In many of the Northern States slave-hunting waxed hot and eager under the national law, but the hunters never attempted to seize their prey in the land of the Green Mountain Boys, though there were fugitive slaves living there, and an occasional passenger still fared along the mysterious course of the Underground Railroad.
Consequent upon the annexation of Texas came war with Mexico,—a war waged wholly in the interest of slavery extension, and forced by the great republic upon her younger sister, weak and distracted by swiftly recurring revolutions.
Having a purpose so opposite to the interest and sentiment of the people of Vermont, no possible appeal to arms could have been less popular among them. Yet upon the call of President Polk for volunteers, a company was soon recruited in the State. Under Captain Kimball of Woodstock, it formed a part of the 9th regiment, whose colonel was Truman B. Ransom, a Vermonter, who had been a military instructor in the Norwich University, and in a similar institution at the South. The 9th was attached to the brigade of General Pierce, in General Pillow's division, under General Scott. The army of Americans, always outnumbered, often three to one, by the enemy, could not have fought more bravely in a better cause; and the little band of Green Mountain Boys gave gallant proof that, in the more than thirty years which had elapsed since they were last called forth to battle, the valor of their race had not abated. Colonel Ransom fell while leading his regiment in a charge at Chepultepec; and the Vermont company was one of the foremost at the storming of the castle, it being claimed for Captain Kimball and Sergeant-Major Fairbanks that they hauled down the Mexican colors, and raised the stars and stripes above the captured fortress.[110]
Upon the dissolution of the Whig party, the least subservient to the slavery propagandists of the two great political parties in the North, Vermont at once took her place under the newly unfurled banner of the Republicans,—a place which she has ever since steadfastly maintained through victory and defeat. In 1856 her vote was cast for Fremont, and four years later, by an increased majority, for Lincoln. Few who cast their votes at this memorable election foresaw that its result would so soon precipitate the inevitable conflict. But five brief months passed, and all were awakened to the terrible reality of war.
FOOTNOTES:
[108] E. P. Walton, in Governor and Council, vol. i. p. 92, says, "This was the first emancipation act in America."
[109] Theophilus Harrington.
[110] Dana's History of Woodstock.