Vermont Part 7

By four in the morning 500 were landed at Wolfe's Cove, whence they marched to the Plains of Abraham. When Arnold's landing became known in the city, sailors were brought on sh.o.r.e from the ships to man the guns of the fortifications; the loyal citizens became more confident of making a successful defense, and when Arnold sent a flag with a summons to surrender, it was fired upon. He was not strong enough to strike; he could but menace; and when menace failed to intimidate the enemy, there was nothing for him but to retire. Therefore he withdrew to Pointe aux Trembles, seven leagues above Quebec, on the left bank of the St.

Lawrence. There, on the 1st of December, he was joined by Montgomery, who had marched his little force of 300 men with all possible celerity through the half-frozen mire of roads wretched at best, and in the blinding snowstorms of a winter already rigorous in that climate. Three armed schooners had also arrived with ammunition, clothing, and provisions. On the 5th the little army, less than a thousand strong, appeared before Quebec, now garrisoned by more than 1,500 men of McLean's regiment, regulars, seamen, marines, and militia. Montgomery opened an ineffectual fire on the town from two small batteries of mortar and cannon. An a.s.sault was determined upon, and on the last day of the year, under the thick veil of a downfall of snow, the troops made the a.s.sault in four columns at as many points. The attack of two columns was a feint against the upper town. Montgomery and Arnold led the actual a.s.sault of the other two against the lower town, and gained some advantages. Montgomery was killed, and his corps of 200 swept back by a storm of grape and musket b.a.l.l.s poured upon them from the second barrier. Arnold was carried from the field with a leg shattered in a successful attack upon a battery, and his column of 300, after a desperate fight of three hours, was overwhelmed by the whole force of the British now turned upon it, and it was obliged to surrender.

The command now devolved upon Arnold, and the troops, reduced to 400, withdrew three miles from the city, and there maintained a partial blockade of it.[67] General Wooster, in command at Montreal, sent expresses to Washington, Schuyler, and Congress, and on the 6th of January wrote to Colonel Warner urging him to raise and send on the more readily available Green Mountain Boys, "by tens, twenties, thirties, forties, or fifties, as fast as they could be collected." The response to his call was prompt. In eleven days Warner mustered his men, and despite the rigors of the northern winter, whose bitterness they had so often tasted, they marched in snow and pinching cold to the a.s.sistance of their brethren in Canada, and their alacrity called forth the approval of Washington and Schuyler.[68]

The offensive operations of the Americans in Canada were thereafter feeble and ineffectual. Reinforcements had arrived, but smallpox was raging in the camp, so that when General Thomas took command on the 14th of May there were less than 900 men fit for duty. In this condition, and with only three days' provisions remaining, an immediate retreat was decided upon by a council of war. This became precipitate when three English ships of war arrived and landed more than a thousand marines and regulars, and General Carleton marched out with 800 regulars against the Americans, already in retreat.

Artillery, stores, and baggage were abandoned, and the troops scattered in flight, the general being able to collect no more than 300 of them.

By day and night they retreated nearly fifty miles before they halted, when, being beyond immediate reach of the enemy, they rested a few days and then marched to Sorel, in sorry plight, worn with disease, fatigue, and hunger.

For the most part, the Canadians proved but fair-weather friends, and gave them little aid now that the fortune of war no longer favored them. General Thomas died here of smallpox, and General Sullivan took command. After the cowardly surrender by Major Beadle of his force of nearly 400 posted at The Cedars, a small fort on the St. Lawrence, to Captain Foster, with a detachment of 40 regulars, 100 Canadians, and 500 Indians, without artillery, and the disastrous failure of General Thompson with 1,800 men to surprise the British advance at Trois Rivieres, all the American troops began a retreat from Canada, where an army of 13,000 English and German troops were now arrived.

