congress. State's attorneys instructed to defend slaves claimed by their masters in Vermont. Michi- gan adopts a prohibitory liquor law. Railroads from Rutland and White- hall and from F^ssex Junction to Rouse's Point. 1851. Railroad from White River Junction to St. Johnsliury. 1852. Passage of the prohibitory law. Franklin Pierce president. 1853. Further temperance legislation. 1854. Formation of the Republican party. Further temperance legisla- tion. 1855. Statue to Allen authorized. Further temperance legislation. 1856. James Buchanan elected president. Fremont carries Vermont. Legislature appropriates twenty thousand dollars for " bleeding Kansas." ERA OF PROGRESS. 30/ 1857. Resolution condemning the Dred Scott decision of the Supreme Court. Financial difficulties. Kansas appropriation repealed. 1858. Vermont's '' emancipation proclamation." All negroes in the State or hereafter brought into it declared free. Perfecting the prohibition law. Vermont Homoeopathic Medical Society founded. i860. Lincoln elected president. Secession ordinances passed by South- ern States. Vermont's militia prepares for action. 1861. President Lincoln inaugurated. Sumter fired upon by the rebels — April 2. The President's call for troops — April 15. Governor Fair- bank's call — April 15. First Vermont regiment formed — April 19. The Battle of Bull Run — July 21. Special sessions of the Legislature. Prompt and generous war acts. First brigade formed. 1862. Organizing the armies. Gallantry of Vermont troops at Lee's Mills and Savage's Station. Rapid formation of new regiments. 1863. The dark days of Rebellion. Valor of Vermonters at Marye's Heights. They turn the scale at Gettysburg — July i, 2, 3, 4. Mob duty in New York. Union victories. 1864. Vermont troops in the battles of the Wilderness, Spotsylvania, Cold Spring Harbor, Winchester. Lincoln elected president. The St. Albans raid — October 19. 1865. The end of rebellion. Vermont troops lead the charge at Peters- burg. Lee's surrender — April 9. Lincoln's assassination — April 14. The return of the soldiers. 1866. Constitutional amendments and the Reconstruction acts. The recovery from the war. 1867. Wool growing and other Vermont industries encouraged by the Morrill tariff. 1868. Grant chosen president. Vermont's enormous Republican majority. 1869. Meeting of the Council of Censors. Proposed constitutional amendments. 1870. The Constitutional Convention. Amendments adopted doing away with Council of Censors and making legislative sessions and State elections biennial. The Fenian raid on Canada. 1871. The amendments ratified by the people. Liquor war at Rutland. 1872 Re-election of President Grant. First session of the biennial legislature. 1873. The beginning of the financial panic. Vermont's debt greatly re- duced and its credit good. Decrease in value of dairy products. 1874. The financial stringency continues. Measures of retrenchment by the Legislature. 1875. Centennial of the death of French and the capture of Ticonderoga. 1876. Centennial of the Declaration of Independence at Philadelphia. Hayes elected president. 1877. Centennial of the Vermont Declaration and of the adoption of the Constitution. Great celebration at Bennington on the anniversary of the battle. 3oS ERA OF PROGRESS. 1878. Many town centennials about this time. Recovering from tlie panic. 1879. Very cold wave — January 3. Success of the resumption of spe- cie payments and the refunding of the U. S. bonds. 1880. Senator Edmunds nominated for president. James A. Garfield elected. Legislature proposes Constitutional amendments. 1881. Assassination of President Garfield — July 2. Centennial of York- town's evacuation. 1882. Constitutional amendments passed again by Legislature. They provide for the popular election of Secretary of State and make U. vS. officials ineligible to State offices. The tax law reformed. Property to be taxed at its full value. First encampment, Sons of Veterans. Law provid- ing for the study of physiology in schools. 1883. Amendments ratified by the people. The tariff revised by Con- gress. A lower duty on wool. 1884. Edmunds again proposed for president. Grover Cleveland elected. Vermont's vote cast for Blaine. 1885. Professor Phelps appointed minister to Great Britain. Removals of many Federal officials. i885. Completion of State Library. Protests of Vermont's representa- tives in Congress against lowering the tariff. 1887. The Interstate Commerce Bill, favored by Vermont, becomes a law. The Burlington winter carnival. Terrible railroad accident at Woodstock. 1888. Great storm — March 12. Centennial of New Hampshire's State- hood — June 21. Formation of State Board of Trade. Brooks Library at Brattleboro opened. State farm purchased for agricultural experiments. President Cleveland's tariff message. The Mills tariff reduction bill opposed by Vermont members of Congress but passed by the House of Representatives. Benjamin Harrison elected president. 