Middlebury register. (Middlebury, Vt.) 1886-1937, 1905-08-18
FRIDAY, AUGUST 1s, 1905.
Vermont Great Man.

No more picturesque figure appears in
our annals than the man to whom a
memorial tower will be dedicated at
Burlington, VT, on the 18th inst, an
anniversary hardly appropriate, since
Ethan Allen had no part in the battle at
Bennington. Not soon will we forget
his "By the Great Jehovah and the
Continental Congress, with which he
called upon the British commander at
Ticonderoga to give over the key to
Canada. Not only was the exploit vast
help to the patriot cause, but the cir
cumstances were well calculated to stir
the imagination of the colonists. The
taking of Ticonderoga gave Allen a
national reputation. But the dramatic
manner of the act was characteristic,
and there are a score of incidents in his
life which harmonic with the Lake
Champlain affair, making it clear that
Allen was frontier leader who was
both bold on occasion and constant in
the exhibition of clustering but heroic
traits.
Ordered not to appear on the deck of
the British war vessel to which he was
confined at one time during his captivity,
he surprised the captain by walking out,
giving DIS all tApldldIlOh thdt HC Hdu
been told "the deck was the place for
gentlemen to walk" and that he was
Colonel Allen and gentleman. When
sent with Vermont troops to put down
the "Windham County Rebellion" he
accomplished his purpose largely by an
nouncing that unless the obdurate Guild
ford people yielded at once he would
make the town as "desolate as Sodom
and Gomorrah." 1t is told of him, to
point out the moral that, with all his
hatred of oppression and his rough Dor
der ways, he believed thoroughly in up
holding the law and orderly processes;
that when it was found a Tory spy had
been convicted by jury of but six men
and attention was called to the fact that
twelve were essential he appealed for a
new trial to the crowd which had assem-
bled to see the execution by guarantee
ing that on the appointed day somebody
should be hanged; "if not Redding then
l will be hanged myself" From these
and similar oft-told incidents we may
well conclude that Washington was
substantially right in saying: There
is an original something in him that com
mands admiration"
The vicissitudes of Vermont before,
during and after the Revolution worked
to give Allen peculiar position among
the Green Mountain Boys. He had
talents which implied keen insight into
political movements, and he was daring
soldier by nature. Yet he was not the
Father of his State"-Governor Chit
tenden filled that role.
He was not its chief diplomatist. His
younger brother Ira, who also was the
financier of the state, was entrusted with
the delicate task of keeping an invading
army out of Vermont by dangling before
the Canadian governor the possibility of
a renewal of allegiance to the Crown. 1t
was in connection with this remarkable
piece of statecraft that Ethan Allen was
suspected of reasonable designs. He,
however, was playing the game which a
small coterie of the States leaders had
adopted, and his acts were consistent
with the theory that the ultimate aim of
the Vermonters was union with the
States without dominance by New York.
Nor was Allen the Vermont soldier par
excellence, for Colonel Seth Warner was
chosen commander of the Green Noun
tain regiment and showed himself well
worthy of the honor.
But Allen was the natural leader of the
Vermonters in the early days of their for
NATIVE period. He was the champion of
their case against New York before the
Revolution-the agitator who could state
with force the argument of the settlers on
the New Hampshire Grants, put tirmer
resolution into the hearts of his neighbors
repel the efforts of the Albany sheriff
toward evicting a bona fide settler, and
treat New York claimants to dose of
''twigs of the wilderness" Those were
boisterous days on the Grants, and chief
of Aliens mould was much needed by the
men who had hOupht their land from the
governor of New Hampshire and did not
intend to pay for it second time. For
NAL jurisdiction over the territory was