“They sank till their fair land became a sty
Stygian with moral darkness. Heart and mind
Debased—dark passions rose, and with red eye,
Rushed to their revel; until Freedom, blind
And maniac, sought the rest the suicide would find.”
The traveller of the present day, as he enters the town of Guilford, on the southern confines of Vermont, will soon be struck with the peculiar appearance of many things around him. Few or no traces of a primitive forest are to be seen, while its place is supplied by a heavy second growth of woods, sixty or seventy years old, in the midst of which the remains of old enclosures and other indications of former habitations are not unfrequently observable. On the cleared farms, also, may often be seen three or four different clumps of aged fruit-trees, scattered about in the nooks and corners of the lot, and sometimes extending into the woods, in such a manner as to preclude the idea that they could have been planted under any thing like the present arrangements of the farm and its buildings. Near these old relics of former orchards may likewise generally be perceived some levelled spot, remains of old chimneys, traces of cellars, or other marks of dwellings long since removed, or fallen to decay. These, with many other peculiarities, give to the whole town an aspect nowhere else to be seen in Vermont, nor even, perhaps, in any part of New England. And if the traveller be of a fanciful turn, he will associate the place with the idea of some deserted country, resettled by a new race of men; and even if he be a mere matter-of-fact man, he cannot fail to perceive that the town must have been originally tenanted under a division of lands and an order of things quite different from those now existing. And either of these suppositions would be far better justified by the facts than most of the speculations of modern tourists made in their flying visits through the land, as will be seen by a recurrence to the early annals of this town, of which, for the purpose of insuring a full understanding of some scenes here about to be described, we must be permitted to give a brief outline.
The events connected with the first settlement of the town of Guilford, which afterwards became so noted as the stronghold of toryism and adherence to the New York supremacy, form a curious anomaly even in the anomalous history of Vermont. The territory comprising this township appears to have been granted, as early as 1754, to a company of about fifty persons, by a charter, which, unlike that of any other town, empowered the proprietors, in express terms, to govern themselves and regulate the concerns of their little community, by such laws as the majority should be pleased to enact, without being made amenable to any power under heaven, save that which might be exercised by the British Parliament. Being thus constituted a band of freemen and legislators, at the outset, they soon took possession of their chartered piece of wilderness, organized by the election of the proper officers of state, and assumed the title of an independent republic, which their charter, in fact, created, any control of the Parliament of England being as little to be apprehended, in their secluded retreat among the wilds of the Green Mountains, as that of the Great Mogul of Tartary. And as novel as was the idea of a republic at that early period, when “the divine right of kings” to govern all men was as little questioned as the divine right of Satan to afflict the pious Job of old, this enterprising little band of settlers, for many years, appear to have well sustained the character they had assumed, not only by carrying out, in all their public doings, that essential principle of a republic which makes the will of the majority supreme, but by the simplicity of their tastes and habits in private life, and their beautiful exemplification of the great law of love, that can only be fulfilled towards our neighbors by according to them equal rights and privileges with ourselves. At length, however, new doctrines began to prevail, and the independent character of our little republic was soon, in a good degree, forfeited; and that, too, by the very means, it would seem, which had been taken to make it flourish and increase. It had been one of the conditions of the charter that every grantee should become an actual settler, and, within five years, clear and cultivate five acres of land, for every fifty purchased. And in accordance with this cunning policy for insuring the actual and rapid settlement of the place, the township had been laid out in fifty and one hundred acre lots, except the governor's right of five hundred acres, which his excellency of New Hampshire, in granting Vermont lands, never forgot to reserve for his own use, in every township, but which the proprietors generally contrived, as in this instance, to have set off on the highest mountain in town, considering it but respectful and fitting, as they used waggishly to observe, that so elevated a personage should be honored with the most elevated location. And the effect of this policy, together with the low prices at which the lands were put, and other inducements held out to draw in settlers, soon became visible in the rapid increase of the population, and consequent improvement of the town. So unexampled in these new settlements was its progress, indeed, in both the particulars we have just named, that within twenty years from the time when the sound of the axe was first heard in its woody limits, the inhabitants were found to number nearly three thousand; while fields were every where opened in the wilderness, and buildings raised in such neighborly contiguity, that the whole town presented the appearance of a continuous village. It is not very surprising, therefore, that, through such an influx of settlers, coming from all parts of the country, and including many interested and active partisans of the York jurisdiction, a majority should soon be obtained, who were induced to depart from the views of the first settlers respecting the independence of their community, and adopt the more fashionable form of subordinate government, which prevailed in all the towns around them. And accordingly we find them, at their annual meeting in 1772, voting the district of Guilford, as they termed it, to belong to the county of Cumberland and province of New York, and thereupon proceeding to reorganize the town, agreeably to the laws of that province. This change, however, does not appear to have been followed by any material alteration of their internal polity, or to have been productive of any great civil discord, till about the time of the opening of the American revolution; when the town became the prey of contending factions, of so fierce and lawless a character as to convert this once Arcadian abode of virtue, simplicity, and rural happiness, into a theatre of violence and social disorganization, which never, perhaps, found a parallel within the limits of order-loving New England. Sometimes the York party and tories,—for, in this town, it so happened that the two were identical,—and sometimes the whigs and friends of the new state of Vermont, were in the ascendant; while scenes of such disorder and outrage were constantly occurring between the belligerent parties, that his honor, Judge Lynch, for many years, appears to have been not the least among the potentates of this notable republic. Nor was order restored to the ill-starred town till after the close of the war; when every refractory spirit, whether tory or Yorker, was punished or awed into submission by the fiery energy of the iron-heeled Ethan Allen, who, then being relieved from the pursuit of more important game, came thundering down upon the town with his hundred Green Mountain Boys, proclaiming to the disaffected, with demonstrations which they well knew how to interpret, that the peaceable and instant submission of the place to the new authorities of the land should alone save it from being “made as desolate as the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah”.
