October 1, 2014 • 22 mins
Allen's later years were marred by some unwise political alliances he made in his effort to gain independence for Vermont. After his political work cooled, he turned instead to writing, though he wasn't a hugely popular author.
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to Stuff you Missed in History Class from how
Stuff Works dot Com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast.
I'm Holly Frown and I'm Tracy V. Wilson. And what
could have part two of our Ethan Allen topic because
he did many crazy things that people don't seem to
(00:23):
know about. Uh So the first part of the story
we talked about his origins, how he came to lead
a militia group called the Green Mountain Boys, who first
were formed to go after uh Yorkers short for New
Yorkers in territory disputes in the New Hampshire Grants, the
New Hampshire Grants being what is modern day Vermont. And
how then this group, the Green Mountain Boys went on
(00:44):
to serve the colonists in the American Revolution in an
effort to bring favor to their desire to make Vermont
an independent state. And after taking forts Um Lake Champlain
from the British with his Green Mountain Boys and additional
troops headed by Benedict Arnold, Ethan who had been voted
out as leader of the Green Mountain Militia, was still
ready to fight on behalf of the colonies, and so
(01:05):
he had volunteered to take part in an initiative to
push the fighting up into Canada. After the successes at
Taikonderoga and Crown Point, Allen really saw a clear path
to move north, and he made his way towards the
north end of Lake Champlain. Having gotten tired of waiting
on some kind of decisive movement and having never gotten
(01:27):
an official commission to make any battle plans, he decided
that the next target should be Montreal. Yeah. He I
think we should be clear that Ethan Allen decided that
if there had been some discussion about it prior to that,
but he really kind of took matters into his own
hands because he was certainly a determined and confident gentleman.
(01:47):
And in June seventy, so this is just a few
weeks after he had led the troops that took Ticonderoga
and Crown Point, forts, Alan began recruiting Native Americans and
even embittered Canadians. You join him in this this little plan.
And so between June and September he amassed his troops
and he laid out sort of a battle plan. Uh.
(02:09):
And this endeavor we probably don't have to, but I
feel we should point out was entirely foolhardy for a
number of reasons, aside for the fact that he was
just kind of doing this of his own initiative. Montreal
knew what Alan was planning. He had not been secretive
enough in his efforts to recruit people, and so word
had gotten to Montreal that he was planning something. And moreover,
(02:32):
even though he had recruited a lot of these men,
not all of them were really on board with his
invasion plans, so it was really just beset by problems. Consequently,
when he forged ahead into Montreal on September, things did
not go well. So, as we said, they knew he
was coming, and this plan was more impulsive than strategic.
(02:55):
He thought that backup was going to come to assist him,
but it never came. A lot of his recruits deserted,
and the whole thing just went so poorly that Ethan
was very easily captured. Yeah, it's a certain level of turnabout.
He so easily took those the forts of Ticonderoga and
Crown Point that then when he tried this more ambitious plan,
(03:19):
it really fell apart, and he was the one that
was easily taken because he was charged as a traitor
to the British Crown. Initially he was shipped back to
England for trial, and Ethan Allen actually wrote of his
time as a captive after the fact, and these writings
were used as war propaganda. In a passage from his
work A Narrative of Colonel Ethan Allen's Captivity, he describes
(03:41):
attempting to negotiate a sort of kindness and fair treatment
with his captors, and the manner in which he was
forced to respond to the poor treatment that he received.
So this is what he wrote. The reader is now
invited back to the time I was put into Irons.
I requested the privilege to write to General Prescott, which
(04:02):
was granted. I reminded him of the kind and generous
manner of my treatment to the prisoners I take at
teknda Roga, and of the injustice and ungentlemanlike usage which
I had met with from him, and demanded gentleman like usage,
but received no answer from him. I soon after wrote
to General Carlton, which met the same success. In the meanwhile,
(04:24):
many of those who were permitted to see me were
very insulting. I was confined in the manner I have
related on board the schooner gas boo about six weeks
during which I was obliged to throw out plenty of
extravagant language, which answered certain purposes at that time better
than to grace a history. So basically he UH did
(04:47):
a lot of swearing, profanity and yelling, which I personally
am going to call extravagant language going forward in my
life because it sounds so nice. Rather than to admit
that I threw a tantrum, UH, and he just felt like,
you know what, in the time, that's what was needed.
