Volume 3, Chapter 71, The Vermont Revolution, The Green Mountain Boys
While the American colonies were moving inexorably toward a final break with Great Britain, and
the winds of revolutionary doctrine blew in from overseas, a local but intense revolutionary
conflict was developing in the North. As in the case of so many internal conflicts in the
The American Colonies, The Struggles Centered Around the Disposition of Land
Western New Hampshire, now Vermont, though still sparsely populated, was being settled
throughout the 1760s, under land grants parceled out by New Hampshire's Governor Benning Wentworth,
and these lands quickly devolved by purchase upon the actual settlers. To attract settlers,
The prices charged for the land were not very onerous.
But New York, goaded by its land speculators, aggressively continued to assert its own arbitrary
claims to all the land of the region.
In 1771, this western region, which also included part of current New York east of the Hudson,
contained some 7,000 settlers.
In 1764, however, the Board of Trade dealt a rude blow to the settlers of western New
Hampshire. It decreed that New York's land claims to the area were valid. New York's
governor, Codwallader Colden, hastened to proclaim his rights and, true to the New York
tradition of venal land oligarchy, to sell those rights to the land to a handful of land
and Speculators from New York. By the end of 1765, Colden had sold to a few speculators
rights to 36,000 acres of the best land in the area, centered around Arlington and Manchester
in what is now southwestern Vermont. Leading these speculators were James Duane and John
T. Kemp. New Hampshire tried desperately to halt or nullify these grants, but the Crown's
This pressure left enough loopholes for New York to continue granting Western New Hampshire
land on a large scale. By the late 1760s, Colden had sold over 535,000 acres in grants,
and had sold well over 2.1 million acres of military land grants to veterans, virtually
all of which were transferred to large land speculators. By 1776, the total had reached
2.1 million acres of regular and 2.4 million acres of military land, granted by New York.
The great New York oligarchs were featured on this new gravy train of land monopoly. Among
Among the grantees were James Dwayne, Philip Skeen, William Livingston, Robert R. Livingston,
Pierre De Peister, Augustus Van Cortland, William Smith, and John Moran Scott.
Claims mean little unless enforced, and the trouble began as soon as New York tried to
oust the New Hampshire settlers in behalf of its newly asserted owners.
In 1769, New York's aged Cadwallader Colden, back as governor after a three-year gap, brought
proceedings against James Breakenridge of Bennington to try to eject him from his farm.
When they arrived at the farm, the New York authorities were driven off by armed friends
of Breakenridge.
The next step was for New York to order the arrest of Breakenridge and his rioting friends,
New York was not able to make any arrest, however, and Colden, with mounting horror,
complained that these settlers of the Green Mountain area proclaimed their allegiance
to New Hampshire, as if they would hasten to salute a New York power that was trying
its best to seize their lands and turn them over to a few privileged favorites.
The following year, New York proceeded again in earnest, launching ejectment suits against
Breckenridge, Aziah, Carpenter and other Green Mountain settlers. At this point, one of the
great figures of American Revolutionary history emerged, to be chosen to lead the defense
of the beleaguered settlers, the redoubtable Ethan Allen. The trial of Breckenridge, Carpenter
and others took place in the New York courts. The impartiality of the court may be gauged
by the fact that its chief justice was Robert R. Livingston himself, a leading New York
grantee of New Hampshire land, and the prosecutors were Attorney General Kemp and James Duane,
the leaders of the speculative ring in the granted land. Not surprisingly, the New York
The court ruled for New York in June 1770.
At first Dwayne and Kempt tried to bribe Ethan Allen into submission, but the latter scornfully
rejected their offer.
Allen and the settlers resolved to hold their positions by force if necessary.
Banding together, the settlers formed a committee of safety to oppose the court's decision,
as well as an armed band to resist New York's aggression against their properties.
The band was called the Green Mountain Boys, and Ethan Allen was chosen its leader.
Soon each town west of the mountains had selected its own Committee of Safety.
Delegates from the local committees convened regularly at Bennington.
Moving from attempted bribery to physical violence, the New York government, now headed
by its ever more grasping governor, Lord Dunmore, sent sheriffs several times to arrest at Breckinridge,
but each time they were violently repelled by armed farmers of the neighborhood. New
York responded by escalating its coercion, ordering the arrest of the rioters, including
the leaders, Silas Robinson and Simon Hathaway. The farmers refused to be intimidated, and
and Violent Armed Defense continued. The Vermont region is bisected by the Green Mountains.