Arnold, who had been in command at Montreal since the 1st of April, crossed the St. Lawrence at Longueuil on the 15th of June, and marched to Chambly, whence the army continued its retreat in good order, first to Isle aux Noix and then to Crown Point.

During the withdrawal of the army from Canada, the services of Warner and his Green Mountain Boys again became conspicuous. Following in the rear, but little in advance of the pursuing enemy, he was chiefly employed in gathering up the sick and wounded. Some straggling in the woods, some sheltered in the garlick-reeking cabins of the least unfriendly habitants, he succeeded in bringing a great number of them to Isle aux Noix.

Thence embarked, in leaky open boats, the wretched invalids voyaged to Crown Point, their misery mocked by the brightness of the June skies, the beauty of the sh.o.r.es clad in the luxuriant leaf.a.ge of early summer, and the glitter of the sunlit waters. The condition of the broken army gathered at Crown Point was miserable in the extreme. More than half of the 5,200 men were sick, and those reported fit for duty were weak and half clad, broken in spirit and discipline. A few were in tents, some in poor sheds, while the greater part had only the shelter of bush huts.

Colonel Trumbull says: "I did not look into a tent or hut in which I did not find either a dead or dying man." More than 300 new-made graves marked the brief tarry of the troops at Crown Point. Those whom Colonel Warner did not succeed in bringing off, and who fell into General Carleton's hands, were treated by him with the greatest kindness.

So closed this unprofitable campaign, in whose prosecution such heroism had been expended in vain, such valuable lives wasted. Beginning with a series of successes, it ended in disaster, and was fortunate only in that it did not achieve the conquest of a province to hold which would have required the presence of an army that could ill be spared elsewhere,--a province which was chiefly peopled by a race alien in language and religion, too abject to strike for its own freedom, and so priest-ridden and steeped in ignorance that its incorporation with it could prove but a curse to the young republic.

FOOTNOTES:

[65] _Governor and Council_, vol. i. p. 6.

[66] Allen's _Narrative_.

[67] Williams, vol. ii.

[68] Hall's _Early History of Vermont_.

CHAPTER IX.

LAKE CHAMPLAIN.

General Gates having been appointed to the command of the northern army, General Sullivan resigned it to him on the 12th of July, receiving the thanks of his officers and the approval of Congress for the ability with which he had conducted the retreat.

In conformity to the decision of a council of war, General Gates withdrew his troops from Crown Point, where not a cannon was mounted, to Ticonderoga, and began strengthening the works there and erecting new ones upon a hill on the opposite side of the lake. While this new work, a star fort, was in progress, news came of the Declaration of Independence, and in honor of the event the place was named Mount Independence. The smallpox patients were removed to a hospital at Fort George, and the recruits, now coming in considerable numbers, were a.s.sembled at Skenesborough.

The construction of vessels of war, wherewith to keep control of the lake, was now entered upon. In spite of the difficulties attending their construction in a place so remote from all supplies but timber, and that green in the forest, the work was pushed so vigorously that before the end of August one sloop, three schooners, and five gondolas were ready for service, mounting fifty-five, twelve, nine, and six pounders and seventy swivels. These were manned by 395 men, old sea-dogs drifted to inland waters, and unsalted navigators of lakes and rivers, "a miserable set," Arnold wrote to Gates. In the latter part of August the fleet sailed down the lake under the command of Arnold, and, when soon after reinforced by a cutter, three galleys, and three gunboats, amounted to fifteen sail.

At the north end of the lake, the British were as busy in constructing and a.s.sembling a fleet. Six armed vessels, built in England especially for this service, could not be got over the rapids at Chambly, and were taken to pieces, transported above this obstruction, and reconstructed.