And I told them off because I tried to be
nice and they wouldn't acknowledge that. And I really loved
(05:09):
this passage because it's sort of very quickly encapsulates this
fiery part of her personality, which we've talked about a lot,
but we haven't really had great examples of. UH. And
his narrative describes also a significant positive shift in his
treatment once he was labeled as a prisoner of war
rather than a trader, and that happened because King George
the Third had decreed that American prisoners should be labeled
(05:32):
as such, and that way taken back to America to
be held rather than being kept in England, which is
where they would have to hold them as traders. He
remained a prisoner, kept first on a ship off the
coast of New York and then moved to Long Island
on parole until May six seventy eight, and that's when
he was released by British troops in exchange for one
(05:53):
of their officers. So, after Alan was released, he was
appointed to the brevet rank of colonel by Congress and
he was awarded back pay for his time and captivity,
but he did not actively serve in the military going
forward from that, So a brevet rank is kind of
an honorary situation in case you did not know that.
Before we move on to him returning to Vermont, let's
(06:14):
take a moment for a word from a sponsor that
sounds grand. And now back to Ethan Allen. So, despite
the service of Allen and his fellow settlers, the New
Hampshire Grants were still lumped in with New York, much
to their dismay. Yeah, the Green Mountain Boys had ably
fought for the freedom of the colonists from British rule,
(06:37):
both with Ethan Allen as their leader and later under
Seth Warner, but there were officials who sort of thought
it was just going to be best and easiest to
simply maintain the same boundary lines for states that had
existed prior to the war. And so this meant that
the proposed state of Vermont, which was really what they
were all fighting for, was still part of New York.
(06:57):
So that was the absolute opposite outcome of what they
had intended when they even joined this whole effort in
the first place. Meanwhile, Vermont had declared its independence in
seventeen seventy seven while Ethan was captive, and just a
few months after his release in May of seventeen seventy eight, Alan,
who had turned his attentions from military service to political negotiation,
(07:21):
formerly presented Vermont's claim for statehood to Congress in Philadelphia.
That happened in September. But there was some tension. New
York was a very powerful state and Congress was not
especially keen on going against New York's wishes. Yeah, and
they were still, you know, dealing with the war effort.
There were a lot of other things going on. But
(07:42):
in the meantime, while the the um fate of Vermont
was kind of being hemmed in hot about both New
Hampshire and Massachusetts were eyeing this land that was there,
and they were kind of making their own claims on
the disputed territory, and all of this unsettled land drama
kind of led Ethan Allen to do something that ended
(08:05):
up being kind of controversial and may not have been
the smartest move. During these territorial disputes, the governor of
Canada was Frederick Haldemant, and in seventeen eighty Ethan, along
with his brother Ira and several other leaders, started a
series of clandestine meetings and communicates with him. They were
negotiating terms to make Vermont part of the British Empire. Yeah,
(08:30):
things weren't going well with statehood and they wanted their independence.
So the Vermont Assembly meanwhile, was not privy to these discussions.
This really was just a small group of men who
had been leaders in various ways that were kind of
opening this discussion. And so while the Assembly was still
working to become the fourteenth state of the Union, that
was their goal, Ethan Allen and his allies, it seemed,
(08:53):
were actually undermining that work by kind of back dealing
with the British. Once these correspondences were revealed, the people
involved claimed that they've been acting out of a desire
to prevent a British invasion and then put pressure on
Congress to make Vermont a state in its own right.
So they claimed that these negotiations were all subterfuge. But uh,
(09:16):
the modern view is that, you know, even after the
war ended in seven teen eight three, officially, some of
these people were actually still having discussions about the possibility
of Vermont becoming part of Britain with these people in Canada.
So the whole hey, we're totally just stringing them along
to prevent an attack. You guys were totally totally cool.
That line of reasoning kind of flies out the window.
(09:39):
It's not a very valid excuse at that point because
there was no attacking going on. Part of Ethan Allen's
history that gets tangled up here and causes some problems
lies in the fact that he was approached during his
time as a prisoner of war to serve as a
spy for the crown. So it's generally believed that he
never served in this capa pacity, but the fact that
(10:01):
he was offered the chance to do so really colored
the perception of his behavior in the negotiations. With haldemand yeah,
he basically was seen as suspicious. They're like, oh, well,
so you say you never betrayed us, but you had
every opportunity to where I wouldn't you, and you were
doing this thing that was kind of dicey. Uh So.
(10:22):
The one thing that's interesting to note, though, is that
while the business with Canadian officials and and in the
broader sense Britain was often labeled as treason by members
of Congress and the public, there were no formal charges
of treason ever officially made to of Ethan Ellen or
any of the other men involved. Back in part one
(10:42):
of this episode, we mentioned that Ethan's wife, Mary died
in seventeen eighty three, and not long after, so did
their couple's oldest daughter. They both died of tuberculosis, and
uh Ethan did mourn both of them, even Mary, even
though it's we mentioned in the first part that they
really weren't said to have a particularly happy marriage. Uh.
