>> ethan allen, the leader of

the green mountain boys, is remembered for his attack on fort ticonderoga and was a prisoner of war in england. this is about an hour. >> thank you for coming. i'm a book seller here at politics and prose. on behalf of everyone here, i'd like to welcome you. i'm privileged to welcome willard sterne randall tonight. ethan allen is remembered for his attack on fort ticonderoga in 1775, time spent in prison in england, but the struggle from adolescent to commander of the largest military force on the eve of the revolution, he's gone beyond the myths, rendering an accurate portrait of the least examined patriots. he's the author of numerous books including george

washington. he's been nominated six times for the pulitzer prize and a newly happily retired professor. please join me in welcoming him to politics and prose. [applause] >> thank you very much, and thank you for coming out tonight with the thunder and light ning. any point of departure is right from the introduction. if we know anything about ethan allen, ucialgly it's only -- usually he took fort ticonderoga, wherever that is and however you spell it. [laughter] his name is usually linked by the green mountain boys like they are tied by a mystical cord, but we really know little about him, and that's why i wrote the book. i lived for over 25 years in

vermont where he's become a mythical figure. part of what i've had to do is sort of peal awaylayers of pathology and figure out what the real ethan allen is like. he's part paul bunyon, part davey kroc et and part jack daniels. oh, ethan allen. [laughter] that's the part that vermont is proudest of. [laughter] apparently, they know little beyond that, even in the schools. ethan allen, among other things, i found just to start out with just a little summary -- in addition to taking the most formidable fort in british america with only 85 men without

firing a shot, he was the first published deist philosopher. he organized 29 communities to defend the new hampshire grants as they were called. there still was not a vermont, against the completing claims of new york, preserving the homesteads until the revolution came along for 40 years, and he was a prolific author. i was surprised at how much he wrote, but he was known as the land speculator and two things connected because ethan allen bought and sold land, bought as cheaply as he could and sold in small parcels to hundreds and hundreds of frontier family, but if you didn't have money on hand to buy land when he came through, he sold you a pamphlet so you got a few acres or parted with a shilling.

he really is the founding father of vermont because without him, new york could not have been held at bay, and neither could have the british by one means or another. he's also the reason why we have a prisoner of war policy stretching down to the present time that we do, and i'll explain that more. the case of ethan allen, prisoner of war. it set how prisoners were treated and the diplomatic relations between warring governments and the civil war. he had impact, and yet we know little of this. he wrote a narrative of his own captivity that went through eight editions in two years and really reenlivened the revolution by making it clear to lagging patriots that the real enemy was the loyalists more than the british forces.

that memoir that he wrote about his captivity went through 60 print, before the civil war, and it's still in print. there's very few other works that have lasted that well. how did he come about this robin hood who is also characterized depending where you are. in new york,-a squatter and land grabber, but in new england, he's robin hood. well, there's a little bit of both. he was bonch in lynchfield, connecticut in 1738 when it was the fron -- frontier. that's hard to imagine today. he was one of eight children. the town was in part founded by his grandmother when took over when the grandfather didn't have the verb to keep the farm going. he was born to perfect parents for the times.

joseph and mary. their children had biblical names and you can trace the names of the children. ethan means strong in hebrew, and the first six children from out testament names. the last two after the family back slid away from puritanism to anglicanism, the girl's name is lydia. he was born in a solid home in lynchfield, and he might have stayed there and may have never gone to vermont except for something called the great awakening which i think was the seed time of the american revolution. it was the first time large numbers of people turned out for mass meetings to hear someone speak. until then, mostly they got enough speaking in three hour

sermons and meeting houses. in the 1730s and 40s, missionary ies came from england, anglicans from the holy club originally from oxford university and every year they preached down the length of the british colonies from new ported rhode island to salve van that, and the crowds were enormous for the times. benjamin franklin verified how large the crowd were. he invented ways to count crowds. he walked around the edges and figuring hot -- he calllated how many square feet the average person took up, and he came to the conclusion there's 25,000 people in the audience. without a microphone, george witfield could reach all of them. he traveled with two horses, one