1889. Senate tariff bill passed. Senators Edmunds and Morrill vote in favor of it. The House fails to concur. Redfield Proctor appointed Sec- retary of War — March 5. Vermont has contributed to the direction and development of the United States two Presidents /;-(? tein. of the Senate, Stephen R. Bradley (1802) and Solomon Foot (1862), a Postmaster General, Jacob Callamer (1849), ^'""^ 3- Secretary of War, I'iedfield Proctor (18S9). Two Presidents, Rutherford B. Hayes and Chester A. Arthur, were born in Vermont, though later they be- came residents of other States, and the list of Vermont boys accredited to other States as Governors, Senators and Representatives is a long one. THE PEOPLE'S COVENANT. AS EMBODIED IN THE CONSTITUTION OF THE STATE OF VERMONT. The first Constitution of the State of Vermont was adopted July 8, 1777, and its provisions have formed the basis of subsequent amendments and revisions. Its most noticeable features were its prohibition of slavery within the State and the fear its framers evidently felt lest the General Assembly should usurp too much power. The first, coming at a time when slavery was legal in all the other colonies, has reflected great credit upon the State and its founders. The second, constraining the builders of the Constitution to limit too closely the powers of the Legislature, compelled a revision in 1786. A new Constitution was adopted July 4, 1793, soon after the admission of the State, and though amended in some important particulars, most of its sections still stand. This Constitution consists of two chapters or parts, subdivided into twenty-one articles and forty-three sections which are here condensed to the briefest possible limits : A DECLARATION OF RIGHTS OF THE INHABITANTS OF THE STATE OF VERMONT. Article I. declares that all men are born equally free and independent and prohibits slavery forever within the State. Article II. asserts the right of the State to use private property when necessary and the right of the owner to receive compensation therefor. Article III. while commending Christian worship and the keeping of the Sabbath or Lord's day, provides that all citizens shall be free to worship God according to the dictates of their consciences, without any abridgment of rights or privileges. Article IV. declares that every person in the State must find in its laws full, free, prompt and legal redress for all wrongs or injuries. Article K. reserves to the people of the State the right, by their repre- sentatives, of governing its police. Article VI. describes all State officers as servants of the people, deriving power from them and accountable to them. 309 3IO THE CONSTITUTION. Article VII. sets forth the right of the people to reform or alter the government. Ai-ticle VIII. declares that all elections should be free and without cor- ruption, and all freemen should have the right to vote, and be eligible to office. Article IX. states that citizens enjoying the law's protection are bound to uphold the law by payment of taxes and by personal service. Article X. defines the rights of the accused in criminal proceedings to a fair trial and defense by counsel. Article XI. protects the persons, possessions and houses of the people from search or seizure except by proper warrant. Article XII. declares the right of jury trial sacred. Article XIII. guarantees free speech and a free press. Article XIV. provides that no action at law or prosecution can be founded upon words used in debate in the Legislature. Ai'ticle XV. reserves to the Legislature the power of suspending laws or their execution. Article XVI. declares for the right of the people to bear arms and against standing armies in time of peace. Article XJ'II. restricts martial law to persons in military service. Article XVIII. enjoins upon the people the duty of exacting right con- duct on the part of legislators and magistrates. Ai-ticle XIX. asserts the right of the people to emigrate from one State to another. Article XX. upholds the right of assembly and petition. Article XXI. prohibits transportation of criminals to another State. IL PLAN OF GOVERNMENT. Sections One, Two and Three fix the Legislative power in a House of Representatives and the executive power in a Governor, Lieutenant-Gov- ernor and Council. Section Four establishes courts of justice. Section Five empowers a future Legislature to create a Court of Chancery. Section Six provides that executive, legislative and judicial powers shall be separate and distinct. Section Seven fixes the ratio of representation in the House. Section Eight names the first Tuesday of each September election day. Section Nine fixes a quorum of the House, prescribes the power of members and gives them, collectively, the title of the General Assembly of the State of Vermont. THE CONSTITUTION. 