(11:03):
But he did not stay single for very long. In
four to the following year, he met Frances montresor brush Buchanan,
and Fanny as she was called, was already a widow herself,
even though she was only twenty four years old when
she met Allan, and at this point he was forty
six and of course a widower because Mary had died,
(11:23):
and he had several young children. The two of them
got married just a few months after they met, and
in contrast to Ethan's first marriage, this match really seems
to have been a lot happier. Fanny was very well educated,
She was interested in music and science, and she could
and would converse with Ethan about his interests and was
(11:44):
by all accounts an extremely calming figure in his life,
which seems like a handy thing to have had around. Uh.
He was given to impulsive behavior. He would curse people
out when he was angry at them, and Fanny really
just sort of old that part of him out a
little bit. Uh. And the pair had three children together,
(12:05):
So Fanny Margaret was born in seventeen eighty four, the
same year they married, Hannibal was born in seventeen eighty six,
and their son Ethan was born in seventeen eighty seven.
Although Allen continued to work on Vermont's behalf, his political
reputation had really taken a huge hit in the wake
of that whole negotiation scandal, and he became less and
less influential. So while he had been the perfect man
(12:28):
to lead a ragtag group of militiamen to seed Vermont's independence,
he just didn't have the finesse needed to actually govern
and lead in times that required more diplomacy instead of
brute force. Uh yeah. So even though Fanny had had
had this calming effect on him, he still, you know,
was the same man at heart. He was not one
(12:49):
that liked to um make deals that involved compromise. So
his work, instead of being so much in the political realm,
began to foe because instead on writing and he went
back to working on a project that he had begun
years earlier with Thomas Young, who in our first episode
we mentioned he was a doctor that Ethan Allen was
(13:11):
friends with and they had a rather uh scandalous public
varilation demonstration that resulted in them both being charged because
it was illegal at the time. So he ended up
going back to the work that they had been doing together,
and he ended up publishing a book entitled Reason the
Only Oracle of Man or a Compendious System of Natural Religion,
(13:34):
and that came out in se And this book is
largely a discussion of deism, which centers around morality and
spirituality coming from a place of reason rather than being
part of a structured and dogmatic religious order. Uh, you
can predict how well that did. That was not well.
(13:54):
Had His criticism of both the Old and New Testaments
really struck a sour note with a lot of bowl. Yeah,
he really did kind of tear apart the Bible, and
and you know, instead of sort of persuading through uh,
some of the ways that he had used when he
was younger, where he was really able to make people
see his point of view, he really kind of just
(14:16):
took an attack approach and it it definitely hurt him. Um.
But regardless of his book sales, he kind of went
about his life. He and Fanny moved to Burlington in
seventy seven to live on the Winooski River, and he
wrote while he was there, he did some farming, and
he generally enjoyed peace and quiet with his family. Remember,
he had a lot of new children at this point.
(14:36):
The cause of his death is not entirely clear. He
had gone out and he was coming home in his
sleigh across a frozen lake and he either had a
stroke or fell off the vehicle because he was intoxicated.
He died without ever regaining consciousness the next day, which
was February twelfth, seventeen eighty nine. He's buried in Burlington, Vermont,
(14:58):
and two years after his passing, Vermont became a state. Yeah,
he had worked for his whole life, but he never
got to see it in his lifetime, although they were close.
Um and just in case, we mentioned in the top
of the first part of this too parter that when
you talk to most people, they hear the name Ethan
(15:19):
Allen and they go, oh, the furniture guy, and they
think that he was a carpenter or a furniture maker
or somehow this was his company. It was not so.