for himself and the other for the portable pull pit from town to town. poor people who never felt at home in the meeting houses turned out, and the great awakening produced a schism in new england and 300 new churches which was too much for ethan allen's father, joseph. he was born a proud puritan and called themselves saints with an upper case "s," much as evangelicals still do today. rather than be part of the awakening, he led 19 families into the wilderness of north western connecticut which seems like a funny thing to say, "the wilderness," but in a valley, he started a new town called cornwall. he was everything. the town moderator, tax assessor, tax collector, all of those jobs until enough people came along. the problem for ethan allen was

you didn't build a school in a new community until there were 50 families. why that number? well, we have this saying, an idle mind is the devil's workshop. in fact, massachusetts passed a law in 1848 called the old diluter law. whenever a population reached 50 families, they had to build a schoolhouse. ethan allen was born too soon. his youngest brother actually got to go to primary school. ethan allen never actually went to a formal school. what he learned in cornwall from his father was how you start a community. from the ground up literally and from the ground down because when people moved into the frontier, the first year they had to clear enough land to plant two acres. that's the formula. one to plant wheat for bread,

one acre for corn, for livestock. they build a rude cabin the same, working in teams of people, logs of the same diameter and length, dove tailed, 1.5 story cabins at first. a loft for the people in the winter and down stories for the -- downstairs for the livestock. you had no problem with heat. the second year, you built a barn. that's how the community grew, slowly, but in the same way. we have an idea of frontiers people going off on their own. it's not true. we have a communal frontier, communities moved, and that's the pattern all across the country. the other thing that was a pattern all across the country was what they did to the landscape when they settled a new community. basically they cut down the hardwood.

there was a hardwood forrest in nova scotia to minnesota when the first american immigrants arrived, and that would be eventually flattened, cut down, and why? were they just terrible people trying to destroy their environment? no, they had no money, and if you cut down one water elm, a tall one, trimmed off the top growth, side branches and all of that and burnt it, you can produce potash. what you then leached down until you formed a rock crystal like a big rock candy. those crystals, those rock crystals of potash were sold for cash to the english who needed if for fixatives in the new textile industry to make

sulfuric acid, ect.. one large elm tree produced enough cash to buy two acers of land. the frontier people cut enough timber to buy a little more land, cut down more timber to buy more land. you get the picture. they used the trunks of the trees for fencing to build houses, eventually to build ships and rafts, ect.. this was the pattern, so people with almost no money could have a down payment and then expand and expand as their families expanded because many of the families had eight to ten children, and the problem was they all survived. ethan allen grew up learning from his father how to start a community, but learning how to hunt as well. there were mohawk indians still in the area, so he learned to live indian style, how to hunt indian style, and he turned into a robust and very outgoing young

man. he was over six feet tall. at a time when the average american male was 5 foot six. how do we know the size? well, when the french joined the revolution and sent the uniforms, they sent the right sizes. we can see the size of the average american. ethan allen was taller from hard farm work which i did for a few years as a young fellow. he learned how to carry a great deal of weight into a lot of work. that was legendary and became part of the myth of ethan allen that he could take 100 pound sack of corn in his teeth and sling it over his shoulder. [laughter] he wouldn't have had teeth if he did that. i know what 50 pounds feels like. never 100. he grew up on a farm, and when he was 16, his father decided he needed a better education than he could get.

learning to read, write, was from his mother. women were literate. we may not have evidence of it, puritan women were trained to keep records of their spiritual feelings in diaries and they made sure that their children knew their bible inside and out. for more education than that, his father took him to salisbury, connecticut, to the private school of a great awakening preacher, but clergy at that time supported themselves by taking in boarding students, four, five, six, or eight at a time living in the house with them, and for nine months, ethan allen studied the classics, learning some greek, latin, some french, algebra, geography, some literature --

