shorting the market. he then the market knowing that the market is going to go down. he literally made that trade the next morning and he made $10,000 oxygenate couple thousand dollars at risk. during this financial crisis as he was having the series of meetings, as he was writing legislation and ranking republican on enough financial services committee, he literally engaged in 40 options trades that seemed to be particularly well-timed and made a lot of money. his insistence is he did not trade on information but tonight i'm if you're a corporate executive, the fcc would take a huge interest in this. >> watch this and other programs online at ltp.org. >> i program from the book to the archives. the license says were figure ethan allen.

the leisure of the green mountain boys and is remembered for his attack on fort o'connor wrote that in 1775. he died on february 12, 1789 at the age of 52. this is about an hour. >> thank you again for coming. i'm a bookseller politics & prose on the behalf of here at the look of view. i'm really pleased to welcome willard sterne randall for his biography, step two. alan is a leader of the green mountain boys. issue number for his attack on fort conder roca and his time spent at the prisoner of war in england. but by chronicling allen's upward struggle from a adolescent to command of the largest american peller tillery forest, mr. randall has rendered inaccurate portrait of

quantifier least examined patriots. he's the outset of numerous books including biographies of thomas jefferson and thomas jefferson, benedict arnold in george washington and his been nominated six times for the pulitzer prize and it's a happily retired history professor from champlain college. please join in welcoming him to politics & prose. [applause] >> thank you very much for coming out. tonight in the thunder and lightning. my point of departure is in the introduction. if we know anything about ethan allen, usually it is only that he took fort conder wrote however that is and however you want to spell it. his name is usually linked with green mountain boys as if they were joined by some mystical court. 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 has become a mythical figure. and part of what i've had to do is peel away the layers of mythology and try to figure out what the real ethan allen was like. to vermonters, he is part paul bunyan, part david crockett and to project daniels. as soon as i said i was writing about ethan allen, i saw a gesture it never seemed before. ethan allen. and that seems to be the part that vermonters are proudest of. but apparently they know little beyond that. even in the schools. ethan allen among other things i found to start off with a little summary in addition to taking the most formidable fort in

british america was only 89 men and without firing a shot he was the first published american deist philosopher. he organized 29 communities to defend the new hampshire grants as they were called. against the competing claims of new york, preserving the homestead when the revolution came along. for 40 years. he was a prolific author. i was surprised. but he was better known as the land speculator and the two things connect to it because ethan allen bought and sold land, but it as cheaply as a kite and sold at a 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, he salutes you a few leakers.

he really is the founding father of vermont because without him, and new york could not have been held at bay and neither could the british. that one means or another. andy has also the reason why we have a prisoner for policy stretching down to the present time that we do and i'll explain that were because the case of ethan allen is very well. the diplomatic relations between governments and the civil war. so he had quite an impact and yet we know little of him. he wrote a narrative as a soundtrack to the that went to eight additions in two years and really enliven the revolution by

making it clear to lacking but it was the lawyers more than the british forces. and that memoir he wrote about his captivity went or 60 printing for this mobile war and is still in print. very very few other works that have lasted top of. how does he come about this robin hood who is also sure to rise. he was a squatter and a land grabber. if you're in vermont, just robin hood. there's a little bit of both. he was born in litchfield connecticut in 1738 when i was a frontier. hard to imagine. one of eight children. the town had been to keep the

farm going. he was born to perfect parents for the times. joseph and mary and her children have biblical names. you can actually trace the changes in the religious views of people in a frontier by going through the names of those children. ethan means strong in hebrew. the last two. the last two. the last two from anglicanism. he was born on the frontier, but not in a shack, and a solid home in the united states they are except for something called the great awakening, which i think is really the time of the american revolution, for mass

meetings to hear someone speak. until then they cut enough speaking at three hour sermon than the 1730s and 40s, missionaries came from england, anglicans from the holy cloud originally of oxford university, george whitfield and the wesley brothers. and every year they preached on the link of the british colonies from newport, rhode island to savanna. and the crowds were enormous. benjamin franklin was the first to verify how a large crowd was when wasilla came through philadelphia. franklin invented a way. he walked around the edges and then he figured out -- he calculated how many square feet the average person took out and came to the conclusion there at 25,000 people in the audience.

without a microphone, george puts it cookery shawl. he travels along with two horses, one for himself and one for his portable from town to town. wherever he went, young people who have never felt at home in the houses turned out. the great awake again produce schism in new england separate churches, which was too much for ethan allen's father. he was born it. 10. much as evangelicals he was due today. rather than stay and featured be part of the great awakening, he led 19 families into the wilderness of northwestern connecticut, which seems like a funny thing to say. but in a valley, he started out

the hot breeze, all of those jobs until enough people came along. the problem for ethan allen was you didn't build school and a new community and so they were 50 families. why that number? you have this old saying when i was growing up we were told at an idle mind is the devil's workshop. in fact, massachusetts is still out in 1648 called you'll dilute her sainted law. whenever a community reached population they had to build a schoolhouse. ethan allen was born too soon. they actually got to go. ethan allen never went to the reform 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. the first year they had to clear

enough land. that was before we had. when maker for corn for the last that. for the most valuable thing they had was the lifestyle. and they built a cabin always the same market in terms of people with the same diameter and length. one and a half story cabin secure. olaf for the people in the winter and downstairs who had no problem with the nephew. by this i can't you attached a shed or built a separate fine. and that is how the community grew, slowly. but in the same way. we have an idea of frontiers people going off on their own. we have a communal frontier. to 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 is a hardwood forest from the highlands of nova scotia to minnesota when the first americans, immigrants arrived and i was eventually flattened, shut down. and why? were they just terrible people? no, they had no money. and if you cut down one water and turned off the top growth of the twigs and all of that and burnt it, you could produce hot ash but she then produced until you formed a rock candy and those crystals of hot ash would then be sold for cash to the english perfect citizen and a