In case you were wondering about how he got tied
in in terms of the image with a large furniture company,
that company was actually named after Ethan Allen when it
was founded in the nineteen thirties in Beecher, Vermont. They
(15:40):
kind of because he is sort of a hero in
Vermont and known for his tenacity and his clarity of vision,
they thought that would be a good, uh, sort of
mascot of sorts for their their new company that they
were going to put together. And if you're also been
wondering as I have been about Green Mountain Coffee, which
(16:01):
I feel like I see everywhere now that also is
headquartered in Vermont. Despite being characterized as a cantankerous and
impulsive person, Ethan Allen has really achieved folk hero status
for Vermont. There's a statue of him that was given
to the National Statuary Hall Collection in eighteen seventies six. Yeah,
(16:23):
and there is a m uh museum, the Ethan Allen
Homestead Museum. Will link to that in the show notes
because they had a lot of sorts material. Uh So, yeah,
he's sort of become famous, and I think a lot
of people, like I have a friend that uh went
to school in Vermont, and she knew a lot about him,
but she was like the only person that really seemed
to have a handle on the Ethan Allen story. So
(16:47):
he's worth talking about. And like I said, I think,
you know, he kind of as many other figures I
seem to pick. I don't do this on purpose. They
have these potentially really prominent places in history and then
they kind of ruined them by being jerks in some
way or angering the wrong person, sometimes through being a
jerk uh and I kind of feel like his his
(17:08):
proclivity for yelling at people and kind of doing his
own thing and making some foolish decisions kind of took
away what possibly could have been an even bigger sort
of image that people would remember outside of furniture. Yeah,
my first association was definitely the furniture company. I think
everybody's is, which is, you know, kudos to them, They've
(17:29):
done great marketing through the years, but it has kind
of obscured the actual image we have of the historical
figure that it is named after. So I also have
some listener mail. The first part of this episode, I
read listener mail from someone who had sent us an
actual parcel, and I'm doing the same thing again because
we've gotten a couple of really lovely parcels lately, and
(17:52):
I want to acknowledge us because we appreciate them greatly.
This one is from our listener Karen, and she says,
Dear Holly and Tricy, I'm a huge fan of the
pod cast. I've listened to all of them, with the
exception of part two of one of your Serial Killers topics.
I just don't sleep well after a topic like that,
so I know you'll understand and forgive. Of course we will.
Everybody has stuff that they're not comfortable listening to. Uh.
(18:13):
I was hiking in the French Alps when I heard
your podcast on La Scala Opera House. We had a
planned stop in Milan, so I added the Opera House
to our mussy list. Uh. You did the research, so
you already know how amazing it is. We loved our tour.
You would have loved the museum because it was filled
with costumes and set design books enclosed a few books
I think you will love, and too funny green packages.
(18:34):
Have you seen these before? These are these little parcels.
I'm describing them of kind of these plastic e green envelopes,
and she says they are provided free at the opera.
You are expected to place your cigarette butt in the
pouch instead of on the sidewalk, so that's kind of
a little cigarette disposal packet. I've never seen them before,
but I haven't smoked in a very long time, so
(18:54):
I would not have been exposed to them. But the
books she sent us are awesome. She sent us a
coloring book of h It's called Discover and Color the
Teatro Alla Scala and it's just a lovely book with
these beautiful drawings in it that I will maybe photocopy
and color, but I won't ever touch the original because
I don't do that. Even as a child, I photocopied
(19:15):
my coloring books like a big nerd. And then another
children's book about a ballerina's costume for Las Scala, and
it's absolutely darling. That illustrations are so pretty. They're these
really lovely watercolors. I love it. I love it, I
love it. And she sent us this cool little free
d kind of pop up paper model of the theater
so you get a sense of how it's laid out
(19:37):
and where the seating is so awesome. Thank you so
so much, Karen. I can't even tell you how much
we appreciate treats like this. Now, I want to thank
the person who sent us those horrible histories miniature figurines,
and I, yeah, I've I've forgotten who sent us those. Yeah,
we I wish we could, and maybe we should figure
(19:58):
out a way to thank everybody sends us stuff, because
we do get some really wonderful and delightful little treats
in the mail from time to time. And I know
I haven't always been able to like loop back around
and make sure they get mentioned on the podcast. Sometimes
we open things and we get all excited and then
we don't write that down and then we forget the
name of the person who said that, and it becomes
(20:20):
then we feel ungrateful. I feel ungrateful. Yeah. I try
to keep all this stuff together, but what often happens
to me is like just other work stuff will come up.
There will be you know, deadlines on articles that happen,
and I just that my gratitude is still there, but
the remembering to express it sometimes gets pushed to the
periphery because we're focused on other stuff and our workloads
(20:41):
are shifting. So please know that we super appreciate anything
that you guys send us. So if you've sent something
and you're like those jerks never thanked me, we really
do appreciate it and we thank you. We just sometimes
are jerks and we get busy and forget things. So
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(21:03):
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(21:27):
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(21:48):
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Welcome to Stuff you Missed in History Class from how
Stuff Works dot Com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast.