The largest of these, the Intrepid, was completed in twenty-eight days from the laying of the keel. Several gondolas,--a sort of long, narrow, flat-bottomed craft,--thirty longboats, and 400 batteaux were hauled up the rapids by the amphibious Canadians, with an immense expenditure of toil and vociferous jabber. By the 1st of October the fleet was ready to enter the lake, and consisted of the Inflexible, carrying eighteen guns; the schooners, Maria and Carleton, carrying fourteen and twelve respectively; and the Thunderer, a floating battery of raft-like construction, mounting six twenty-fours, as many sixes, and two howitzers; with a number of gondolas, gunboats, and longboats, each carrying one gun. It was manned by 700 experienced seamen, and commanded by Captain Pringle. In opposing this formidable fleet, so vastly superior in all its appointments, in everything but the bravery of officers and men, the odds were fearfully against the Americans, but the intrepid Arnold did not hesitate to accept the chances.

The sails of the British squadron were whitening the lake beyond c.u.mberland Head when Arnold disposed his vessels behind the island of Valcour, where, screened from sight of the main channel by woods whose gorgeous leaf.a.ge was yet unthinned by the frosty touch that painted it, he awaited the approach of the enemy. Sailing past the island, the British discovered the little fleet of the Americans, and, conscious of their own superiority, at once advanced to the attack from the southward; but the wind, which before had favored them, was now against them. The flagship Inflexible, and some others of the larger vessels, could not be brought into action, and the Carleton and the gunboats took the brunt of the battle.

For four hours the fierce fight raged, sustained with the utmost bravery by both combatants. The forests were shaken with the unwonted thunder, whose roar was heard at Crown Point, forty miles away, and the autumnal haze grew thick with sulphurous smoke. General Waterbury, commanding the Washington galley, was in the hottest of it, and only brought his shattered vessel out of the fight when all but two of his officers were killed or wounded. One of the American schooners was burnt, a gondola sunk, and several other vessels much injured; while the British had two gondolas sunk, and one blown up with sixty men on board. Toward nightfall, Captain Pringle withdrew the vessels engaged, and anch.o.r.ed his whole fleet across the channel to prevent the escape of the Americans. Escape was all that Arnold hoped for now, and in the darkness of night he silently got his vessels around the north end of Valcour,[69] and, making all speed southward, was out of sight of his enemy when daylight came.

The British gave chase, and overtaking the Americans at Split Rock, about noon of the 13th, at once began firing on them. The sorely crippled Washington was forced to strike her colors after receiving a few broadsides. Arnold fought his flagship, the Congress galley, with desperate courage, while, within musket-shot, the Inflexible poured broadsides into her, and two schooners raked her from astern. He effectually covered the retreat of his escaping vessels with the Congress and four gondolas, and then ran ash.o.r.e in the shoal head of a little bay on the eastern side of the lake. He set fire to the vessels, and keeping his flag flying on the Congress, which he did not quit till she was enveloped in flames, got all his men landed but one wounded lieutenant, who, forgotten in the confusion, was blown up with his vessel. Of the American fleet, only two galleys, two schooners, a sloop, and gondola had escaped; and toward Ticonderoga, whither these had fled, Arnold retreated with his stranded crews, barely escaping an Indian ambuscade. Joined by the few and now defenseless settlers, they toiled along the rough forest road, behind them rolling the irregular boom of the cannon, exploding as the fire heated them, and at intervals the thunder of a bursting magazine. Throughout that long, unequal combat, as in many another in the same good cause, Arnold bore himself with cool, intrepid valor, still preserved by an unkind fate from honorable death to achieve everlasting infamy. The land-locked bay, where may yet be seen the oaken skeletons of his brave little craft,[70] bears his name, nowhere else honorably commemorated in all his native land.

General Carleton, who accompanied the British fleet, gave orders that the prisoners taken should be treated with the greatest kindness. He himself praised their bravery, and sent them home on parole. By this politic course he so won their esteem, that it was deemed impolitic to permit them to mingle with the troops at Ticonderoga, and they were sent on to Skenesborough.

