Volume 4, Chapter 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 confrères 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.
work.
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 Elazer Patterson, Colonel in the New York militia, began recapturing the
The Cow's 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 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 East Side 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 truly let the insurgents off with
light fines and granted amnesty to all political prisoners, thus taking all the steam from
from Congress's 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 specter 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 Allens, 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.
Britain began secret negotiations with the Little Republic, and Vermont truly 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 East Side, the River Towns, as well as the Yorkers, decided to unite against
of the 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
to 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
The New York towns, line 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 re-entrance of the New York towns.
Vermont was now united internally, but at the expense of the implacable enmity of New Hampshire and New York.
New York. In response to Congress's 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 Colonel
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 eighty men, fled at the arrival of Ethan Allen and
his five hundred Vermonters.
Trouble also sprang up in the East Union, the former New Hampshire River towns, with
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
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
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 east side 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 re-confiscated 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's 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 Colonel 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.
Rothbard still stood as an independent republic, albeit shorn of its expanded East and West
Union towns, its eventual admission to the Confederation apparently inevitable.