In this lively study, Robert E. Shalhope supplies a fascinating microcosmic view of the rise and triumph of liberal individualism in America and explores its impact on political culture. Selected by Choice Magazine as an Outstanding Academic Title Originally published in 1996. Americans who lived between the Revolution and Civil War felt the brunt of resounding and sometimes frightening changes, which together eventually influenced the political culture of early America. In this lively study, Robert E. Shalhope examines one of the changes most difficult to gauge and most controversial among students of the period—the rise and triumph of liberal individualism in America—and explores its impact on political culture. Taking Bennington, Vermont, and its environs as a case study, Shalhope untangles the clash among three competing elements in the community—the egalitarian communalism of the Strict Congregationalists; the democratic individualism of the revolutionary Green Mountain Boys; and the hierarchical authority of the community's Federalist gentlemen of property and standing. None of these players anticipated (and indeed did not wish for) the result—the emergence of democratic liberalism. Shalhope writes of class tension, economic competition, and religious differences—and ultimately of cultural conflict and political partisanship—and yet throughout uses individual life experiences to give the narrative piquancy and to emphasize the significance of seemingly small, personal decisions. Shalhope thus demonstrates how the private lives of ordinary people played a role in the settlement of public issues. As an account of a single town and how its residents responded to change, Bennington and the Green Mountain Boys supplies a fascinating microcosmic view of the larger story of how liberal America came to be.

The myth and the reality of Ethan Allen and the much-loved Green Mountain Boys of Vermont—a “surprising and interesting new account…useful, informative reexamination of an often-misunderstood aspect of the American Revolution” (Booklist). In the “highly recommended” (Library Journal) Those Turbulent Sons of Freedom, Wren overturns the myth of Ethan Allen as a legendary hero of the American Revolution and a patriotic son of Vermont and offers a different portrait of Allen and his Green Mountain Boys. They were ruffians who joined the rush for cheap land on the northern frontier of the colonies in the years before the American Revolution. Allen did not serve in the Continental Army but he raced Benedict Arnold for the famous seizure of Britain’s Fort Ticonderoga. Allen and Arnold loathed each other. General George Washington, leery of Allen, refused to give him troops. In a botched attempt to capture Montreal against specific orders of the commanding American general, Allen was captured in 1775 and shipped to England to be hanged. Freed in 1778, he spent the rest of his time negotiating with the British but failing to bring Vermont back under British rule. “A worthy addition to the canon of works written about this fractious period in this country’s history” (Addison County Independent), this is a groundbreaking account of an important and little-known front of the Revolutionary War, of George Washington (and his good sense), and of a major American myth. Those Turbulent Sons of Freedom is an “engrossing” (Publishers Weekly) and essential contribution to the history of the American Revolution.

On August 16, 1777, a motley militia won a resounding victory near Bennington, Vermont, against combined German, British and Loyalist forces. This laid the foundation for the American victory at Saratoga two months later. Historian Michael P. Gabriel has collected over fifty firsthand accounts from the people who experienced this engagement, including veterans from both sides and civilians--women and children who witnessed the horrors of the battle. Gabriel also details a virtually unknown skirmish between Americans and Loyalists. These accounts, along with Gabriel's overviews of the battle, bring to life the terror, fear and uncertainty that caused thousands to see the British army as loved ones departed to fight for the fledgling United States.

The author of Vermont Firsts and Other Claims to Fame examines the pivotal American Revolutionary War skirmish and the men behind it. In April 1775, a small band of men set out from Hartford and traveled swiftly north toward the shore of Lake Champlain, recruiting men to their expedition along the way. Within only a few days, this loyal group of volunteers arrived in Vermont and, joining forces with Ethan Allen and his legendary Green Mountain Boys, launched a daring attack to capture more than one hundred cannons stored at Fort Ticonderoga. In this comprehensive look at “America's First Victory,” Richard Smith traces the Patriots’ route from Connecticut, through the towns of western Massachusetts and the Berkshire hills and north to Bennington, Vermont, and Lake Champlain. He chronicles the rival expedition led by Benedict Arnold, his confrontation with Allen, and the surprise attack that changed the course of the American Revolution.

