and and are influenced by the tories we hold such influence in distaste for it for a denies the blood and treasure that we have spent a lot of liberty ever since i arrived at the state of manhood and acquainted myself with the general history of mankind i have felt a sincere passion for liberty the history of nations doomed to perpetual slavery in consequence of yielding up to tyrants their natural born liberties i read with a sort of philosophical horror so that the first systematical and bloody attempt at lexington to enslave america thoroughly electrified my mind and fully determined to be to take part with my country and as i was wishing for an opportunity to signalize myself on its behalf directions were privately sent to me from that then colony of connecticut to raise the green mountain boys and if possible with them to surprise and take the ticonderoga this enterprise i cheerfully undertook and after guarding the several passes that led to the to cut off intelligence between the garrison and the country made a forced march from pennington and arrived at the lake on the evening of may ninth seven hundred seventy five with two hundred and eighty three valiant green mountain boys we had the most difficulty in procuring boats across the lake but i landed eighty three men at the garrison and sent the boats back to the rear guard commanded by colonel south warner but as they began to dawn i found myself under the necessity to attack the fort before the rear could cross the lake as this was deemed hazardous i harangue the officers and soldiers in the manner following friends and fellow soldiers you have for a number of years past with discouraging terror to arbitrary power your valor is famed abroad and acknowledged as appears by the advice and orders to me from the general assembly of connecticut to surprise and tact and attack the fortress before us i propose to advance before you and in person conduct you through the wicket gate for we must this morning either quit our pretensions to valor or or take charge of this as this is a most dangerous attempt most desperate attempt i do not urge it on any contrary to his will you that will undertake voluntarily poise your fire well that is the introduction the opening chapter of colonel ethan allen this narrative of his captivity interesting the enough the that the title is about this long in the original edition i mention that because that is ethan as the soldier i hope to cover quickly ethan the philosopher the soon the religious philosopher and  ethan the negotiator for the whole of them and negotiations and those three topics should take us to about forty five minutes in which time i hope you will have questions there are various quotations that i think are important so you heard ethan the soldier now listen to ethan the the rational soldier the humanitarian when he was on parole one of the charges he took upon himself as an officer on parole in new york during his two years eight months captivity was to try to look after whatever prisoners he could and the british deliberately starved the prisoners and here's an account of one particular prisoner i was and the prisoners were kept confined in the basement of churches or in church yards with guards i was in one of the church yours and it was rumored among those in the church and sundry of the prisoners came with their usual complaints to me and among the rest a large boned tall man as he told me from pennsylvania who was reduced to a mere skeleton said he was glad to see me before he died which he had expected to have done last night but was a little revived he for the mourning for me that he and his brother had been urged to enlist in the british service but had both resolved to die first that his brother had died last night in consequence of that resolution and that he expected shortly to follow him but i made the other prisoners stand a little off and told him with a low voice to list which means to enlist then he asked whether it was right in the sight of god i assured him that it was and th to himself obliged him to deceive the british by enlisting and deserving the first opportunity upon which he answered with transport that he would list i charged him not to mention my name as his advisor least that should get air and i should be closely confined in consequence of it so my point there being that e had a a rational approach to to the military and he saw the most effective thing that these officers and soldiers could do would be when pressed to enlist and then do what damage they could after that they're doing their country more more good that way and they're saving their own lives and many of them had wives and children to return to so that the the honor that was is generally considered the honor of the soldier does not is second to reason reason is what god gave us and we would be disobeying the will of god if we did not use our reason and when we get to the oracle of man which is a five hundred page treatise on religion you will see why he got in so much trouble because he was pointing out that if god hadn't wanted us to think he wouldn't have given us a brain and that is the opposite of what church and state teach and so he did not make many friends with those kinds of attitudes and i could quote you some of the horrible things that were said about him and i happen to believe that a lot of it had to do with his ability to spot hypocrisy and to think clearly about militarism and what the state and the church were asking people to do i have a quote from this wonderful little book which is probably  sale here called the quotable ethan allen and this quote describes his attitude toward hypocrisy very clearly the there was a group of vermonters that were not just they were vermonters at the time a group of settlers who moved to a place in pennsylvania called wyoming and they wanted to set up their own place on earth which he thing called the right to self preservation and blackstone the law dictionary calls