textile industry to make sulfuric acid, et cetera. but for now i have found ways one large on tree produce enough cash to buy two acres of land. so the frontier people would cut down enough timber to buy a little more land and cut down a little more land. you get the picture. they used the trunks of the trees were sent into that house says, eventually to build ships, wraps, et cetera. this was a pattern, so people with almost no money could have a down payment and expand and expand as their families expanded because many families bakery community they are indians in the area so he learned to highlands in style

and he turned into a rope fast and very outgoing term and. he was over six feet tall was about five feet six. how do we know? when the french center their uniforms, they sent the right sizes. we can see how the size of the average american. ethan allen was taller from hard farmer, which i did for a few years. he learned how to carry a great deal of weight into a lot of work and legendary, that he could take 100-pound sack of corn in his teeth and fling it over a shoulder. he wouldn't have had many teeth if he would've tried it. over 100. but he grew up on a farm and when he was 16, his father

decided he needed a better education than he could get learning how to read and write because women take the education the farmer. women were literate. even though he may not have evidence of much of that comment. 10 women were trained to keep records of their spiritual feelings and diaries and they made sure their children view the bible. so for my education, ethan's father took in the south to a private school of the reverend arthur the, which is a great awakening preacher, but like most clergy have to support themselves by taking it boarding students, four, five, six or eight at a time living in the house with them. for nine months, ethan allen studied the classics, learning

some 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. said ethan allen's education he was being heard good to divinity school which turned out to be pretty ironic later on. but he came home and took over the family, helped his mother and raise the other seven children and paid a post-father's day because his father was rd detection of early americans. he couldn't clear enough land. maybe somewhere out there. so he raised his younger brothers and was a bit of a bully to them. he only left twice briefly to join and reinforce the english

during the french words. he saw no combat, but he saw her mom 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 native women pictures older. it is not a flaming romance. it was just that he carried the core and 10 sacks on a horse to her father's middle in the next town and it took all day to get the million times, so she fixed them something to eat and they got to know each other pretty well and spent more time before he went home as years went by a very slow courtship. everybody knew she was ethan allen's girl. nobody else apparently dated her. he didn't take anybody else. they were all relatives. there wasn't much of a

selection. but he did me at age 26 and moved to silas perry and set up his first business. he founded the "forbes" and alan iron foundry, the oldest and connecticut which went to the revolution and produced cannon for the american revolution. he got a little distracted from his business, which was flourishing. when he met a young dark during town and took to spending long evenings and afternoons studying deist writings from england and having fun with inconsistencies of the bible which is already dishonestly kept it to themselves. as they read more they began to think more than reason was important in scripture. she told ethan allen seven

hectometers for doing me no expense. for example every year smallpox swept through. every 30 years academics at boston. people left boston and went into the frontier to move farther and farther west. one reason is continued because inoculation was only the. it was that people have done it successfully somewhere else. as early as 1715, but monica had written about this the royal society has picked his writings to america. there is so much superstition about that than intervening anyway against what was considered god's will that the smallpox epidemic went on. ethan allen thought that something had to be done and did

it in what became his quintessential ray. in front of the town meeting house on the sand at as everyone poured poured out of the service, he had himself inoculated by to two young. how he did it? a needle threaded pass through a sewer of someone with smallpox within past. sorry. giving him a mild dose of smallpox. well, she was arrested, not for inoculation, but for one of the selectmen, his former teachers and magistrate, reverently accosted him for coming he managed to put it all us about god in the same sentence that he was straightforward glacé. and of course it didn't make any better than the workings and farmers crowded and it was ethan allen a little too much so he was dead and fined the maximum fine of 10 children.

it doesn't sound like much, but if you had two convictions in any town, you and your family had to leave and not come back. they caught him on the second offense. the second offense so when hawks got out into economic card and he the. he didn't have the right to do that. there is a higher grade it was supposed to return the heart to the owner or turn it into porkchops. at ethan allen had broken the law by violating the covenant was then brought charges against him and he was convict you can and he had to leave, which many had to leave connecticut. so he went right to the flame. he went to northampton, massachusetts, which is arbor day battleground because the leading theologian, jonathan edwards had been bred out of that town because he accused a

man of getting a book belonging to a midwife and passing it around the curls and he named names from the pulpit. but jonathan edwards went after the wilderness and eventually became president of princeton, which are the same day. i can say it. i went there. and ethan allen went there and get in trouble right away. he opened the lead mines. people thought at the time where there was glad. and he swore a lot with those workers as people do in mines. in the crochet cotton spec and it finally brought them up on charges. again, profanity this time. so he was fine and convict did. he sold his interest in the lead mines. but when the fellow who brought the mind should have been shift at the settlement but that the money, allen was stripped to the

waist and thrashed. he was arrested. but then the fellow left town and got his friends to come back and ethan allen this time straight to the waist and got out his wit and there is another altercation this timing was right out of northampton massachusetts. but then where do you go? yet a family. he left his wife and children with his younger brother who asserted the famous one of the clan, human allen who ran a prosperous tory. ethan allen for the next four winters went up into his now empty land. the french had left him there was unpopulated except for indian hunters. ethan allen became a professional hunter for 40 years and literally ran with the indians. that is not a figure of speech. his brother later wrote as i represented many things, he attempted a biography.

