Ethan Allen, the Robin Hood of Vermont

CHAPTER II.

EARLY LIFE, HABITS OF THOUGHT, AND RELIGIOUS TENDENCIES.

The life of Allen may be divided into four periods: the first thirty-one years before he came to Vermont (1738-1769), the six years in Vermont before his captivity (1769-1775), the two years and eight months of captivity (1775-1778), and the eleven years in Vermont after his captivity (1778-1789).

When he was two years old the family moved into Cornwall. There his brothers and sisters were born, there his father died, there Ethan lived until he was twenty-four years old. When seventeen he was fitting for college with the Rev. Mr. Lee, of Salisbury. His father's death put an end to his studies. This was in 1755, when the French and Indian war was raging along Lakes George and Champlain, a war which lasted until Allen's twenty-third year. Some of the early settlers of Vermont, Samuel Robinson, Joseph Bowker, and others, took part in this war. Not so Allen. There is no intimation that he hungered for a soldier's life in his youth. His usual means of earning a livelihood for himself and his widowed mother's family is supposed to have been agriculture.

William Cothrens, in his "History of Ancient Woodbury," tells us that in January, 1762, Allen, with three others, entered into the iron business in Salisbury, Connecticut, and built a furnace. In June of that year he returned to Roxbury, and married Mary Brownson, a maiden five years older than himself. The marriage fee was four shillings, or sixty-seven cents. By this wife he had five children: one son, who died at the age of eleven, while Ethan was a captive, and four daughters. Two died unmarried; one married Eleazer W. Keyes, of Burlington; the other married the Hon. Samuel Hitchcock, of Burlington, and was the mother of General Ethan Allen Hitchcock, U. S. A.

Allen resided with his family first at Salisbury and afterward at Sheffield, the southwest corner town of Massachusetts. For six miles the boundary line of the two states is the boundary line of the two towns. In these towns the families of Ethan Allen and his brothers and sisters lived many years. Two years after moving to Salisbury he bought two and a half acres, or one-sixteenth part of a tract of land on Mine Hill, an elevation of 350 feet in Roxbury, containing, it is said, the most remarkable deposit of spathic iron ore in the United States. Immense sums of money were expended in vain attempts to work it as a silver mine. Two years after Allen began his Vermont life he still owned land in Judea Society, a part of the present town of Washington. The details and financial results of these business undertakings are not furnished us. They indicate enterprise, if nothing more. Carrying on a farm, casting iron ware, and working a mine, not military affairs, seem to have been the avenues wherein Allen developed his executive ability during his early manhood.

What were his educational facilities, his social privileges, and his religious views during this formative period of his life? Ira Allen, in 1795, writes to Dr. S. Williams, the early historian of Vermont, that when his father, Joseph Allen, died, his brother Ethan was preparing for college, and that the death of his father obliged Ethan to discontinue his classical studies. Mr. Jehial Johns, of Huntington, told the Rev. Zadock Thompson that he knew Ethan Allen in Connecticut, and was very certain that Allen spent some time studying with the Rev. Mr. Lee, of Salisbury, with the view of fitting himself for college. The widow of Judge Samuel Hitchcock, of Burlington, told Mr. Thompson that Ethan's attendance at school did not exceed three months. Ira Allen writes General Haldimand in July, 1781, that his brother Ethan has resigned his Brigadier-Generalship in the Vermont militia, and "returned to his old studies, philosophy." To what period in Ethan's life does the phrase "old studies" refer? It could not be his life after the captivity, during his five years' collisions with the Yorkers, but the period we are now considering. Heman Allen's widow, when Mrs. Wadhams, told Zadock Thompson that one summer when he was residing in her house he passed almost all the time in writing. She did not know what was the subject of his study, but on one occasion she called him to dinner, and he said he was very sorry she had called him so soon, for he had "got clear up into the upper regions." Allen himself says:

In my youth I was much disposed to contemplation, and at my commencement in manhood I committed to manuscript such sentiments or arguments as appeared most consonant to reason, lest through the debility of memory, my improvement should have been less gradual. This method of scribbling I practised for many years, from which I experienced great advantages in the progression of learning and knowledge; the more so as I was deficient in education and had to acquire the knowledge of grammar and language, as well as the art of reasoning, principally from a studious application to it; which after all, I am sensible, lays me under disadvantages, particularly in matters of composition; however, to remedy this defect I have substituted the most unwearied pains.... Ever since I arrived at the state of manhood and acquainted myself with the general history of mankind, I have felt a sincere passion for liberty. The history of nations doomed to perpetual slavery in consequence of yielding up to tyrants their natural-born liberties, I read with a sort of philosophical horror.

