crisis would like to blame what sociologists call the other. that is people who are different than you. so that when i was giving a talk last week -- and i think we probably have to end in a minute so this might be my last answer. so i was giving a talk a couple months ago actually in arizona. and people asked me about the crisis of the economy in arizona is in disastrous shape with homes people can't sell and people forced to foreclose. what they blame this crisis on? illegal mexican workers who are coming in and taking jobs from american citizens. so all those people in their $400,000 homes are just dying to go out and pick tomatoes in the fields of arizona and illegal mexican workers are taking these jobs away from them. this, of course, is absurd. this, of course, is nonsensical.

but rather than to look inward and say, oh, we have some really incredible structural problems with our economy or we have problems with a society where 4 million people are held in bondage -- rather than to discuss that, you find someone else you can blame. you find the scapegoat. and so in the 1840s, the convenient scapegoat are irish immigrants. they are poor. they are catholic. they are different from us. and they threaten us. i should note by the way that fillmore brings a treaty with switzerland to the senate and urges the senate to pass this treaty because it will give americans equal rights in switzerland and swiss citizens equal rights in america except the first paragraph of the treaty says, this will only apply to christian americans because half the cantons in switzerland did not allow jews to come in the cantons or much

less run a business or own land there. and fillmore sees nothing wrong with this even, of course, by this time there's about a quarter million jews in the united states, not nearly as many are there are in black slaves and irish immigrants but these american citizens are not on fillmore's radar screen because they are not his americans and that's why i would argue that, in fact, what we have here is the first tea party president. and in 1856, the first tea party presidential candidate. thank you. [applause] >> paul finkelman's millard fill moor is part of the american presidents series and for more information visit americanpresidentsseries.com.

>> booktv has over 100,000 twitter followers. be a part of the excitement. follow booktv on twitter to get publishing news, scheduling updates, author information and talk directly with authors during our live programming. twitter.com/booktv. >> and now willard stern randall recounts the life of american revolutionary war figure ethan allen who was the leader of the green mountain boys who was remembered for his attack on a for the in 1775 and his time spent as a prisoner of war in england. this is about an hour. >> thank you again for coming. my name is sarah boline. on behalf of everyone here i'd like to welcome you. i'm pleased to welcome william certain randall this evening for his biography, ethan allen his life and times. allen as we most know is the leader -- was the leader of the green mountain boys. he's remembered for his attack

on for the the for the and his time spent as a prisoner of glared but talking his struggle and as a para in the eve of the revolution rememberers an accurate portrait of our least examined portraits. william has done biographies on thomas jefferson, benedict arnold and ben fringe lynn. he's a newly happily retired history professor from champagne college. please welcome me to poll licks and prose. [applause] >> thank you very much. and thank you for coming out tonight in the thunder and lightening. my point from departure is right from the introduction -- if we

know anything about ethan allen usually it's only that he took the for the, wherever that is and however you spell it, his name is usually linked with the green mountain boys, as if they were joined by some mystical cord but we know little else about him. and that is why i wrote this book. i've lived for over 25 years in vermont where he's become a mythical figure. and part of what i've had to do is sort of peel away the layers of theology and try to figure out what the real ethan allen was like. to vermonters he's part paul bunyan, part davy crockett and two part jack daniels. [laughter] >> as soon as i said i was writing about ethan allen, i saw a gesture i had never seen before.

oh, ethan allen, oh, ethan allen. and seems to be the part vermonters are most proud of. [laughter] >> but they know little beyond that, even beyond the schools. ethan allen, among other things, i found, just to start out with a little summary -- in addition to taking the most formidable fort with 89 men and not fire a shot, he was the first published diased philosopher. he organized 29 communities to defend the new hampshire grants as it was known. there still wasn't a new hampshire. preserving the homesteads until the revolution came along, for 40 years. he was a prolific author. i was surprised at how much he

wrote. but he was better known as the land speculator and the two things connected between ethan allen bought and sold land, bought it as cheaply as he could and sold it in small parcels to hundreds and hundreds of frontier families but if you didn't have any money on hand to buy a piece of land when he came you through his clearing he sold you a pamphlets or he got a few acres or parted with a schilling. 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. and 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. because the case of ethan allen prisoner of war set the precedent for how prisoners were treated and the diplomatic