ethan allen would run alongside a herd of deer. they waited for a full minute and then the snow is a seacrest is so perfect for snowshoeing, but not perfect so they would run alongside their did tierney on which you find. take his hat, put it on the carcass of the scavengers wouldn't touch it, run a lunch, should another one of take off the coat, put it on a tear. should another one, take out the tuna can put on the deer. you get the picture. before he was through, he was buck. but what he did was take the skin of the last year he shot and put it on himself. the hives every spring were sent by canoe down to silas perry, where the younger brothers had set up a pan or a handmade

buckskin coveralls. press race business on the frontier. even jefferson pulled buckskin over his suits for years. the horrors went. so the family was prospering. what ethan allen was time to come here so so exploring. and finding the very best ones in getting the idea that all of his family would go up in the valley from a cute but she did in 1770. he went and bought his first plan. 1000 acres was the equivalent of 1000 of our dollars, 500 acres, 500 new haven, which just about topiary. and in the speculative can other members of the family followed him. some of his neighbors had seen for monitoring the french and indian wars. colonel thomas chittenden, head of the college then decided to

move with his claim into the one o-oscar river valley park near burlington, vermont and malton valley. not to do this come at ethan allen became a land speculator and investor. at first it's very small pieces of land. his timing could not have worse. at exactly that time in 1770, the old problem of who owned the land flared. new hampshire's royal governor ready about where it had sold chargers for 170 township in new hampshire and vermont. now who put the chargers? i did a little digging. workcenter, willis and vermont named after st. louis who is a merchant in and start workcenter, willis and vermont named after st. louis who was a merchant in and start come at a major lack of money from the british was a merchant in and start come at a major lack of money from the british family man and that his merchant

friends for some of it off and land for a moment. so willis and his friends came up with 40 shillings in silver or not went to governor what words for granting the papers set up a township five miles by five miles. but you can see the numbers on the scale. anyone operates in 15 years pocketed $3 million, our money in fees, just from those land charts. only to be outdone by new york, but new york said wait a minute. our charter says everything between lake champlain and the connecticut river is new york. send your governors began, claiming and insisted that the settlers by the land of second time. the speculators in the settlers have begun to trickle in, only about 1500 people living in vermont by 1770. but those people wanted to hold onto the land. if they had worked very hard and it took whatever they had.

what ethan allen did at the speculators come as a shareholder among the steep of that we should resist. he was chosen at a stockholders meeting we would hire the best player in new england and go to albany, new york not the capital, but where the supreme court of new york was an resist the attempts of new york to sell this land again. meanwhile, new york is empty albany county sheriff with 302 survey and seize farms as settlers in the bennington area, who would budge. they stood with guns to decide until the posse went away. problem for near christmas to most of the posse retouch and when about to cooperate. land-grant saturday been taken place in new york by this time. what ethan allen has to chose an

adversary would be supreme court, albany, he wrote about it. he began writing about the right and the claims of the settlers. the grandeur of these colonial members of the court, with the longleaf and the beautiful roads in the middle of the wilderness. what he also knew was the chief counsel for the royal province of new york on 60,000 acres of vermont land. the chief judge of 170,000 acres or was claiming to own in vermont. they all had interests. so allen went to pending 10 the figures 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 castings in each town. and the captain selected ethan

allen's kernel, downs and he was paid a salary. so he is one of the first paid american rebels. and for four years, green mountain boys held out as new york shirts and drove out and he would be new york settlers. now how they did it today you might not approve of completely. you could call a vigilante is some way to collect here. it depends. the first time they visited you if you try to start a five but they knew your feet, they took your senses down at night. otherwise i just went to your cart and come into your fields. well, that would be enough for most people to say this isn't going to work. ..

successfully held off the with yorkers as they call them after four years ethan allen and his officers were denominated out false. the new york provincial assembly passed the law putting a price on allen as 100-pound sterling which was an awful lot of money the time and 50 in each of his captains. allen's response was to put a price on the head of the attorney-general of new york, should he dared to come into vermont territory. but, if he had been caught at any time, he could have been aimed 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 she was the first to come up with the idea that lake champlain was the key to the defense of new england and the other colonies, and so when the word came of lexington and concord, ethan allen sent a letter to all fer will cost of the committee of correspondence of connecticut in which he proposed ceasing the cannon on which 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 pressed into service. and so he organized an expedition against lake town grown-up he didn't know at the same time benedict arnold, a wealthy smuggler merchant from

norwich, etiquette who had formed his own company of soldiers and outfitted them and put them in bright red uniforms have heard of lexington and march with his men, some of them yale students towards boston to volunteer for the fight there and arnold was given the commission by massachusetts, you have both of them in a footrace to get to ticonderoga, and they arrived basically a few days apart. arnold showed up all spent and polished and government fellows were not going to have anything to do with him. they turned their guns over and clubs over their shoulder which is a sign that they were not going to fight, drift off to the side of the field. while allen and arnold negotiated. arnold had shown up without even a weapon. he was so full of enthusiasm he had also given the game away to the british by sending a message through to albany saying he was coming please send supplies, etc..

but they worked out a negotiation so that they became the coke, bonds, and at 4 o'clock in the morning détente, 1775 after the light on lake champlain they managed to get 89 of the green mountain boys they promised to lexington, 89 across the lake. how did they know, what to do? ellen had sent to spies, hunters with long beards to the fort barbour for a hair cut. and they had figured out the leave the land. it was peacetime to those garrisons. they hadn't heard of lexington and concord. a british water had to go to halifax, quebec, montreal and st. john, and then down lake champlain to get to ticonderoga. paul revere and 30 of his writers were more efficient. all of new england knew what was going on. so allen and arnall stormed the fort. they took every one prisoner.