it the safety of the whole but even called it the right to self preservation and here is what he has to say about the hypocrisy of the government of pennsylvania in the scenes of horror and complicated whoa we were your front here our blood answered for yours our hazard and unparalleled distress purchased your safety we stood between you and the tomahawk and scalping knife and diverted the inhuman strokes from you alas what returns have we had from your government the widows and orphans of those who fell in the common cause of america particularly in your defense have been plundered to spoiled of their goods and driven from their habitations and legal possessions which other inhabitants in general and the whole treated nearly as inhumanly as by the common enemy and many of our inhabitants have been killed by the hostil of government to dispose us us of our lands and labors without the formality of a trial by law your government hither to have been extremely earnest to cram their laws down our throats and do not fail to hold up to our view the sanctity thereof the law they say is holy just and good but the said inhabitants alias yankees are carnal pennsylvania must leave your farms and occupations wives and children and at the hazard of your lives kill and destroy those are really yankees who guarded your front tier in the late war and who if you do not extra page will guard you in a subsequent one that the people of the state at large have a right to judge and even interposed in this interesting dispute will further appear when by a government swayed by interest interested and overbearing men they are ordered to march under arms to the hostile ground of wyoming and at the hazard of their lives fight against us for no other cause not reason but that we will not tame surrender our farms orchard tenements labors and right of soil to a hunt tow of land thieves and he goes on naturally he tends to and  i selected this piece because i wanted in the beginning to give you a taste of his passion for liberty number one and his hatred of hypocrisy number two and of course you can hate hypocrisy if you don't say it and he saw it clearly in what was happening in pennsylvania and he saw it clearly in what was happening all around him and in pennsylvania they were england they had won that and now oh well that's that's over we don't have to grant you the right to exist here in pennsylvania and so again looking at who ethan was he attacked hypocrisy wherever he saw it and if you can spot any in him please let me know because i've been studying ethan allen a long time and i see paradoxes sure plenty of paradoxes but i don't see hypocrisy in him or i so that's a taste of the narrative and a taste of his idea of hypocrisy i wanted to tell you which give you a little bit more out of the narrative on his ideas of internationalism and peace and how to get along with your neighbors and i find that particularly interesting right now today  for reasons you may gather when i when i read this or reasons you might want to ask me about when we have time at the end i know my friend danny back there will know immediately what i'm talking about ok he's talking to the british now  book your power has been continued longer than the exercise of your humanity and it's by no means sufficient to support your vanity i have something of a smattering of philosophy and understand human nature in all its stages tolerably well and thoroughly acquainted with your national crimes and assure you that they not only cry aloud for heaven's vengeance but excites mankind to rise up against you virtue wisdom and policy are in a national sense always connected to power or another words power is their offspring and such power as is not the wrecked it by virtue wisdom and policy never fails to destroy itself as yours has done it is so in the nature of things and don't fit it should be otherwise for if it was not so vanity injustice and oppression  triumphant for he goes on to talk about his his belief that trade and cultural exchange are what will bring peace to the world my affections are frenchified i glory in louis the sixteenth the generous and powerful ally of these states and i'm fond of a connection with so enterprising learned polite courteous and commercial  nation and i'm sure that i express the sentiments and feelings of all the friends of the present revolution i begin to learn the french tongue and recommend it to my countrymen before hebrew greek or latin provided only one of them to be attend to for the trade and commerce of the states in future must inevitably shift its channel from england to france spain and portugal and therefore the statesman politician and merchant need be acquainted with their several languages particularly the french nothing as the present revolution nothing could have served so effectively and effectually to illuminate eliminate polish enrich the states as the present revolution as well as preserve their liberty mankind are naturally to national even to the degree of bigotry and commercial and at the same time they are bartering commodities for the convenience and happiness of each nation they marry separately exchange which parts and customs and manners as may be met as may be beneficial and learned to extend charity and goodwill to the whole of mankind so you can see ethan as the defender of his place on earth of his territory but you can see him also as the amount open to commerce and cultural intercourse of all kinds and education we're talking about the age of  tenment here which did not go unnoticed by ethan allen his belief in science was as strong as any of his beliefs in whether it be a military operation or whether it be political he he believed that science was the way to trump superstition and idolatry and so let's move on to that where ethan says a competency of knowledge in the sciences is our only bulwark against superstition and idolatry the superstitious parts of mankind which one means or other are far the