3^1 Section Ten, now no longer in force, constituted an executive Council of Governor, Lieutenant-Governor and twelve Councilors, and described the manner of their election. Section Eleven defined the powers of Governor and Council. Section Twelve prescribes the oath of office for Representatives. Section Thirteen provides that the deliberations of the Assembly shall be open to the public except when the welfare of the State forbids. Section Fourteen provides for the printing of Assembly proceedings. Section Fifteen gives the " style " of the laws. Section Sixteen, now no longer in force, to prevent hasty legislation, gave the Governor and Council the right to suspend the operation of laws until the next session of the Legislature. Section Seventeen prohibits expenditure of money except by act of the Legislature. Section Eighteen gives the qualifications of Representatives. Section Nineteen seeks to prevent the acceptance of fees or bribes by legislators. Section Twenty prohibits the Legislature declaring any person guilty of treason or felony. Section Twenty-one gives the right of suffrage to males twenty-one years of age who have resided in the State one year. SectionTwenty-two provides for a militia. Section Twenty-three relates to commissions. Section Twenty-four describes the process of impeaching State officers. Section Twenty-five is intended to regulate the compensation of officers. Section Twenty-six prohibits the holding of more than one State office by the same person at the same time. Sections Twenty-seven and Twenty-eight provide for the proper performance of the duties of Treasurer and the auditing of his accounts. Section Twenty-nine prescribes the form of oath to be taken by State officers. Section Thirty declares that no person shall be eligible to the office of Governor or Lieutenant-Governor who has not resided in the State four years. Section Thirty-one affirms the right of jury trial of civil causes. Section Thirty-two gives the legal form of indictments. Section Thirty-three forbids imprisonment for debt and the fixing of excessive bail for bailable offenses. Section Thirty-four prescribes forfeitures and penalties for those guilty of bribery at elections. Section Thirty-five provides for the recording of deeds. Section Thirty-six directs the Legislature to regulate entails so as to "prevent perpetuities." Section Thirty-seven pronounces in favor of employing prisoners at hard labor. THE CONSTITUTION. Section Thirty-eight confirms the right of suicides' heirs to inherit their property. Section Thirty-nine, since modified, gave to every immigrant the right to hold real estate, and provided that after one year's residence he could vote. Section Forty asserts the right of the people of the State to hunt and fish within its limits under proper regulations. Section Forty-one calls for laws to prevent vice, for the establishment of a sufificient number of schools and for the encouragement of religious and charitable societies. Section Forty-two makes the declaration of rights an inviolable part of the Constitution of the State. Section Forty-three, not now in force, provided for a Council of Cen- sors to meet once in seven years, whose duty it was to inquire whether the Constitution and laws had been observed, to recommend the passage and repeal of laws and, if thought necessary, to call a Convention to consider amendments suggested by the Censors. III. Amendments and Additions. It will be seen by the last section that no provision was made for the adoption of an entirely new Constitution, as in other States, but from time to time amendments have been made. The first of these, adopted in 1828, restricts the suffrage to native or nat- uralized residents. The ne.xt amendment, in twelve Articles, was passed in 1836. It abolishes the Governor's Council and establishes in its place a Senate, whose thirty members are elected one from each county and the remainder apportioned according to population. All bills appropriating money are to originate in the House of Representatives, but the Senate is sole judge of the qualifica- tions of its members and has the power of impeachment. The Lieutenant- Governor is President of the Senate e.xcept when acting as Governor, when an acting President is chosen. To the Governor is given the power of veto- ing bills passed by the Assembly ; but vetoed bills, when repassed by a bare majority of Senate and House, become laws. The concluding paragraphs provide that the writ of habeas corpus shall not be suspended, and that portions of the Constitution of 1783 inconsistent with the amendment shall be repealed. In 1870 two otlier important amendments were passed. The first pro- vides that the General Assembly shall meet biennially on