Green Mountain Boys

The Green Mountain Boys were a Revolutionary War–era militia group from the region of modern-day Vermont. The group formed in the 1760s to protect local land rights from what its members considered an illegal intrusion from colonial New Yorkers. Branded outlaws by New York's governor, who promised to pursue them into the region's Green Mountains, the group transformed the threat into its name—Green Mountain Boys. At the outbreak of the American Revolution (1775–1783), the Green Mountain Boys, led by their founder Ethan Allen, joined the war effort and won the first colonial victory against the British. The group eventually became part of the Continental Army and, ironically, was reorganized under the authority of New York State. The regiment fought in several notable battles during the war before being disbanded in 1781.

Background

The British colonial ventures in North America began as business enterprises designed to make a profit for their sponsors back in England. The groups of colonists who traveled to the New World entered into a written agreement, or charter, with the king, officially granting them land and placing them under the sovereignty of the British Crown. Since the king was thousands of miles across the Atlantic, he appointed governors as his representatives in colonial affairs. Virginia was the first American colony, founded in 1607; it was followed by Massachusetts in 1620 and New Hampshire in 1623. When Georgia was chartered in 1732, it brought the number of British colonies to thirteen.

In 1749, Benning Wentworth, the colonial governor of New Hampshire, began selling land in the colony's western region to settlers. The parcels were located between Lake Champlain and the Connecticut River—roughly equivalent to the borders of modern-day Vermont. At the time, Britain's King George II had decreed that the border of the neighboring New York colony stopped just east of the Hudson River. Four years after the king died in 1760, his grandson, King George III, decreed the eastern boundary of New York to be the Connecticut River, thereby ceding Vermont and the western sections of Massachusetts and Connecticut to New York. The king ruled that the settlers already on the land could keep their property; however, New York authorities refused to honor the claims and demanded that the settlers repurchase the land from its New York "owners."

Overview

Tensions flared between the New Hampshire landholders and the "Yorkers" throughout the 1760s. In 1770, landowner Ethan Allen and several of his relatives formed a militia to defend their land from what they felt was an incursion by the Yorkers. The loosely organized group harassed local residents who submitted to New York authority and showed up in armed resistance to stop New York court officials from enforcing eviction notices. In one instance, a local doctor who voiced his support for the Yorkers was tied to a chair and suspended from a flagpole outside a tavern. In another, the group drove several New York settlers from their land and burned their cabins to the ground.

Allen's militia was dubbed the "Bennington Mob" in court documents, and New York's governor labeled them "outlaws" and "revolutionaries." The governor went so far as to put a price on members of the group and derisively claimed that he would "chase them into the Green Mountains." The militia seized on the comment and adopted the name Green Mountain Boys. The Green Mountain Boys were led by Allen, his brothers Levi and Ira, and his cousins Ebenezer Allen, Seth Warner, and Remember Baker. In 1774, the New York Assembly declared that Ethan Allen and several other militia members would be subject to capital punishment. Allen responded by threatening to find the delegates who drafted the measure and flog them.

On April 19, 1775, the long-simmering conflict between colonial Americans and the British erupted into armed fighting in Lexington, New Hampshire, signifying the beginning of the American Revolution. The Green Mountain Boys were one of many militia groups who joined the colonial cause in the early days of the war. Just weeks after Lexington, a group of colonial leaders from the New England states commissioned the Green Mountain Boys to attack the British Fort Ticonderoga on Lake Champlain. Ticonderoga was considered of great strategic importance for a possible colonial invasion of Canada. Allen and his men were joined by forces led by Colonel Benedict Arnold of Connecticut in the assault on Ticonderoga. On May 10, 1775, the troops crossed the lake in the early morning hours and surprised the sleeping garrison of British soldiers, capturing the fort for the first colonial victory of the war. The next day, a force of Green Mountain Boys led by Seth Warner captured a British contingent at Crown Point near the southern end of Lake Champlain.

After the battle, Allen and Warner traveled to Philadelphia to ask the Continental Congress to officially incorporate the Green Mountain Boys into the Continental Army. Congress agreed, but the militia was assigned to the revolutionary congress of New York, where Allen was still considered an outlaw. Allen convinced the congress to provide military pay to the regiment, which was reorganized under the name Green Mountain Continental Rangers. Given the opportunity to select its own commander, the regiment snubbed Allen and instead voted Warner as its leader. Allen joined the staff of another New York regiment as a lieutenant colonel. In September 1775, Allen took part in an ill-fated attack on British-held Montreal and was captured. He was imprisoned in England for three years and eventually returned to the United States in 1778.

As commander of the Green Mountain Rangers, Warner helped turn back British troops at the battle of Longueuil near Montreal in November 1775. The regiment also played a role guarding the retreat of the Continental Army from Canada in 1776 and in a retreat during the battle of Battle of Hubbardton in 1777. That same year, Warner's troops were part of key victories in colonial Bennington and Saratoga that helped secure the region for the Continental Army. The Green Mountain regiment remained active under Warner's command until 1781 when it was disbanded.

Bibliography

"Benning Wentworth." Virtual Vermont, 14 Oct. 2013, www.virtualvermont.com/history/bwentworth.html. Accessed 28 May 2017.

"The Capture of Fort Ticonderoga." History.com, www.history.com/topics/american-revolution/capture-of-fort-ticonderoga. Accessed 28 May 2017.

"The Colonial Experience." USHistory.org, www.ushistory.org/gov/2a.asp. Accessed 28 May 2017.

Duffy, John J., et al., eds. The Vermont Encyclopedia. UP of New England, 2003.

Hart, William B. "The Unsettled Periphery: The Backcountry on the Eve of the American Revolution." The Oxford Handbook of the American Revolution, edited by Edward G. Gray and Jane Kamensky. Oxford UP, 2013, pp. 30–46.

Procknow, Gene. "Seth Warner or Ethan Allen: Who Led the Green Mountain Boys?" Journal of the American Revolution, 5 May 2014, allthingsliberty.com/2014/05/seth-warner-or-ethan-allen-who-led-the-green-mountain-boys/. Accessed 27 May 2017.

Randall, Willard Sterne. Ethan Allen: His Life and Times. W.W. Norton & Company, 2011.

Randall, Willard Sterne. "The First American Victory: Ethan Allen Takes Fort Ticonderoga." History Net, 2 Nov. 2007, www.historynet.com/the-first-american-victory-ethan-allen-takes-fort-ticonderoga.htm. Accessed 27 May 2017.