more numerous are but the jukes of church and state at whose command they cut one another's throats as they suppose for gods as they suppose  god sake and commit all manner of cruelty and outrage how many ideas can you put into sentences i hope we can talk about that if we have time later because that is a mouthful the whole idea of seeing what church and state gets people to do how it gets them to behave in opposition to logic reason and science he got up and he wrote his oracle the the the reason reason the only  to make this point now i'll go a little bit into the oracle and then spend time talking about one of his greatest accomplishments which was the how them and negotiations how many of you know what i what they were oh good ok or one ok so you can you can verify what i'm saying or criticize it however you wish ok the oracle and then this these are ethan's own words in a in a book called the american deists of which he was one benjamin franklin was another for example with the way somebody in in ethan's opening remarks he says thoroughly electrified my mind somebody in an audience would say they didn't have electricity in those days and i wanted to say who was benjamin franklin what is the one thing you learned about benjamin franklin if you don't know anything else so anything anyway this is a this is again a mouthful so let's see what too wordy the desire of knowledge has engaged the attention of the wise and curious among mankind for ages which has been productive of extending the arts and sciences far and wide in the several quarters of the globe and excited the contemplative to explore nature's laws in gradual series of improvement  philosophy astronomy geography and history and many other branches of science have arrived to a great degree of perfection it is nevertheless to be regretted that the bulk of mankind even in those nations which are most celebrated for learning and wisdom are still carried down the torrent of superstition and entertain very unworthy apprehensions of the being perfections creation and providence of god and their judy to him which lays an indispensable obligation on the fellow suffolk friends of human nature knew none i'm asleep to exert themselves in every lawful wise and prudent method to endeavor to reclaim mankind from their ignorance and delusion by enlightening their minds in those great and sublime truthes concerning god and  providence and their obligations to moral rectitude which in this world and that which is to come cannot fail greatly to affect their happiness and well being and this we should read a sort of give you a cue what's coming up this reflects plato in that moral good is a good activity if you do good if you do moral activities you will become happy that's that's pure plato and ethan gets to that idea in one of the things that  the reading you and that is happiness is being a moral good and he says moral good is the only source from whence a rational supplied with a happiness agreeable to the dignity of its nature it would be impossible for a mere pittance itself to make a vicious mind taste the ecstatic felicity of a moral happiness so long as it may be supposed to be vicious in as much as as morality in the nature of the thing itself is a prerequisite to that happiness without the possession and actual enjoyment of which the mind cannot be mentally happy or enjoy itself agreeable to its discerning conscious and sentimental nature but must disapprove of the erroneous departure or to vicious pursuits from the enviable rules of moral fitness and feel proportionably guilty and miserable that was one sentence and it so i don't i never recommend anybody try to read reason the only oracle man i couldn't get through it myself but i am extremely impressed at his ability to reason in the same way that the great philosophers reason i assume that he read plato i mean if you read he studied under john young and studied the classics studied greek and whether or not he he learned any of the greek language is neither here nor there the fact is that he studied all the great philosophers and out of which he came into a new and like him and himself which was that the church at the state are feeding you a lot of superstition so that you will behave the way they want you to so that you pay your taxes so that you'll fight their wars for them that may not do you any good at all may not do humanity and the good at all but they have their reasons and they will persuade you to do it i remember the this is in direct opposition to what the the war poets from one thousand leaven through one nine hundred seventeen said that you know they go home and the minister would say to them well you did your part you fought god's cause you know you might only have one leg but it's worth it and and ethan knew long before that what nonsense that was and how that your only reason should play a part in a democracy and and just to to make you more of it to make you a full human being that is what ought to play a part in your lives and i'm i came here today because people think of ethan allen as this brash semi soldier part time soldier who took four taken or over from twenty three you know tired sweeping english and by the way i want to mention that generally i would think that a soldier who does his homework and realizes that the fort is poorly defended would use a become political that i mean is that the idea that you you do your research and you scout the place and you find out what you're going to be up against so what do we read today in some by some authors oh there were only forty eight people there and twenty three of them could fight well that's the point that you you tried a big thick enemy you know you don't try to get all your men shot you try to get what you want to get and his job from connecticut was actually the general assembly but i don't think he knew that  benedict arnold was of course with him on this assault and the idea was to take it without getting anybody killed and