the first Wednes- day of October. The Governor, Lieutenant-Governor, Treasurer, Senators, Representatives, Assistant Judges of County Court, Sheriffs, High Bailiffs, State's Attorneys, Judges of Probate and Supreme Court and Justices of Peace are elected on the first Tuesday in September. The terms of the THE CONSTITUTION 313 State oificers commence when they are chosen and qualified, of the Senators and Representatives on the first Wednesday of October, and of the other officials named on the first of December. The second of the 1870 amendments abolishes the Council of Censors and provides that at the session of the General Assembly for 1870 and each tenth year thereafter, the Senate can, by a two thirds vote, propose amend- ments to the Constitution which, if concurred in by a majority of the House of Representatives, are referred to the next General Assembly and published in the newspapers. If again passed by both Houses they are submitted to popular vote, and if supported by a majority of the voters become an effec- tive portion of the Constitution. The powers formerly belonging to the Council of Censors are now conferred upon the House of Representatives, and Section Forty-three of the original Constitution is abrogated. In 1880 twenty-two amendments were proposed by the Senate. These were cut down in the House to six. The Assembly of 1882 cut the number down to two and these were ratified by vote of the people in 1883. The first amendment provides for the election of the Secretary of State by the people, and the second prohibits the election of United State officials as legislators. A SELECTION OF BOOKS TOUCHING UPON THE STORY OF VERMONT. The student of Vermont's history will soon discover that, while what may be called the heroic age of the Commonwealth has inspired a comparatively large number of writers and formed the theme of many interesting books, the not unevent- ful century since its admission as a State has received scant attention. The period of the Green Mountain Boys, the unquiet times between the close of the last French war in 1763 and the successful issue of the Revolution twenty years later, has always been the favorite of the Vermont historians, but the more recent history of the State must be gathered, a scrap here and a scrap there, from a variety of sources ; and this fact must explain and excuse the inclusion in the following list of some volumes which may seem to have but a remote relation to the subject. No general history of the State has been recently published, and the best extant do not bring its story beyond the beginning of the present century, Williams' " History of Vermont " covers the history of the State up to the close of the eighteenth century, and a later edition adds a few years to the record. This boolv is old and somewhat rare. Hiland Hall's " Early History of Vermont " tells its story up to 1791 and is probably the best his- tory extant of that period. B. H. Hall's " History of Eastern Vermont " is hardly a general work, as its name implies, but is very full and painstaking. Chase's " Gathered Sketches from the Early History of Vermont and New Hampshire " is a collection of frontier tales and legends. The character of H. W. DuPuy's "Ethan Allen and the Green Mountain Heroes of 1776" is indicated by its title. Ira Allen's " Natural and Political History " was published in London at the close of the last century, and is mainly devoted to the New Hamphsire controversy. Graham's " Present State of Ver- mont," published in London in 1797, is more curious than Allen's book but less valuable. The Rev. Hosea Beckley's History is an unmethodical but chatty and readable account of Vermont up to about 1S40. Zadock Tiionip- son's Gazetteer, along with much other matter, relates the legislative pro- 3'4 BOOKS RELATING TO VERMONT. 315 ceedingsof the State up to 1841, with some account of religious, educational and other forms of activity. A very brief appendix was published in 1853. The story of the discovery of New France, of which Vermont was a part, may fitly be read in the works of such old chroniclers as Charlevoix and Joliet. Champlain's account of his voyage up Lake Champlain is in his translated works and is full of interest. Champlain's style is much more modern than that of the English writers of a century or more later and his book reads like a novel. The character and experiences of the early settlers may be studied from such works as Williams' " Redeemed Captive," Hub- bell's " Narration of the Sufferings of the Early Settlers of Wolcott," Sparks' " Life of Ethan Allen " in his American Biographies, Mrs. Ellet's " Women of the Revolution," wherein is an account of Jane McCrea, and in Everett's " Life of Stark." The complicated controversy with New York and New Hampshire is fully told in the general histories mentioned