relations between warring governments in the civil war. so he had quite an 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. and that memoir that he wrote about his captivity went through 60 printings before the civil war and is still in print. there are very few works that have lasted that well. how did he come about? this robin hood who's also characterized depending on where you are -- if you're in new york, he was a swatter and a land grander. if you're in vermont, new

england he's robin hood. he was born in litchfield connecticut in 1758, when it was the frontier, hard to imagine if you go to the berkshires today. one of eight children. the town had been in part founded by his grandmother, mercy allen, who took over when her husband didn't have the -- quite the verve to keep the farm going. he was born to perfect parents for the times, joseph and mary. and their children had biblical names and you can actually trace the changes in the religious views of people on the frontier by going through the names of those children. ethan means strong in hebrew. and the first six children have old testament names. the last two, after the family sort of back-slid away from puritanism to .

and he may have stayed there and never gone to vermont except for something called the great awakening which i think was really 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 of speaking in three-hour certainlions in the puritan meeting houses but in the 1730s and '40s, missionaries came from england. anglicans came from the holy club of oxford university. george whitfield and the wesley brothers and every year they preached down the length of the british colonies from newport, rhode island to savannah and the crowds were enormous for the times. benjamin franklin was the first to verify how large the crowds were when whitfield came through

philadelphia. franklin invented a way to count a crowd. it's a pretty good one. he walked around the edges and then he figured out how many -- he calculated how many square feet the average person took up, and he came to the conclusion that there were 25,000 people in the audience. without a microphone, george whitfield could reach all of them. he traveled along with two horses one for himself and one for his portable pulpit from town to town. and wherever he went, young people, poor people who had never felt at home in the puritan meeting houses turned out and so the great awakening produced a schism in new england and 300 new separatist churches which was too much for ethan allen's father joseph. he was born a proud puritan. they called themselves saints, upper case s much as

evangelicals still do today and rather than stay in litchfield and part of the great awakening he led 18 families into the wilderness into northwestern connecticut which seems a funny thing to say the wilderness but in a valley he started a new town called cornwall. he was everything the town moderator, the selectman, the tax assessor, the 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 old saying at least when i was growing up -- we were told an idle mind is a devil's workshop. in fact, massachusetts had passed a law in 1648 called the old deluder sankton law so whenever a community reached a population of 50 families they had to build a schoolhouse. ethan allen was born too soon. his younger brother you're are

a, his youngest brother actually got to go to primary school. ethan allen never went to a formal school. what he learned in cornwall from his father is how you start a community. from the ground up, literally, and from the ground down, because when people moved on to the frontier, the first year, they had to clear enough land to plant 2 acres. that was the formula. 1 acre to plant wheat, for bread. 1 acre for corn, for livestock. for the most valuable thing they had was the livestock and they built a cabin always the same working in teams of people. logs of the same diameter and length dovetailed 1.5 story cabins at first. a loft for the people in winter, the downstairs for the livestock. you brought them into the house. you had no problem with enough heat. by the second year, you attached a shed or built a separate barn. and that's how a 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 would be the pattern all across the country. the other thing that became a pattern all across the country was what they did to the landscape when they settled a new community. basically, they cut down the hardwoods. there was a hardwood forest from cape breton highlands of nova scotia when the first american immigrants arrived. and that would be eventually flattened, cut down. and why? why, were they just terrible people trying to destroy their environment? no. they had no money. and if you cut down one water elm, very tall water elm and trimmed off the top growth and the side branches and the twigs and all that and burnt it, you

could produce pot ash which you then leeched down until you formed a rock crystal, like a big rock candy and those crystal, those rock crystal of pot ash could then be sold for cash to the english who needed it at the start of the industrial revolution for fixatives in their new textile industry to make sulfuric acid. one large elm tree produced enough cash to provide money and cut down more timber to buy a little more land you get the picture. they used the trunks of the trees for fencing to build houses, eventually to build ships and rafts, et cetera. but 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 these families like the allens had 8 to 10 children. and their problem was, they all survived. so 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 6 feet tall at a time when the average american male when the average 5'6 inches. but 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 and do a lot of work and that became legendary it became a myth of ethan allen.