Although the heart of the settler resistance was located west of the mountains, the eastern
region erupted also. There, while the Breaken Ridge turmoil continued in the west, a band
of armed settlers, headed by Joseph and Benjamin Waite and by Nathan and Samuel Stone, rebelled
against New York Authority denied its jurisdiction, captured the sheriff who had tried to arrest
them and forced the New York courts to adjourn. But the revolutionary movement there did not
command the mass support that it did west of the Green Mountains. For the eastern side
was more remote and New York's yoke was felt more lightly there. The town of Guilford even
The Revolution went so far as ardently to advocate allegiance to New York. Riders were
therefore routed by 400 pro-New York inhabitants, and the Settler Revolution was stilled in
eastern Vermont by the end of 1770. But in the West, the Revolutionary struggle intensified.
From defending the property of Breakenridge and the other settlers, the rebels went on
Robert Cochran led an armed band and forced out of the territory to leading New York officials.
Surveyors from New York were threatened and beaten, and their surveying tools confiscated.
The New York government next tried the soft sell, wooing the angry settlers by promising
to confirm their grants from New Hampshire and reduce official fees. But the settlers
In July 1771, Sheriff Henry Ten Eyck gathered a huge posse, numbering in the hundreds, at
Bennington, in the southwest corner of Vermont, to bar Breaken Ridge from his farm. Now at
At last these insolent rebels were to be taught the lesson of obedience. Setting out confidently
on their easy mission, the New York posse was ambushed, surrounded and forced back by
a heroic band of ardent revolutionaries, members of the Green Mountain Boys, led by captains
Robert Cochran and Seth Warner, a cousin of Ethan Allen. This stirring victory of a private
The Green Mountain Boys now launched a systematic campaign to drive off the settlers who had
been brought in by New York to enjoy the property created by the New Hampshire settlers.
Charles Hutcheson, a transplanted New Yorker on Cochran's property, saw his cabin burned
and was ordered off by Ethan Allen. Go your way now and complain to that damned scoundrel
your governor. God damn your governor, laws, king, council and assembly. Governor Tryon
of New York, in consequence, offered a reward for the capture of Allen, Cochran and another
leader, Remember Baker, to which Allen and the Green Mountain Boys retorted sardonically
Boldly by offering counter-rewards for the capture of their arch-enemies Dwayne and Kemp.
In high spirits, Allen wrote mockingly to Philip Skeen that, by virtue of a late law
in the province, they are not allowed to hang any man before they have kitched him. Boldly,
Allen rode into Albany unharmed and was welcomed by a sympathetic populace. Allen did not even
and let himself be phased by the desertion of the Green Mountain cause by the New Hampshire
authorities. By the end of 1771, Governor John Wentworth of New Hampshire had abandoned
support of the rebels, hoping indeed to acquire some of the New York claimed land for himself.
The best the settlers could now hope for from New Hampshire was neutrality, which they gained
when Wentworth refused to issue a proclamation against the Green Mountain boys.
The Green Mountain Boys now stood alone. How could these very loosely organized and individualistic
irregulars hope to stand up to the overwhelming might of the New York government backed by
British regular troops? The answer lies in the authentic genius of the undaunted Ethan
Allen. Allen perceived the potential of a new form of warfare on the scene of world
of World History. Alan had watched with interest and sympathy the Prendergast Tenet Rebellion
of 1766 and the rapid debacle of the rebel cause. From this carnage, Alan and Alan alone
learned the proper military and revolutionary lessons. Alan saw that the grave mistake of
Prendergast and the tenets was to rush out an unorganized and untrained mass to do formal
All battle with the well-trained and far more heavily armed British troops. The ensuing
slaughter was inevitable. But why must all battle be waged in formal ranks on open fields?
Just because all European military lore said so? Allen did not see why these hide-bound
rules should not be transcended. In particular, he saw that a revolutionary war, a people
The People's War was best waged in a far different and a far more revolutionary manner.
In brief, what were the advantages and disadvantages of the Green Mountain Boys in their armed struggle
with the organized power of New York? Their disadvantages were all too evident, the superior
arms and the formally trained specialized troops of the enemy. But the military advantages
The advantages of such a zealous people's revolutionary movement had too often been overlooked.