I'm Holly Frown and I'm Tracy V. Wilson. And what
could have part two of our Ethan Allen topic because
he did many crazy things that people don't seem to
(00:23):
know about. Uh So the first part of the story
we talked about his origins, how he came to lead
a militia group called the Green Mountain Boys, who first
were formed to go after uh Yorkers short for New
Yorkers in territory disputes in the New Hampshire Grants, the
New Hampshire Grants being what is modern day Vermont. And
how then this group, the Green Mountain Boys went on
(00:44):
to serve the colonists in the American Revolution in an
effort to bring favor to their desire to make Vermont
an independent state. And after taking forts Um Lake Champlain
from the British with his Green Mountain Boys and additional
troops headed by Benedict Arnold, Ethan who had been voted
out as leader of the Green Mountain Militia, was still
ready to fight on behalf of the colonies, and so
(01:05):
he had volunteered to take part in an initiative to
push the fighting up into Canada. After the successes at
Taikonderoga and Crown Point, Allen really saw a clear path
to move north, and he made his way towards the
north end of Lake Champlain. Having gotten tired of waiting
on some kind of decisive movement and having never gotten
(01:27):
an official commission to make any battle plans, he decided
that the next target should be Montreal. Yeah. He I
think we should be clear that Ethan Allen decided that
if there had been some discussion about it prior to that,
but he really kind of took matters into his own
hands because he was certainly a determined and confident gentleman.
(01:47):
And in June seventy, so this is just a few
weeks after he had led the troops that took Ticonderoga
and Crown Point, forts, Alan began recruiting Native Americans and
even embittered Canadians. You join him in this this little plan.
And so between June and September he amassed his troops
and he laid out sort of a battle plan. Uh.
(02:09):
And this endeavor we probably don't have to, but I
feel we should point out was entirely foolhardy for a
number of reasons, aside for the fact that he was
just kind of doing this of his own initiative. Montreal
knew what Alan was planning. He had not been secretive
enough in his efforts to recruit people, and so word
had gotten to Montreal that he was planning something. And moreover,
(02:32):
even though he had recruited a lot of these men,
not all of them were really on board with his
invasion plans, so it was really just beset by problems. Consequently,
when he forged ahead into Montreal on September, things did
not go well. So, as we said, they knew he
was coming, and this plan was more impulsive than strategic.
(02:55):
He thought that backup was going to come to assist him,
but it never came. A lot of his recruits deserted,
and the whole thing just went so poorly that Ethan
was very easily captured. Yeah, it's a certain level of turnabout.
He so easily took those the forts of Ticonderoga and
Crown Point that then when he tried this more ambitious plan,
(03:19):
it really fell apart, and he was the one that
was easily taken because he was charged as a traitor
to the British Crown. Initially he was shipped back to
England for trial, and Ethan Allen actually wrote of his
time as a captive after the fact, and these writings
were used as war propaganda. In a passage from his
work A Narrative of Colonel Ethan Allen's Captivity, he describes
(03:41):
attempting to negotiate a sort of kindness and fair treatment
with his captors, and the manner in which he was
forced to respond to the poor treatment that he received.
So this is what he wrote. The reader is now
invited back to the time I was put into Irons.
I requested the privilege to write to General Prescott, which
(04:02):
was granted. I reminded him of the kind and generous
manner of my treatment to the prisoners I take at
teknda Roga, and of the injustice and ungentlemanlike usage which
I had met with from him, and demanded gentleman like usage,
but received no answer from him. I soon after wrote
to General Carlton, which met the same success. In the meanwhile,
(04:24):
many of those who were permitted to see me were
very insulting. I was confined in the manner I have
related on board the schooner gas boo about six weeks
during which I was obliged to throw out plenty of
extravagant language, which answered certain purposes at that time better
than to grace a history. So basically he UH did
(04:47):
a lot of swearing, profanity and yelling, which I personally
am going to call extravagant language going forward in my
life because it sounds so nice. Rather than to admit
that I threw a tantrum, UH, and he just felt like,
you know what, in the time, that's what was needed.
And I told them off because I tried to be
nice and they wouldn't acknowledge that. And I really loved
(05:09):
this passage because it's sort of very quickly encapsulates this
fiery part of her personality, which we've talked about a lot,
but we haven't really had great examples of. UH. And
his narrative describes also a significant positive shift in his
treatment once he was labeled as a prisoner of war
rather than a trader, and that happened because King George
the Third had decreed that American prisoners should be labeled
(05:32):
as such, and that way taken back to America to
be held rather than being kept in England, which is
where they would have to hold them as traders. He
remained a prisoner, kept first on a ship off the
coast of New York and then moved to Long Island
on parole until May six seventy eight, and that's when
he was released by British troops in exchange for one
(05:53):
of their officers. So, after Alan was released, he was
appointed to the brevet rank of colonel by Congress and
he was awarded back pay for his time and captivity,
but he did not actively serve in the military going
forward from that, So a brevet rank is kind of
an honorary situation in case you did not know that.