no one was hurt. no one was killed. the fund 90 gallons of rum that belong to the commandant. they had a bit of a party. ethan allen wrote out a chip that he would pay the, not at some future time and sent off 85 prisoners and 60 women and children to connecticut. now part of what i have had to do is the bond that the attack. one of the most famous lines in early american history is what ethan allen supposedly set to the, not at ticonderoga and he rode the wind himself, certainly years later he figured he couldn't get the thing through the printer, but what became famous as the, onset on whose authority do you demand ethan allen supposedly set in the name of jehovah and the continental congress. but according to the young man who was there, and the british who was next to the commandant in his report what he really

said was coming out of their youth and old rat which sounds a little more believable. it didn't go down well with some of the vermonters. they were afraid the british would counterattack. and allen 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 much weight in new york especially and in the settlements so rather than steal of the fight he became a scout. to spy out of the defense's. we say into canada we are talking about quebec province which is huge but it was defended by only 600 redcoats. 300 of the regulars were tied

down on the border at fort st. john, and that meant montreal and quebec have the older 300. what allen didn't know is the mohawk nation under orders from the iroquois joined the british side which they never left. we don't know our history of the indians and the british will be enough to know that they were british citizens from 1715 and on. it was never a question what side they were going to be on. so his idea was to move quickly, 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 montr. allen was only able to raise 134 men and paying some french 1p a day which is more cash than they

usually have, but the french canadians many were unhappy with the british so alan miscalculated and thought he would have more support from the french canadians. he also thought he would have more support from the americans, the new commander of the green mountain boys didn't show up as he expected with the green mountain boys nor did any of the other americans. so basically ethan allen crossed the st. lawrence river at night trying horse ticonderoga and the british garrison under the strong commander with 134 trained troops and 300 mohawk warriors. it was over in about two hours and 45 minutes of wasting ammunition as even now when would point out to bid us the shot at each other out long-range until the indians worked around behind the others hope and ellen had to surrender and that begins i think one of the most important things that most vermonters and americans don't know about the prison as

ethan allen was captured and told he would be sent to a land and tried for treason which is a rather cory way of carrying out the sentence of death. so he and the others were put in chains in the hold of the ship in the st. lawrence and they could hear the guns of the americans getting closer and closer to arriving just a little too late at montreal. as the ship sailed toward england you have four men in the cage and the conditions crossing the atlantic in chains in the wintertime and none of them died. these are tough people. allen basically got so enraged at his treatment at one point that he took his manacles and get through. 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 to read when he reached england to his amazement there was a crowd waiting a very enthusiastic crowd because for taking the fort which the british haven't been able to take from the french and the french and indian war might have gone ahead of him so the crowd as he was marched up the house to the british castle built by henry viii where he was to be held. while the british tried to figured out what to do with him this was a new problem. it shouldn't have been a question. they were rebels. but carlton decided they would have been tried in england and so i was able to find a british cabinet minister meeting at night in the home of one of the ministers which they decided the best thing they could do is get even alan the heck out of england. because in parliament, john wilkes and pro americans were

working up enough votes to get rid of habeas corpus to get the prisoners tried as civilian prisoners instead of as traders. so even allen would spend much of the next few years getting the heck out of there. the british on the ship to ireland they joined the convoy that was attacking charleston the irish road out in open boats bringing presents of meat and fruit and beautiful cloth and a dagger and cash. even alan managed to keep the british ships captain at the port. from ireland the convoy went to the carolina by way of bermuda, the fallin still held below to come up and walk for a few minutes each day. from there he was taken to halifax where he was actually put in jail and helped the other seascape and refused to ease

gave he wanted to be treated as an officer and a gentleman for equal rank so he became very ill in the jail in halifax and eventually he was shipped to manhattan after the british captured new york where he was put on parole then he had to begin by dark and stay 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 the farmland at the time and what has now been the new lot subway stop in east brooklyn held a prisoner he wanted to it have reached a where he didn't have enough money to buy anything and he lived on clams because that is what the farmers provided for the $2 a month he had to pay as a prisoner. it was too much for him he broke his parole and cost manhattan and have horrible conditions of

other prisoners. some 10,000 americans died in prison ships in all about bay of brooklyn because the same decisions of the british ministers what they had decided was that habeas corpus couldn't be served on the ship so the state of american prisoners was to be saved on chirps of virtually all of them died in the course of the war. and if you think about it, think about where we have prisoners' right now it is a naval base you have to wonder if there isn't some legacy of the decision for the british in 1775. well, ethan allen couldn't keep his mouth shut in long island either and he complained bitterly about the treatment by the british, and this time he was arrested and taken to the provost jeal in british hands in new york city and put in solitary confinement and he was held in the jail for the rest of the 34 months that he spent as a

british prisoner. eventually general washington was able to set up an agreement to trade with the british commanders prisoner for prisoner. 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 and they of 1778 evin alan was exchanged for the full colonel of the british regiment who was a member of parliament. one of the proudest moments of his life to be the end he was led by the calgary export from the elizabethtown new jersey to valley 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 he wrote this to the president of the congress henry lawrence. his fortitude and firmness seems to have placed him out of reach of misfortune.

there is in him and the original something that commands admiration. and his long captivity and sufferings have only served to increase if possible his characteristic enthusiasm so that is the assessment read very much the revolutionary leaders the first thing even alan did when he got back to vermont, not the first thing he did but he learned his brother by only a week before looking out the window waiting to see if more were coming down the road yet. he lost his only son. his wife was dying of tuberculosis and a daughter was dying of tb and sweeping the impoverished frontier of the time. 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 paynter 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 an elective office because he refused to take an oath. he thought they were puritan and by this time he was a confirmed diaz. this brings up the question what is a confirmed diaz? do they come from? no. they believe it was the author of a perfect universe that created everything it wants and then you didn't need anybody to fix its, clergy, miracles, bibles, mystery, only reason to read so he ran everything through that filter from the time of his captivity. he became a real philosophical during the long days and confinement. he started to sign his letters