that he could take a 100-pound sack of corn in his teeth and sling it over his soldier. he wouldn't have had many teeth if he had tried that. i know what 50 pounds feels like. never 100. but he grew up on a farm. and when he was 16, his father decided that he needed a better education than he could get learning how to read and write and do sums from his mother because women did the education while the men did the farm work and the hunting. women were literate. and even though we may not have evidence of much 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. so for more education than that, ethan's father took him to salisbury, connecticut, to the private school of the reverend

arthur lee, who was a great awakening preacher but like most of the clergy of that time had to support themselves by taking in boarding students four or five or six or eight at a time living in the house for 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. so 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. and he came home and took over the family, helped his mother raise the other seven children, run the farm, bay off his 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, well, maybe somewhere else you could have even more. so 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. and he stayed at home until age 26. he only left twice briefly to join militia trying to re-enforce the english during the french and indian wars. and he saw no combat but he 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 about average for an american male. and he married a woman six years older than he was. it was not a flaming romance. it's just that he had carried the corn on sacks to his her father's milling and she would

fix him to eat and they got to know each other well and he spent more time over years went by. everybody knew that she was ethan allen's girl. nobody else apparently dated her. and he didn't date anybody else in cornwall because they were all relatives. there wasn't much of a selection. but he did marry at age 26. and moved to salisbury and set up his first business. he founded the forbes and allen iron foundry, the oldest in connecticut, which went on -- right through the revolution and would produce canon for the american revolution at least. he got a little distracted from his business which was flourishing when he met a young doctor in town who was a deists and they spent to spending long afternoons and evenings and having a little bit 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 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 swept through the british colonies. every 30 years there was a great epidemic that hit boston. where people left boston, moved up and down the coast and started to go into the frontier and move farther and farther west because of those epidemics. and one reason this continued was because inoculation 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 worthily monthgue the written about it and they had spread those writings in america and there was so superstition in intervening what was considered god's will that the smallpox epidemics won't. ethan allen thought something had to be done about this and he did it -- what became his quintessential way. on a sunday as everyone poured himself out of service he had himself inoculated by dr. young. how they did it a needle a thread that was passed through a sore of somebody with smallpox passed through his arm giving him a dose of smallpox. well, he was arrested, not for inoculation because when one of the select men -- his former teacher and magistrate, reverend lee, accosted him for it, he

managed to put beasbub and god in the same sentence so he was tried for blasphemy and in court he didn't make it any better and the working men and the farmers crowded in and loved ethan allen a little too much for the magistrates so he was convicted and fined the maximum fine of ten shellings. it doesn't sound like much but if you had two convictions in any town you were rode out of town. they got him on the second offense. the second offense -- somebody's hog got out and into ethan allen's garden. and he arrested the hog. now, 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 covenant of the hog grieve who had then brought charges against him and

he was convicted again and he was red out of salisbury, connecticut. which many had to leave connecticut so he went right to the flame. he went to northampton, massachusetts, which was already a battleground because the leading theologian john edwards had been red out of that town because he had accused young men getting a book belonging to a midwife and passing it around to the girls and he named names from the pulpit. you just didn't do that so jonathan edwards went off to the wilderness and eventually became the president of princeton which was about the same thing at that time. i can say it. i went there. and ethan allen went there and got in trouble right away he opened a lead mine. people thought at the time where there was lead there was silver and gold. there wasn't. and he swore a lot with his workers, as people do in mines. and the clergy kept inspecting

and finally brought him up on charges again of profanity this time so he was fined and convicted. he sold his interest in the lead mine. he was losing interest in business but when the fellow who bought the mine showed up at settlement without the money, ethan allen stripped to the waist and thrashed the fellow. he was arrested again. but then the fellow left town and got his friends to come back and ethan allen this time stripped to the waist and got out his bullwhip and there was another altercation and this time ethan allen was red out of northampton and out of massachusetts. well, but then where do you go? he had a family? he left his wife and children with his younger brother who was the -- sort of the tamest one of the clan, hemman allen who ran a general store and ethan allen for the next four winters 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 wrote as he attempted many things and attempted a biography of ethan allen and never finished it. ethan allen would run alongside a herd of deer. indian style, they waited for a full moon. and in the snow there was a crust of snow perfect for snowshoeing but not perfect for the sharp hooves of deer so they would run alongside the deer and ethan allen would run next and take a hat of the car vass and run along and shoot another one and take off his coat and put it on the deer, shoot another one and take off his tunic and put it on the deer. you get the picture.

before he was through we could say he was buck naked. but what he did was take the skin of the last deer he shot and put himself while he went back and dressed the game. the hides every spring were sent by canoe down to salisbury where the younger brothers had set up a tannery and made buckskin coveralls, a very prosperous business on the frontier. even jefferson pulled on buckskins over his go to meeting suit for years. the horse sweated. you had to have buckskin. so the family was prospering while ethan allen was hunting, he was also exploring. and finding 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 bought his first land. 1,000 acres for the equivalent of 1,000 of our dollars.