for nine months before the news came that his father had dropped dead from all the hard work at the age of 50. ethan allen's education, and he was being prepared to go to divinity school at yale which turned out to be pretty ironic later on. he came home, took over the family, helped his mother raise the other seven children, run the farm, pay off the father's debt because his father was already speculating in land which was the addiction of early americans. if you couldn't clear enough land, maybe somewhere else you can have even more. he raised his younger brothers. he was a bit of a bully to them. there's evidence of this. he was a tough big brother. he stayed at home until age 26. he only left twice briefly to join militia trying to reenforce the english during the french and indian wars. he saw no combat, but saw vermont for the first time,

crossing over the mountains through the valley of vermont, remembering how beautiful it was. at age 26, he married -- which was average for an american male, and he married a woman eight years older than he was. it was not a flaming romance. it was just that he carried the corn in sacks on a horse to her father's mill in the next town, and it took all day to get milling down, so she fixed him something to eat, and they got to know each other well, and he spent more time before going home as years went by. a slow courtship. everybody knew she was ethan allen's girl. nobody else dated her, and he didn't date anybody from cornwall because nay were all relatives. [laughter] he did marry at 26, moved to

salisbury, and opened his business finding the forbes and allen refinery that produced cannon for the american revolutionaries. he got a little distracted from his business which was flourishing when he met a young doctor in town which was a deist, and they took to spending long evenings and afternoons studying deist writings from england, and having a little bit of fun with the inconsistencies of the bible, which was all right as long as they kept it to themselves, but as they read more of the deist writings, they began to think that more that reason was more important than scripture, and reason told ethan allen that some of the things that the town leaders were doing made no sense. for example, every year smallpox went through the british

colonies. every 30 years, there was a great epidemic that hit boston. people left boston, moved up and down the coast and started to go into the frontier and move further and further west because of the epidemics, and one reason this continued was because aknocklation was illegal in every british colony. now, it wasn't that people hadn't done it successfully somewhere else. the turks had done it successfully, and as early as 1715, lady ashley wrote about this and members of the royal society of england had spread writings to america, but there was so much superstition wrapped up in intervening any way against what was considered god's will, that the smallpox epidemics went on. ethan allen thought something had to be done about this, and he did it in what became his way. in front of the town meeting house on a sunday as everyone

poured out of the service, he had himself aknock cuelated by dr. young. how they did it? a needle and thread passed through a soar of somebody with smallpox, passed through his arm giving him a mild dose of smallpox. well, he was arrested, not for annoculation, but his former too teacher accosted him for it, he managed to put beelsebub and jesus in the name sentence. he was charged for blasphemy. he was convicted and fined the maximum fine of 10 shillings. it doesn't sound like much, but 23 you had two convictions in any town, you were out of town.

you and your family had to leave and not come back. they got him on the second offense. somebody's hog got out and into ethan allen's garden. he didn't have the right to do that. there was a hog grieve who was supposed to return the hog to the owner or turn it into pork chops, but ethan allen had broken the law by violating the cove innocent of the hog who then brought charges against him, and he was convicted again, and he read out of connecticut. he had to leave. many had to leave connecticut. he went right to the flame. he went to north hampton, massachusetts, already a battleground because the leading thee lotion of the great awakening, john than edwards had been read out of that town because he accused young men of getting a book belonging to a midwife and passing it around to the girls, and he named names

from the pulpit. john went to the wilderness and eventually became president of princeton, which was about the same thing at the time. [laughter] i can say that, i went there. ethan allen went there and got into trouble right away. he opened the led mine. people thought at the time where there was led there was silver and gold. there wasn't. he swore a lot with his workers as people do in mines, and the clergy kept inspecting and timely brought him up on charges again of profanity this time. he was fined and convicted. he sold his interest in the led mine. he was losing interest in business, but when the fellow who bought the mine showed up at settlement without money, ethan allen stripped to the waste and lashed the fellow. he was arrested again. [laughter] the fellow left town, got his

friends to come back and ethan allen got out his bull whip, and there was altercations, and then he was again read outside of massachusetts. where do you go? he had a family. he left the wife and children with the younger brother, the tamest of the clan, heman allen who ran a prosperous store. he went up into this now empty land the french had left, and it was unpopulated except for indian hunters, and ethan allen became a professional hunter for four years and literally ran with the indians. that's not a figure of speech. his brother ira later wrote as he attempted many things, he attempted a biography of ethan allen, and he never finished it. ethan allen would run alongside a herd of deer.

