Ethan Allen

Ethan Allen was born January 31, 1738, in London, in Lichfield, Connecticut. He was the eldest of eight, born to Joseph and Mary Allen. The Allens were devoutly religious and were involved in the debates that split the Puritan churches during the first great awakening. The Allens dis Religious and philosophical debates shaped young Ethan's childhood. He studied for admission to Yale Divinity School, but his studies were cut short due to his father's death. As the eldest son, Ethan was obliged to support his mother and seven siblings. Besides working the family farm, he had several other business ventures in Connecticut. Allen was the part owner of a successful iron foundry in Leadmine and managed his family's finances. Ethan married Mary Bronson, a Miller's daughter, and began a family. He also formed a new friendship with Dr. Thomas Young, who exposed him to the philosophy of deism. This philosophy was highly adversarial to the religious establishment of New England, but Ethan took to it and was not shy about publicly expressing his views. Ethan had to relocate several times as his pugnacious disposition, contrarian ways, and tendency to use strong language, found him exiled from two towns in Connecticut and Massachusetts. After being forced out of Northampton, Massachusetts, Ethan became a commercial hunter, which required him to travel for months at a time. It was one of these hunting trips that he first came to Vermont. The area now known as Vermont was called the New Hampshire Grants. From 1740 to 1770, New Hampshire, with dubious legal authority, chartered towns in the area and sold land blocks to settlers, which New York contested. The crown ruled in favor of New York, putting the status of the New Hampshire settlers in question. This was further complicated when New York refused to honor New Hampshire titles unless a high fee was paid to confirm them. When New York's government took steps to begin evictions of settlers who either refused or could not afford the fees, resistance began. Ethan Allen had earned enough money to purchase a home land in Vermont in 1770. He and his brothers formed a land speculation business known as the Onion River Land Company, which would eventually hold title to 65,000 acres of land in Vermont. These purchases were all based on New Hampshire titles, giving him a major stake in the conflict. After attempts to settle the matter in court failed, a n In Albany, this militia was pejoratively called the Mennington Mob, later becoming known as the Green Mountain Boys. Ethan Allen was elected their first carnal commandant. For the next five years, the Green Mountain Boys were thorns in the sides of New York authorities. Any attempts by New York to establish control over the New Hampshire grants or any attempt by Yorkers to claim the land was met with resistance. Surveyors were driven off, settlers forced to leave, and sheriffs who attempted to evict New Hampshire grantsmen had to contend with on Green Mountain Boys. Ethan Allen, as well as several other leaders, were declared outlaws by New York and had warrants issued for their arrests. This rebellion would later be caught up in a much larger one. In 1775, Great Britain had 20 colonies in North America and a rebellion broke out in 13 of them. As British troops moved through Massachusetts, confiscating supplies of weapons and powder and skirmishing with colonial militia, alarm spread through New England. Patriot leaders looked at the heavily armed forts along Lake Champlain as a source of arms and munitions. The Massachusetts and Connecticut Committees of Safety made plans to capture Fort Tye, Kondoroga, and asked Ethan and his Green Mountain Boys to assist. 60 Connecticut and Massachusetts men gathered at Hans Cove in Shorham with nearly 230 Green Mountain Boys and planned a dawn raid on May 10, 1775. The night before, Benedict Arnold arrived, carrying a commission from Massachusetts, and declared himself in command. Many of the assembled men mocked Arnold and refused his orders, but Allen and Arnold agreed to share command. At 4 a. m. on May 10, Allen and Arnold made the decision to attack with only a fraction of their army, as insufficient boats were at hand and weather conditions made the crossing slow and treacherous. At dawn, the fort was easily taken, as the sleeping garrison of a mere 50 men was totally surprised and in fact had not received official word that a rebellion had commenced. The following day, Crown Point, another British fort a few miles to the north, was also taken, with little resistance by the detachment of Green Mountain Boys led by Seth Warner. The capture of these two forts secured protection from the British to the north and provided much needed cannon for the fledgling Continental Army. On June 23, 1775, Ethan Allen and Seth Warner appeared before the Continental Congress, telling them about the capture of Fort Ticonderoca, the cannon, and the military situation on the ground. Congress then recognized the Green Mountain Boys as an official regiment of the Continental Army, with Ethan Allen as its first commander. Despite leaving Philadelphia with a commission, political factions in Vermont had other ideas. While a great n Warner was elected the commander of the New Continental Regiment and Ethan's brothers all given commissions, but Ethan was not. The rejection had been engineered in part by the Northern Departmental Commander, Philip Schuyler, who did not care for Ethan Allen and had been part of the same New York Assembly that had declared him an outlaw. Ethan Allen volunteered to remain on, and Schuyler eventually consented to his acting as a scout. Schuyler ceded command to Richard Montgomery due to illness in September 1775. During this time, Ethan was acting as a scout and recruiting Quebec Qua to support the American cause. Frustrated by delays during the s A second attack force failed to arrive and Ethan, deserted and trapped, was easily captured and sent for trial as a traitor in England. His capture presented a conundr Was Ethan a criminal subject to hanging or an enemy combatant subject to the Articles of War? Out of fear that