500 acres, 500 in new haven which is just above middlebury. and he got the bug, the speculative bug. and other members of the family followed him. some of his neighbors had seen vermont during the french and indian wars. colonel thomas chittenden decided to move into the river valley up near burlington, vermont, and bolten valley. now to do this ethan allen became a land speculator and investor. at first with very small pieces of land. his timing could not have been worse. at exactly that time in 1770, the old problem of who owned the land flared. new hampshire's governor had sold charters for 170 townships

in new hampshire and vermont. now, who bought the charters? i did a little digging. for example, williston vermont is named after sam willis who's a merchant in long island for supplying the british and american laws and he wanted to lay some of it off in vermont. so willis and his friends came up with 40 shillings in silver and that went to governor wentworth for granting the papers to set up a township 5 miles by 5 miles. you see the numbers and the scale -- 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, our charter says everything between lake champlain and the connecticut river is part of new york. so new york governors began counter-claiming and insisted that the settlers buy the land a

second time. the speculators and the settlers who had begun to trickle in. there were only 1500 people living in vermont by 1770. but those people wanted to hold on to their land. they had cleared it. they had worked very hard. it took whatever they had. and what ethan allen did as a speculator, as a shareholder among these people said we should resist and he was chosen at a stockholders meeting as we would call it to hire the best lawyer in new england and go to albany, new york, the capital of -- not the capital but where the supreme court of new york was, 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 bennington area who wouldn't budge. they stood with their guns at

their sides in the fields until the posse went away. .. in the middle of the wilderness. but he also new is the chief counsel for the province of new york owned 60,000 acres of vermont land. the chief judge owned 170,000 acres or was claiming to in vermont. they all had conflicts of interest. so allen went back and the

leaders of the 29 settlements got together at a meeting at the catamount tavern which became the unofficial capital and they decided to form a militia with captains in each town and the captains elected the colonel, don and he was paid. so he is one of the first paid american rebels and for four years of the green mountain boys held off the new york sheriffs and drove out and would be new york settlers. now how they did it today well, you might not approve of completely if you call what vigilantes' samore terrorism and dependent. the first time they visited you tried to start a farm with the new york beat the to your senses down and the livestock went into your garden and into your fields. that would be enough people to

say this isn't going to work. if it didn't do the job the next time they came and took your barnhart, and if you were still there they took the roof off your house. they drew the line and a burning. they never set fire to anybody's home, but every time they did it, more would-be sellers back to albany and affidavits so there's vast records of these atrocities or defense movements however you want to characterize showing these claims so that in four years as the green mountain boys successfully held off the yorkers as they called them after four years ethan allen and his officers were denominated out clause. they passed a law putting the price of the 100-pound sterling which is an awful lot of money

at that time and 50 on each of the captain's. his response was to put a price on the head of the attorney-general should he dare to come into the vermont territory. but if he had been caught at any time she could have been hanged without a trial and executed it is a very serious thing. luckily for evin allen, the american revolution came along. what i mean by that is he was the first to come up with the idea of lake champlain was the key to the defense of new england and the other colonies so when the word can of lexington and concord ethan allen sent a letter to all over will cost of the committee of correspondence of connecticut in which he proposed ceasing the cannon on lake champlain and then leading an invasion of canada before the british could

reinforce from england and he was commissioned a connecticut colonel and the green mountain boys were into service. so he organized an expedition. what he didn't know at the same time benet it arnold, a wealthy smuggler and merchant from norwich connecticut who formed his own company of soldiers and outfitted them and put them all in bright red uniforms had heard of lexington and march with his man some of them yale students toward boston to volunteer for the fight. he was given a commission by massachusetts, so you have both of them in a footrace to get to the ticonderoga and they arrive basically a few days apart. arnold showed up and they were not going to have anything to do with him. they turned their guns over which is a sign of the fight and