as the -- i am losing it but basically the heck philosopher. in vermont for five years before the revolution ended he confiscated loyalist properties putting little money in his pocket from each one and paid for the vermont troops in the american revolution and the defense is at home so part of ethan allen's legacy that makes him still very popular in vermont is the of the debt when the revolution was over and for baliles did and wanted vermont to pay a share of it. ethan allen actually negotiated with the british secrecy on and off for three years but from all i can find from studying those papers and records were

destroyed when the warehouse in albany burned 100 years ago but i was able to use the wonderful digitalization of records of the canadians. they are way ahead of us preserving the materials, and you can find the haldeman correspondents at this is called relating to ethan allen's negotiations with the governor haldeman, the military governor of canada, you can find them digitalized and the originals in the british libraries. after studying them i found this latest word change to make a terrific difference in the interpretation we get of our historical figures. rick sable, one day in 1780 the loyalist colonel robinson from new york sent a messenger through to even alan in vermont and the letter began we are well aware of your commerical schemes

and because there was a careless transcript made some time in the 1920's that became aware of the commercial schemes so many historians have believed even alan was in it for the money and was only in that dealing with the british and the haldeman negotiations. once i found that, i took a lot longer studying the records. that's why the book took six years. what i came away with was the idea of a man who was taking his philosophy putting into action which is a dangerous thing as we have seen in the 20 of century we put on or philosophers in the corner of our universities and very rarely let them make policies. but ethan allen put into action his deism and his philosophy that def is a very natural thing not to be feared.

but you must resist the enemy and the brave. the man loved to jump on tree stumps and covering the crowd and was often write for doing it. for example to girls fell off in the woods one day in 1780, four years of a 7-years-old and when they didn't show up by nightfall their father went to the firm and took them and organized a search party and for three days and nights they searched and men came from new york to join the search and couldn't find the girls and on the third day they were about to give up and ethan allen jumped on the tree stump and said you are parents, how would you feel? can you stop and leave them out there? don't be afraid of the bears and the wolves you killed them all there are no snakes, you've eaten and so the party went out again a few hours later the girls were found asleep where they had been kept alive eating

berries which is why they had been there in the first place but it's that's kind of thing that smith and also history. and what i've done is go back and look at the time histories many of them compiled town by town by abbey hemingway 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 the been duped primm. dimond kept secret what they were doing it, and never had intended to join the british empire. washington wasn't even sure to find out what ethan allen was doing it was the same spot that he had sent into ticonderoga so that didn't work. when the revolution was over, ethan allen we married and his wife died, she married a much younger woman 26-years-old, she was the illegitimate daughter of

a swiss engineer in the british army raised by aunt it really looks to committed suicide but left acres of land of the connecticut valley so she and her aunt were there trying to see if she could sell any of this land. and ethan allen met her in a boarding house run by the chief justice of vermont. he needed a source of income proposed right away. he wouldn't take the oath of marriage but he married anyway. they wrote off in the wintertime and back where ethan allen was hard at work writing the most impenetrable document i have ever seen, 500 some pages called the only article laufman. he needed and editor. he never had one. he apparently dictated all of it. they didn't have spell checked so he must have had aliterate klerk probably a jongh college

graduate who needed some money. but he took the the sestak writings he started in connecticut with the young doctor and then he got the manuscript in the field hospital trying to help the troops and the revolution and sat in bennington writing this attack on the puritanism in the house he was running right next door to the puritan church so if you go to bennington you won't find the house, they tore it down and put a monument to the more faithful historian in its place. but he finished reading the only article he sold all the land he could and dissolved the 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 is where his homestead has been found and reconstructed. wonderful land on the river.

but he finished his book and he had 1500 copies printed at his own expense only 200 were circulated before the rest were mysteriously burned. some people say that it was god's will and the lightning did it and other people went on state was the printer he was scared to death and was going to be run out of town, too. only 200 copies circulated. they went to the governors, they went to paris where ethan allen was corresponding and who wrote the famous letters of the american farmer and actually. this is the quest for me to see how this man has gone beyond fort ticonderoga. he was tending his garden out of politics on a small piece of land naming one of the three

children from the second marriage joseph valverde as a farmer as he cut raising cattle, treating them to the british vermont had free trade when the rest of the country couldn't when the revolution was over. vermont didn't become a state until 1791 after ethan allen died and his death came about because a was a drought in 1788 and 89 and in fact the same drought that was causing starvation in the streets of paris and i think helped touch off the french revolution. but on february 10th, 79, ethan allen and one of his hired man a free black man named newport crossed the ice to get a load of hay from a cousin by 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 had been partially sculpt in the attack on montr and was so poor somebody tried to sue him and take his gun away for so little money on the frontier and ethan allen left the court to save him as well. but that night they had a party in the violence in which simply in deutsch and to the heroes of ticonderoga by the vermont legislature and they heard that he was coming they pulled into the tavern and they have a party. early next morning as ethan allen and newport crossed the guice he noted something was

wrong. ethan allen stopped talking. he had slumped over. i think it's a beautiful ending for the story because here in the first american state, created without slavery, ethan allen died in the arms of a freed slave. i can't make up something like that. 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 the younger brother on the river to see him before he was buried on the hilltop overlooking the river. he's buried somewhere there. they've stolen everything. we don't know the us botts so there is no monument but there's authority foot column with a ridiculous figure that is supposed to look a lot like ethan allen and one of the problems we have with the book is not what he looked like.

painters couldn't make a living on the frontier unless they were doing so there were no images from life but what i discovered the families of the founding fathers were doing a few generations later the rich getting together for the fourth of july and they were talking about what their ancestors lookalike, something like what you do to a police artist basically so the first governor of vermont, there was no portrait. but if you see in one you've seen them all. the same bushy eyebrows etc., and ethan allen was able to verify somewhat what he looked like because jpmorgan who was buying everything he could about that period bought etchings of revolutionary officers and they are held in the library and there is an image of ethan allen which matches almost exactly the image in the first really good biography done by john in 1929.