indian style waited for a full moon, and in the snow, there was a crust of snow, perfect for snow shoeing, but not perfect for the sharp hoofs of deer. ethan allen shot one, put the hat on the carcass so the it wouldn't be touched. run along, shoot another one, put it on the deer. you get the picture. before he was through, he was well, we could say, buck enacted. -- naked. the hydes were sent by canoe down to salisbury where the younger brothers had set up a shop and made buckskin cover alls, a prosperous business. even jefferson pulled buckskins

over his go-to meeting suit for years. the horse sweated, you had to have buckskin. the family was prospering. while ethan allen was hunting, he was also exploring. he found the very best lands, and getting the idea that he would move his family, all of his family, up into the valley of vermont which he did in 1770. he went and bought his first land, 1,000 acres for the equivalent of $1,000 of our dollars. 500 in new hairch is just above middlebury. he got the speck speculative bug. some of the neighbors saw vermont in the french and indian wars. one head of the militia from connecticut decided to move with his clan into the river valley up near burlington, vermont and

bolton valley. he became a land speculator and investor, first with small pieces of land. his timing could not have been worse. exactly that time in 1770, the old problem of who owned the land flaired. the royal governor had sold charters for 170 townships in new hampshire and vermont. who bought the chargers? i did digging. sam willis, a mother chance from -- merchant in long island who made a lot of money for supplying in the wars and he wanted to lay some of it off in land in vermont, so willis and his friends had 40 shillings in silver, and that went to the governor for granting the papers

to set up a township five miles by five miles. well, when you see the numbers and scale, bening wentworth in 15 years pocketed $3 million our money in fees just from those land charters. only to be outdone by new york when new york said wait a minute x our charter says everything between lake champlain and connecticut river is part of new york. they began counterclaiming and insist the settlers buy land second time. there were only about 1500 people living in vermont by 1770, but those people wanted to hold on to their land. they cleared it, worked hard, it took whatever they had, and what ethan allen did as speculator, as a shareholder among these people said we should resist. he was chosen as a stockholders

meeting to hire the best lawyer in new england and go to albany, new york, the capitol of -- not the capitol, but where the supreme court of new york was, the supreme court, and resist the attempts of new york to sell this land again. meanwhile, new york had sent the albany county sheriff with 300 men to survey and seize the farms of settlers in the benington area who would not budge. they stood with guns by their sides in their fields until they went away. most of the posse were dutch who represented the british lords and were not about to cooperate. land riots had already been taking place in new york by this time. well, ethan allen, as the chosen one, went before the supreme court in albany and was laughed out of court. he wrote about it. he began writing about the

rights and claims of the settlers. he explained the grander of the justices. what he also knew is the chief council for the royal province of new york owned 60,000 acres of vermont land. the chief judge owned 170,000 acres or was claiming to own in vermont. they all have conflicts of interest. allen went back to benington, and the leaders of the 29 settlements got together at a meeting at the tavern, the unofficial capitol of the vermonters, and they decided to form a militia with captains in each town, and the captains legislated ethan allen as colonel, and he was paid a salary. he's one of the first paid american rebels, and for four years, the green mountain boys

held off the new york shall sheriffs and drove out any would-be new york settlers. now, how they did it today, well, you might not approve of completely. you could call it terrorism. it depended. the first time they visited you, if you tried to start a farm with a new york deed, they took your finances down at midnight, and the livestock just went into your garden and into your fields. well, that would be enough for most people to say, well, this is not going to work. if it didn't do the job, the next time they came and took your barn apart. if you were still there, they took the roof off your house. they drew the line at burning. i found no evidence that they set fire to anybody's home, but every time they did it, more would-be new york settlers went back to albany and swore off affidavits.