in the first paragraph, but the curious can consult further E. Allen and J. Jay's " Refutation of the Claims of New Hampshire and Massachusetts," Bradley's " Vermont's Appeal to the World," Slade's " State Papers of Vermont," the fourth volume of the "Documentary History of New York " and an article in the Historical Magazine in 1869 and another in 1873. The Revolutionary period may be studied with special reference to the part played in that war by Vermont in the general histories, and in Headley's " Life of Schuyler," Everett's " Life of Stark," Riedesel's Journal and Mme. Riedesel's Memoirs, Burgoyne's Narrative, Stark's account of Bennington in the New Hampshire State Papers, the volume published on the centennial celebration of Bennington, and the articles under the appropriate headings in " Hemenway's Gazetteer." The period of the growth of parties is treated only by Thompson of the historians mentioned and his account may be supplemented by the various lives of Adams and Jackson, by Benton's " Thirty Years " and Van Buren's " Political History." The anti-masonic movement is treated in these books and in the " Life of William Wirt." The canals are discussed in the special works on the subject, and in Tuckerman's " Life of Clinton and Others." The Canadian troubles of 1837 and succeeding years are fully told in Lind- sey's " Life and Times of W. L. Mackenzie." The anti-slavery agitation is described in S. J. May's " Recollections," Wilson's " Rise and Fall of the Slave Power," the " Life of Garrison," by his children, and a vast number of other books, and in a monogi-aph on Slavery in Vermont by Hiland Hall in the New England Register for 1875. The histories respectively of the growth of the railroads and of the temperance movement figure in the special works on those subjects and in the statute books of the State. The authoritative work upon the share of the Green Mountam troops in the Civil War is Benedict's " Vermont in the Civil War." It is supple- mented by a vast number of general war histories, by monographs upon Gettysburg and the Wilderness and by the war papers in the Century Maga- zme, which are the latest word upon many disputed points. Such works as 3i6 BOOKS RELATING TO VERMONT. Walker's "The Vermont Brigade in the Shenandoah Valley" and Haynes' " History of the Tenth Regiment," and many memorial volumes also bear witness to the interest shown by Vermonters in their second heroic age. Works which defy classification are Hemenway's ponderous Gazetteer in four volumes, which contains much general as well as local historical matter, the " Poets and Poetry of Vermont," by the same editor, a large number of local histories of counties and towns, a few of them admirable, but the greater part of comparatively little value ; Slaf ter's " Vermont Coin- age," and articles upon the geology of Vermont in the American Journal of Science for iS68 and 1877, its fossil remains in Hours at Home for 1866, and its archaeology in the American Naturalist for 1881. Better worth reading than many volumes to which reference has been made, perhaps, are the works of fiction having Vermont for their scene. Among these the foremost place is occupied by D. P. Thompson's " Green Mountain Boys on the March," " May Martin," " Locke Amsden," " Gaunt Gurley" and "The Rangers." J. G. Holland's "Bay Path " deals with the life of the early settlers of Massachusetts, and Mrs. Stowe's " Oldtown Folks" pictures New England country life in a community not far different from Vermont. The time and scene of Cooper's " Deer Slayer " and " Last of the Mohicans " are those of the last French war along the lake. A later phase of quiet country life in Vermont is given by Rowland E. Robinson in his quaint dialect sketches, " Uncle Lisha's Shop " and " Sam Level's Camps." INDEX Abolitionists, 187. Adams, Dr. Samuel, punishment of, 51. Addison, fort at, 31. Agriculture, 146, 178, 272 ; agricultural soci- eties, 203; agricultural implements, 181, 272 : agricultural studies at University, 290. Alien and Sedition laws, 117. Albany, 22. Allen, Ebenezer, 223. Allen, Ethan, 46, 51, 64, 68, 70, 81, 90, 100. Allen, Ira, 84, 106. Allen, the Rev. Mr., 73. Anti-Masonic movement, 185. Appomattox, Lee's surrender at, 261. Arnold, Benedict, 64. Arquebus, 13, 14. Baker, Remember, 51, 52, 89. Banks, State, 197; U. S. Bank, 191; Sav- ings, 286. Barns, 205. Base-ball, 239. Beech Seal, 48. " Bees," 158. Benedict, 261. Bennington chartered, 41 ; battle of, 73. Boundary dispute, 40, 41, 42, 43, 44. Braddock, 32. Bread Riots, 190. Brigade, First Vermont, 246, 249, 257. Brigade, Second Vermont, 251. Bull Run, 243 , Second Regiment at, 244. Canada, 22, 30, 68, 71, 72, 266. Canal, Erie, 167; Champiain, 153. Capitol, the new, i88. Caroline, the burning of the, 199. Cartier, Jacques, 19. Caughnawaga, 30. Census figures, 