her drift off to the side of the field while ellen and arnold negotiated he showed up without even a weapon he was so full of an uzi is in. also he had given the game away to the british by sending a message through to lme to the colony say that he was coming in to bring supplies etc.. they worked out in negotiations and that they became the coach, wants, and at 4 o'clock in the morning on may 10th, 1775 after a stormy night on lake champlain, they managed to get 89 of the 2000 green mountain boys the promised to muster, 89 across the lake and attacked fort ticonderoga. how did they know what to do? allen had sent to spies, hunters with long beards to the fort barbour for a haircut and they figured out the lead of the land. it was peace time to the garrisons. they haven't heard of lexington and concord. a british letter had to go to

halifax, quebec, montreal and st. john and then down on lake champlain to get to ticonderoga. paul revere was a little more efficient. all of new england was going. so allen and arnold stormed the fort. the took a free one prisoner. no one was hurt, no one was killed. they found 90 gallons of rum that belonged to the commandant and they had a bit of a party. ethan allen wrote that he would pay the, not at some future time and send 85 prisoners and 60 women and children to connecticut. part of life had to do is deboned that attack. one of the from the date the most famous lines in history is what e thad allen supposedly said to the, not at ticonderoga and he rode the wind himself several years later i guess he

figured he couldn't get the real thing for the printer but what became famous as when the, not said by whose authority do you demand ethan allen supposedly set in the name of jehovah's and the continental congress. but according to the young man who was there and the british subaltern who was next to the, not in the report what he really said was coming out of there, you damn old rat. [laughter] which sounds a little bit more believable. well it didn't go down well with some of them in vermont. they were afraid the british counterattack. and allen was actually stripped of his command shortly after this one by the town elders of the vermont settlements. he had been the commissioned colonel by the continental congress after breaking independence hall and making a wonderful speech. but that didn't carry much work decollate in new york especially were in the settlements. so rather than stay out of the

fight, he became a scout and went to canada to raise the canadian militia and buy out the defenses. now into canada we are talking about the quebec province which was a huge but was defended by only 600 redcoats. 300 of those regulars were tied down on the border at fort st. john and that meant montreal and quebec only head theatre 300. but allen did not know is that the mohawk nation under orders from the iroquois six nations joined the british side which they 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 and on. there was never a question which side they were going to be on. so alan's idea was to move quickly and was also the idea of george washington who sent

benedict arnold with a thousand men to attack quebec at the same time ethan allen decided without george washington's approval to attack montr. ellen was only able to raise 134 men, paying some french cannot be taught 1p a day which is usually more cash than they had, but the french canadians many were unhappy with the british so he miscalculated and thought he would have much more support from the french canadians. he also thought he would have more support from the americans. his own cousin, the new commander of the green mountain boys did not show up as he expected, nor did any other americans so basically he crossed the st. lawrence river at night trying to do this again and he ran into a british garrison under a strong commander with 134 trained troops and mohawk warriors.

it was over in about two hours and 45 minutes of wasting ammunition as ethan allen pointed out. as the shot at each other long range until the indians worked around behind allen and theaters and the had to surrender, and that begins i think one of the most important things most in vermont and most americans don't know about the prison of evin allan. he was captured and told he would be sent to england and tried for treason which is a cory way of carrying out a sentence of death. so he and the offers 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 at montreal as the ships sailed toward england said you have 44 men in a cajun final conditions across it the atlantic inn chains in the wintertime and none of them died.

these are tough people. allen basically got so enraged at the treatment at one point that he took his manacles and debt through the chain of the soft odierno. so for the rest of his life he had a little bit of a gap in his smile and he was very proud to show it off. when he reached england, to his amazement the was a crowd waiting, a very enthusiastic crowd because his famous for taking the for which the british hadn't been able to take from the french and the french and indian war had gone ahead of him so the crowd was waiting as he was marched up the long walk to the castle, a british castle built by henry viii where he was to be held. while they tried to figure out what to do with him this was a new problem. it shouldn't have been a question. they were rebels. but carlton had decided they would be tried in england.