there's a vast record of these atrocities or defense movements, however you want to characterize them showing these claims so that in four years as allen an the green mountain boys successfully held off the yorkers as they called them, after four years, ethan allen and his officers were denominated outlaws. the new york provenn issue assembly passed a law putting a price on allen's head and his captains. allen's response was to put a price on the head of attorney general of new york. [laughter] should he dare to come into vermont territory, but if he had been caught at any time, he could have been hanged without a trial, summarily executed. it was a very serious thing. luckily for ethan allen, the american revolution came along, and what i mean by that is he was the first to come up with

the idea that lake champlain was a key to the defense of new england and the other colonies, and so when word came of lexington and concord, ethan allen sent a letter to oliver willcot of connecticut proposing to seize the cannon on lake champlain and leading an invasion of canada before the british could reenforce from inland, and he was -- england, and he was commissioned a connecticut colonel and the green mountain boys were pressed into service, and so he organized an expedition against fort ticonderoga. benedict arnold, a wealth yi smuggler and mother chapter from -- merchant from connecticut who formed his own in bright red

uniforms had heard of lexington and march with his men towards boston to volunteer for the fight there, and arnold was given the commission by massachusetts, 10 you have both of them in a foot race to get to fort ticonderoga and they arrived a few days apart. arnold showed up spit and polishes, and the vermont fellows wanted nothing to do with him. they turned their guns over their shoulders which was a sign they were not going to fight, drifted off to the side of a field while allen and arnold negotiated. arnold showed up without even a weapon. he was so full of enthusiasm, and it gave the game away to the british by sending a message through to albany saying he was coming so please send supplies, ect.. they worked out a negotiation so they became the cocome daunts,

and at four o'clock in the morning after a stormy night, they managed to get 89 of the 2,000 green mountain boys, 89 across the lake and attack fort ticonderoga. how did they know what to do? allen sent two spies in, hunters with long beards to the fort basher for a haircut, and they figured out the lay of the land. it was peacetime to those. they had not heard of lexington and concord. a british letter had to go to halifax, quebec, montreal, and st. john, and then down lake champlain to get to fort ticonderoga. all of new england new what was going on. they stormed the fort. they took everyone prisoner. no one was hurt. no one was killed. they found 90 gallons of rum

that belonged to the coma daunt. they had a party. a sendoff of 85 prisoners and 60 women and children to connecticut. now, part of what i've had to do is sort of de bunc that attack. it's what ethan allen supposedly said at the lake, and he wrote the line himself several years later. i guess he figured he couldn't get it through the printer, but by whose authority do you come? ethan allen said in the name of jehovah and the continental congress, but according to a young man there what he really said was come out of you you damned old rat. [laughter] it sounds more believable.

[laughter] well, it didn't go down well with some of the vermonters. they were afraid that the british would counterattack, and allen actually was stripped of his command shortly after this by the town elders of the vermont settlements. he had been commissioned to colonel by the continental congress after visiting independence hall and making a wonderful speech, but that didn't carry weight in new york especially or in the settlements. rather than be out of the fight, he became a scout, and he went into canada to raise french cay neighed ya militia and spy out the defenses. we say into canada. we're talking about quebec province when was huge, but it was defended by only 600 red coats, 300 of those regulars were tied down on the border at fort st. john, and that meant montreal and quebec just had the

other 300. what allen did not know is that the mountain mohawk nation under orders joined the british side, which they had never left. we don't know our history of the indians and the british well enough to know that they were british citizens from 1715 on. there was never a question which side they were going to be on, so allen's idea was to move quickly. it was also the idea of george washington who sent benedict arnold with a thousand men to attack question bike, and at the same time he decided without washington's approval to attack montreal. allen raised 134 men paying some french one pence a day, more cash than they usually had, but the french canadians, many were unhappy with the british. allen miscalculated and thought

he'd have more support. he also thought he'd had support from the americans, his own cousin, the new commander of the green mountain boys did not show up as he expected with the green mountain boys, nor did any of the other americans. basically, ethan allen crossed the river at night trying toot fort ticonderoga again, and he ran into a british garyson under a strong commander, sir guy karlton with 134 trained troops. it was over in two hours and 45 minutes of wasting ammunition as allen pointed out and shot at each other long range as the indians worked behind the others. allen had to surrender. that begins one of the most important things that most vermonters and americans don't know about the saga of prison of ethan allen. he was captured and told he would be sent to england and

