University of Virginia Library

INTRODUCTION.

The events which transpired in the early settlement
of Vermont, and especially during the seven
years immediately preceding our great struggle for
national independence, deserve a conspicuous place
in what has been termed the romance of history.—
The situation in which the settlers found themselves
placed, about the beginning of the last mentioned
period was one very peculiarly calculated to arouse
the individual feelings of men, and raise their minds
to that pitch of desperate excitement, when, spurning
all further restraints, they, like the pent fires of
the earth, break through the barriers that circumscribe
the ordinary course of human action, and
leap at once into the arena of daring deeds and
chivalrous exploits. They had derived the titles to
their lands from patents made under the authority
of the British crown, and issued by the royal governor
of New Hampshire,—to which province it
was then generally understood their territory unquestionably
belonged. A claim to this territory,
however, was soon set up by the government of
New York: and in the process of time certain
statesmen of the latter province, corruptly combining
with influential land speculators, procured, by
their intrigues at the British court, a decree establishing
Connecticut river as the boundary line between
the two beligerent provinces, and thus throwing
the whole of the disputed territory within the
governmental jurisdiction of New York. In a
change of jurisdiction merely the settlers of the

New Hampshire Grants, as this tract of country
was then usually designated, would have doubtless
peaceably acquiesced. But when, by one of the
most bold and singular perversions of law and justice
to be found on record, the tribunals of New
York decided this decree to have a retrospective
operation, so as to involve the titles of the lands as
well as the jurisdiction of the territory, the voice of
the indignant settlers unitedly rose from every part
of their Green Mountains, in loud and determined
remonstrances: for, this decision, which was of
itself a legal paradox, going to destroy the right of
property already irrevocably granted by the crown—
the very same source of power by which it was now
proposed a new right with new conditions should be
irrevocably established—subjected them to the exasperating
alternative of either relinquishing their
farms, which they had once honestly purchased and
paid for, with all those improvements that had cost
them so much labor and privation, or of purchasing
and paying for them again on such terms as those
who claimed to be their new masters might choose
to exact. The latter, with their limited pecuniary
resources, they at once saw that it would be utterly
impossible for most of them to do; while to the former
their proud spirits would never for a moment
brook the thought of submitting. Paying, therefore,
after they had vainly exhausted every argument
in petition and remonstrance to the governor
and his council, and as vainly attempted to defend
a few of the first suits brought for the possession of
their farms before his obsequious tribunal; paying,
we say, no further attention to the summonses to
quit which now poured thickly upon them, they
soon found their secluded settlement invaded by
the greedy swarms of their cormorant foes, attended
by sheriffs, each with a large armed posse for a forcible
ejection of the inhabitants, and surveyors with their
assistants for laying out and locating the unoccupied
territory. Having thus found, that peaceable measures
were wholly unavailing, the now aroused and
determined settlers unanimously resolved on resistance,
and immediately put themselves in an attitude
to carry their resolution into effect. An independent
organization was accordingly established
throughout the Grants, consisting of committees of
safety, as they were termed, appointed to act as
provisional courts for trying offenders, supervising
the public concerns in their respective towns, and
generally to serve, it is believed, as delegates to the
general convention which, from time to time, assembled
to consult on the public welfare, and make
such regulations and decrees as the exigencies might
require; while to enforce these orders and decrees,
and to defend the settlers from aggressions of the
New York authorities, military associations were
formed, the members of which soon became generally
known by the appellation of the Green Mountain
Boys. And although the shedding of blood
was generally avoided by them in repelling these
intruders upon their soil, yet punishment of some
kind was sure, on the commission of every offence,
to be promptly administered. These punishments
were various and singular—sometimes extremely ingenious
and laughable. The most common mode,
however, consisted in the application of the beech
rod, or the Beech Seal, as they were pleased to
term it, in allusion to the emblem of the great seal
of New Hampshire, of which their parchment
deeds, probably, bore the impress; while this novel
method of applying it, they humorously contended,
was but to confirm their old titles. In this spirited
manner was the contest commenced and continued
by the settlers; and although armed forces were
several times sent into the Grants to aid the authorities
in ejecting the inhabitants, and although all the
leaders of the latter were indicted and outlawed as
felons by the courts of New York, and proclamation
after proclamation issued by the governor of
that province, offering large rewards for the delivery
of those marked for the punishment of death,
and teeming with denunciations against all those
who should offer further resistance; yet so united
were the people, and so determined the character
of their opposition, that their baffied antagonists
were never able to accomplish but the most insignificant
results for their years of labor in endeavoring
to effect a foothold in the territory of Vermont,
while the whole controversy exhibited to the world
the singular spectacle of a few thousand poor settlers,
thinly scattered over a wilderness of a hundred
miles in extent, successfully resisting for a series of
years the authority of a province, apparently determined
on their subjugation, and possessing perhaps
fifty times their population and resources.

Having thus glanced at the leading features of
this embittered controversy, (out of the events of
which a large portion of the following story is woven,)
to enable the reader more readily to understand
many of the allusions he may find in the
progress of the tale, we will now proceed with the
narration.