Ethan Allen

Ethan Allen
Major General
Vermont Republic Militia
January 21, 1738 – February 12, 1789

Ethan Allen is one of the most colorful personalities of the American Revolution. A jack of all trades, Allen was crucial to the capture of Fort Ticonderoga in New York and the founding of Vermont. He also formed the legendary Green Mountain Boys to police the British provinces of New York and New Hampshire as well as lobbied Congress to ratify Vermont’s statehood.

Born in Litchfield, Connecticut, in 1738, Allen grew up in a family descended from English Puritans. Allen’s father, Joseph, raised him according to strict Puritan traditions. At an early age, Allen could quote passages of the Bible and allegedly carry a theological discussion. His interest in religion was so strong that he studied to become a minister and hoped to gain admission to Yale College (now Yale University).

However, his father’s death prompted Allen to abandon his studies and enlist in the local militia at age 19. He enlisted in response to the Siege of Fort William Henry on Lake George during the French and Indian War. Allen and his comrades rushed to the siege, but before they arrived, they received word that the French had taken the fort. With his brief tour of military service now over, Allen returned to his family farm.

In 1762, Allen married Mary Brownson. The couple settled in Salisbury, Connecticut, where they purchased a small farm and acquired an iron furnace to support themselves and a growing family of five children. Historians generally believe that Allen’s marriage to Brownson was unhappy. His flamboyant personality likely clashed with Brownson’s strict piety. However, he remained at her side and the couple had five children together, only two of which survived to adulthood. During his time in Salisbury, Allen befriended Thomas Young, a doctor, philosopher, and political theorist from New York. Young became somewhat of a mentor to Allen and shared his theories with the young man. The two collaborated on a book that critiqued organized religion. By then, Allen had abandoned his Puritan roots and embraced Deism (the belief in a supreme being that does not intervene in the universe).

By the 1760s, Allen became involved in the New Hampshire Land Grants dispute. Since 1749, New Hampshire Governor Benning Wentworth had begun selling parcels of land in present-day Vermont — land to which the colonies of New York and New Hampshire laid claim. In 1764, King George III attempted to settle the dispute by favoring New York. However, as surveyors from New York began to stake their claim on the territory, they were met with resistance from the New Hampshire settlers who occupied the land. As the situation culminated in the Supreme Court of New York, Allen (who himself had likely accepted land grants from Wentworth) agreed to represent a group of New Hampshire grant-holders. The trial ended quickly, and the court ruled against Allen.

When he returned to New Hampshire from the trial, Allen and other settlers gathered at Catamount Tavern in Bennington to discuss further actions to defend their grants. This meeting resulted in the formation of the Green Mountain Boys, a local militia that aimed to prevent New York from controlling the territory. The settlers appointed Allen as the colonel commandant of the force, while his cousins Seth Warner and Remember Baker each commanded companies of the militia. Together, the Green Mountain Boys patrolled the New Hampshire land grants and drove off any surveyors or speculators.

Though Allen and his men resorted to force, they generally avoided bloodshed. That changed in 1775 when protesters descended upon the courthouse in Westminster, New Hampshire (now Vermont) to prevent a New York judge from holding court. A riot broke out, and the local sheriff’s forces fired upon the protesters inside the courthouse. Allen and the Green Mountain Boys arrived after the violence to restore order. Westminster’s residents organized a convention (in which Allen participated) to lobby the King to remove them from New York’s territory.

But nearly a week after the convention, the first shots of the American Revolutionary War rang out at Lexington and Concord. Allen sidelined his quest for independence from New York and devoted the Green Mountain Boys to fighting the British. In late April 1775, Allen received a message from a company of Connecticut militiamen informing him of their plan to capture Fort Ticonderoga, New York, an important stronghold on Lake Champlain. Allen pledged support from the Green Mountain Boys and began planning an expedition to attack the fort. On May 2, 1775, 130 Green Mountain Boys and 60 Massachusetts and Connecticut militiamen set off for Fort Ticonderoga.

Before Allen and his men reached the fort, Col. Benedict Arnold of Connecticut arrived to assume command of the expedition. However, the troops rejected Arnold as their commander and insisted on continuing to report directly to Allen. The two officers met privately and reached an agreement; Arnold allowed Allen to maintain command as long as both men led the attack from the front. On May 10, the small force of Soldiers crossed Lake Champlain and attacked the fort at dawn. The militiamen quickly overtook the lone sentry and advanced straight to the officer’s quarters. Allen supposedly demanded that Capt. William Delaplace, the fort’s commander, surrender his sword “in the name of the Great Jehovah and the Continental Congress!” Delaplace did so, and the American force captured the British garrison without firing a shot.