it's not this. this is the statue given to vermont, the place instead chu rahall here in the nation's capital in the 1870's. each state got vermont got ethan allen where remarkably he looks like marlon brando play napoleon. [laughter] everything is wrong about it. it's a revolutionary hat with a french revolutionary cockade. the rest of it i think is right but that is not ethan allen. the family actually came up with a composite sketch of him which is in the book. this is the first illustrated biography, and i went to great pains to come up with the different versions of him, but there was a composite describing what he looked like as the end of his captivity as a prisoner of war and i think that is the closest because i have seen others including his grandson who helped me start this by giving all of the books anybody

ever printed and he's a dead ringer for the fellow who's a prisoner of war. so, that's the story of ethan allen. why don't we know more about it? because he took on the puritan clergy and they lived after he died one missionary from new haven came up and literally stomped on his grave. timothy dwight, the president of the university said on february february 12th ethan allen, the general from vermont dieting and he decides and help where he looks up forever towards heaven from the flames. you get the idea, and that went from pulpit to call it until his memory went with it. it was revived in the civil war when the green mountain boys swarmed into the uniform at the fight of gettysburg and the harbor etc..

more vermont per capita fought and died on the union side than any other northern state. that is also the legacy of ethan allen and the fleet planes that fly over the city's since 9/11 or the green mountain boys of the guard of vermont. his legacy is the state with dissent never really agreeing even among its delegation never agreed from the west side of the mountains to the east side of the mountains. but it has a strong reputation for diversity and dissent and most of all the legacy of ethan allen is since his time where people went to start over to start again. thank you. [applause] >> this is where i say fire at will.

>> in your own book references made to his advocate of the separate church and state can you comment further on that? >> his attack on the established church of new england and his book recent article is just that. he doesn't think that you should have a. in hierarchy in vermont or new england. he was speaking mostly to new england. he didn't use the words separation of church and state. it was claimed by thomas jefferson and a letter to his secretary of the navy during a reelection campaign in 1803 there should be a wall of separation. but jefferson's only bouck alliance very well on his view along with the fallin and both of them believe that there had to be separation between church and state and indeed in vermont by law in any new community the school had to be built before

the church was to be built and that is still the case so that is some proof of it. server? >> i'm from arlington vermont and i think even alan's first wife is probably right next to st. james church. >> arlington as one of the towns he beat up the most so it is ironic she would die and be buried there because i was mostly loyalists. >> growing up we knew that words west arlington was story hollow in the 1940's. >> tory is not a nice word. madam? >> i'm from vermont and i've always called myself a green mountain girl and we used to dress up in costumes and a talked about them having meetings of the tavern.

is very much a part of my life. my dad was a history professor at green mountain and he's the man who did the highway markers, the historic markers around vermont. >> that's wonderful. >> it's wonderful to hear your researcher the research. >> no one ever called them by their last name. >> we used to pretend we were running a with the indians through the woods. [laughter] -- thank you very much for coming. [applause]

>> the idea this book was born out of frustration and the idea crystallized for me that the first and only time i flew on the air force one i had taken this job and had been working for a while where it was my assignment to write sort of more personal intimate stories about the presidency and with the president's life a slight, and it only took me 80 a week of doing the job to realize the president doesn't have personal moments certainly none that i was going to get access to. everything about his life is outsourced in this crazy way. he has 94 served the family and the white house, six calligraphers write anything he wants britain, 70 people need to schedule every day. it's a huge army that sort of helps him operate in this day to day way and his schedule is subdivided into these chunks and there is a secretary of side of

the oval office which has a reverse peephole so she can look in and make sure things are running on schedule, and he called the bulkeley and i think sometimes it really drives him crazy, and in the few weeks i've been doing this job had been driving me crazy probably often my editors because i probably wasn't writing as many stories and not getting to the sort of personal moments and obama's life. so finally come after doing this for it's probably been a few months at this point might turn cannot fly on air force one and it's pretty much everybody who covers the president might your name is put into this huge database and every time the president goes on a trip the move through the database and eight more people get their turn to fly on air force one. so my name came up and i finally felt this is a mumbai going to see something.

i'm going to be a close and i will have a chance to sort of experience with this is like a little bit for him. so got dressed up, obama flies out of the private air force base in virginia, got dressed up, actually rented a car to drive over there because rachel and i's car at times a batter up pontiac grand am we had kept functional. it didn't feel appropriate point to the tarmac by air force one. [laughter] we rented a car. i'm sure they gave me like a volkswagen bug. rented the car, drove over and we did with these other eight reporters and as we waited for the term to board the plane we waited for maybe i don't know, an hour and then they let us up. there were two entrances on air force one and they led us up the one that is backed by the four airplane and we walked up and sat down and they said okay wait here. we are waiting for the president

to arrive at the airport. so we waited for maybe a half an hour. then we heard the president has arrived at the airport and we've never seen reporters move the staffs of there is a mad scramble to get back off the plane to watch the president and then we saw him walk six steps from the front of the plane and so those six steps toward eliminating. we saw what he was wearing and what he was doing and we all were frantically taking notes about it in. we got back on the plane and flew to new hampshire. we scrambled off as fast as we could to watch the six steps again into the motorcade and we followed behind separately in a different car and this is the naftali there's not enough time or space for the press have to go into the event with him so we were off site in the satellite location where we watched the speech on the tv and taking notes of the event that way.