without killing anybody and that's exactly what he did and he sent as you probably know he sent the cannon to washington at dorchester highs and that is arguably what scared general gage out of boston and sent him flying to new york so i consider that an ations which i consider his greatest accomplishment for the for the creation of a safe vermont outside of the ten years he kept new york at bay with the green mountain  boys and again if you have any questions about the green mountain boys and how well that happened i'd be happy to answer so call them in the goshi asians what was that all about i will read you a little bit were to free prisoners were to make an exchange of prisoners but they accomplished so many more things than that that i think it's really worth talking about ethan as the negotiator as the representative of vermont who made this happen he wasn't the only instance i cannot without deviating from the rule of conduct which i have constantly observed exchange the officers of colonel warner's regiment at this time because there are a great many who have been much longer in captivity have therefore it just right to a preference but to endeavor to afford them the best relief the nature of the cause case will admit i have written to general hold them and and proposed to him to send them and the other not exactly kosher to treat the prisoners the way they were being treated and then we have a letter from christopher carlton back to ethan allen by the bearer captain sherwood sherwood was a green mountain boy who became a tory because he felt that the united states was the united states he felt that america should remain part of the british empire though could i meet with you or him or both perhaps the business would be sooner concluded should any difficulty arise between captain sherwood and you my instructions are so ample that i flatter myself i could remove them etc i mention these two letters because i wanted to give you a little history as to how these negotiations first began and again  austin sibley to free prisoners but i'll tell you in the course of this little talk how many more other things were achieved in the course of these negotiations if it was accused by some and even today there are a few people who haven't got it haven't figured it out he was accused of some of of treason because here's this guy from you know who knows where vermont what's that who negotiating with the chief governor of canada for the exchange of prisoners and he has no right to do that was a big one who thinks he is and and yet he was successful what did he accomplish by entering into these negotiations with general hold them and well he accomplished a succession of hostilities between the british empire and vermont he said here's here's the carrot if we pull this off i would like to bring for months back into the british empire that was the carrot now even this wonderful fellow who was here david talk here david bennett who writes this book with the idea that e serious about joining he quotes ethan is saying no way i could pull this off the people of vermont would have my head so i think that's good enough evidence that attacked it was just a carrot so that these exchanges could go forth but much more than that it was a carrot to keep the british from using lake champlain and vermont as a corridor and raiding vermont towns fighting the vermont militia or the continental army as it was at that time in vermont so those kinds of accomplishment are not to be shrugged off as as minor and another great accomplishment was that if he could postpone this long enough at least through the fall of eighty one i think we're into now he could allow the farmers to harvest their crops which was pretty important in those days ridden r v s your crop is starved so some people look at this and say if it was brilliant some people look at this and say oh he was just lucky he was really trying to join the british empire and all this other stuff well you know it's that's just going to happen well usually in history when a leader accomplishes something you tend to ascribe intent to that accomplishment so in the case of ethan if he prolonged the british any potential british invasion then that's what he tried to then that was his intent if he did that so that farmers could harvest their heyday and their crops that was his intent if he did that so that the british couldn't use wouldn't use lake champlain and raid the towns that was what he intended to do and if he also achieved what he said he wanted to do which was exchange prisoners then while good for you you think you've done all these things that's that's amazing and we still have people who question these negotiations and again i don't mean to say that ethan was like the only were going both considered the vermonters and that is to say the green mountain boys of the time a formidable enemy sithole them and having been from their earliest contests continually in arms they are in every respect better for provided than continental troops and their principles more determined and said they usually bellicose burgoyne who was the the person who got his rear end kick bennington the the hampshire grants now abounds in the most active and rebellious race in the continent and hangs like a gathering storm on my left  george washington was equally respectful and wished that congress would act to get from an officially on their side before it was too late you don't want the green mountain boys fighting against you they want them on your side and i think that again is a tribute to ethan allen because he was one of the people who formed the green mountain boys and i don't want to imply that he was the only one this wonderful book moses robinson and the founding of vermont by judge mello is a wonderful perspective on other people who were doing who've been who happen to be vermont historians might say well what about the royals a raid the royals and raid was not an official raid by the british army and