tried for treason, hangs, drawn, and quartered. a gory sentence of death. he and others were put in chains in the hold of a ship in the st. lawrence, and they could hear the guns of the americans getting closer and closer, arriving just a little too late to hit montreal as the ship sailed towards england. you have 34 men in a cage in vile conditions crossing the atlantic in chapes in the winter time, and none of them died. these were tough people. allen basically got to enraged at the treatment at one point, he took his man any kls and pit through the chain of soft iron. he had a gap in his smile then, and he was very proud to show it off. reaching england, to his amazement, there was a very

enthusiastic crowd because his fame of taking the king's fort, which the british could not take, had gone ahead of him. a crowd was waiting as he was marched up the long walk to the castle, a brit ire base l -- british castle built by henry eight viii. this was a new problem, a new kind -- it shouldn't have been a question. they were rebels. they should have been hang, but karlton decided they would be tried in eng land -- england. i found a british cabinet ministry meeting at night in the home of a minister com n which they decided the best thing was to do is get ethan allen out of england before he stirred up more popular support because in parliament, john wilkes and pro-americans were working up enough votes to rid of habeas

corpus and try them as american prisoners rather than traitors. ethan allen spent the next few years getting out of there. the british put him on a ship to ireland. in cork, in the cove of cork, the irish road out in open boats bringing presents of meat and fruit and beautiful cloths and a dagger and cash. ethan allen managed to keep the cloth, the cash, and the dagger. the british ships captain ate the meat and drank the pork. the convoy went to the carolinas by way of bermuda. ethan allen was allowed to walk the deck for a few minutes each day. from there, he was taken to halifax where he was put in jail and helped others to escape. he wanted to be traded as an officer and gentleman of equal

rank. he became ill in the jail in halifax. eventually, he was shipped to manhattan after the british had captured new york where he was put on parole, many began by dark and stayed in the township and not speak against the british. he and 300 other officers were sent to brooklyn which was farmland at the time, and what is now the new lot subway stop in east brooklyn, ethan allen was held prisoner, not really held, but wondered to a tavern each day, and he lived on clams because that's what the farmers provided for the $2 a month rent he paid as a prisoner. -too much for him. he broke his parole, crossed to manhattan, saw the horrible conditions of other prisoners. some 10,000 americans died in prison ships in wallabout bay

off brooklyn because of the same decision of the british ministers, what they had decided was that habeas corpus could not be served on a ship, and so the fate of american prisoners was to be held on ships where virtually all of them died in the course of the war, and if you think about it, i think about where we have prisoners right now, it's a naval base. you have to wonder if there's not some legacy of that decision of the british in 1775. well, ethan allen couldn't keep his mouth shut in long island either, and he complained bitterly about the prisoners' treatment by the british, and this time he was arrested and taken to the provost jail, worst jail in british hands in new york city, and put in solitary confinement and he was held there for the rest of the 34 months he spent as a british prisoner. eventually, general washington set up an agreement to trade

with the british commanders, priers for prisoner. we had more than they did, so from the very beginning, we took more prisoners than they d and we had more leverage in exchange, and so in may of 1778, ethan allen was exchanged for full colonel of a british regimen who was member of parliament, one of the proudest moment of of his life, led from elizabethtown, new jersey accompanied by george washington, and george washington gave him a review of honor, treated him well, and after allen went home to vermont, washington wrote this to the president of congress, henry lawrence -- "his fortitude and firmness seemed to have placed him out of reach of misfortune. there is in him an original something that commands admiration, and his long

captivity and sufferings only served to increase, if possible, his characteristic enthusiastic zeal." that's washington's assessment, and very much of the other revolutionary leaders. the first thing ethan allen did when he got back to vermont, well, not the first thing he did -- he learned his brother died a week before looking out the window seeing if ethan allen were coming down the road yet. he lost his son, his wife was dying of tb. tb was sweeping the impoverished frontier at the time, and what he did to show his bitterness to the idea that other americans were fighting against the revolutionaries is hang a loyalist as soon as he got back to vermont. he was made the district attorney, and had the fellow hanged who basically was stealing horses and providing them to the british. the rest of the revolutionary