163, 176, 177, 267, 284. Champiain, Lake, 12 17, 66, 123, 130. Champiain, Samuel de, 14. Charge, Pickett's at Gettysburg, 251. Chittenden, Martin, 123. Chittenden, Samuel, 81, 86, 87, 88, 98, 105, 115. Churches, 154, 290. Clinton, Governor of New York, 42, 104, 106. Cold summer, 136. Committee of Safety, 93, 99. Congress, the U. S., 91, 96, 105, 107. Connecticut, 40, 63, 95, 164. Constitution, adopted, 97 ; amended, i8g, 283; of New York, gS ; of the U. S., iii. Conventions, 92, 93. " Corlaer's Lake," 25. Corps, Sixth Army, 250, 261. Council, governor's, abolished, 189. Council of Censors, 71, 80, 113, 2S0. Council, king's orders in, 46. Courcelles, governor of Canada, 22. Courts, Vermont without, 99. Crown Point, iirst settlement at, 31. Debt of Vermont, 286. Declaration of Independence, Vermont's, 94. Declaration of Peace, 107. Deerfield raid, the, 27. Delaplaice, Captain, 66. Dieskau, Baron, 32. Discovery of the St. Lawrence, 27. Dorset, conventions at, 92, 93. Drunkenness in the U. S., 208. Dummer, Fort, 31, 39. Durham, 48, 53, Edmunds, George F., 277. Education, 298. Era of Good Feeling, 133. Factory system, the, 273. Fairbanks, Governor, 238. Federalists, 116, 134. Fees, of colonial officials, 44. Forestry, need of, 295. Fort Edward, battle at, 32. France in the New World, 14, 25, 26. French, William, 57. Frontenac, Count, 26. Future of Vermont, 291. Galusha, Governor Jonas, 122. Gates, General, 77. Garrison, William Lloyd, 224. 3^7 3i8 INDEX. Gettysburg, battle of, 250. Going to market in tlie old days, 144. Green Mountain Boys, 46, 55, 68, 236. Growth of Vermont, early, 59. Haldimand, General, 84, 87. Hochelaga, 18. Horses, 180, 276. Hough, Benjamin, whipped by the Green Mountain Boys, 48. Hubbardton, battle of, 72. Hudson, Henry, discovers the river named for him, 18. Hurons, the, 16. Imitations of butter and cheese, 274. Impnsontnent for debt, 213. Iroquois, the, 12, 21. Jackson, President, and the panic, 191. Jenison, Governor, proclaims the patriot movement, 200. Lafayette visits Vermont, 137. Land law reform, 109. Lee's Mills, battle of, 24S. Legend of the bell, 29. Legislation, recent, 279. Libraries, 156, 290. Lincoln, 232, 25S. Louisbourg taken by the British, 32. Lumber, 275. Lydius' claim, 53. Maine law, the passage of, 210. Manufactures in Vermont, 153, 177, 276, 293. Maple sugar, 148, 274. Massachusetts, Vermont a portion of, 40 ; its boundary, 60; renewal of its claim to Vermont, 104 ; its slavery proposition, 121. Massacre at Fort William Henry, 34. Massacre at Schenectady, 26. May, the Rev. Samuel J., mobbed in Ver- mont, 225. McCrea, Jane, 80. McDonough, Commodore, 127. McLeod, trial of, 200. McKenzie, leader of the " Patriots," 199. Middlebury College, 288. Mob duty in New York, 255. Monroe, James, 133. Montgomery, Genet al James, 68. Montreal, 26, 36, 68. Morrill, J. S., 277 ; the Morrill tariff, 275. Morris, Dinah, 223. Mrs. Howe, the fair captive, 35. Napoleon, 132. New Amsterdam, 38. New Hampshire, 41, 103. New York claims Vermont, 42 ; endeavors to enforce its claims, 52, 57 ; renounces its claims, no; its constitution adopted, 98. Newspapers in Vermont, 155. " Onontio," 25. Oswego, capture of, 33. Oxen m Vermont, 181. Panic of 1837, 189, 193. Parties in Vermont, 116, 135, 277. Patriot movement, the, ig8, 201. Pay of officials in early times, 113. Peace of Utrecht, 31; of 1763, 36; with Great Britain, 107. Peters, the Rev. Samuel, 37. Petersburg, battle of, 259. Phelps, Professor E. J., Minister to Eng- land, 27S. Pitt, William, 34. Plank roads, 201. Plymouth, iS. Prevost, General, 129. Prohibition, the law passed, 212 ; in Maine, 210; foreign criticism upon, 217. Protection, resolutions favoring, 284. Putnam, Israel, 35. Putney, fort at, 39. Quarries, 128, 277. Railroads, 170; injury effected by their com- petition, 272 ; the Inter-State commercs law regulating, 284, 293. " Raisings," 159. Rebellion, the outbreak of, 235 ; in Wind- ham County, 106. Redding, David, 100. Regiments of Vermont, 248, 249. Republican party, the, 230. Robinson, Samuel, 46. Royalton, Indian raid upon, 82. Scott, General Winfield, 131. Scott, William, 247. Schenectady, inassacre at, 26. Schuyler, General, 68, 72, S3. Senate of Vermont, iSg. Settlement of Vermont, 31, 39, 40. Sheriff of Albany, 47, 52. Slavery prohibited in the Constitution, gS ; the Massachusetts amendment relative to, 121; sympathizers with in the West, 7, 169 ; Legislative protests against, 223, 224, 225, 226,227,228; abolition of slavery in Ver- mont, 231. Specie Circular, the, 193. St. Albans, the raid at, 264. Stamp Act, 55. St. Lawrence, discovery of, ig. Staniiard, General, at Gettysburg, 251, INDEX. 