Life of Col. Ethan Allen (ePub)

Covers the life of Ethan Allen as he fights for first the New Hampshire Grants and then for the newly declared United States of America. His capture of Fort Ticonderoga and his fight to make Vermont an Independent state are all related."e;THE first settlement of Vermont, and the early struggles of the inhabitants not only in subduing a wilderness, but establishing an independent government, afford some of the most remarkable incidents in American history. When we now survey that flourishing State, presenting in all its parts populous towns and villages, and witness the high degree of culture to which it has attained, and which, under the most favored social organization, is usually the slow achievement of time, we can hardly realize that seventy years ago the whole region from the Connecticut River to Lake Champlain was a waste of forests, an asylum for wild beasts, and a barrier against the inroads of the savages upon the border settlements of the New England Colonies. This change has been brought to pass in the first place by a bold and hardy enterprise, and an indomitable spirit of freedom, which have rarely been equalled; and afterwards by the steady perseverance of an enlightened and industrious population, deriving its stock from the surrounding States, and increasing rapidly from its own resources. To the historian this is a fertile and attractive theme. By the biographer it can only be touched, as bearing on the deeds and character of the persons, who have been the principal actors in the train of events.Among those, who were most conspicuous in laying the foundation upon which the independent State of Vermont has been reared, and indeed the leader and champion of that resolute band of husbandmen who first planted themselves in the wilderness of the Green Mountains was ETHAN ALLEN."e;-Print ed.