war period, he was sick. he was weakened by his captivity. he never held elective office because he refused to take an oath. he thought the oath were puritan, and by this time he was confirmed deist. what's that? do they confirm? no. they believe that god was the author of a perfect universe that created everything at once and that you didn't need anybody to fix it, clergy, miracles, bibles, mysteryies, only reason. he ran everything through that filter from the time of his captivity. he became very philosophical of long days of being in confinement. he started signing letters as

the -- i'm losing it, but basically the hick philosopher used various forms of this. in vermont for five years before the revolution ended, he took loyalist properties, put little money in his pocket from each one, kept the family going that way, the loyalist lands paid for the vermont troops in the american revolution and for the defenses at home, so part of his legacy making him popular in vermont is vermonters had no debt when the revolution was over, and everybody else did and wanted vermont to pay a share of it. ethan allen actually negotiated with the british secretly on and off for three years, but from all i can find from studying those papers, which have eluded a lot of historians because the original american records were destroyed when a warehouse in albany burped exactly 100 years

ago. i used the wonderful digitalization of records from the canadians. they are way ahead 6 us -- of us in preserving materials. you can find the correspondence relating to ethan allen's negotiations with governor, the military governor of canada. you can find them digitalized in canada, and you can find the originals in the british library, and after studying them, i found that even the slightest word change can make a terrific difference in the interpretation we get of the historical figures. for example, one day in 1780, the loyalist colonel robinson from new york sent a messager through to ethan allen in articlington, vermont -- arlington, vermont, and the letter began we are well aware of your schemes, and because there was a careless transcript

made sometime in the 1920s, that became we are aware of your commercial schemes, so many historians believe ethan allen was only in it for the money, and only in it double-dealing with the british in the negotiations. once i found that, i took a lot longer studying the records, and that's why the book took six years, but what i came away with was the idea of man who was taking his philosophy and putting into action which is a dangerous thing as we have seen in the 20th century. we put our philosophers in the corner of our universities and very rarely let them make policies. [laughter] ethan allen put into action his deism and his philosophy that death was a very natural thing not to be feared, but that you must resist the enemy. you must be brave. the man loved to jump on tree

stumps, and harangue a crowd, and he was often right for doing it. for example, two young girls got lost in the woods one day in 1780, four and seven years old, lost in the woods. when they didn't show, the neighbor went to ethan allen's and formed a search party. three days and nights they served and men from new york even came to search. on the third day they were about to give up. ethan allen jumped up and said, you're parents, how would you feel? could you stop and leave them out there? don't be afraid of the bears and the wolves. you killed them all. there's no snakes; you've eaten them. two hours later, the girls were found asleep on a rock where they were kept alive eating berries which is why they had been there in the first place. it's that kind of thing that's

missed, but also history. i've gone back and looked at the town histories, many of them compiled town and town by abbey hemmingway in the 1860s, and you get quite a good picture. when the revolution was over, the british realized they were duped, that vermont never intended, the leaders kept secret what they were doing, and never intended to rejoin the british empire. washington was not even sure. he sent a spy in to see what ethan allen was doing, but it's the same spy ethan allen sent into to fort ticonderoga, 10 that didn't work. [laughter] when the revolution was over, ethan allen remarried. his wife had died of tb. he married a much younger woman, 26 years old. the illegitimate daughter of a swiss engineer in the army raised by the aunt, and that aunt married a loyalist who

committed suicide, but left 40,000 acres of land in the connecticut valley, so she and her aunt were trying to sell the land, and ethan allen met her in a boarding house run by the chief justice of vermont. he needed a source of income, proposed to her right away. he would not take an oath of marriage, but he married anyway. they rode off in a sled in the winter time, and back to benington where ethan allen was writing the most inpen traitble document i had ever seen, 500 pages called "reason, the only oracle of man." he needed an editor. he never had one. he apparently dictated all of it. they didn't have spell check, so he must have had a literal clerk, a young college garage rat who -- graduate who needed money. he took the writings he started