Following close on the heels of the victorious fleet came the swarming transports bearing General Carleton's army, with the intention of moving at once upon Ticonderoga. Crown Point was no longer an obstacle, for when news of the disaster of their fleet was brought to that post, the Americans set fire to the place, destroyed everything that could not be removed, and withdrew to the main army holding Ticonderoga. But the wind, which had been a fickle ally of the English since they began this invasion, again turned against them from the south on the 14th, and held stiffly in that quarter for eight days. General Carleton's transports could make no headway against it up the narrow waterway, and he was obliged to land his forces at Crown Point. Thence he sent reconnoitring parties on both sides of the lake toward Ticonderoga, and some vessels up the channel, sounding it within cannon-shot of the fort.

Meanwhile Gates's army made most of the time given by the kindly autumnal gale. The works were strengthened and surrounded by an abatis.

In these eight days, carriages were built for forty-seven pieces of cannon and the guns mounted; while reinforcements that came in, and sick men recovered, swelled the army to 1,200 strong. Carleton's opportunity for an easy conquest of Ticonderoga was past, and his reconnoissances gave him no encouragement to attempt an a.s.sault. Therefore, after tarrying at the fire-scathed fortress till past the middle of November, when the wild geese were flying southward over the gray and desolate forests, and the herbage of the clearings was seared by the touch of many frosts, he reembarked his army and returned to Canada. General Gates at once dismissed the militia, active military operations ceased in this quarter, and the northern armies of America and Great Britain began their hibernation.

FOOTNOTES:

[69] There are conflicting statements concerning Arnold's course in eluding the British fleet. According to some authorities he slipped directly through the enemy's line under cover of thick darkness; others state circ.u.mstantially that he escaped around the north end of Valcour, and this un.o.bstructed course certainly seems the one which would naturally be taken, instead of attempting the almost impossible feat of pa.s.sing through a fleet that guarded the channel, barely half a mile in width.

[70] Years afterward, a bra.s.s gun was raised from one of these wrecks, and played its part in gaining the naval victory at Plattsburgh.

CHAPTER X.

VERMONT AN INDEPENDENT COMMONWEALTH.

At the beginning of the Revolution, the people of the New Hampshire Grants were without a regular form of government, for the greater part of them had long refused to submit to the jurisdiction of the royal government of New York, and were now as little disposed to compromise their a.s.serted rights by acknowledging the authority of that province when it had taken its place among the United Colonies in revolt against Great Britain. Such government as existed was vested in Committees of Safety, but these, whether of greater or lesser scope, were without recognized power to enforce their decrees upon the respectable minority which still adhered to New York.

Under these circ.u.mstances a convention, warned by the Committee of Safety of Arlington, met at Dorset, January 16, 1776, at the "house of Cephas Kent, innholder." Persons were appointed to represent the case of the Grants before Congress by a "Remonstrance and Pet.i.tion." This stated that inhabitants of the Grants were willing, as heretofore, to do all in their power for the common cause, but were not willing to act under the authority of New York, lest it might be deemed an acknowledgment of its claims and prejudicial to their own, and desired to perform military service as inhabitants of the Grants instead of New York.

Upon the return of Heman Allen, who duly presented the memorial to Congress, a second convention was held in July at the same place, thirty-two towns being represented by forty-nine delegates. Allen reported that Congress, after hearing their pet.i.tion, ordered it to lie upon the table for further consideration, but that he withdrew it, lest the opposing New York delegates should bring the matter to final decision when no delegate from the Grants was present. Several members of Congress and other gentlemen, in private conversation, advised the people of the Grants to do their utmost to repel invasions of the enemy, but by no means to act under the authority of New York; while the committee of Congress to whom the matter was referred, while urging them to the same exertions, advised them, for the present, to submit to New York, saying this submission ought not to prejudice their right to the lands in question.

The convention resolved at once "That Application be made to the Inhabitants of said Grants, to form the same into a separate District."