so is really frustrated with trying to write to the presidency in any kind of meaningful way and i was listening to a speech and i heard him say something i heard him talk about before but it just sort of clicked. he talked about these letters he reads every night which are a sampling of the 20,000 letters that come into the white house every day and he talked about how the letters were what he felt like were his only direct connections left to people out in the country and that he governed, and he said that the letters were the same that kept him sane when he fought like he was barricaded from so many of the things and i realized quickly than that is something that seemed personally a real and genuine and something i wanted to try to write about. so that's what i did. it started with this story and i wrote a longer piece of the process of getting the letters to his desk and the paper was generous enough to give me a leave for the year where i did

about to montana and i think they were distinguished from that title now but went out there and vote and at the end of this year finally did get time on the president's schedule where that psychiatry was looking into that reverse people at us while we talked about the letters and i will read -- i will read a brief part of the look now that sort of that half an hour i had about what this means. the president said hardest letters were the ones that made him feel removed, even powerless. people write to the president when circumstances term buyer. it is a matter of last resort. what resulted each day inside of the purple folder with an intimate view of parts should and personal struggle. a way of desperation capable of overwhelming senses. so many writers need help, obama said committee of the act of government was so slow it

sometimes took years before legislation can actually improve people's lives. a few times during his presidency, obama had been moved by a letter that he had written a personal check or made a phone call on the behalf believe he was the only way to ensure a fast result. it's not something i should advertise that it's happened. many other times he forged letters to the from the agency's our cabinet secretaries asking for a standard hand written note can you please take care of this? the letters to the heartbreaking, he said. some you've read and say ghosh i want to help this person and by man not have the tools to help them right now and then you start thinking about the fact for every one person that was describing their story there might be another 100,000 going through the same thing so there are times when i'm reading the letters and i killed him and i can't do more faster to make a difference of their lives. he said his nightly reading in the white house made him a plan for his days in the community organizer back in the 1980's

when he was making $10,000 a year and working on the south side chicago. he discretion it from college and purchased a used car for $2,000 spent his days driving around the housing projects to speak with residents about their lives. he became familiar with many of the same issues that flooded meal 25 years later. housing calamities, chronic unemployment, struggling schools. his organizers in chicago considered him a master of hands on granular problem-solving. he was skinny and boyish, a good listener, still my youth. some of the older women in the products made a habit of inviting them into their homes and cooking for him. he looked around their apartments keeping a log of the maintenance issues and then delivering the list to the land for sheep. he helped arrange meetings with city housing officials to talk about asbestos problems and established the tenants' rights organization, funded job-training program and a touring group that prepares students for college. when he left for harvard law school after years in chicago

obama said his path for his future. he wanted to become a politician, a job that would allow him to listen to people's problems and he enjoyed the satisfaction of solving them. now he was the most powerful politician of all and fixing the problems seemed more difficult and satisfaction was more elusive. the people i could say let's go to all the men's office or let me be an advocate in some fashion, obama said. and here just because of the nature of the office and the skills he issued he removed and waste or frustrating. sometimes we want to do is pick up the phone and say tell me more about what is going on and let me see if i can be your social worker, of your advocate and of your mortgage advisor and employment counselor. but i have to constantly reconcile the my mind as i have a very specific role to play in this office and i have to make a bunch of big decisions he would open the aggregate and of having a positive effect for this is you can't always be certain. that is one of the reasons obama

had taken by a few letters each night. he liked the satisfaction of providing at least one thing concrete. here is a short author interview from the c-span campaign 2012 bus as it travels the country. >> congress and come in your book political rules of the road provides readers with more than 50 tips to read what is the most popular? >> on collected rules from over 108 members of the house presidents and that we had 514 different rules and tried to put them into categories. there's a couple of rules people agree on the. don't do something you don't want to read in the first page of "the washington post" and that was the most widely it will everybody agrees on, but it gets violated day after day. i of the two rules colin don't get in a fight with someone who buys their ink by the carload

press and the other is you have to explain you are in trouble. i might change that to the tiger woods ruled but you can look at the regular politics keen and what's happened to joe paterno and what you start explaining something you or the defense of it and the press will absolutely destroy to read khator some of the politicians you interviewed? >> gerry ford, george bush, tip o'neill. who's who of people i serve with and i knew, and he had a couple rules. all topics as local but they didn't just talk about the rule the told you or why they got the rule and the most significant was jerry ford before he died he wrote about a four and a half pages of his rules and i even remember the page we could in page 68 and the rule was do what's right even if it costs you your election and both

republican leadership are committed side of the party was not sure we pardon of nixon? we all agree on that the question was when the. he became president in august 08, and the problem was the midterm elections were coming up and ford was very popular when he took over. people like to come he was cities and honest man and i don't care, part of it is rightly and left the midterm election because you are going to callis and he did. he pardoned him and we lost like 72 seats and still have never recovered from that watergate election. so, i love you, i really do, and i just -- i made jerry ford families have been. he was wrong when he did that was interesting to look at that will end know i was there discussing it with the president and it's hard to disagree and the president would get right in the back of his neck he would

get red and i knew it wasn't too far. estimate what inspired you to write this book? >> it was a political accident. i got into politics late and when i got in iras very frustrated fill one had ever given me a chance to see politicians talk about it to understand and i decided we've written one book about how coffin for strikes which is a great book on the nuts and bolts of it but this book is a lot of ways is more interesting because it's one of the vote that way and what makes a congressman votes for this or against this or a president or somebody who's the secretary of defense. so we spend a lot of time and the politics and government. we have symposium's every six months and work with young people we teach the four members we have the congress to campus program, and my desire is to get back.