"Briefly, this work seeks to accomplish two things surrounding Vermont's creation years (those before the 1777 Declaration of Independence and Constitution and 1791 statehood) by: 1) introducing and exploring more fully the contributions made by two important individuals with direct connections to Ethan Allen (Hartford, Connecticut attorney Jared Ingersoll and British Army Major Philip Skene); and, 2) examining closely the time period between 1759 and 1775 when colonizing efforts were made by Skene (precipitated at the direction of Gen. Jeffrey Amherst), Allen, and others to turn the Hampshire Grants into North America's fourteenth British colony. Each of these factors occurred in the context of efforts to right the turmoil caused by Benning Wentworth's land granting practices and which placed the many titles of settlers and proprietors into legal jeopardy. Title problems formed the basis for the 1770 and 1771 Ejectment Trials that introduce Ingersoll (already representing clients involved in title-related ligitation south of the Grants dating to 1766), which then led directly to the formation of the Green Mountain Boys with Allen at their head. Following this, when the creation of courts in Charlotte County (1772) to possibly right the Ejectment Trials results did not appear feasible, the creation of a new colony that Skene would govern became the next focus of the Grants leaders. All was lost with the outbreak of war in 1775"--

Take a chilling tour of spooky New England legends . . . Visit Vermont with this comprehensive collection of tales, legends, folklore, ghost stories, and strange-but-true facts—and enjoy supernatural side trips to the surrounding areas of New York, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, and Quebec—with this delightful guide to the region’s haunted history. From Chittenden’s Ghost Shop to the Hubbardton Horror to the Mystery of the Bennington Triangle, Green Mountain Ghosts is filled with local lore and characters more colorful than any fall foliage!

The long-awaited biography of the frontier Founding Father whose heroic actions and neglected writings inspired an entire generation from Paine to Madison. On May 10, 1775, in the storm-tossed hours after midnight, Ethan Allen, the Revolutionary firebrand, was poised for attack. With only two boatloads of his scraggly band of Vermont volunteers having made it across the wind-whipped waters of Lake Champlain, he was waiting for the rest of his Green Mountain boys to arrive. But with the protective darkness quickly fading, Allen determined that he hold off no longer. While Ethan Allen, a canonical hero of the American Revolution, has always been defined by his daring, predawn attack on the British-controlled Fort Ticonderoga, Willard Sterne Randall, the author of Benedict Arnold, now challenges our conventional understanding of this largely unexamined Founding Father. Widening the scope of his inquiry beyond the Revolutionary War, Randall traces Allen’s beginning back to his modest origins in Connecticut, where he was born in 1738. Largely self-educated, emerging from a relatively impoverished background, Allen demonstrated his deeply rebellious nature early on through his attraction to Deism, his dramatic defense of smallpox vaccinations, and his early support of separation of church and state. Chronicling Allen’s upward struggle from precocious, if not unruly, adolescent to commander of the largest American paramilitary force on the eve of the Revolution, Randall unlocks a trove of new source material, particularly evident in his gripping portrait of Allen as a British prisoner-of-war. While the biography reacquaints readers with the familiar details of Allen’s life—his capture during the aborted American invasion of Canada, his philosophical works that influenced Thomas Paine, his seminal role in gaining Vermont statehood, his stirring funeral in 1789—Randall documents that so much of what we know of Allen is mere myth, historical folklore that people have handed down, as if Allen were Paul Bunyan. As Randall reveals, Ethan Allen, a so-called Robin Hood in the eyes of his dispossessed Green Mountain settlers, aggrandized, and unabashedly so, the holdings of his own family, a fact that is glossed over in previous accounts, embellishing his own best-selling prisoner-of-war narrative as well. He emerges not only as a public-spirited leader but as a self-interested individual, often no less rapacious than his archenemies, the New York land barons of the Hudson and Mohawk Valleys. As John E. Ferling comments, “Randall has stripped away the myths to provide as accurate an account of Allen’s life as will ever be written.” The keen insights that he produces shed new light, not only on this most enigmatic of Founding Fathers, but on today’s descendants of the Green Mountain Boys, whose own political disenfranchisement resonates now more than ever.

The definitive sourcebook for Vermont facts, figures, people, events, and history

It is 1774 in Vermont, and Erastus dreams of becoming a Green Mountain Boy. After the death of his father, Erastus's storytelling uncle Hiram arrives to care for the family farm. Uncle Hiram shares mythical tales of the legendary Ethan Allen and the adventures of the Green Mountain boys, leading Erastus to one conclusion: he wants to belong to this elite group. Just when Erastus thinks he can't get any more inspired, he is invited to a meeting and hears Ethan Allen speak. Filled with passion and a drive he can't control, he plots to leave with his uncle Hiram and join the group. Erastus's mother knows she cannot stop him and bids him farewell for the greatest journey of his life. Narrated with the excitement and hilarity of a young man fueled with patriotism and pride, Memoir of a Green Mountain Boy follows Erastus through violent attacks, narrow escapes, and encounters with famous and infamous American revolutionaries. This personal account of Erastus's journey with a homegrown militia captures the beautiful spirit of naïve youth during an epic era in United States history-the American Revolution. For more information, go to: www.green-mountain-boy.com.