and so i was able to find a british cabinet ministry meeting at night in the home of one of the ministers in which they decided the best thing they could do is get even alan the heck out of england before he started that anymore populace support because in parliament john wilkes and pro-american were working enough and enough votes to get rid of habeas corpus to get the prisoners tried instead it as traders. so even allen would spend much of the next few years getting the heck out of there. the british put out a ship to ireland to join the convoy at talking charleston. in the cove the irish rolled out in open boats bringing presents of meat and fruit and a beautiful cloth and a dagger and cash. ethan allen managed to keep the cash and the dagger. the british ships captain drink

the port. from ireland, the convoy went to the carolinas by way of bermuda. even alan still held and allowed them to walk the deck for a few minutes each day. from there he was taken to halifax where he was actually put in jail and helped the others escaped. he refused to escape. he wanted to be treated as an officer and a gentleman of equal rank. so he became retial 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 had to begin by darkened stage in the township where he was held and not speak against the british. and then he and 300 other officers were sent to brooklyn which was farmland the time and what is now the new subway stop in east brooklyn he was held a

prisoner wasn't really held, he wanted to beat walked into a tavern each day he didn't have money to buy anything and he lived on clams because that is what they provided for the $2 a month he had to pay as a prisoner. it was too much for him. he broke his parole and crossed the manhattan and he saw the horrible conditions of other prisoners. some 10,000 americans died in prison ships in wall about day off of brooklyn because of that same decision of the british ministers what they had decided was that habeas corpus could not be served on the ship so with the fate of american prisoners was to be held on the ships virtually where all of them died in the course of the war. if you think about, think about where we have prisoners' right now it's a naval base you have to wonder if there isn't some legacy of the decision of the profession 1775. welcome even island 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, the worst in british hands in new york city and put in solitary confinement and he was held in the provost jail for the rest of the 34 months that he spent as a british prisoner. eventually the general washington was able to set up an agreement to trade with the british commanders. we had more than they did so from the very beginning we took more prisoners than they did and we have more leverage in the exchange and so may of 78 e. fallin was exchanged for a full colonel of a british regiment who was a member of parliament, one of the proudest moments of his life, and he was led by a calgary export from elizabethtown new jersey to volley forge where he was ushered into the company of

george washington, and george washington gave him a review of honor, treated him very well and after allen went home to vermont washington wrote this to the president of the congress. his fortitude and firmness seems to have placed him out of reach of misfortune. there is in him and our original something that commands admiration and his long captivity and suffering have only served to increase if possible his characteristic enthusiastic zeal. so that's washington's assessment and very much of the other revolutionary leaders. the first thing he did when he got back to vermont, not the first thing that he learned that his brother died on the week before looking out the window waiting to see if evin was coming down the road yet. he lost his only son. his wife was dying of tuberculosis, the daughter was studying of tuberculosis sweeping the impoverished

frontier that time. and what he did to show his bitterness to the idea that 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 have the fellow hang who basically was stealing horses and providing to the british faugh the haags. the rest of the period he was weakened by his captivity. he never held elected office because he refused they believe that god was the author of a perfect universe that created everything at once and didn't

need anybody to fix it. clergy, miracles, bibles, mysteries, only reason. so he ran everything through that filter from the time of his captivity, became very philosophical during the long days in confinement. he started to sign his letters as -- i am losing it but basically the hick philosopher he used various forms of this. in vermont for five years before the revolution ended, he confiscated the loyalist properties, put money in his pocket, kept the family going that way. the confiscation of the loyalist land paid for the vermont troops in the american revolution and for the defense at home. as a part of his legacy which still makes him very popular in vermont is the had no debt on

the revolution and everybody else did and wanted for want to pay their share of it. ethan allen actually negotiated with the british secret the on and off for three years but all i can find from studying those papers which i have included a lot of historians because the original american records were destroyed when the warehouse and albany burned 100 years ago but i was able to use the wonderful digitalization of records of the canadians they are ahead of us on preserving materials and confined the correspondence that this is called relating to the negotiations with governor haldeman, the military governor of canada. you can find them digitalized in canada and you can find the originals in the british library. after studying them, i found that even the slightest word change can make a difference in

the interpretation that we get of our historical figures. for example, one day in 1780 dillinger list colonel robinson from new york sent a messenger 32 ethan allen in arlington vermont and began we are well aware of your commerical schemes command because there was a careless transcript and sometime in the 1920's that became we are aware of your commercial schemes so many historians believe that even now when was only in it for the money and was only dealing with the british and the haldeman 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 the man who was taking his philosophy and putting it into action which is a dangerous thing as we have seen in the 20th century.