Two advantages were that the rebels dwelt among an admittedly friendly and sympathetic
population and operated on a thoroughly friendly terrain.
As settlers themselves, the rebel forces were of that population and could blend quickly
and easily with it.
This itself greatly offset the specialization of the enemy. These part-time rebels, so camouflaged,
just could not easily be spotted, isolated or captured. Therefore, able to move among
the people and on familiar terrain as fish in water, the rebel band had the great advantage
of mobility and speed. It also had the advantage of surprise, for the support of the surrounding
The Rebels came to know where the enemy was, but the enemy knew virtually nothing about the Rebels.
The Rebels, therefore, could and must hit and run, hit and run, strike and fade away, harassing and weakening and demoralizing the enemy while keeping it always off balance.
These advantages and others the far-sighted Allen had come to see. In short, he perceived that the proper path to victory for a people's revolution against a well-armed State force is guerrilla warfare, not a foolhardy rush to open confrontation and instant defeat.
To organize guerrilla warfare, the rebels needed knowledgeable and brilliant leadership and high morale, both in the fighting force and in the supporting population.
The Vermont settlers possessed these requisites, in the high-quality leadership of Allen and his lieutenants, and in the zeal of the settlers fighting for their homes and land against aggressors.
By 1772, a successful and continuing guerrilla war was being waged in the Green Mountains.
The astuteness and farsightedness of Ethan Allen's grasp of the principles and tactics
of guerrilla war may be seen by his highly restrained use of coercion.
Since it is crucial to the success of a revolution to keep the active support of the masses,
must be held to the necessary minimum, both for daily mass support and so as not to provoke
enemy reprisals against the people. Therefore, only as necessary and then but minimally were
threats and terror employed by the Green Mountain Boys in achieving their aims of driving out
the New York officials and interlopers, and of rescuing settlers and their own members
from the New York Enemy. So remarkable was their minimizing of coercion that in all their
battles and skirmishes the Green Mountain Boys never killed a single man. Alan sensed
that revolutionary practice cannot successfully proceed without revolutionary theory and he
proceeded to supply the latter as well. Lusty, militant, candid and rough-hewn, Alan may
may have been, but he was far from an unlettered oaf. Though lacking a college education,
Allen studied at the feet of the notable Boston radical Dr. Thomas Young. From Young, Allen
imbibed deism, Newton, and French rationalism. Allen used his ardently held lock-in natural
rights theory to justify the settler revolution. In his brief narrative, 1774, written at
At the behest of a convention of Westside towns, Alan rested the settlers' rights to their
land on the lock-in natural right of possession and cultivation, which is of itself abundantly
sufficient to maintain the right in the possessor, and to gain him a title sealed and confirmed
with the sweat and toil of the farmer.
In short, as Darlene Shapiro puts it, Alan's argument then is that he who occupies and
works the land has a natural right to it, a right sufficient to confer legality.
In true Lockean fashion, Alan proceeded to demonstrate the limits of government.
Laws and society, compacts, were made to protect and secure the subjects in their peaceable
No person or community of persons can be supposed to be under any particular compact of law,
except it presupposeth that the law will protect such person or community of persons in his
or their properties. Therefore, no government or king may force a man to give up his rightful
The Supreme Power cannot take from any man any part of his property without his own consent.
When a government transcends its proper limits and invades private property, then power reverts
to the people who resumed their original liberty.
In this way, reasoned Allen, the settlers of western New Hampshire had returned to a
The State of Nature. By the default of the governments of New York, New Hampshire and Great Britain, the Green Mountain Boys had become the means by which the settlers assumed the task of defending their property.
Governor Tryon, the stern extirpator of the regulators, had never encountered such opponents
as the Green Mountain Boys. In the spring of 1772, he asked for negotiations, although
he refused to talk with the top leaders. The rebels sent his negotiators, Captain Stephen
Fay, the veteran tavern keeper of Bennington, where the rebels often gathered, and his son
In the rebel messages to try on, it was trenchantly pointed out who the real rioters and wielders of violence were, though they, the sheriff and posse, style us rioters for opposing them, and seek to catch and punish us as such, yet in reality themselves are the rioters, the tumultuous, disorderly faction, or infind the land-jobbers.