the execution of American officers would lead to the execution of captured British officers, the British government decided to treat him as a prisoner of war. The main source of information on Ethan's experiences as a prisoner or his own action-packed account published immediately after his release but corroborated by the diaries and letters of his fellow prisoners. His fortunes as a prisoner were most favorable when he was incarcerated briefly in Pendena's Castle Cornwall and on his return voyage when the citizens of Cork, Ireland greeted him. At times he suffered greatly, particularly on board prison ships, where he dealt with disease, beatings, and being chained to the bulkhead for days on end. His health suffered greatly during this period. Losing a significant amount of weight, he looked haggard by the time he was finally repatriated after 954 days in captivity in the spring of 1778 in exchange for the release of a British colonel who was a member of parliament. Ethan Allen reported to George Washington at Valley Forge and was given a bravet commission and a pension in recognition of his service. He published his memoirs of his captivity in 1779 and they became a national bestseller second only to Thomas Paine. Ethan returned home to Vermont which had declared itself an independent state and had been pursuing two separate struggles against New York and the British Empire. Although he continued to involve himself by writing pamphlets and letters in support of the rights of the New Hampshire Grantsmen and Vermont's claim for independence, the government of the Vermont Republic had other things in mind. At the request of Vermont Governor Thomas Chittenden, Ethan Allen, Ira Allen, and several other men opened negotiations with the representative of Frederick Haldeman, the Governor General of Canada. Although ostensibly negotiating a prisoner exchange, the men had another agenda. Vermont had been facing raids from British Allied natives and the dispute with New York was showing no signs of abating. The matter of the New Hampshire claims had been laid before Congress which was dragging its feet on bringing about a resolution. The bait offered the British was Vermont becoming a separate state and rejoining the British Empire. The Allen's wrote to the British offering to deliver Vermont as a British province in exchange for recognition and a cessation of raids. Simultaneously, Chittenden wrote to the governments of New Hampshire and Massachusetts requesting their recognition in order to pressure Congress. When news of these attempts have been made public, accusations of treason flew. Recent scholarship has indicated that this attempt had a larger strategy in mind. With Montreal recaptured, the British were conducting raids. In order to protect Vermont from any more raids and to protect northern New York from any raids at all, the Allen'strung the British along for nearly five years. One of the best things they ever did was to completely fool the British because the British bought it. They believed that Ethan Allen and the other Vermonters would deliver Vermont into their hands. They didn't figure out that they had been fooled until after George Washington had defeated the British in Yorktown. Ethan Allen, most of all, was carrying on secret negotiations with the British with the full approval of Vermont's governor. They did not inform the American government because there were so many loyal spies. The involvement of France in the conflict and the eventual defeat of the British rendered these discussions null. In addition, the fractious nature of Vermont's early politics played a role in complicating Vermont's path to statehood. In June 1783, Ethan's wife, Mary, died of tuberculosis. Six months later, he met a young widow who was boarding with his friend Stephen Bradley. Frances Montresor Brush Buchanan was the illegitimate daughter of a British Army engineer, Major John Montresor. She had been raised by her uncle Loyalist Crean Brush and was well educated in botany, music, languages, and literature. At 16, she had been married to a British naval officer who perished in a battle with an American privateer. Despite her loyalist family, Ethan was quite taken with Frances, who was nicknamed Fanny. After a brief courtship, they were married in 1784. Ethan also contented himself with rewriting a philosophical work begun in earlier years with his deist friend Dr. Thomas Young of Salisbury. In 1785, his reason, the only Oracle of Man was published. The book was a financial disaster and not well received, probably because its ideas were as controversial as its author. It most clearly reflected his personality as a free thinker and an independent spirit. Major portions of the book were commentaries and criticisms of the Bible, organized religion in general, and the clerical establishment. He postulated natural law and the idea of a good God in harmony with nature, hardly ideas that would endear him to the New England religious establishment. If mankind would dare to exercise their reason as freely on those divine topics as they do in the common concerns of life, they would, in a great measure, rid themselves of their blindness and superstition, gain more exalted ideas of God and their obligations to him and one another, and be proportionately delighted and blessed with the views of his moral government. While the book was not successful in its own time, it was found to have influenced transcendental thought so popular in the 19th century. The last five years of Ethan's life were his most tranquil. He and his second wife, Fanny, moved to a home on their property in the Burlington Interveil. Ethan concentrated on farming and writing and died in February 1789. He was bringing a load of hay home from his cousin's house in South Hurot when he suffered a stroke and fell into a coma, dying in the night. The issue of the New Hampshire grants was finally settled when Vermont was admitted to the Union in February 1791. Oh, all to the borders, Vermont has come down with your bridges of deerskin and jackets of brown with your red woolen caps and your moccasins come to the gathering s