we put our philosophers in the corner of the universities and a very rarely let them make policy but even allen put in his deism and the philosophy that def was a very natural thing not to be feared but that you must resist the enemy coming you must be brave. the man loved to jump on the tree stumps and he was often write for doing it for example to young girls got lost in the woods one day in 17 eda, 4-year-old and 7-years-old and when they didn't show up by nightfall the mother went next door to the farm and told them and he organized a search party and for three days and nights they searched and men can even from new york to join the search and they couldn't find them. on third day they were about to give up and she jumped on his tree stump and said your

parents, how would you feel? can you stop and leave them out there? don't be afraid of the bares and wolves, you killed them all. there are no snakes, you've eaten them so the search party went on again and two hours later the girls were found asleep on a rock where they're headed been kept alive eating berries which is why they had been there in the first place, but it's that kind of finger that is miffed but also history and what i've done is i've gone back and looked at on histories many of them compiled town by town in the 1860's and 70's, written by the local historians, and you get quite a good picture. so when the revolution was over the british finally realized the it been duped, that vermont never intended its leaders kept secret but they were doing and never had intended to rejoin the british empire. washington wasn't even sure she spent a spy to find out what

even allen was doing it was the scene despite the even allen had sent to ticonderoga said that didn't work. [laughter] when the revolution was over, even alan remarried. his wife had died and he married a much younger woman, 26-years-old. she was the illegitimate daughter of a swiss engineer in the british army raised by his on and who had committed suicide but left 40,000 acres in the committee conn alisa there were there to see if anybody itself of land. ethan allen met her in a boarding house run by the chief justice of fremont. he needed a source of income proposed right away he wouldn't take an oath of marriage, but he married any way and they rode off in a the wintertime and back where ethan allen was hard at work writing the most dhaka that

i've ever seen 500 some pages cold reason the only oracle of man. he needed an editor. he never had one. he apparently dictated all of it. they didn't have a spell check so he must have had a clerk probably a young college graduate who needed some money but he took the writings that he started back in salzburg connecticut with arthur young, the young doctor and then he got that manuscript from the widow of arthur young that died in the field hospital trying to help the troops and the revolution and he sat writing this attack on puritanism in the house he was renting next door to the puritan church. if you go to bennington you will find the house. they tore it down and put the monument to the more fitful historian in its place. but he finished and sold all the

land he could. he dissolved the company that the family used all through the period before the war. he held on to 1500 acres in the valley and that is where his homestead has been found and reconstructed. wonderful land on the river but he finished his book and he had 1500 copies britain and its own expense only to hundred circulated before the rest were mysteriously burned. some people in town say that of scott's will and the lightning did it and others say it was the printer he was scared he was going to be run out of town, too missile me 200 copies circulated. they went the members of congress, they went to governors, they went to paris where even alan was corresponding come and actually saw the work of ethan allen just

before the french revolution's of this has been a wonderful quest for me to see how this man has gone beyond the loss of fort ticonderoga. he ended up living the the personification of tending his garden out of politics on a small piece of land, naming one of the three children from the second marriage joseph valverde and he prospered as a former as much as he could reason cattle, treating them to the british. vermont had free trade when the rest of the country couldn't when the revolution was over. they did not become a state until 1791 after ethan allen died and his death came about because there was a drought in 1788 and 89 in the exact same drought causing starvation in the streets of paris but on

february 10, 79, even alan and one of his two hired men, a free black man named newport crossed the ice to get a load of hay from a cousin on one of the islands in lake champlain. the was the hardest thing for me to find out the name of this man. he was invisible to history. but i started studying voluminous amounts of town newspaper records and found an article in 1943 that identified the farmhand of ethan allen. the name had been passed down among local people. the other farm hand had been partially stopped in the attack on montr and was so poor somebody tried to sue him and take his gun away there was so little money in the frontier and ethan allen left in to court and saved him as well. but that night they had a party in the islands in the lake champlain given to the heroes of

ticonderoga why the vermont legislature and the green mountain boys when they heard he was coming they poured into the tavern and they had a party. early next morning as ethan allen and newport crossed the ice, newport noticed something was wrong. ethan allen had stopped talking. he slumped over. so i think it is a beautiful ending for the story because here in this first american state, created without slavery, the 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 under your brother on the river to see fallin before he was buried on