A lull now appeared in the New York conflict. In the West, the governor obeyed royal orders
to leave the New Hampshire settlers alone. In the East, the revolutionary spirit died
down. Guilford formally proclaimed itself part of New York, and two pro-Yorkers were
elected to the New York Assembly. Tryon, in the phase, readily concluded a truce on the
The basis of letting the settlers alone. But the Vermont lull was destined to be short-lived.
Continued pressure by Yorkers on western New Hampshire lands led to determined armed resistance
by the rebels. Full-scale conflict resumed more intensely than ever, and a feudal arrest
order was sent out for Remember Baker and Ira Allen. Governor Tryon vainly asked for
The British wanted no repetition of their role in suppressing the New York Tenet Rebellion of 1766. During 1773 guerrilla terrorism by the boys intensified. The major irritant was the Scottish Colonel John Reed, a New York land claimant, who had been ejected from his claimed land by the settlers a year before. In early 1763, the British wanted no repetition of their
1973, Reid led a party of Scottish immigrants back to settle on the invaded land. He built
a wall and even began to construct a village on the land. But in mid-August, Ethan Allen,
Baker and Seth Warner, leading a hundred Green Mountain boys, swept down to demolish this
nascent settlement and to drive the intruders off the land. When asked by a settler for
For his legal warrant for this raid, Baker lifted his hand to a declaim, Here is my
warrant, and Allen then raised his rifle high and dramatically shouted, This is my law!
As the guerrilla war continued to rage, Ethan Allen and his band in the autumn of 1773 kidnapped
one of New York's top officials in the area, Judge Benjamin Spencer. Allen, Cochran, Warner
Alain and Baker then conducted a public trial of Spencer, finding him guilty of allegiance
to New York at the expense of the settlers. Alain and Baker informed Spencer that they
valued not the government of New York nor even the kingdom they had force and power
sufficient to protect themselves against either. As punishment, Spencer's roof was pulled off.
After this salutary warning, Spencer pledged himself to be a loyal citizen of New Hampshire
thenceforth. Thus was a leading royal official in the western area mildly but firmly removed
from the fray. The request of the unhappy trion for British troops was again scornfully
turned down. General Frederick Haldeman in Boston, a Prussian-trained officer totally
and unfamiliar with Alan's new-style guerrilla warfare, indignantly wondered how Tryon could
possibly claim to need His Majesty's troops to vanquish a few miserable bandits. Finally,
Governor Tryon moved to a stance of maximum toughness, violating the canons of Anglo-Saxon
law in the process. In early March 1774, he put through the New York legislature the Bloody
Law, which proclaimed that Allen, Warner, Baker, Cochran, Breakinridge and three other
Green Mountain boys were to be regarded as convicted felons and were to suffer death
without trial unless they surrendered themselves within 70 days. Rewards for the capture of
these leaders were also greatly increased. In the face of this awesome sentence of outlary,
Ethan Allen never faltered. Instead, he leaped to counterattack in a magnificently revolutionary
manner. In a slashing remonstrance, Allen blasted the New York officials of insatiable,
avaricious, overbearing, inhuman, barbarous blood-guiltiness of disposition and intention.
Allen dared the New Yorkers to come and get the Green Mountain boys. Come on, we are ready
for a game of scalping with them, for our martial spirits glow with bitter indignation
and consummate fury to blast their infernal projections.
Allen concluded with sweeping counter-death threats, promising death to anyone who dared
to arrest a single Green Mountain boy. And a West Side Convention of Settlers in mid-April
branded any person in the area holding a commission from New York an enemy to their country.
New York was stunned to find maximum threats answered in kind. No one surrendered, and
the Green Mountain boys redoubled beatings and insults to New York officials and transplants,
and they proceeded to seize, try and sentence the New Yorkers. Acting Governor Colden, replacing
Tryon who had been called to England to explain this curious phenomenon in the New Hampshire
Rather ambivalently, if unsurprisingly, hailing American liberty and devotion to the King.
Going beyond this stance, Leonard Spaulding of Dummerston cursed King George for establishing
the Roman Catholic Church in Canada so vehemently that he was arrested for high treason. Soon
armed men gathered and marched to Westminster, freeing Spaulding without meeting any resistance.
