Inventing Ethan Allen

VII | Silence and Exclusion

                      my uncle jerry There’s much, he says, about Vermont For history and song, Much to be written yet, and much That has been written wrong. { charles g. eastman, 1848 } chapter vii Silence and Exclusion Murder, Slaveholding, and Plagiarism The evidence documents some of Ethan Allen’s activities beyond dispute . On May 10, 1775, he and Benedict Arnold captured Fort Ticonderoga with eighty-three of the “valiant Green Mountain Boys” who had gathered at Hand’s Cove in Shoreham. Allen’s and most accounts gloss over the fact that roughly 40 percent of the triumphant force that pushed into the crumbling fort came from Massachusetts, New Hampshire , Connecticut, and New York. Allen did capture Fort Ticonderoga. The record clearly established his capture at Montreal on September 25, 1775. But Ethan’s version of the incident in his captivity narrative still lacks probing analyses of his decision to launch that rash attack, after promising to join Montgomery in the siege of St. John. Moreover, did the promises of John Brown and Seth Warner prompt him to hazard it, as in Ira’s version, written after Brown, Warner, and Ethan were long dead? The convention of town Committees of Safety gathered at Cephas Kent’s tavern in Dorset on July 26, 1775, rejected Allen, and elected Seth Warner to command the newly organized Green Mountain rangers as a New York militia unit. He also wrote and published tracts forcefully stating the case of the New Hampshire titleholders against New York authority and for Vermont’s recognition by Congress. This much and more has a secure basis in accessible, verifiable fact. Silence and Exclusion { 139 The documentary record of other aspects of Allen’s active life makes clear statements, but Allen himself and subsequent generations of historians and biographers have rendered often contradictory interpretations about their meaning. In 1788 he clearly stated to Guy Carleton, governor general of Canada, “In the time of General Haldimand’s command , could Great Britain have afforded Vermont protection, they would have readily yielded up their independence, and have become a province of Great Britain.”1 Did the Arlington Junto treat with the British with the purpose of joining the British Empire, or did they, beginning with Williams’s and Ira Allen’s accounts, cleverly bluff the British to defend Vermont’s vulnerable northern frontier? The long documentary trail of both stages of the Haldimand Negotiations has produced a sharp contrast of interpretations that remains vigorous more than two centuries later. After the success of the New York land speculators at the Ejectment Trials in 1770, did Allen briefly work on behalf of New York as James Duane, the only principal to leave a record wrote, or did he immediately take command of the Green Mountain Boys? In other cases, like Allen’s death, the contemporary record contains contradictions that have engendered conflicting interpretations and have allowed license in telling the story. Guy Carleton, Lord Dorchester, Governor General of Quebec, 1768–78, 1784–96. Carleton commanded the defenders of Montreal who captured Ethan Allen there on September 25, 1775. The year after Carleton lifted trade restrictions on Vermont timber and livestock exports to Quebec in 1787, Ethan, Ira and Levi Allen visited Carleton, then 1st Baron Dorchester, on his second commission to govern Quebec, to petition for tariff-free trade of Vermont products from Lake Champlain to markets in Quebec and England. Courtesy of the National Archives and Library of Canada. 140 } Inventing Ethan Allen His brother Ira, historians, biographers, illustrators, and others have also repeated events not supported by any evidence other than “tradition has it,” “history says,” and similar disclaimers that precede the retelling in works of a serious nature. The more dubious tales include Allen leading the rescue of two lost girls, his taking sacks of salt between his teeth and slinging the heavy bags over his shoulder, his having a tooth pulled to provide an example to a frightened woman who needed an extraction, the dialogue about religious conviction with his daughter Loraine as her death approached, or one John Graham said he “often heard him affirm,” that after death he expected to live again as a white stallion.2 The retelling of these tales usually employs the same dialogue and much of the same language, as if presented by an unnamed eyewitness, often word for word. In his captivity narrative Allen started the story of his twisting “off a nail with...