Following the capture of Fort Ticonderoga, Allen took it upon himself to raid Fort St. John with his troops, located to the north along the Richelieu River. Despite Arnold’s disapproval, Allen and the Green Mountain Boys departed without food or water to attack the fort. However, they aborted the mission when they learned of an approaching British column that outnumbered them. Upon their return to Ticonderoga, Allen’s men started to desert, likely because they had been gone from their homes and farms for so long, and the fort’s alcohol ran out. Arnold also began to assert his rank over Allen for control of the Ticonderoga garrison.

Allen appealed to the Continental Congress to incorporate the Green Mountain Boys into the Continental Army, which it did in July 1775. As more men volunteered for service in the Green Mountain regiment, they ultimately elected Seth Warner over Allen as their commander. This was likely a result of Allen’s reckless decision to attack Fort St. John. But the oversight did little to dissuade Allen from the Patriot cause, and he persuaded Warner to allow him to accompany the regiment as a civilian scout.

In August 1775, Allen joined the Continental Army for the invasion of Quebec, a campaign for which he strongly advocated. The American commander Maj. Gen. Richard Montgomery, likely aware of Allen’s reputation as a rabble rouser, sent him to the countryside to recruit a French-Canadian regiment. Allen did so, recruiting nearly 200 men to the Patriot cause; but that was not enough. He took it upon himself to lead his force to Montreal and attempt to capture the city from the British. On Sept. 24, 1775, Allen and 100 men crossed the St. Lawrence River without reinforcements. British General Guy Carleton was quickly alerted to Allen’s presence and routed his force in the Battle of Longue-Pointe, capturing the Patriot leader during the fight.

Allen’s subsequent imprisonment by the British caused him to miss much of the Revolutionary War until 1778. He was placed upon a series of British prison ships and sailed from Montreal to England, where he was imprisoned in Pendennis Castle. In 1776, Allen was transferred to Cork, Ireland then to the prison ship HMS Mercury, which sailed back to the American coast. Allen was aboard Mercury in New York Harbor in January 1777 when Vermont declared independence and formed its own republic. While imprisoned, he also learned that his young son Joseph had succumbed to smallpox. Allen remained in confinement until May 1778 when he was exchanged for British Col. Archibald Campbell.

After returning to the Continental Army, Allen joined General George Washington’s forces encamped at Valley Forge, Pennsylvania where he received an honorary promotion to brevet colonel for his bravery during his “long and cruel captivity.” However, Washington had little need for Allen’s services. With no role in the Army, Allen returned home to Vermont. He became intimately involved in local politics and lobbied the Continental Congress to recognize Vermont’s statehood. He discretely oversaw negotiations with British officials to admit Vermont as a new British province in exchange for military protection. These discussions were purportedly about prisoner exchanges, but in reality, they were aimed to establish Vermont as British province and secure the protection of its people. Opponents of Vermont’s statehood labeled these negotiations as treasonous, once their details became known .

After the Revolutionary War, Allen began chronicling his life and exploits. He also returned to the lessons imparted to him by Thomas Young and published a philosophical treatise titled “Reason.” Allen remarried following his wife’s death in 1783, this time to Frances “Fanny” Buchanan. This marriage proved to be much happier than his first. Allen died on Feb. 12, 1789, after suffering a stroke while delivering a load of hay to his cousin, Ebenezer Allen. He was buried four days later in the Green Mountain Cemetery in Burlington, Vermont after a large, public funeral.

Known as a great American patriot, Allen’s contributions to Vermont and the American cause have become legendary. Though best known for his capture of Fort Ticonderoga, Allen’s versatility as a militiaman, military officer, politician, and philosopher made him one of the most beloved, if not eccentric, Founding Fathers.

Evan Portman
Graduate Historic Research Intern

Sources

Bellesiles, Michael A. Revolutionary Outlaws: Ethan Allen and the Struggle for Independence on the Early American Frontier. Charlottesville, VA: University Press of Virginia, 1993.

Holbrook, Stewart H. Ethan Allen. New York: MacMillan Company, 1940.

Jellison, Charles A. Ethan Allen: Frontier Rebel. Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 1969.

Randall, Williard Sterne. Benedict Arnold: Patriot and Traitor. New York: William Morrow, 1990.

Randall, Williard Sterne. Ethan Allen: His Life and Times. New York: W.W. Norton, 2011.