Green Mountain Boys. - Those turbulent sons of freedom: Ethan Allens Green Mountain boys and the American Revolution

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Copyright 2018 by Christopher S. Wren

Endpapers from The American Military Pocket Atlas , 1776. Printed for R. Sayer and J. Bennet, map and print-sellers, London.

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Interior design by Paul Dippolito

Jacket design by Tom Mckeveny

Jacket photograph by Bob Krist/Corbis Documentary/Getty Images

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Wren, Christopher S. (Christopher Sale), 1936

Title: Those turbulent sons of freedom : Ethan Allens Green Mountain boys and the American Revolution / Christopher S. Wren.

Description: New York : Simon & Schuster, 2018. | Includes bibliographical references and index.

Identifiers: LCCN 2017053023 (print) | LCCN 2017056325 (ebook) | ISBN 9781439110119 (ebook) | ISBN 9781416599555 (hardback) | ISBN 9781416599562 (trade paperback)

Subjects: LCSH: Allen, Ethan, 1738-1789. | Vermont--History--To 1791. | Vermont--Militia. | Ticonderoga (N.Y.)--History--Revolution, 1775-1783. | United States--History--Revolution, 1775-1783--Regimental histories. | BISAC: HISTORY / United States / Revolutionary Period (1775-1800). | HISTORY / United States / State & Local / New England (CT, MA, ME, NH, RI, VT). | BIOGRAPHY & AUTOBIOGRAPHY / Historical.

Classification: LCC E263.V5 (ebook) | LCC E263.V5 W74 2018 (print) | DDC 973.3/443--dc23

LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2017053023

ISBN 978-1-4165-9955-5

ISBN 978-1-4391-1011-9 (ebook)

For ALEXANDRA AND MADELEINE

Granddaughters of Liberty

In Memory of

Christopher Braxton Wren 19702014

T hey called themselves Green Mountain Boys and George Washington did not trust them. He wanted their leader detained for interrogation. The other colonies balked at letting them join the United States of America. Britain plotted to exploit their discontent and cajole them back under the Crown.

Some of the harshest combat in the American Revolution fell to the homesteaders who settled New Englands northern frontier. Defending shaky titles to the land they cleared, they made their own rules to create an independent republic called Vermont.

Insubordination flowed through the blood of these Green Mountain Boys and their kin. Driven by self-interest more than patriotism, they waged their own wars for independence, first against the neighboring colony of New York, which laid claim to their homes, and then against King George III in an insurgency across a boundless expanse of wilderness.

Their disrespect of authority became a signature American trait that continues to manifest itself today. Choosing officers who led by example rather than rank, those turbulent sons of freedom, as one of Washingtons toughest generals called them, excelled as light infantry rangers with tomahawks as well as muskets, which the best could fire as rapidly as three rounds per minute.

The skirmish they started in this insignificant corner of the world, from Londons perspective, would become a thread to unravel the tapestry of the ascendant British Empire, which had grown adept at ruling over restive subjects as far afield as India, French-speaking Canada, the Caribbean, and countless islands acquired in European wars and kept in thrall by redcoats and the Royal Navy. Missionaries were sent forth to propagate the gospel according to the Church of England.

But this uprising in North America was launched by Yankee cousins at a distance who shared the same language, habits, and customs, even as they fussed about unequal trade and taxation without representation (unlike the loyal emigrants of Newfoundland and Nova Scotia). They offered Britain a wealth of valuable raw resources from ship masts to potash and animal pelts, not to mention a dumping ground for convicts and other undesirables exiled to America.

The hapless General Johnny Burgoyne was undone by what he called the most active and most rebellious race in Vermont who would frustrate his plan to impose law and order on an unruly backwater of the British Empire. Vermont differed from not just England but also the American colonies, and couldnt hold a candle to civilized cities like Philadelphia and New York.

So here is what happened in this wild and neglected corner of the American Revolution, as told through a strapping trio of Green Mountain Boys with outlaw bounties on their headsEthan Allen, his second cousin Seth Warner, and their companion Justus Sherwood. Allen, a charismatic rogue, would lose command of his Green Mountain Boys, botch an invasion of Montreal, and be shipped overseas in chains for a public hanging. His cool-headed cousin, Seth Warner, would forge the raucous Green Mountain Boys into a disciplined force whose hit-and-run tactics honed in strategic retreats helped save a broken, diseased American army from annihilation. And their friend Justus Sherwood, who opted for law and order over anarchy, would become their worst enemy as a master spy for Britain.

Hindsight assures us that the American Revolution would succeed, but those who fought on both sides could not foretell the outcome. This is their story too.

I t was the lure of cheap land that drew pioneers like Ethan Allen, Seth Warner, and Justus Sherwood to leave Connecticut in one of the first great migrations in colonial New England. The virgin wilderness of the New Hampshire Grants, as Vermont was once called, attracted farmers from across Connecticut, Massachusetts, and New York, where their fathers fields had become unaffordable or parceled among too many sons.