319 Stark, General, 33, 73, 78- Summer people in Vermont, 294. Sumter, fall of, 235. Tariff, the Morrill, 285 ; of i»28, 152; of 1883, 275. Temperance societies, 210. Texas, controversy about, 228. Ten Eyck, Sheriff, 52. Ticonderoga, battle near, 17; capture of, 63. Tories' property confiscated, 99. Torture of prisoner by Indians, 18. Town Meeting, 157. Tupper, Sergeant, 86 University of Vermont, 289. Van Curler, Arendt, 23. War of the Revolution, 63 ; of 1812, 123; of the Rebellion, 235 ; Vermont in the war, 236 ; war measures in the Legislature, 239. Washington, 106. Warner, Seth, 47, 66, 89. Wentworth, Governor Benning, 41. West, Vermonters in the, 284. " Western fever," the, 169. Westminster town charter granted, 40; the bloody court at, 56. Wheat, 149 190. Wild animals, 153. Wilderness, battle of the, 256. Williams, the Rev. John, 28. Williams, William, 41. Windham rebellion, the, 106. Windsor, Constitution, adopted at, 97. Wirt, William, vote for President, 186. Wolfe's Victory at Quebec, 35. Wool, 152, 275. Wright, Silas, 165. Yorktown, the British surrender at, 87. THE STORY OF THE STATES. EDITED BY ELBRIDGE S. BROOKS. The Story of Vermont is the fourth issue in the proposed series of graphic narrations descriptive of the rise and development of the American Union. It comes as a clear and practical outline of the early struggles and continual growth of that sturdy Commonwealth whose sons and daughters have made its name strong and brave, or, who leav- ing it, have borne the love of their native hills closely to their hearts. This Story of Vermont is at present without a competitor, no history of the Green Mountain State having been published for over forty years. Every Vermont family, and every family who can proudly trace their origin to the Mountain Commonwealth should find pride and pleasure in this story of the rise of a State. Great care is being exercised in the selection of writers for the entire series and the expressions of popular and critical approval of the plan adopted are gratefully acknowledged by the publishers. This fourth volume will be speedily followed by two others already in press : The Story of Kentucky by Emma M. Connelly. THE STORY OF THE STATES. The Story of Massachusetts by Edward Everett Hale. The Story of Colorado by Charles M. Skinner will be one of the earliest issues in the fall of 1889. Among the other volumes secured for the series, several of which are already well toward completion, are : The Story o: The Story o The Story o The Story o The Story o The Story o The Story o The Story o The Story o The Story The Story o The Story o The Story o: The Story o The Story o The Story o The Story o The Story o The Story o The Story o The Story o: California . Virginia Connecticut Missouri Texas Maryland Delaware the Indian Territory Michigan the District of Columb Oregon Maine Pennsylvania Kansas Mississippi . Wisconsin . Florida Alabama Tennessee . Arkansas New Jersey By Noah Brooks By Marion Harland By Sidney Luska By Jessie Benton Fremont By E. S. Nadal By John R. Coryell By Olive Thorne Miller By George E. Foster By Charles Moore By Edmund Alton By Margaret f:. Sangster By Almon Gunnison By Olive Risley Seward By Willis J. Abbott By Laura F. Hinsdale By Reuben G. Thwaites By S. G. W. Benjamin By Annie Sawyer Downs By Laura C. Hollo way By Octave Thanet By Wm. Elliot Griffis The stories will be issued at the uniform net subscription price of $1.50 per volume. Announc- ments of additions to the series will be made in succeeding volumes. Inquiries respecting the series may be addressed to the publishers, D. LOTHROP COMPANY, BOSTON. THE STORY OF THE STATES. {A Iready published. ) The Story of New York, by Elbridge S. Brooks. The Story of Ohio, by Alexander Black. The Story of Louisiana, by Maurice Thompson. 8vo, each volume fully illustrated, price ^1.50. The initial volumes of this new and notable contribution to American history have been so favorably received that little doubt can remain as to the need of the series they inaugurate and the permanent popularity of the style adopted for their telling. "Of the series instructively," says the Boston Globe, "one can hardly say too much in praise. In a new field it contrib- utes essentially and influentially to the right estimation of national character and of the mission of the future." I — NEW YORK, Every American should read this book. It is not dull history. It is story based on historic facts. "With all the fascinations of a story," says the Journal of Education, " it still remains loyal to historic facts and the pa- triotic spirit." " A valuable contribution to picturesque history." — Bosioji Advertiser. "Vivid, picturesque and entertaining " — Minneapolis Tribune. " To one familiar with the historj' of New York State this book will be exceedingly refresh- ing and interesting. Mr Brooks is an entertaining writer and his Story of Ne\v York will be read with avidity. He is no novice in historic writing. This book will add to his reputa- tion and will find its