75. The Republic of Vermont

Still another territory of ambivalent status was Vermont. As late as 1778, Vermont, an independent republic, had not been recognized by the United States or accepted as a state. The acceptance of the western New Hampshire river towns as part of Vermont incurred the intense hostility of New Hampshire and of the United States, and the Westside Vermont towns succeeded in expelling their new acquisition, though at the price of threatened secession by the Eastside towns in union with their confreres on the other side of the Connecticut River. Soon the Eastside towns erupted against their tormentors in the West. In the spring of 1779, the bulk of the towns on both sides of the Connecticut River inconsistently called for the New Hampshire conquest of all Vermont. (Any stick with which to beat their Westside oppressors!) But the major war raged in the southeastern towns, which were generally loyal to New York. Vermont —not very consistently—was unwilling to allow its southeastern towns (Brattleboro, Guilford, and others) the self-determination that it claimed for itself. It began confiscating cows in lieu of compulsory military service in the southeast, and Yorker crowds led by Eleazer Patterson, colonel in the New York militia, began recapturing the cows and returning them to their original owners. The “Cow War” was on. Patterson kept pleading with Governor Clinton of New York to come to the aid of the suffering Yorkers against the Vermont invasion, but Clinton, beset by a large threat from the British, sent only promises and encouragement.

Unchecked by New York intervention, the petty despots of Vermont sent Ethan Allen and a hundred men to crush the lower Eastside rebellion. No resistance was offered to the formidable Allen, who arrested Patterson and all the Yorker militia officers. The hapless militiamen were tried under a new law, ironically prohibiting the disregard of “constituted authority.” But Vermont shrewdly let the insurgents off with light fines and granted amnesty to all political prisoners, thus taking all the steam from Congress’ order, incited by New York, to release all such prisoners.

During the summer of 1779, the lower Eastsiders petitioned Congress for New York’s claim and against Vermont’s admission as a state, while New Hampshire voted to incorporate Vermont into her own territory. In the face of these conflicting threats, Vermont acted boldly, defying one and all, and subtly raised the spectre of a possible separate peace with Great Britain. This placed her existence in great peril, for all of her enemy states agreed to place the power of decision over her fate into the hands of Congress. Congress arranged to make the decision on February 1, 1780, meanwhile ominously ordering Vermont to cease granting land or selling confiscated Tory property. The death knell seemed at hand for the independent state of Vermont.

But under the leadership of the Aliens, Vermont defied Congress. As a separate republic, she continued to make land sales and published several pamphlets by Ethan and Ira Allen for the Vermont cause. Under this shrewd defiance and the blows of the British invasion in the South, Congress sidestepped any real decision, and confined itself to strongly denouncing Vermont’s behavior. Then, in mid-September, Vermont Governor Thomas Chittenden presented to Congress a flat and open threat. Since Congress had refused to admit Vermont as a state, Vermont would feel free to accept separate peace terms from Great Britain. Great Britain began secret negotiations with the little republic, and Vermont shrewdly used these to continue to stave off a British invasion from the north. A Congress frightened by this great show of determination postponed matters once more.

Meanwhile, all the disaffected men of the Eastside—the river towns as well as the Yorkers—decided to unite against their Vermont oppressors. Meeting at Charlestown, on the east bank of the Connecticut River, in mid-January 1781, delegates from 43 towns in eastern Vermont and western New Hampshire decided overwhelmingly to join the state of New Hampshire. But Ira Allen, wheeling and dealing, persuaded the convention to reverse itself and vote the Eastside towns back into Vermont. In return, he promised once again that Vermont would take the western New Hampshire towns back into the Vermont republic—an act that would mollify the towns on both sides of the Connecticut River.

Vermont’s daring in the face of enemies on all sides was phenomenal. Dickering with Britain to stave off attack, defying New Hampshire by incorporating her western towns once again, it now moved to incorporate New York towns on her western boundary which were disgruntled by New York’s failure to protect them against Carleton and grateful for Vermont’s truce with Great Britain which by design included them as well. The New York towns lying west of Vermont’s border and east of the Hudson and Lake George responded to the invitation with enthusiasm, and met in mid-May at Cambridge to apply immediately for inclusion in Vermont. The June session of the Vermont legislature eagerly accepted the reentrance of the New York towns.

