We have returned from Vermont, and it is therefore incumbent upon me to return to this blog, though I’m sure there are many that would urge me to prolong my literary silence of the past two weeks. But, alas, it cannot be.
I am still blissfully ignorant of recent events, except I’m aware that in a recent local probate court race our Democratic candidate prevailed, but probate court elections provide little grist for the pundit. Nor is the Libyan situation clarified enough for comment. The old boss looks to be gone, but we don’t yet know who the new boss will be.
So, I thought I’d write about the book I’m currently reading: Ethan Allen: His Life and Times, by Willard Sterne Randall, a fitting read given my recent Vermont sojourn. I am assuming that most of what Randall has written about Allen is true, an assumption that I would be more confident about were it not for a number of obvious factual errors in the book. I am fairly sure, for instance, that even in the 18th century, Portsmouth, New Hampshire was North of Boston, and I’m also confident that the Connecticut Courant was published in Hartford and not in New Haven. But, putting aside these and other editing errors, the book is worth a read because poor Ethan is a fairly neglected figure, except up there in Vermont, where he is justly honored as a founding figure of the short lived Republic of Vermont which, perhaps to its regret, voluntarily entered this now fraying union.
We all know that Allen captured Ticonderoga, with a little help from Norwich native Benedict Arnold, but he pretty much fades from history after that remarkable feat. This is primarily because he was captured leading a doomed attack on Montreal and spent several years in British prisons, in which prisons more Americans died during the Revolution than in battle. As an aside, we could formerly be proud of the fact that George Washington, et. al., from the start treated their prisoners with humanity, an enlightened precedent that we have, along with so many other enlightened precedents, recently cast away. Allen wrote a book about his experiences, which remained popular until the Civil War era, and which had a salutary effect, according to Randall at least, on this nation’s policy toward wartime prisoners, until recently, of course.
More interesting about Allen, a Connecticut native, is the fact that he led his guerrilla band, the Green Mountain Boys, for several years before the war in a protracted struggle against the royal governor of the Colony of New York, which, along with New Hampshire, claimed what is now Vermont as its own. Allen and his compatriots had titles stemming from New Hampshire grants, and they banded together to resist New York’s demand that they either vacate their lands or buy them for a second time. The struggle was largely successful, and it appears they managed to win through intimidation, some rough justice, and what we might today call terrorism, without ever actually killing anyone, though they did threaten death quite liberally. When Allen entered New York to take Ticonderoga, he was a wanted man, with a price on his head and a sentence of death already imposed. Allen was certainly protecting his own interests-he and his brothers purchased thousands of Vermont acres-but he appears to have acted just as much on behalf of the other settlers who owned small farms. During the war he protected Vermont in another way: by getting the British to believe Vermont might switch sides in exchange for recognition. As a result, the British stopped border raids. The bluff was believable because New York was refusing to let the rest of the country recognize Vermont.
Even more interesting, to my mind, is the fact that Allen, who came from a very religious family, pretty much shed his religion, first becoming an Anglican (which is only barely a religion) and then becoming a deist if not an atheist. He was drummed out of Salisbury, Connecticut, basically for apostasy. He had little formal schooling, but was a voracious reader, and late in his life wrote a book in which he embraced reason (remember reason, it actually was once the guiding principle of American politics) and both rejected and ridiculed revealed religion, much like his soul mate, Tom Paine. In fact, there are some who claim Paine stole from Allen, but that’s maybe going a little far. Allen got the same treatment from the clerics as Paine, but the people of Vermont didn’t turn against him. It never ceases to amaze me how many of these pioneer types educated themselves to such a high degree of both literacy and philosophical sophistication, in Allen’s case, while taking care of his fatherless family and then leading a guerrilla band in Vermont.
All in all, a good read, despite the inaccuracies and a lot of disorienting chronological backtracking. Allen comes across as much more substantial than a mere swashbuckler.
Back to politics tomorrow.
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