The original settlers of the New Hampshire Grants,—that territory now known as the State of Vermont,—were of this sturdy, fearless, and independent sort. It seemed as though they had drawn inspiration from the snow-clad, storm-riven mountains, at whose base their lowly thatched cabins were nestled. The long and hard winters taxed the energies of the new settlers for the necessaries of life, and precluded the introduction of luxuries that only degenerate. The stubborn wilderness was to be felled; the latent productiveness of the soil developed; hand to hand encounters with wild beasts were not infrequent; common safety demanded a unity of strength against the crafty foe, and necessity begat friends at the same time it rendered friendship a mutual safeguard; and this unity of purpose, thus nurtured and sustained, afterward displayed itself in one of the most unique chapters in the annals of American history.
The people of these Grants, known to the world as the Green Mountain Boys, were worthy the wild and romantic country in which they lived, and the stirring times in which they acted. Vermont was never organized as a separate colony under England, and from the first that plucky little community refused to submit to the domination of the older colonies on her borders. Her people seemed to imbibe a spirit of independence from the free air and the everlasting mountains.
New York claimed a jurisdiction over her soil, and a like demand was put forward by New Hampshire and Massachusetts. But the brave Green Mountain Boys, under the guidance of such natural leaders as the Allens, Baker, Warner, and others of like invincible spirit, kept the greedy land-grabbers at bay. In short, Vermont never had a government other than the supreme will of her own people, nor acknowledged the authority of any earthly potentate, until she was admitted on an equal footing into the Union of States, as the Fourteenth luminary in the blue field of the nation’s emblem.
Yet had this people no inconsiderable share in the work of achieving that independence which made the present of our country a glorious possibility. They secured what they believed to be their own rights, at the same time they contributed to the adjustment of the claims of her sister communities.
There is no pretension, in the present pages, to giving what will be new to specialists in Vermont history. But to the general reader, and to the student of the philosophy of human events, there is much, we hope, both new and instructive. The firm bearing of the brave and hardy settlers of the Hampshire Grants, and the important part they played in the War of the Revolution, give to the material of this little book somewhat of a national interest. Indeed, but for timely services of the Green Mountain Boys, it is more than possible the cause of America might have been lost.
Indians fishing by torchlight.
CHAPTER I.
GEOGRAPHICAL OUTLINE AND SETTLEMENT.
Stephen A. Douglas has been credited with the remark that Vermont is an excellent place to emigrate from. Though small in area, with a surface singularly broken by mountain ranges, wracked by frosts and covered with snows five months of the year, yet her internal economy has proved favorable to the growth of both brain and brawn: in the halls of Congress, as well as in the pursuits of science and literature, she maintains her place right gallantly.
That long and irregular lake on the northwest boundary bears the name of the great European discoverer and explorer, Champlain, who here sought, and vainly, for a northwest passage to Cathay. The loveliness of its shores, and the unsurpassed picturesqueness of its islands, endear it to the tourist. Twice it has been the scene of a naval combat.