In Allen's youth great revivals were inaugurated, organized, and continued mainly by the preaching of Whitefield, who roused and electrified audiences of several thousands, as men have rarely been moved since the days of Peter the Hermit. Even Franklin, Bolingbroke, and Chesterfield were fascinated by him. As for Allen, baptized in his infancy, in the days when no Sabbath-school blessed the race, when the Westminster Catechism and Watts' Hymns were in use throughout New England (Isaac Watts died when Allen was eleven years old), living in and near northwest Connecticut in as democratic and religious community as the world had ever seen, reading none of the books of the Deists, he was fond of discussion and delighted in writing out his arguments. Having been brought up an Armenian Christian, in contradistinction to a Calvinistic Christian, his views in early manhood began to change. One picture of this gradual evolution he gives us in the following description:

The doctrine of imputation according to the Christian scheme consists of two parts. First, of imputation of the apostasy of Adam and Eve to their posterity, commonly called original sin; and secondly, of the imputation of the merits or righteousness of Christ, who in Scripture is called the second Adam to mankind or to the elect. This is a concise definition of the doctrine, and which will undoubtedly be admitted to be a just one by every denomination of men who are acquainted with Christianity, whether they adhere to it or not.

I therefore proceed to illustrate and explain the doctrine by transcribing a short but very pertinent conversation which in the early days of my manhood I had with a Calvinistic divine; but previously remark that I was educated in what are commonly called the Armenian principles; and among other tenets to reject the doctrine of original sin; this was the point at issue between the clergyman and me. In my turn I opposed the doctrine of original sin with philosophical reasonings, and as I thought had confuted the doctrine. The Reverend gentleman heard me through patiently: and with candor replied:

"Your metaphysical reasonings are not to the purpose, inasmuch as you are a Christian and hope and expect to be saved by the imputed righteousness of Christ to you; for you may as well be imputedly sinful as imputedly righteous. Nay," said he, "if you hold to the doctrine of satisfaction and atonement by Christ, by so doing you presuppose the doctrine of apostasy or original sin to be in fact true;" for, said he, "if mankind were not in a ruined and condemned state by nature, there could have been no need of a Redeemer; but each individual of them would have been accountable to his Creator and Judge, upon the basis of his own moral agency. Further observing that upon philosophical principles it was difficult to account for the doctrine of original sin, or of original righteousness; yet as they were plain, fundamental doctrines of the Christian faith we ought to assent to the truth of them; and that from the divine authority of revelation. Notwithstanding," said he, "if you will give me a philosophical explanation of original imputed righteousness, which you profess to believe and expect salvation by, then I will return you a philosophical explanation of original sin; for it is plain," said he, "that your objections lie with equal weight against original imputed righteousness, as against original imputed sin."

Upon which I had the candor to acknowledge to the worthy ecclesiastic, that upon the Christian plan I perceived the argument had clearly terminated against me. For at that time I dared not to distrust the infallibility of revelation; much more to dispute it. However, this conversation was uppermost in my mind for several months after; and after many painful searches and researches after the truth, respecting the doctrine of imputation, resolved at all events to abide the decision of rational argument in the premises; and on a full examination of both parts of the doctrine, rejected the whole; for on a fair scrutiny, I found that I must concede to it entirely or not at all; or else believe inconsistently as the clergyman had argued.

He relates also a change from his juvenile views of biblical history:

When I was a boy, by one means or other, I had conceived a very bad opinion of Pharaoh; he seemed to me to be a cruel, despotic prince; he would not give the Israelites straw, but nevertheless, demanded of them the full tale of brick; for a time he opposed God Almighty; but was at last luckily drowned in the Red Sea; at which event, with other good Christians, I rejoiced, and even exulted at the overthrow of the base and wicked tyrant. But after a few years of maturity and examination of the history of that monarch given by Moses, with the before recited remarks of the apostle, I conceived a more favorable opinion of him; inasmuch as we are told that God raised him up and hardened his heart, and predestinated his reign, his wickedness, and his overthrow.

In 1782 he says:

In the circle of my acquaintance (which has not been small), I have generally been denominated a Deist, the reality of which I never disputed; being conscious I am no Christian, except mere infant baptism makes me one; and as to being a Deist, I know not, strictly speaking, whether I am one or not, for I have never read their writings.

We are told that Allen in his early life was very intimate with Dr. Thomas Young, the man who supplied the state with its name, "Vermont," in April, 1777, and who so strongly encouraged it to assert its independence. One of the most noted characteristics of Ethan, his fondness for the society of able men, is illustrated in his association with Young.

Dr. Young, who was a distinguished citizen of Philadelphia, was on most of the Whig committees in Boston, before the Revolution, with James Otis, Samuel Adams, Joseph Warren, and others. He and Adams addressed the great public meeting on the day "when Boston harbor was black with unexpected tea." He was a neighbor of Allen, living in the Oblong, in Dutchess County, while Allen lived in Salisbury. Afterward he lived in Albany, and died in Philadelphia in the third year of Allen's captivity. He was influential in causing Vermont to adopt the constitution of Pennsylvania.

The Oblong, Salisbury and vicinity, abounded in free thinkers. Young and Allen opposed President Edwards' famous theological tenets, the latter spending much time in Young's house, and it was generally understood that they were preparing for publication a book in support of sceptical principles; the two agreeing that the one that outlived the other should publish it. Allen, on going to Vermont, left his manuscripts with Young, and on his release from captivity after Young's death obtained from the latter's family, who had gone back to Dutchess County, both his own and Young's manuscripts, and these were the originals of his "Oracles of Reason."

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