Before we move on to him returning to Vermont, let's
(06:14):
take a moment for a word from a sponsor that
sounds grand. And now back to Ethan Allen. So, despite
the service of Allen and his fellow settlers, the New
Hampshire Grants were still lumped in with New York, much
to their dismay. Yeah, the Green Mountain Boys had ably
fought for the freedom of the colonists from British rule,
(06:37):
both with Ethan Allen as their leader and later under
Seth Warner, but there were officials who sort of thought
it was just going to be best and easiest to
simply maintain the same boundary lines for states that had
existed prior to the war. And so this meant that
the proposed state of Vermont, which was really what they
were all fighting for, was still part of New York.
(06:57):
So that was the absolute opposite outcome of what they
had intended when they even joined this whole effort in
the first place. Meanwhile, Vermont had declared its independence in
seventeen seventy seven while Ethan was captive, and just a
few months after his release in May of seventeen seventy eight, Alan,
who had turned his attentions from military service to political negotiation,
(07:21):
formerly presented Vermont's claim for statehood to Congress in Philadelphia.
That happened in September. But there was some tension. New
York was a very powerful state and Congress was not
especially keen on going against New York's wishes. Yeah, and
they were still, you know, dealing with the war effort.
There were a lot of other things going on. But
(07:42):
in the meantime, while the the um fate of Vermont
was kind of being hemmed in hot about both New
Hampshire and Massachusetts were eyeing this land that was there,
and they were kind of making their own claims on
the disputed territory, and all of this unsettled land drama
kind of led Ethan Allen to do something that ended
(08:05):
up being kind of controversial and may not have been
the smartest move. During these territorial disputes, the governor of
Canada was Frederick Haldemant, and in seventeen eighty Ethan, along
with his brother Ira and several other leaders, started a
series of clandestine meetings and communicates with him. They were
negotiating terms to make Vermont part of the British Empire. Yeah,
(08:30):
things weren't going well with statehood and they wanted their independence.
So the Vermont Assembly meanwhile, was not privy to these discussions.
This really was just a small group of men who
had been leaders in various ways that were kind of
opening this discussion. And so while the Assembly was still
working to become the fourteenth state of the Union, that
was their goal, Ethan Allen and his allies, it seemed,
(08:53):
were actually undermining that work by kind of back dealing
with the British. Once these correspondences were revealed, the people
involved claimed that they've been acting out of a desire
to prevent a British invasion and then put pressure on
Congress to make Vermont a state in its own right.
So they claimed that these negotiations were all subterfuge. But uh,
(09:16):
the modern view is that, you know, even after the
war ended in seven teen eight three, officially, some of
these people were actually still having discussions about the possibility
of Vermont becoming part of Britain with these people in Canada.
So the whole hey, we're totally just stringing them along
to prevent an attack. You guys were totally totally cool.
That line of reasoning kind of flies out the window.
(09:39):
It's not a very valid excuse at that point because
there was no attacking going on. Part of Ethan Allen's
history that gets tangled up here and causes some problems
lies in the fact that he was approached during his
time as a prisoner of war to serve as a
spy for the crown. So it's generally believed that he
never served in this capa pacity, but the fact that
(10:01):
he was offered the chance to do so really colored
the perception of his behavior in the negotiations. With haldemand yeah,
he basically was seen as suspicious. They're like, oh, well,
so you say you never betrayed us, but you had
every opportunity to where I wouldn't you, and you were
doing this thing that was kind of dicey. Uh So.
(10:22):
The one thing that's interesting to note, though, is that
while the business with Canadian officials and and in the
broader sense Britain was often labeled as treason by members
of Congress and the public, there were no formal charges
of treason ever officially made to of Ethan Ellen or
any of the other men involved. Back in part one
(10:42):
of this episode, we mentioned that Ethan's wife, Mary died
in seventeen eighty three, and not long after, so did
their couple's oldest daughter. They both died of tuberculosis, and
uh Ethan did mourn both of them, even Mary, even
though it's we mentioned in the first part that they
really weren't said to have a particularly happy marriage. Uh.
(11:03):
But he did not stay single for very long. In
four to the following year, he met Frances montresor brush Buchanan,
and Fanny as she was called, was already a widow herself,
even though she was only twenty four years old when
she met Allan, and at this point he was forty
six and of course a widower because Mary had died,
(11:23):
and he had several young children. The two of them
got married just a few months after they met, and
in contrast to Ethan's first marriage, this match really seems
to have been a lot happier. Fanny was very well educated,
She was interested in music and science, and she could
and would converse with Ethan about his interests and was
(11:44):
by all accounts an extremely calming figure in his life,
which seems like a handy thing to have had around. Uh.
