[FN] MSS. and correspondence of General Gansevoort.
There was yet another source of distraction to the state authorities, civil and military, threatening nothing short of hostilities between New-York and the occupants of the New Hampshire Grants. A brief sketch of the cause and progress of the difficulties here referred to, though apparently foreign to the main subject of the present work, is nevertheless deemed essential to a just understanding of the situation of affairs in the Northern Department. Those who are versed in the early history of New-York and Vermont, cannot be ignorant of the fact, that for many years anterior to the war of the Revolution, a controversy had existed between the Governors of New Hampshire and New-York respecting the jurisdiction of the territory now constituting the State of Vermont. This controversy was begun in 1749, and continued fifteen years; during which period the Governor of New Hampshire was in the practice of making grants of lands and townships in the disputed territory. In 1764 the question was carried up to the King in council, and a decision rendered in favor of New-York, confirming her claim to the territory north of Massachusetts, as far east as the Connecticut river. Under this decision, the Colonial Government of New-York unwisely gave the Order in Council a construction of retrospective operation, involving the question of title. The grants from the Governor of New Hampshire were declared void, and the settlers were upon this ground called on either to surrender their charters, or to re-purchase their lands from New-York. This demand they resisted, and with this resistance the controversy was renewed in another form, and continued with great vehemence, and with but little interruption, for many years. [FN-1] About the year 1770 the celebrated Ethan Allen became conspicuous as a leader of "the Green Mountain Boys" in these proceedings. A military organization was adopted, and the mandates of the courts of New-York were disregarded, and its officers and ministers of justice openly set at defiance. When the sheriff of Albany appeared with his posse comitatus, the Green Mountain Boys opposed force to force, and drove them back. Lord Dunmore was then at the head of the colonial government of New-York, and exerted himself actively to maintain its territorial claim. An act of outlawry against Allen and several of his most prominent associates was passed, and a reward of £fifty offered for Allen's head. Lord Dunmore issued a proclamation, commanding the sheriff of Albany county to apprehend the offenders, and commit them to safe custody, that they might be brought to condign punishment; [FN-2] but the friends of Allen were too numerous, resolute, and faithful, to allow of his arrest, or in any manner to suffer his personal safety to be compromised. [FN-3]
[FN-1] Slade's Vermont State papers, Introduction, p. 17.
[FN-2] Sparks's Life of Ethan Allen.
[FN-3] President Allen's Biographical Dictionary.
Governor Tryon, who succeeded Lord Dunmore, endeavored, both by force and by conciliation, to pacify the people of the Grants, and bring them back to their fealty to New-York. But in vain. Within the boundaries of the disputed territory, the laws of New-York were inoperative. It was to no purpose that civil suits, brought by the New-York grantees, were decided in their favor; process could not be executed; the settlers who had purchased farms under the New-York grantees, were forcibly driven away; surveyors were arrested, tried under the Lynch code, and banished under the penalty of death should they ever again be caught within the bounds of the interdicted territory; [FN-1] and those who presumed to hold commissions of the peace under the authority of New-York, were tried by the same courts, and inhumanly chastised with rods on their naked backs, to the extent of two hundred stripes. [FN-2]
[FN-1] Sparks—Life of Allen.