you never catch up with the country. i had incredible opportunities, and i want to give back. senator gramm, a democrat, put together an florida legislation that of all things requires the six to be taught, starting in first grade and we were in the essex literacy we forced the states who were going to have the full year in seventh grade and it has a bible you in ten years or so for a bill will be in the top five of six understandings and we know whether states john lamborn because how can you make intelligent decisions of what is going on a 40% of the people in your state don't know the bridges of government or the separation of powers or 73% of the fourth graders on the test can't pick the constitution all of these documents? anyway, that is the whole the real for me. when i work with kids and teachers and given an opportunity to look at this

government which will hold its false is the greatest government had on the face of your petraeus mekouar with your book used in the next education? it talks about political rules of the road for potential candidates. speed it takes basic issues. edmund burke, do you represent your district or do what you want to do? there are many issues like that that are put in and there is a lot of common sense in the book from the various members of the congress. some are funny and there are democrats that gene mccarthy said with of the bipartisanship and the league of women voters that's where accidents happen and they are not just rules. people explain in a paragraph or two or three how they got that rule and why it was important in

their life and just like jerry ford he only wrote from the heart about it and what he said at the end of that is, you know, you've got to remember ' when you raise your hand in the floor of the house you don't take an oath for the republican party come you don't take an oath to the democratic party to take an oath to the constitution against all enemies foreign and domestic and we have to give back to that and get back to civility to the it's a good book. he will have a better feel of why congress reacts in the way that it does and the different questions that you come up with as a member of the house. there was never anything like this before. it took me 20 years to put together and the funny thing about that is the have and written letters and about ten years later. but it's hard to get members of congress to sit down. i had to beat them up and

crittenden and do everything and it was really worth while. your book sort of swedes through mubarak's rules before talking of the days before the revolt and then you close with some commentary on the key transitional challenges ahead which are economics corruption, and i think with the development is clearly a current conversation to have and i think even start changing quite quickly but it's also important to keep track and note what ret

letter to the revolution command just to note you have been faced in cairo -- >> since 1897. >> which means you didn't just landed in cairo on january 25, so you saw this lead up and described in your book increasing strangleholds of the regime and in the education of people on the ground. i remember as the dictator felt egypt would not. but in less than three weeks mubarak was gone and so was this a surprise to you? >> there was a lot immediately after to nisha there was a lot of chatter in egypt. the activist forces were openly trying to figure out how to make the same thing happen and try to lay the groundwork for the

similar uprising but you heard so much. that can't happen here. i remember talking on the 26 actually come the day after the start of the revolution when we had these unprecedented numbers turning out and taking the country into the u.n. charter of walker's i remember getting a cab and wanting to go and having of the classic cabdriver we can't do what they did. it's a civilized country. even and then the egyptians did not believe they could pull this off and i think one of the stories of the mubarak regime is people kind of lost faith in themselves. he killed the sense of political engagement and sold this feeling of helplessness in the people. as dictators go, he wasn't

saddam hussein, there will be no mass graves being unearthed in egypt, but he really sort of chill their spirits and it took awhile but people just lost faith in themselves. so immediately before the revolution started the had a subset and was right after to nisha and buddy egyptians were starting to set themselves on fire. you had that very disturbing trend happening in egypt and all of the delegates were like no its not possible this is sent to nisha. everybody had a reason why egypt could not -- for symbol could not be repeated, and the one that was off and i give him this credit from day one he was very and he was the head of the league in lockstep with these guys and i was shocked by the quotes. he was basically saying this is a wake-up call. there's things that really need

to change. this could spread. we have to be careful and a sort of technology people will not be marginalized. i remember the quote vividly. >> this sense of marginalization and resistance certainly was not -- it wasn't the sense that suddenly on january 25th or what was the date when they felt? >> they realize they have a grievance toward the regime, and it wasn't either that they hadn't tried to express themselves. there were events leading up to the revolution that enabled it eventually to begin. you could say it was a catalyst in the sense but it wasn't the sole reason for the uprising in

egypt. estimate it wasn't the whole reason people had grievances. it wasn't the reason that people the need to have a revolution but it did open the door of what was possible. it broke -- they broke it on the 25th i think that it really chipped away at the sense of helplessness that had taken hold over the previous decade in egypt, so just seeing that it was possible really changed the game. but obviously going back to have so many bad elections in cases of the rim bent police brutality and the gun man beaten to death in alexandria in june of 2010 and whose name became a touchstone for lawlessness and the unchecked brutality of the interior ministry under mubarak. that was big and i tried to market here was the turning paid and he was the turning point but i still maintain that without

tunisia maybe there would have eventually have been some sort of revolution but it doesn't happen like this or on this timeline without them setting an example. >> agree to ask you to read a passage for the book. >> the accidental dictator. i think this chapter quite amusingly tells her story at the attitudes, the attitudes of the people perhaps now is in their minds they face the current struggle against the stuff. >> chapter 1 is called the occidental dictator. imagine for a moment the president george bush the first had suddenly died in office leaving dan quayle the national punchline who nobody thought

would ever wield any real power as president of the united states the measure nearly three decades later the same perceived slight weight was still running the country. that generations of americans said never known any other leader that he and marilyn quayle were busily remaning the public buildings, bridges and libraries after themselves and the president for life was seemingly grooming one of his children to continue the family business of running the country. if that seems far-fetched, it isn't too far from the reality that the egyptians have been living through for nearly three decades. put simply, hosni mubarak's was never supposed to happen. one of the core ironies of the 29 year deaf girl on egypt was that he stumbled into what was probably the most important and influential job in the modern middle east entirely by accident. it's a reality that became abundantly clear from the beginning of uprising in the

winter of 2011 that finally topple mubarak. once the protestors succeeded shattering the states that kept them in power it became immediately clear that there really was no plan b. the regime and its final days fell back on the parade of antiquated insincere rhetoric on inspired and finally one last effort in the violence in the desperate attempt to retain the control. it all served to underscore hiding behind the trenches and the tear gas of the central security rye yet was intellectually bankrupt and cynical blank space of the regime. that's why there was a distinct undercurrent of bitterness and shame mixed in which the euphoria and resurgent sense of empowerment survive through the february when mubarak left the stage. this sentiment was something approaching. i can't believe we can't let