after it happened it was regarded as a mistake so it had nothing to do with what ethan was trying to accomplish because they weren't supposed to do that raid they were provoked by the kind of wog indians who wanted some fun and wanted to you know get some scalps and steal when they came down what did they steal mirrors furniture hats clothing and people and took them back they purposely avoided the town that they thought maybe would fight settlers so that raid made my point is that ethan's hold up in the goshi ations were a complete success because there were something like fifty four raids in new york ohio raid which had nothing to do with the british army at all so again kudos for for ethan allen for figuring this out and i believe that was something that he all mention that quickly to get us up to two forty five there's the doctrine of imputation which even railed against which is the doctrine that the sins of the  father visited upon the son adam and eve you know they made a mistake and humans are going to be punished ever since he thought that was just idiotic it's ridiculous and he said if you regard god as as somebody who is omnipotent and who knows what he's doing why do you say that he does these idiotic things why why does he punish a person the for telling a lie and the same punishment for murdering you know twenty people whatever it is so isn't even went after point by point in the bible as to why he says that religion that teaches these things is teaching superstition and the the doctrine of imputation is one of the so one of the points that he makes he says i fancy sir you will be diverted when you read the twelfth chapter that's of reason the only oracle of men it rips up and overturns the whole notion of jockeying alienating transferring damnation salvation and their merchandise thereof one of my favorite expressions of ethan allen ministerial damnation salvation so we damn you for this but if you pay us you're saved and he just threw up his hands and he says how can you people believe this and that's why he was hated for writing re man because he pointed out these what i think are rather obvious flaws in the concept of a god who knows what he's doing and he said you know we all believe that god knew what he was doing and this is before darwin remember there was so there's no nobody had thought of the concept of chaos working itself out you know that the earth form itself from two atoms here and nuclei here and and the whole world grew out of that that that that concept of chaos had not entered into anybody's mind yet so ethan believed in a god who knew what he was doing gave man a brain and said well if man's reason isn't more important than catholicism or protestantism or whatever else how come man can go from one religion to another he wants to how come men can choose his religion if his brain isn't more important than your church and of course that got him hated because when you can't answer yes or guy like that you can you can go up a good point or you can make a big fuss about it and so i guess i wanted to point out his ability to see clearly to come up with the the expression the damnation salvation society is i thought a very clever way of seeing the way church and state get people to behave of what i wanted to convey about ethan allen from the soldier to the humanitarian to the internationalist to the scholar if you will and so i'm hoping that you might be able to to take all the depended on on the given letter and where it was going but for proof of how long it took some of these prisoners didn't get released till after the war was over and these negotiations started long before that so it did take a long time for communications to to make it from one place to another and some escaped from they were they were imprisoned many of them on an island on the st lawrence where the currents were wicked i mean if you're trying to swim you just get sucked under and some people who were great swimmers apparently made it or they grabbed a hold of a log and you know went along but it was a very difficult trek even if you got across into vermont you had a very difficult time getting home and so many died in the process who had already been exposed supposedly exchanged so it was a it's a pretty ironic and tragic situation that it took so long to get these letters back and forth in some ethan they knew it was a pretty clever character and they didn't know how much influence he had in vermont and he himself admitted that he could never pull this off but he didn't out of out of vermont for ten years never killed anybody a bluff told them and into thinking that he was influential enough to pull this off and so my to me the obvious conclusion is that it was a bluff and it worked good for you isn't so the scholars who fight over this they don't know what was in ethan's head but they do know what he accomplished and please just give him credit for what he accomplished don't assume he was trying to accomplish something else like you know with anybody else in history if he crosses the alps with his elephants and whatever else he does he did that on purpose some scholars seem to think that when he's an accomplished he didn't quit accomplish on purpose but so my answer is it was a bluff and all the men suspected it but he couldn't resist i mean the idea of vermont with the remember all the men was scared of the green mountain boys they were tough and they knew how to fight and they knew how to fight guerrilla warfare british prison there is a very old where and what i said i don't i know that some prisoners were held as service domestic servants in montreal but i don't know who was exchanged for whom i i might have read that at some point  don't remember who specifically was exchanged for whom but i'm sure it wasn't just the ones that were on that island he writes about that in we go as captives he talks about that which surely the something with what i said before keeping the doors open for statehood i forgot