The convention laconically declared that "the Spirited Conflict," which had so long continued between the Grants and New York, rendered it "inconvenient in many respects to a.s.sociate with that province." But, to prove their readiness to join in the common defense of America, they, with one exception only, subscribed to the following a.s.sociation: "We the subscribers inhabitants of that District of Land, commonly called and known by the name of the New Hampshire Grants, do voluntarily and Solemnly Engage under all the ties held sacred amongst Mankind at the Risque of our Lives and fortunes to Defend, by arms, the United American States against the Hostile attempts of the British Fleets and Armies, until the present unhappy Controversy between the two Countries shall be settled."

The convention invited all the inhabitants to subscribe to this "a.s.sociation," and resolved that any who should unite with a similar one under the authority of New York should be deemed an enemy to the cause of the Grants. Persons were appointed to procure the signature of every male inhabitant of sixteen years upwards, both on the east and west sides of the Green Mountains. Thus the convention took the first formal steps toward severing the connection with New York, and uniting all the towns within the Grants in a common league.

Only one town on the east side of the mountains was represented in this meeting; but pains were taken to confer with those inhabitants, and at the adjourned session, in September, ten eastern towns were represented.

At this session it was voted that the inhabitants should be governed by the resolves of this or a similar convention "not repugnant to the resolves of Congress," and that in future no law or direction received from New York should be accepted or obeyed. The power was a.s.sumed of regulating the militia, and furnishing troops for the common defense.

For the especial safe-keeping of Tories, a jail was ordered to be built at Manchester. It was to be constructed with double walls of logs, eighteen inches apart, the s.p.a.ce to be filled with earth to the height of seven feet, "floored with logs double." The convention appointed a "Committee of War," vested with power to call out the militia for the defense of the Grants or any part of the continent. Fines were exacted from every officer and private who should not comply with the orders of the convention; and each non-commissioned officer and private was required to "provide himself with a suitable gun and one pound of powder, four pounds of bullets fit for his gun, six flints, a powder horn, cartouch box or bullet pouch, a sword, bayonet, or tomahawk."

The convention adjourned to meet at Westminster on the 30th of October.

When that day arrived, the country was in great alarm from the disaster to the American fleet on Lake Champlain, and Carleton's advance toward Ticonderoga. The militia was hurrying to the defense of that fortress, and many delegates were kept at home by the impending need of protection for their families. Owing to these circ.u.mstances, the few who met could not be informed of the minds of the people, and it adjourned to the 15th of January, 1777. During this interim, the popular sentiment had so rapidly ripened for the proposed separation that, when the convention met, little time was spent in debate before the adoption of a Declaration of the Independence of the New Hampshire Grants. As revised for publication it is as follows: "We will at all times hereafter, consider ourselves as a free and independent state, capable of regulating our internal police in all and every respect whatsoever, and that the people on said Grants have the sole and exclusive and inherent right of ruling and governing themselves in such manner and form as in their own wisdom they shall think proper, not inconsistent or repugnant to any resolve of the Honorable Continental Congress.

"Furthermore, we declare by all the ties which are held sacred among men, that we will firmly stand by and support one another in this our declaration of a State, and in endeavoring as much as in us lies to suppress all unlawful routs and disturbances whatever. Also we will endeavor to secure to every individual his life, peace, and property against all unlawful invaders of the same.

"Lastly, we hereby declare, that we are at all times ready, in conjunction with our brethren in the United States of America, to do our full proportion in maintaining and supporting the just war against the tyrannical invasions of the ministerial fleets and armies, as well as any other foreign enemies, sent with express purpose to murder our fellow brethren and with fire and sword to ravage our defenseless country.

"The said State hereafter to be called by the name of New Connecticut."

This bold and decisive act, by which a free and independent commonwealth was erected, was with eminent fitness consummated in the court-house at Westminster, a place already consecrated to the cause of liberty by the blood of William French, who, less than two years before, had fallen there in defense of the people's rights.