Vermont was now united internally, but at the expense of the implacable enmity of New Hampshire and New York. In response to Congress’ demand to surrender the towns that had seceded from New Hampshire and New York, she sturdily informed it that she could not do so until admitted as a state. Yorktown finally eliminated the threat of British invasion, but again opened Vermont to attacks from its jealous neighbors. New York sent a troop of militia under Col. John van Rensselaer to try to recover the seceding New York areas, called “the West Union.” But New York militiamen began to desert en masse and defect to the ranks of Vermont, and the New York force, worn down to 80 men, fled at the arrival of Ethan Allen and his 500 Vermonters. Trouble also sprang up in the “East Union,” the former New Hampshire river towns, with Vermont and New Hampshire imprisoning each other’s officials. An angry mob rescued a pro-Vermont official from a jail in Keene, and the furious New Hampshire legislature delivered an ultimatum to Vermont to get off the East Union territory in 40 days or suffer a full-scale invasion by 1,000 New Hampshire troops. And the southeast Yorkers sprang up once more to urge Vermont inclusion in the state of New York.

At this point, Vermont’s bold determination and high resolve were dissolved as if by magic, by the advice of the now charismatic George Washington. In January 1782, Washington gravely advised Vermont to surrender the West and East Union towns to New York and New Hampshire respectively, after which Congress would surely admit Vermont promptly into the Union as the fourteenth state. Vermont rapidly divested itself of these acquisitions, even though this meant the betrayal of the hopes of the East and West Unioners. Perhaps symbolically, it did this on Washington’s birthday. But with the territory removed from Vermont hands, Congress conveniently forgot its part of the bargain and tabled the whole issue, now that the British threat was over. New York and New Hampshire began to move in for the kill, and New York passed a law pardoning all citizens of Vermont and recognizing all grants of land made there by New Hampshire or by Vermont itself. The southeast towns redoubled their urgings to be incorporated into New York and the Eastside towns did the same for New Hampshire.

At this point, rebellion and conflict broke out in the southeast, launched by a Yorker movement centering in Guilford. In this unstable situation, Vermont felt it could play New Hampshire and New York against each other, since in any partition of Vermont the entire Eastside was scheduled to go to New Hampshire and not to New York. Neither state could then intervene in the fray. The second Cow War began once more over attempted conscription into Vermont’s militia, leading to refusal, consequent confiscation and sale of the refusers’ cows by Vermont. A Yorker mob reconfiscated Joel Bigelow’s cow and the fracas had begun again. Now New York state finally and officially organized Cumberland County in the southeast, appointing sheriffs, judges, and militia officers.

In the face of a threatened Vermont invasion, the southeasterners were scarcely deterred by Vermont’s passivity and mild treatment of the affair. Yorker prisoners were forcibly released, and Yorkers refused to pay taxes to the republic of Vermont. Finally, in mid-September, Vermont sent Ethan and Ira Allen and over 200 men into Cumberland, and they promptly rounded up the leading Yorker officials. The blustering threats of the highly feared Ethan Allen to lay waste to Guilford quelled that town’s attempt at resistance. A Vermont court decreed permanent banishment from the republic for the five leading Yorker rebels and confiscation of their property. Many other Yorker officials were fined or banished, and Ethan Allen accurately taunted the Yorkers: “You have called on your god, Clinton, till you are tired. Call now on your god, Congress, and they will answer you as Clinton has done.” But while no rescue came, the banished leaders were soon readmitted and resumed their rebellious activities, and were once more arrested and pardoned, and took up rebellion again, and so on in a seemingly endless cycle.

While Washington tried to soften Congress’ newly aroused hostility to Vermont, Governor Clinton continued in implacable opposition. But as the war with Britain came to an end, both Clinton and Congress were finally getting increasingly weary of the whole Vermont problem—precisely what the Vermonters had been counting on. Mounting rebellion in the southeast finally led to a second invasion by 300 Vermont militia under Col. Stephen Bradley in mid-January 1784, and this invasion again quelled the southeast revolt. With the death of the leader of the rebellion, Charles Phelps of Marlboro, the seemingly interminable Yorker revolt came to an end. Vermont still stood as an independent republic, albeit shorn of its expanded East and West Union towns, its eventual admission to the Confederation apparently inevitable.