back in salisbury, connecticut with author young, the young dr. and he got that manuscript who had died trying to help the troops in the revolution. he sat writing this frontal attack on puritanism in the house he was representing right next door to the puritan church. if you go to benington, you can't find the house, they took it down and put a monument to a more faithful historian in its place. he sold all the land he could, desolved the land company that the family had used all through the period before the war. he held on to 1500 acres in the river valley, and that's where his homestead has been found and reconstructed. wonderful land on the river. he finished his book and had 1500 copies printed as his expense, 200 circulated before

the rest were mysteriously burned. now, some people in town say it's god's will and the lightning did it, and others say, no, it's the printer. he was scared he would be run out of town, too, but they burned. 200 copies circulated to members of congress, governors, and paris where ethan allen was corresponding with one who wrote the famous letters of an american farmer, and they saw the work of ethan allen just before the french revolution. 24 has been a wonderful -- this has been a wonderful quest for me to see how the man went beyond the walls of fort ticonderoga. he -- the personification of him tending a garden, out of politics on a small piece of land naming one of the three children from that second marriage joseph voltaire allen,

and he prospered as a farmer as much as he could raising cattle, trading to the british. vermont had free trade when the rest of the country couldn't when the revolution was over. vermont did not become a state until 1791 after ethan allen died, and his death came about because there was a drought in 1877 and 89, the exact same drought causing starvation in the streets of paris and helped start the revolution. ethan allen and one of his two hired men, a freed black man named newport, crossed the ice to get hay from a cousin on one of the islands. that was the hardest thing for me to find out, the name of this man. he was invisible to history, but i started studying amounts of town newspaper records.

i found an article in 1943 that identified the farm hand of ethan allen, the name was passed down among local people. the other farm hand he had had been partially scalped in the attack on montreal, and was so poor somebody tried to sue him to take his gun away. there was so little money on the frontier, and ethan allen leapt into court and saved him as well. that night, they had a party in south hero, the hero io lands of lake champlain, given to the heros of the fort ticonderoga, and when they heard ethan allen was coming, they poured into the valley, and they had a party. early next morning as ethan allen and newport crossed the ice, newport noticed that something was wrong. ethan allen had stopped talking. he slumped over. i think it's a beautiful ending for this story because here 234

this first american state, created without slavery, ethan allen, his founder, died in the arms of a freed slave. i can't make up something like that. it was the largest funeral that had taken place in america until that time. 10,000 people went through the ice and snow to the home of younger brother ira allen on the river to see ethan allen before he was buried on a hill top overlooking the river. now, he's buried somewhere there. souvenir hunters have stolen everything. we don't know the exact spot, so there's no monument at the grave. there's a 40-foot column with a ridiculous figure on it that's supposed to look like ethan allen. the problem i had is what does he look like? painters couldn't make a living on the frontier. there were no images of him, but

what i discovered the families of the founding fathers were doing a few generations later was getting together for 4th of july and talking about what their an sees sores looked like, something like what you do to a police artist basically, and so the first governor of vermont, no portrait, but if you see him, you have seen them all. there's plenty in vermont, same bushy eyebrows, ect.. and ethan allen -- i was able to verify somewhat what he looked like because jp morgan, buying everything he could that period bought etchings of revolutionary officers, and they are held in the morgan library, and there's an image of ethan allen that matches almost exactly the image in the first really good biography of ethan allen done by john bell in 1929. it's not this. it's not this. this is the statue given to vermont.

vermont's place in statuary hall here in the nations capitol in the 1870s. each state got one, and vermont got ethan allen where he looks remarkably like marlin play napolean. everything's wrong about it, a french revolutionary hat with a cape. the rest is right, but that's not ethan allen. [laughter] the family came up with a composite sketch of him in the book. this is the first illustrated biography of ethan allen, and i went to great pains to get versions of him, but there's a composite describing what he looked like at the end of his captivity as a prisoner of war, and i think that's the closest because i've seen other allens including his 6th grandson who helped me start the work by giving me all the ethan allen books printed, and he's a dead ringer for the fellow who was a