that in philadelphia they were considering gosh you know vermont  and the new yorkers were having hissy fits because they didn't want vermont to become a state and the southern southerners were having a hissy fits because they were afraid of another northern state coming in so ethan by doing that sped up the negotiations at least temporarily for vermont becoming a state so that was one making statehood a necessary option for congress to keep from mountains which he sayd she said that buying time for the green mountains in the fall of seventeen eighty one to harvest their crops and prepare for battle i wrote this by the way and as part of a review of that book arranging an exchange of vermont and british prisoners those prisoners that for a month held would have been officially under the continental army they were the green mountain boys were put under the command of self warner and so the prisoners that they captured would have been continental army prisoners but negotiate but the negotiations were went on nonetheless with the thin and an it you know been scotched calls me thin allen all the time because he says we need you because i'm such a thorn in the side of of the state house and certain certain things that don't happen that i think ought to like public banking  boy who's a current day ethan allen the ones that haven't been killed yet  well i'll have to well john no i see these these people are married to the military industrial complex and even bernie he was pimping for the f thirty five you know trying to bring the f thirty five so i i i mean dennis kusin it was sort of out there like that and  wrong wrong paul not rand paul that ron paul was kind of in there but martin luther king was kind of out there which is why he got killed and  pad i could probably think of some some people who were great leaders like that i mean i have my dave delozier he spent several years in paradox here and i don't assume to have an answer but the idea is that if you do the right thing you'll feel good about it but you know there are people like henry kissinger who just love slaughtering people so it doesn't hold up necessarily and i just use henry as the first name to pop into my head i mean i could i could give you a long list of people who seem to just love to make life miserable for other people and they get a big kick out of it so i can't personally agree with the senate and plato on the idea that you'll feel good if you do the right thing you'll feel good if you do the right thing according to your own needs and and beliefs but that doesn't necessarily play into humanity as helping as helping humanity but that's what moral rec union considering where it is right now were it is now i'm sure is now and would want to see where it was then you given that each state was a sovereign entity yeah yeah everything to gain and nothing to lose by becoming a state because you gained the intercourse with the states you gain the power to trade you gain so much by becoming is a state and cultural intercourse to it was everything he was in favor of all of that and he even i mean he fought for statehood he was very disappointed when washington kind of said well hang on a minute you know now that we know that we won the war we might just what new york take you over and but it didn't happen because alexander hamilton got involved and then again they were afraid of the remount voice kicking up a fuss so they became a state for various complicated reasons but they they didn't they had to pay thirty thousand bucks to new york to give the land jobbers in new york and that's it i don't know how to explain it quickly but they didn't get a great deal when they when they joined the union but they  did get to join and that was what was most important at that time because you know there were enemies afoot not like today where all the enemies are make believe they they were really worried  about the brits maybe you know trying again which they did in eight hundred twelve so they had every reason to become a state ye but he died in february so and the news was all that fast and he had retired he was like a lot of the founding fathers they said look what i want to do is i want to have a farm and i want to study agriculture and i want to read and you look at jefferson's library my god my god that's what these guys wanted to do and so i think that ethan after he wrote his religious treatise he just wanted that he was happy loved it door his wife and his family and he just wanted to kind of chill out so i did i i don't think he would have known about this the second against superior forces in some cases and they they were extremely successful and at the battle of bennington they were part of the rear guard that held up the bri and self warner brought them down to bed eaten and then they took a deep breath and fought again i mean they must have been dead exhausted and and the battle of bennington was a slaughter the body beat the germans and the brits that were there it was a tremendous victory and it set up saratoga in my opinion saratoga couldn't have happened without the defeat that the british  suffered in anything i mean i'm not alone in that opinion many think that's a pretty well accepted opinion it's just that in the history books it's like well it's just they don't have time to go into all the all the details but that's my opinion and i think it's generally accepted that bennington set up saratoga yeah and the whole the whole narrative it is on a double cd it's a dramatic reading of this book it's two c d s it takes place from here to albany in your car if you want to hear it and so it has all the adventures that isn't had from the time he took take under oath tell the time he was released two years eight months as a prisoner of war  ralph when he when they were putting this together back in the eighty's so both of these people would think they're going to be invited to play a part in the next week next month so july sixty two o'clock come back ok