Vermont Republic

At a glance

What was the Vermont Republic?

A self-declared state in the Green Mountains, created by settlers who held land grants from New Hampshire and found that New York claimed the same land. It governed itself for fourteen years, issued its own money, conducted its own diplomacy and applied to join the United States — which refused, because admitting Vermont would have meant taking a side against New York.

It was not a small curiosity. Vermont had about 30,000 people at its declaration and about 85,000 by 1791, which made it comparable to several of the original states. Its constitution was one of the most radical written in the revolutionary era, and its politics — the Allen brothers, the Chittenden faction, the Haldimand negotiations — were as ruthless as anything in Pennsylvania or New York. The map draws the republic from 1783 to 1790, because that is the period the border data covers; the state existed from 1777 and joined the Union in 1791, and this entry uses the full dates.

Why did the Grants break away?

Because two colonies gave the same land to different people. New Hampshire began granting townships west of the Connecticut River in 1749, in the same decades that the English colonies were settling their boundaries, and New York claimed the same territory under its 1664 and 1674 charters. In 1764 the Crown ruled for New York, and New York courts then began evicting settlers whose titles came from New Hampshire.

The settlers organised. The Green Mountain Boys, led by Ethan Allen and his brothers, resisted eviction with threats and violence, and the dispute became a small war of intimidation — barns burned, surveyors run off, sheriffs beaten. When the Revolution began, the Boys took Fort Ticonderoga in May 1775 in the name of the Continental Congress, and the Grants became a military asset with a political claim.

What was the land dispute really about?

Money, on both sides. New York's great families — the Livingstons, the Van Rensselaers, the Schuylers — held patents covering the Grants and stood to collect quitrents and fees from tens of thousands of acres if New York's jurisdiction was upheld. The settlers had bought their land from New Hampshire speculators, cleared it and improved it, and would have had to pay again, or be evicted, if New York won. The conflict was between two sets of landlords and the people actually farming the land.

New York's courts were the weapon. Ejectment suits, writs of possession and sheriff's sales were how the claim was enforced, and the Green Mountain Boys answered with intimidation: burned barns, broken surveyors' instruments, and the threat of worse. When the Revolution gave the settlers a language of natural rights, they used it — but the substance was always title.

The consequence was a state built by landowners against other landowners. Vermont's politics for its whole life were the politics of who held which patent, which is why the Allen and Chittenden factions fought so hard and why the settlement of 1790–91 was a payment rather than a principle.

What happened in 1777?

Two things: a declaration and a constitution, both in a year when Vermont was also a battleground. On 15 January 1777 a convention at Westminster declared the Grants "a free and independent state", and in July a convention at Windsor adopted a constitution. The Windsor convention sat from 2 to 8 July 1777 — Slade prints 2 July as the date of adoption, and the Thorpe/Avalon text gives 8 July; the difference is between the day the committee reported and the day the convention adjourned.

The constitution was radical: manhood suffrage for all free men, annual elections, a single-house legislature with a council, a governor with a council of censors to review the constitution every seven years, and a bill of rights that included a clause on slavery. It was also never submitted to the people for ratification — Slade's own footnote says so — which is worth remembering when people call it the purest expression of popular government.

Did it abolish slavery?

No, and the clause is worth quoting exactly, because the myth depends on not reading it. The 1777 constitution's bill of rights declared:

"Therefore no male person, born in this country, or brought from over sea, ought to be holden by law, to serve any person, as a servant, slave or apprentice, after he arrives to the age of twenty-one years, nor female, in like manner, after she arrives to the age of eighteen years, unless they are bound by their own consent, after they arrive to such age, or bound by law, for the payment of debts, damages, fines, costs or the like."

Four things follow from the text. It protects only people after they reach 21 or 18, so it licenses holding them as slaves as children. It says "ought to be holden", not "shall be holden" — a statement of principle, not a prohibition. It has no enforcement mechanism, no penalty, no court procedure. And it survived word for word into the 1793 constitution, which means Vermont retained it for decades while slavery continued in the state.

The Vermont Historical Society's own exhibit long described the constitution as having "abolished slavery", while the same society published Harvey Amani Whitfield's book showing that it did not and that enslaved people lived in Vermont after 1777. That contradiction — between the civic myth and the archival record — is the real historical story. Vermont was early to declare a principle and slow to enforce it, which is not the same as abolition.

Whitfield's evidence is archival rather than legal: bills of sale, estate inventories, runaway notices and court records showing enslaved people living and working in Vermont after 1777, owned by prominent citizens including some who had voted for the constitution. The numbers were small — a few dozen at any one time, in a population of tens of thousands — but the principle matters. A state that declares a principle and leaves the practice intact has not abolished anything; it has made a statement.

The myth survives because it is flattering and because the clause is easy to misread. The Vermont Historical Society's exhibit corrected itself only after its own publication contradicted the label, which is a useful case study in how civic history is made.

What did the constitution say besides slavery?