The town clerk of Dummerston hailed this liberating act by the brave sons of freedom and concluded
his account of the affair by denouncing the cutthroatly Jacobitish high church, tyrannical
minions of George III, the Pope of Canada and tyrant of Britain. No conservative hanging
back or ambiguity here. The Westsiders, always leading in the revolution, were not to be
After the removal of Benjamin Spencer, the Baptist minister, Judge Benjamin Huff was
the only major New York official remaining in the area. Finally, at the end of January
1775, Huff was seized by the Green Mountain boys and taken to Sunderland to be tried by
the leaders of the rebels. Huff was charged with allegiance to New York and acting as
as a New York magistrate. Admitting the charges, Hough was sentenced by the judges to two hundred
lashes with a rope scourge and exiled from the New Hampshire grant area. Before sending
Hough out on foot, Allen and Warner capped their triumph by issuing the judge a passport
for safe conduct to New York. Thus, Ethan Allen had led the Green Mountain boys in five
years of outstandingly successful guerrilla war against mighty New York to a smashing conclusion.
In some New York officials and planted settlers had been ejected from the area and New Hampshire
settlers had been defended with no one killed on either side during the entire period. Indeed,
only one Green Mountain boy was wounded and a few New Yorkers were whipped, pushed around
– The full catalogue of casualties of this remarkable conflict under a remarkable and
brilliant leader.
Matters were also coming to a head on the east side of the Green Mountains.
A convention of Cumberland County had endorsed the actions of the First Continental Congress.
Non-importation, however, was rejected by the New York Assembly, thus widening further
A third county convention in early February petitioned Governor Colden against the tyranny
of the county court, which was appointed from above rather than chosen by the people of
the county. Moreover, the court was too expensive and burdensome. It inconveniently dragged
local farmers in to sit on juries and was too prompt in enforcing collection of debts.
Despite warnings of approaching tension, the Cumberland County Court opened on March 13.
A group of about a hundred men met at Rockingham, north of the county seat at Westminster, and,
armed only with clubs, marched down to the county courthouse and engaged in a sit-in.
That evening, marching up from the south, came Sheriff Billy Patterson, at the head
of Fifty Men, many of them equipped with firearms. That night the sheriff's posse
shot its way into the courthouse and killed two of the sit-ins in what soon was dubbed
the Westminster Massacre. The first one to die was young William French, who was fittingly
saluted as the martyr of the fray. The Westminster Massacre aroused and galvanized the people
of the East Side New Hampshire Grants. The following day, militia companies of the people
formed and kept tramping into Westminster. The Patterson posse hastened to flee. The
county court, reading the handwriting on the wall, hastily adjourned. The radical elements
in the assembled mob proposed to burn the courthouse and shoot the sheriff, the judges
and all their retinue, but they were held back by the more restrained militia commanders.
Instead, the militia men released the sit-in prisoners and arrested the sheriff, judges,
county clerk and members of the posse that could be rounded up.
As militia men continued to pour into Westminster to fend off any New Yorker or British counter-attack,
A climactic moment came when there arrived from across the mountains a detachment of
Green Mountain boys, led by Captain Robert Cochran. Their arrival was a living symbol
of the emerging unity between the two halves of the New Hampshire Grant territory. As usually
happens in such cases, the postponement of revolutionary vengeance led to a cooling off
The Yorkite prisoners were either released on bond or sent for trial to Massachusetts,
where they were all soon released. Not one of the Yorkers implicated in the massacre
even came to trial. However, the generally hated Justice Noah Sabin, on returning to
his farm, was treated by his fellow citizens with an intense wrath that stopped just short
of Invading Another Man's Sacred Right of Private Property.
Sabin was assured that should he take one step beyond the borders of his own farm, he
would be shot that instant.
Unity between the East Side and the West Side was further forged on April 11 when a convention
of the Town Committees of Safety of the two regions assembled at Westminster and proclaimed
that all citizens should wholly renounce and resist the oppressive jurisdiction of the government
of New York. Two Eastsiders and Ethan Allen were selected to draw up a remonstrance on
their joint behalf. As the news arrived of the shattering events at Lexington and Concord,
the sturdy and successful Vermont Revolution naturally blended into the revolution against
and Great Britain. For one thing, the enemy New York government, particularly its executive,
was a royal government, as was that of New Hampshire. For another, the call of liberty
against the oppression of the state was very familiar to the men of the Green Mountains.
They had fought for the libertarian cause for years. What more natural than to extend
and the fighting against the larger despotism of imperial Britain.