He was given to impulsive behavior. He would curse people
out when he was angry at them, and Fanny really
just sort of old that part of him out a
little bit. Uh. And the pair had three children together,
(12:05):
So Fanny Margaret was born in seventeen eighty four, the
same year they married, Hannibal was born in seventeen eighty six,
and their son Ethan was born in seventeen eighty seven.
Although Allen continued to work on Vermont's behalf, his political
reputation had really taken a huge hit in the wake
of that whole negotiation scandal, and he became less and
less influential. So while he had been the perfect man
(12:28):
to lead a ragtag group of militiamen to seed Vermont's independence,
he just didn't have the finesse needed to actually govern
and lead in times that required more diplomacy instead of
brute force. Uh yeah. So even though Fanny had had
had this calming effect on him, he still, you know,
was the same man at heart. He was not one
(12:49):
that liked to um make deals that involved compromise. So
his work, instead of being so much in the political realm,
began to foe because instead on writing and he went
back to working on a project that he had begun
years earlier with Thomas Young, who in our first episode
we mentioned he was a doctor that Ethan Allen was
(13:11):
friends with and they had a rather uh scandalous public
varilation demonstration that resulted in them both being charged because
it was illegal at the time. So he ended up
going back to the work that they had been doing together,
and he ended up publishing a book entitled Reason the
Only Oracle of Man or a Compendious System of Natural Religion,
(13:34):
and that came out in se And this book is
largely a discussion of deism, which centers around morality and
spirituality coming from a place of reason rather than being
part of a structured and dogmatic religious order. Uh, you
can predict how well that did. That was not well.
(13:54):
Had His criticism of both the Old and New Testaments
really struck a sour note with a lot of bowl. Yeah,
he really did kind of tear apart the Bible, and
and you know, instead of sort of persuading through uh,
some of the ways that he had used when he
was younger, where he was really able to make people
see his point of view, he really kind of just
(14:16):
took an attack approach and it it definitely hurt him. Um.
But regardless of his book sales, he kind of went
about his life. He and Fanny moved to Burlington in
seventy seven to live on the Winooski River, and he
wrote while he was there, he did some farming, and
he generally enjoyed peace and quiet with his family. Remember,
he had a lot of new children at this point.
(14:36):
The cause of his death is not entirely clear. He
had gone out and he was coming home in his
sleigh across a frozen lake and he either had a
stroke or fell off the vehicle because he was intoxicated.
He died without ever regaining consciousness the next day, which
was February twelfth, seventeen eighty nine. He's buried in Burlington, Vermont,
(14:58):
and two years after his passing, Vermont became a state. Yeah,
he had worked for his whole life, but he never
got to see it in his lifetime, although they were close.
Um and just in case, we mentioned in the top
of the first part of this too parter that when
you talk to most people, they hear the name Ethan
(15:19):
Allen and they go, oh, the furniture guy, and they
think that he was a carpenter or a furniture maker
or somehow this was his company. It was not so.
In case you were wondering about how he got tied
in in terms of the image with a large furniture company,
that company was actually named after Ethan Allen when it
was founded in the nineteen thirties in Beecher, Vermont. They
(15:40):
kind of because he is sort of a hero in
Vermont and known for his tenacity and his clarity of vision,
they thought that would be a good, uh, sort of
mascot of sorts for their their new company that they
were going to put together. And if you're also been
wondering as I have been about Green Mountain Coffee, which
(16:01):
I feel like I see everywhere now that also is
headquartered in Vermont. Despite being characterized as a cantankerous and
impulsive person, Ethan Allen has really achieved folk hero status
for Vermont. There's a statue of him that was given
to the National Statuary Hall Collection in eighteen seventies six. Yeah,
(16:23):
and there is a m uh museum, the Ethan Allen
Homestead Museum. Will link to that in the show notes
because they had a lot of sorts material. Uh So, yeah,
he's sort of become famous, and I think a lot
of people, like I have a friend that uh went
to school in Vermont, and she knew a lot about him,
but she was like the only person that really seemed
to have a handle on the Ethan Allen story. So
(16:47):
he's worth talking about. And like I said, I think,
you know, he kind of as many other figures I
seem to pick. I don't do this on purpose. They
have these potentially really prominent places in history and then
they kind of ruined them by being jerks in some
way or angering the wrong person, sometimes through being a
jerk uh and I kind of feel like his his
(17:08):
proclivity for yelling at people and kind of doing his
own thing and making some foolish decisions kind of took
away what possibly could have been an even bigger sort
of image that people would remember outside of furniture. Yeah,
my first association was definitely the furniture company. I think
everybody's is, which is, you know, kudos to them, They've
(17:29):
done great marketing through the years, but it has kind
of obscured the actual image we have of the historical
figure that it is named after. So I also have
some listener mail. The first part of this episode, I
read listener mail from someone who had sent us an
actual parcel, and I'm doing the same thing again because
we've gotten a couple of really lovely parcels lately, and
(17:52):
I want to acknowledge us because we appreciate them greatly.