It was a radical document for its time. It gave the vote to all free men, not only property owners; it provided for annual elections; it created a single-house legislature with a governor and council rather than a bicameral parliament; it guaranteed religious liberty and required the support of public worship; it abolished imprisonment for debt in some circumstances; and it created the Council of Censors. It was also, like most revolutionary constitutions, a document written by men of property who assumed that property would govern.

The constitution was revised in 1786 and replaced in 1793, after statehood. The constitution was revised in 1786 and replaced in 1793, after statehood. The 1786 revision was a housekeeping exercise — clarifying the council, the courts and the militia — and it kept the slavery clause and manhood suffrage. The 1793 constitution, written after admission, kept both again and added refinements to the judiciary. Vermont's constitutional continuity across the revolution, independence and statehood is unusual: the republic's founding document survived the republic. Vermont's constitutional tradition — annual elections, town meeting government, suspicion of the executive — is the republic's most durable legacy.

Did women get the vote?

No. The suffrage clause reads "every man" — not every person, not every free inhabitant. Vermont's constitution was radical about property and religion and conventional about gender. Women could not vote, could not hold office, and were not mentioned in the suffrage provisions at all.

They were not invisible. The constitution's divorce provisions allowed women to petition, and the records of the Vermont courts show women using them — for desertion, cruelty and adultery — in numbers that suggest a society in which marriage was not entirely a one-way arrangement. But the vote was not theirs, and the claim that Vermont pioneered women's suffrage is a misreading of "manhood suffrage", which meant exactly what it said.

How did the republic conduct its diplomacy?

Three ways, at once. It petitioned Congress for recognition, and was refused — not on the merits, but because admitting Vermont meant alienating New York, whose support the war could not do without. It negotiated with New York, intermittently and in bad faith on both sides. And it talked to the British in Canada, which was the lever that made the other two take it seriously.

The result was a state that existed in fact and not in law. Vermont governed, taxed, coined and defended itself, and was treated by its neighbours as a jurisdiction with which one might deal, while the Congress that claimed to speak for America would not seat its delegates. When the war ended, the question became whether the new federal union could afford to leave a functioning state outside it — and the answer, eventually, was no.

What was the Haldimand affair?

The most dangerous episode in the republic's history. In 1780–82, with the war going badly and New York pressing its claims, Vermont's leaders opened negotiations with the British governor of Canada, Frederick Haldimand. The surviving minutes, taken by Haldimand's secretary, show that Vermont sought a truce that would keep its territory neutral, and that reunion with Britain was discussed as a possibility if the United States refused to recognise the state.

Whether that amounted to treason is the argument. The Allens and Chittenden were playing a double game: negotiating with the British to pressure Congress, and negotiating with Congress to pressure the British. The minutes record a truce and discussions, not an agreement to return to British rule, and Vermont never fought for Britain. The affair was later used against the Allens by their enemies, and the evidence supports "negotiated a truce and discussed reunion", not "planned to betray the Revolution".

Who were the Allens?

Ethan Allen was the republic's soldier and showman: tall, profane, a deist who wrote Reason the Only Oracle of Man, the man who took Ticonderoga and then spent two years as a British prisoner, and the author of a captivity narrative that made him famous. He was also a land speculator on a large scale and a politician who understood that fear was a currency. He died in 1789, two years before statehood.

Ira Allen was the operator: the diplomat, the historian, the man who negotiated with Congress, with New York and with the British, and who wrote the first history of Vermont to make sure his family's version was the one that survived. Thomas Chittenden was the governor who held the factions together for fourteen years, and the Council of Censors was the institutional expression of the same suspicion of concentrated power that made the Allens popular.

The Allens' enemies called them traitors for the Haldimand talks; their friends called them realists. Both were right about the methods and wrong about the motives, which is usually the case in frontier politics.

How was the republic governed?

By a governor, a council and a single house, with a unique institution: the Council of Censors. Every seven years, thirteen censors were elected to review whether the constitution had been violated, to propose amendments, and to call a convention if necessary. It was an attempt to build constitutional review into the political system rather than the courts, and it is the most original thing in Vermont's constitutional design.

Thomas Chittenden was governor for almost the whole life of the republic, balancing the Allen faction against the Yorkers and the Congress. The legislature met in rotation because there was no capital, and the state's business was conducted by committees, justices of the peace and the militia. The republic coined money from 1785: Reuben Harmon's mint at Rupert struck copper coins with the legends Vermontensium Res Publica and Stella Quarta Decima — the fourteenth star — a claim to statehood in metal.

The courts were the republic's real government. Justices of the peace handled debt, trespass, tithes and marriage; the county courts handled land and crime; and the supreme court rode circuit. Because land titles were contested, the courts were where the republic's authority was tested every week, and the judges — often the same men who had fought the Yorkers — were political figures as much as lawyers. Vermont's legal system was English common law administered by Americans who had rejected English sovereignty, and it worked because the alternative was chaos over title.

What about the money?