It was a dark and gloomy day in April, and the sleety storm was beating, in fitful gusts, against the broken and creaking casements, and the disjointed, loose, and leaky covering of an old, dilapidated log-house, standing by the road-side, in one of the thousand little dales, which, with their corresponding hills, so beautifully diversify the face of the town we have been describing. But as comfortless as this miserable hut was, and as poor and insufficient a protection from the elements as it afforded, even for the healthy and robust, it was now the only shelter of a sick and destitute woman, the widowed mother of Harry Woodburn. The hand of her son's persecutor, as it not unfrequently is seen to occur in the history of human oppression, was destined to fall even more heavily on her than on him for whom the blow was designed. The minion officer, selected by Peters for the purpose, had no sooner received his warrants, than, faithful to the cruel instructions of his employer, he had repaired post-haste to the residence of the absent Woodburn, of which he was authorized to take possession, and, with insults and abuse, rudely thrust the lone and unprotected occupant out of doors, in despite of all her entreaties for mercy, or delay till her son should return, or even for one day, to give her an opportunity to find some shelter for her now houseless head. He then, with the aid of the three or four ruffian assistants enlisted to accompany him, threw all the furniture out of the windows or doors into the mud and snow beneath where the whole, consisting of crockery and glasses, now half broken by the fall, and beds, linen, kettles, chairs, tables, and the like, soon lay piled promiscuously together. Having thus driven the terrified and distressed woman from the comfortable abode which had formerly cost her and her deceased husband so many years of toil to erect and furnish, and having, to add to the wrong, either injured or destroyed the greater part of her little stock of goods, by the wanton or careless manner in which they had been removed, this brutal officer next proceeded to the barn, and by virtue of his copias for costs, seized the cow and oxen, the last remaining property of the wronged and ruined young man, which, after intrusting the present keeping and defence of the premises to two of his band, he drove away to another part of the town, to be sold at the post, as soon as the forms of the law, respecting notice of the sale, could be complied with. The poor widow, half distracted at being thus suddenly bereft of house and home, spent the remainder of the day in vainly endeavoring to procure some tenement into which she could remove with her furniture, or with so much of it as might yet be saved. On the next day, however, as a last resort, she obtained and accepted the present use of the deserted cabin we have described, situated but a short distance from the house from which she had been ejected. And into this comfortless place, after several days of incessant toil and exposure, she succeeded in getting her damaged furniture, but not till her exertions, combined with her anxieties and grief, had given rise to a malady which, though not at first very threatening, became, each subsequent day, more and more alarmingly developed in her overtasked system. In this situation she was found by her son, who, being entirely ignorant that any judgment had passed against him, and, consequently, little dreaming what was taking place at home, had remained at Westminster nearly a week after the massacre, attending the public meetings, which, as we have before intimated, followed that event; when he returned to Guilford, and, with feelings bordering on desperation, learned the extent of his misfortunes. But the bitterness of his feelings, as great as it was, at being stripped of all his property through such a series of wrongs, soon became wholly merged in anxiety and grief for his sick and sorrow-stricken parent, and in the exasperating thought that her sickness and suffering proceeded from the same source with his other injuries. And close and unremitting had been his attentions to her, until the day previous to the one on which we have introduced her to the reader; when he had been induced to leave for Brattleborough, or other more distant towns, to try to obtain money to redeem his stock, which was now about to be sold, and which was worth more than double the amount, as he had recently ascertained, of the execution on which it had been seized. On the morning after his departure, she had become so much worse that she was compelled to take to her bed, and despatch her only attendant for a doctor. That attendant was Barty Burt, who had come down from Westminster with Woodburn, and had been engaged by the latter to remain with his mother during his absence. Having thus glanced over the events which had occurred previously to the opening of this new scene of our story, we will now return to the point we left to make the digression.
Slowly, to the suffering invalid, rolled the sad hours away, as with thick and labored breathing, she lay tossing upon her rude couch, standing behind a blanket-screen, in one corner of her cheerless abode. Occasionally she would raise her fevered head from the pillow, and seem to listen to catch the sounds of expected footsteps, and her languid eye would turn anxiously towards the door; when, after thus exerting her senses in vain a few moments, she would sink back upon her bed, with a long-drawn, sighing groan, which told alike of disappointment and bodily anguish. At length, however, footsteps were heard approaching, the door opened, and Barty Burt stilly glided into the apartment, and approached the bedside of the sufferer.
“You have come at last, then,” said she, lifting her dim eyes to meet the face of the other. “It seemed as if you never would arrive. But where is the doctor?”
“He will be on afore long, mistress; but I've had a time on't in getting round, I tell ye!” replied Bart.
“I am very sorry, if you have had any unexpected trouble on my account,” meekly observed the invalid; “but what has befallen you?”
“O, nothin,” answered the former—“nothin, at least, but what I was willing to bear for Harry's sake, who invited me home here till I got business, or for yours, who let me be. Though to be stopped and bothered, when one is going for the doctor, is worse than I ever thought of humans before. But it shows their character—dum 'em!”
“Did they really stop you, knowing your errand?”