This one is from our listener Karen, and she says,
Dear Holly and Tricy, I'm a huge fan of the
pod cast. I've listened to all of them, with the
exception of part two of one of your Serial Killers topics.
I just don't sleep well after a topic like that,
so I know you'll understand and forgive. Of course we will.
Everybody has stuff that they're not comfortable listening to. Uh.
(18:13):
I was hiking in the French Alps when I heard
your podcast on La Scala Opera House. We had a
planned stop in Milan, so I added the Opera House
to our mussy list. Uh. You did the research, so
you already know how amazing it is. We loved our tour.
You would have loved the museum because it was filled
with costumes and set design books enclosed a few books
I think you will love, and too funny green packages.
(18:34):
Have you seen these before? These are these little parcels.
I'm describing them of kind of these plastic e green envelopes,
and she says they are provided free at the opera.
You are expected to place your cigarette butt in the
pouch instead of on the sidewalk, so that's kind of
a little cigarette disposal packet. I've never seen them before,
but I haven't smoked in a very long time, so
(18:54):
I would not have been exposed to them. But the
books she sent us are awesome. She sent us a
coloring book of h It's called Discover and Color the
Teatro Alla Scala and it's just a lovely book with
these beautiful drawings in it that I will maybe photocopy
and color, but I won't ever touch the original because
I don't do that. Even as a child, I photocopied
(19:15):
my coloring books like a big nerd. And then another
children's book about a ballerina's costume for Las Scala, and
it's absolutely darling. That illustrations are so pretty. They're these
really lovely watercolors. I love it. I love it, I
love it. And she sent us this cool little free
d kind of pop up paper model of the theater
so you get a sense of how it's laid out
(19:37):
and where the seating is so awesome. Thank you so
so much, Karen. I can't even tell you how much
we appreciate treats like this. Now, I want to thank
the person who sent us those horrible histories miniature figurines,
and I, yeah, I've I've forgotten who sent us those. Yeah,
we I wish we could, and maybe we should figure
(19:58):
out a way to thank everybody sends us stuff, because
we do get some really wonderful and delightful little treats
in the mail from time to time. And I know
I haven't always been able to like loop back around
and make sure they get mentioned on the podcast. Sometimes
we open things and we get all excited and then
we don't write that down and then we forget the
name of the person who said that, and it becomes
(20:20):
then we feel ungrateful. I feel ungrateful. Yeah. I try
to keep all this stuff together, but what often happens
to me is like just other work stuff will come up.
There will be you know, deadlines on articles that happen,
and I just that my gratitude is still there, but
the remembering to express it sometimes gets pushed to the
periphery because we're focused on other stuff and our workloads
(20:41):
are shifting. So please know that we super appreciate anything
that you guys send us. So if you've sent something
and you're like those jerks never thanked me, we really
do appreciate it and we thank you. We just sometimes
are jerks and we get busy and forget things. So
that is all. If you would like to send us
an email, you can do that History podcast at house
dot works dot com. You can also connect with us
(21:03):
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You can visit our store at misst in history dot
spreadshirt dot com if you would like to purchase shirts
or bags, or mugs or anything else that you feel
will perfectly uh show your love of history. And if
(21:27):
you would like to do a little bit of research
on a topic we discussed today, you can go to
our parents site how stuff Works. Type in the words
prisoner of war in the search bar, and you will
get how the rules of war work, so you will
get maybe some insight into how that whole shift happened
from trader to prisoner of war and how that treatment
would have been difference. UH. You can also visit our
(21:48):
history site, which is missed in history dot com if
you want to listen to the shows, read the show notes,
read an occasional blog, or just check out pretty pictures
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you can absolutely do that at our parents site, which
just has to works dot com for more on this
(22:10):
and thousands of other topics, does it how stuff works
dot com. M
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Hosts And Creators
Tracy V. Wilson
Holly Frey
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