The republic coined copper from 1785, and the coins are the most tangible remains of its sovereignty. Reuben Harmon's mint at Rupert struck pieces with a bust and the legend Vermontensium Res Publica, and the "Stella Quarta Decima" issues added a fourteenth star — a claim to be the fourteenth state. The coinage was small, debased at times, and mostly circulated locally, but it did what it was meant to do: it told anyone who handled a Vermont coin that Vermont was a state.

The republic also issued paper and treasury notes, and its finances were always thin. The $30,000 paid to New York in 1791 was a substantial sum for a frontier state, and the fact that Vermont could raise it says something about the republic's fiscal capacity — and about how badly its leaders wanted admission.

What was the Council of Censors?

A body unique to Vermont, created by the 1777 constitution and copied by no other state. Every seven years thirteen censors were elected — one from each county — with power to inquire whether the constitution had been violated, whether the legislature had exceeded its authority, and whether amendments were needed. If they judged that a convention should be called, they said so; the people then decided.

It was an attempt to answer a question the Americans usually left to the courts: who guards the constitution? Vermont's answer was a periodic political audit rather than judicial review. The Council met through the nineteenth century and was abolished in the 1870s, by which time the courts had taken over the function. It is the clearest institutional expression of the republic's suspicion of permanent authority — and of its faith that the people, meeting in convention, could correct their government.

What was life like?

Hard, rural and mobile. A Vermont farm was carved out of forest: the trees felled and burned for potash, the stumps left to rot, the stone gathered into walls that still run across the hills. Wheat and rye, maize and potatoes, cattle and sheep; a sugar bush for maple sugar; a sawmill and a gristmill on the stream. The growing season was short and the soil thin, and many families moved on west within a generation.

The town was the unit of government, as in New England, and the meeting house and the town meeting were the school of politics. Religion was Congregationalist in the older towns and Baptist or Methodist on the frontier, and the Great Awakening had left a taste for religious argument. Ethan Allen's deism was scandalous precisely because everyone else was arguing about Calvinism.

The republic's social order was rough. Land titles were contested, debt was endemic, and violence was close to the surface — the Green Mountain Boys had been a paramilitary organisation before they were a government. Vermont in the 1780s was a place where a man's claim to his land depended on whether his neighbours would defend it.

What did Vermont join?

The Union, on New York's terms. Congress would not admit Vermont while New York claimed it, and New York would not give up its claim without compensation. The bargain of 1790–91 was that Vermont paid New York $30,000 to settle the land titles; the Vermont assembly voted 92 to 12 to accept, and a convention at Bennington ratified the arrangement 105 to 0 (with 109 members present). Congress admitted Vermont as the fourteenth state on 4 March 1791, the first state added after the original thirteen.

The price of admission is worth stating plainly: Vermont bought its way into the Union by compensating the state that had claimed it. The republic's independence ended in a property settlement.

What was life like?

Frontier farming on thin upland soil: maize, rye, wheat, potatoes, cattle and sheep, with potash and lumber for cash. Farms were carved out of forest, and the stump-filled fields, stone walls and sugar bushes that still characterise the Vermont landscape are the product of this period. Land speculation was the other economy: the Allens, the Chittendens and their allies held huge tracts and sold them on to settlers, and the politics of the republic were in large part the politics of land titles.

Ethan Allen died in 1789, before statehood, and became a folk hero — the man who took Ticonderoga, negotiated with the British and wrote a deist tract that scandalised New England. His brother Ira lived on, became a leading citizen of the new state, and wrote the first history of Vermont. The Allen legend, like the abolition myth, is a nineteenth-century construction laid over a messier eighteenth-century reality.

Why did Congress refuse to recognise Vermont?

Because the Articles of Confederation gave Congress no power over state boundaries, and New York had allies. Admitting Vermont would have meant overriding New York's charter claim, setting a precedent for every state with a land dispute, and rewarding a government that had negotiated with the enemy. Congress therefore did nothing, for fourteen years, while Vermont governed itself.

The refusal had consequences beyond Vermont. It showed that the Confederation could not resolve a dispute between a state and a self-declared state, and it fed the argument for a stronger federal government. When the Constitution was ratified in 1788, it gave Congress the power to admit new states — the mechanism that finally brought Vermont in — and Vermont's admission in 1791 was one of the first exercises of it.

What did statehood change?

Not much in daily life, and a great deal in law. Vermont entered the Union with its constitution, its land titles and its institutions intact; the Council of Censors continued, the town meetings continued, and the copper coinage ended because federal money replaced it. What changed was that Vermont's courts were now part of a national system, its land titles were secure against New York, and its citizens had a share in a federal government they had not helped to create.

Vermont sent its first senators and representative to the Congress that had refused it recognition fourteen years earlier. The republic's leaders — Chittenden, Ira Allen — moved easily into state politics, and the mythology of the Green Mountain Boys moved into national mythology. The state that had negotiated with the British became a bastion of Federalist respectability within a decade.

Common myths about Vermont

Timeline of the Vermont Republic

What the map shows next

At 1777 on the map the republic has just declared itself, the United States is fighting for its existence, and the Haudenosaunee hold the interior.

At 1791 on the map Vermont is the fourteenth state, and the map's Vermont Republic disappears.