With Ethan Allen at Ticonderoga

by W. Bert Foster

Enoch, with the head of the bleeding youth in his arms, cried to those about him to move aside and bring a light. All were too much inflamed by passion to heed him for a time; but suddenly one man sprang forward and thrust a huge, brass-locked pistol into his own face. The boy was frightened, and strove to throw himself backward out of range; but the pistol snapped!

Providentially the weapon was either unloaded, or the powder was damp. Otherwise that moment would have ended Enoch Harding’s earthly career. And in the flash of torchlight which was an instant later cast upon the scene, the startled boy recognized the dark features and hawk nose of Simon Halpen. The villain had sought him out and had striven to pay off old scores in that moment of confusion and uproar.

But the confusion helped Enoch to escape, too. Lot seized his shoulder and dragged him up from his knees. “Let him alone, poor chap!” he whispered hoarsely in his friend’s ear, and Enoch saw that he was crying, “Let him alone. He is dead. Oh, these villains shall be punished for this–they shall be punished! War has begun, Nuck–and we have seen its beginning!” In his horror and despair Lot Breckenridge was prophetic. War had begun; the first blood of the revolution–antedating in its sacrifice the Battle of Lexington–had been shed.

Indeed, Lot and Enoch were fortunate to escape from the building, for ten of the Whigs had been wounded beside poor French, and seven of the remaining were taken prisoner. The town was roused and a great concourse of people gathered in the streets. The sheriff and his men were loudly execrated, and even some of the Tories expressed their indignation. The men who had done the deed were forced to remain under cover for the rest of the night while the alarm went into all the countryside and by daybreak the patriot farmers were pouring into Westminster–a horde of indignant citizens before whom the Tory officials trembled.

The very judges themselves were taken into custody and had not the better counsel of the staid and solid men prevailed, the sheriff and those who aided him might have been hung to a gibbet erected in the court-house yard. On the fifteenth Captain Cochran and forty Green Mountain Boys, who had been apprised of the terrible affair, marched over the mountain to arraign themselves upon the side of the Whigs if the matter should come to real warfare. But fortunately further bloodshed was averted, and never again did a Tory judiciary hold court in Eastern Vermont.

Enoch went back to Bennington with some of Robert Cochran’s company. News of the Westminster affair had preceded him and the Catamount Inn was thronged with earnest men discussing the matter and various other news-packets which had lately come from other colonies. War with the mother country seemed inevitable and Ethan Allen and men of his stamp looked forward to it not without some eagerness. It was not that they were reckless and irresponsible, or did not understand the terrible situation in which the colonies might find themselves should the mother country send across the sea a great army. But in the coming struggle they beheld the salvation of their own people and of the Hampshire Grants.

Therefore, perhaps even previous to this time, immediately following the Westminster Massacre, these leaders had earnestly discussed the possibilities of war and what the Green Mountain Boys could do to further the cause of the colonies. On the shores of the beautiful lake which was the colonists’ boast, were two of the strongest fortresses–or two which had been and could be made again the strongest–of the New World, Ticonderoga and Crown Point. At Old Ti were many stores and munitions of war and the place was held by a comparatively small guard of red-coats who had a great contempt for, and therefore small appreciation of, the valor of the colonials.

With these circumstances in mind Old Ti was already an object of the conferences of Vermont’s leading men. Possessing that fortress, Crown Point, and Skenesboro, the lake would be free of British and the way to Canada open; and at that early date it was strongly believed by the patriots that the French descendants of the early settlers of Canada would join the Colonies in their fight for freedom.

Young Enoch Harding did not see the leaders as he passed through Bennington; but he was waylaid there a dozen times, and upon his road home, to satisfy the curiosity and interest of his neighbors in the Westminster trouble. Letters from Boston had roused them to the highest pitch, too. Nor were his mother and Bryce any less anxious to hear and discuss the news. Mistress Harding had lived within a few miles of Boston and felt a deep interest still in the people and the affairs of the Massachusetts Colony. That a foreign soldiery should have been landed on her shores fired even this good and gentle woman with anger, and when Bryce said he’d go to Boston, too, along with Lot Breckenridge, if there was war, she did not say him nay.

But the Hardings had little time to waste upon politics. The boys had to drop the drilling soon, too, for it came ploughing and seed time. ’Siah Bolderwood remained about the settlement rather later than usual that year; and mainly for the reason that public affairs were so strained. He said his own crop of corn which he intended putting into the lot near Old Ti upon which he “had let the light of day” could wait a bit, under the circumstances, for there might be occasion to “beat his ploughshare into a sword” before corn-planting time.