way into thousands of private libraries." — Utica Press. II — OHIO. This volume has been received with the most enthusiastic approval. No existing work occupies precisely the same field. It is at once picture, text-book and story. Mr. Black's skill in condensing into so brief a compass so much valuable matter, his deft handling of all the varying phases of Ohio's story and his picturesque presentation of what in other hands might be but the dry details of history have secured alike popular recognition and popular approval. "To incorporate within some three hundred pages, even an intelligible sketch of the history of Oliio is something of a literary feat, and to make such a sketch interesting is still more difficuit. Mr. Black, however, has succeeded in doing this. . . . His book is welcome and valuable and is well adapted for popular use and reference." — New York Tribicne. " One of the warm, lively, picturesque narratives, lighted up with bits of personal, human interest and clean glimpses of a people's every-day life which will closely interest the general reader." — Chicago Times THE STORY OF THE STATES. Ill — THE STORY OF LOUISIANA. One volume, Svo, T,y] pages, fully illustrated, $1.50. Mr. Thompson's brilliant and entertaining outline of the history of one of the most picturesque and romantic States in all the sisterhood of American commonwealths is full of grace and vigor, yoked to characteristic description and a pleasing presentation of facts. It is, says the Critic, " A wonderfully picturesque account of a land abounding in in- terest of every sort : landscapes, hereditary singularities, mixed nationality, legends and thrilling episodes." OPINIONS OF THE PRESS. '' The manner in whicli this story is told by Mr. Thompson leaves little to be desired . . . He has made an absorbing and stirring, but at the same time most thoroughly practical and instructive book." — Boston Traveller. " He has taken the history of Louisiana and, eliminating the dry details with admirable discrimination, has given us a vigorous, impressionable sketch full of life, warmth and color." — Chicago News. " There is no lack of fascinating and romantic inaterial in the history of Louisiana wiihout going beyond the barest facts, as indeed Mr. Thompson shows." — 'llze Natioji "An absorbing romance and at the same time a practical and instructive history." — Jotir- n ■/ of Editcatioti. " In some respects the best history of Louisinna that has yet been published This is said with the knowledge that Gayarre, Cable and a host of more or less popular writers have said much on the subject ... A book which would entertain an abolitionist and yet leave a slave-holder with humid eyes; a book that neither suppresses unpleasant truths nor denies justice ; a book which wounds no partisan prejudices in a country torn by opposing interests — surely is a rare book. And it is one to be commended with enthusiasm to North and South alike." — Charleston Nnvs and Courier. " Limned in swift adumbration with great spirit and impartiality the book deserves to be adopted as a text-book m the schools of Louisiana and to be generally read as a fine treat- ment of its theme." — The Critic. "Mr. Thompson's prose is full of the fire and s]-)irit of poetry, and the story could scarcely be told better or more interestingly. The writing is free from all prejudices and can be read with a like interest by the jieopleof Illinois and those of Louisiana." — Chicago Inter Ocean. "This breaking away from the dull forms of historical statement has its distinctive advan- tages from the writer's as well as the reader's standpoint." — Brooklyn Times. " Louisiana has one of the most romantic of histories, and the telling of its story loses nothing in grace or charm at the hands of Mr Thompson." — Cleveland Plain Dealer. " We recommend this graphic history to all our readers who are intere.sted in the past, tlie present and the probable future of the United States." —Boston Golden RuU. " There is not a dull page in the book. The text is as delightful and as breezy as the best of Mr. Thomiison's works in fiction . . . The art of a clever workman makes the history charminc and the facts are the result of careful research and study on the part of a man who never slights any part of his work." — Indiana/olis JVe7vs. " Mr. Thompson has sketched the story with sympatliy, and in an agreeable descriptive way, not overloading his narrative with details, yet omitting nothing of real significance." — Christian Union. " The story is picturesque beyond all possibility of greater and more vivid heiglitening . The book is one of great popular interest and it is rarely that a work of historical accuracy is presented in a garb so graceful and alluring." — Newark Daily Advertiser. 6; / LIBRARY OF CONGRESS iiii" III II' 11 II I II !i nil 013 787 202 A