Allen, Ethan

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Allen, Ethan

ALLEN, ETHAN. (1738–1789). American officer. New Hampshire (Vermont). Born on 10 January 1738 in Litchfield, Connecticut, Allen moved to the New Hampshire Grants in 1770. The next year he was named "colonel commandant" of the Green Mountain Boys, the volunteer militia that fought a largely bloodless conflict with New York for control of the region that became Vermont. In 1771 Governor Tryon of New York declared Allen an outlaw, placing a twenty-pound reward on his head, raised to one hundred pounds in March 1774. With the events at Lexington, Allen immediately linked the cause of the New Hampshire Grants with the American Revolutionary struggle, leading the force that took Ticonderoga on 10 May 1775. Within two days, Allen's forces captured control of Lake Champlain without loss of life. He was voted out of command of the Green Mountain Boys by the region's elders, who thought he operated too precipitously. Allen then joined the staff of General Richard Montgomery as a recruiter, enlisting Indians and Québecois to join the forces invading Canada. Operating ahead of Montgomery's invading army, he was captured after his premature attack on Montreal on 25 September 1775. Identified as the captor of Ticonderoga, Allen was sent in irons to England and lodged in Pendennis Castle. The government, fearing reprisals if it hung Allen, returned him to America, where he suffered notoriously harsh treatment at the hands of the British in Halifax and New York City. On 6 May 1778 he was exchanged for Lieutenant Colonel Archibald Campbell and reported to Washington at Valley Forge. On 14 May he was brevetted colonel in the Continental army.

Back in Vermont, Allen led the efforts to gain congressional recognition for the new state of Vermont. But Congress avoided getting involved in a dispute between New York and New Hampshire, especially as New York's Governor Clinton threatened to abandon the war effort should Vermont be admitted to the Union. Appointed major general of Vermont's militia in 1779, Allen launched a long and crafty political and diplomatic campaign to insure Vermont's independence, playing New York against New Hampshire and Congress against the British. The British recognized their opportunities for capitalizing on the situation in Vermont, and in July 1780 Allen received a letter from Beverley Robinson that led to a correspondence between Allen and Canada's governor, General Frederick Haldimand.

By not hiding his negotiations with the British from Congress, Allen set himself up for charges of treason, but he maintained the autonomy of his state. As New York's passion for holding onto the region died down in 1784, Allen dropped his negotiations with the British. He used the upheaval of Shays's Rebellion in 1786 to persuade the New York elite of Vermont's reliability, rejecting offers to lead the Massachusetts uprising. Pushed by Alexander Hamilton, New York's legislature dropped its claims to Vermont, though Governor Clinton stalled its entry into the Union until 1791.

Allen's book about his captivity, Narrative of Colonel Ethan Allen's Captivity (1779), was a major success, apparently selling more copies than any book of the period with the exception of Paine's Common Sense (1776). Less successful, but more controversial, was Allen's Reason the Only Oracle of Man (1785), the first deistic work published by an American. Allen died while returning to his home in Colchester, Vermont, on 12 February 1789.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Allen, Ethan, Papers. Vermont State Archives, Montpelier, Vermont.

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

revised by Michael Bellesiles

Encyclopedia of the American Revolution: Library of Military History