CHAPTER XXI.

[98]Chancellor Livingston brought merinos to this country as early as 1802. In 1809 William Jarvis, our consul at Lisbon, brought a considerable number of merinos to Vermont, and from his famous Weathersfield flocks most of the Vermont merinos are descended.

Being almost wholly of New England origin, the settlers of Vermont and their descendants were in the main a religious people, and held to church-going when there was no place for public worship but the schoolhouse and the barn. In such places the members of the poorer and weaker sects held their meetings till within the memory of men now living. This was particularly the case of the Baptists and Methodists, who were viewed with slight favor by the predominant Congregationalists. This sect organized the first religious society in Vermont at Bennington in 1762, and first erected houses of worship. These structures were unpretentious except in size, and for years were unprovided with means of warming. When the bitter chill of winter pervaded them, the congregation kept itself from freezing with thick garments and little foot-stoves of sheet-iron; the minister, with the fervor of his exhortations. Folks went to church with no display of apparel or equipage. Homespun was the wear, till some ambitious woman aroused the envy of her kind by appearing in a gown of calico, or some gay gallant displayedhis many-caped drab surtout of foreign cloth. The sled or wagon that served for week days on the farm was good enough for Sunday use, when its jolting was softened with a generous cushioning of buffalo robes for such as did not go to church on horseback, or on foot across lots.

Late in summer, after the earlier crops were gathered, the Methodists were wont to congregate in the woods at camp-meetings. These meetings were celebrated with a fervor of religious warmth, and whether by day the white tents and enthusiastic worshipers were splashed and sprinkled with sunlight shot through the canopy of leaves, or lit at night by the lateral glare of the pine-knot torches flaring from a score of scaffolds set on the tree-trunks, the scene was weird and picturesque beyond what the fancy can conjure from the modern fashionable camp-meeting, with its trim cottages and steadily burning lamps and unmoved throng, and one can but think that another fire than that of the old pine torches burned out with them.

There were few Episcopalians, though the royal charters had given them two glebe lots, and two for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts, and there were so few Roman Catholics that no priest of that faith established himself in the State till 1833. In parts of the State there were many Friends, commonly called Quakers, who, by reason of their non-resistant principles, were exempted from military service.

The state grants gave in each town two lots of two hundred acres each to the first settled minister of the gospel, of whatever persuasion he might be. The rental of all these grants, except that of the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel, now goes to the support of public schools, with that of a similar grant originally made for that purpose.

The schoolhouse was one of the earliest recognized necessities, when the settlement of the State was fairly established. The pioneers built the schoolhouse of logs, like their dwellings, and its interior was even ruder than that of those. Rough slabs set on legs driven into augur-holes furnished the seats, and the desks, if there were any, were of like fashion. In winter, when the school was largest, if indeed it was held at all in the busier seasons, a great fireplace diffused its fervent heat through half the room, while a chill atmosphere pervaded the far corners. Among such cheerless surroundings many a Vermonter of the old time began his education, which was completed when he had learned to read and write and could cipher to the "rule o' three." Many of the scholars trudged miles through snow and storm to school, and the master, who always boarded around, had his turns of weary plodding with each distant dweller. The boy whose home was far away was in luck when he got the chance of doing chores for his board in some homestead near the schoolhouse. Increase of population and of prosperity brought better schoolhouses, set in districts of narrower bounds.

As early as 1782, nine years before the admission of the State into the Union, provision was made by legislative enactment for the division of towns into districts, and the establishment and support of schools. It directed that trustees for the general superintendence of the schools of each town should be appointed, and also a prudential committee in each district; and empowered the latter to raise half the money needed for the support of the schools on the grand list, the other half on the polls of the scholars or on the grand list, as each district should determine.

At one time the school fund, derived from the rental of lands and from the United States revenue distributed among the States in 1838, was apportioned among the heads of families according to the number of children of school age, without regard to attendance, or restriction of its use to school purposes. This singular application of the funds could not have greatly furthered the cause of education, though it may have stimulated the increase of population, for to the largest families fell the greater share in the distribution of the school money.

In 1827 the legislature provided for the examination and licensing of teachers, and for the supervision of schools by town committees; and also for a board of state commissioners, to select text-books and report upon the educational needs of the State. These provisions were repealed six years later, and there was no general supervision ofschools till 1845, when an act provided for the appointment of county and town superintendents, but the first office was soon abolished. In 1856 a state board of education was created, empowered to appoint a secretary, who should devote his whole time to the promotion of education. J. S. Adams, the first secretary, served eleven years, and by his earnest efforts succeeded in awakening the people to a livelier interest in the public schools. During his service, normal schools were established, for the training of teachers; and graded schools in villages, with a high-school department, became a part of the school system.[99]

In 1874 a state superintendent was appointed in place of the board of education; while in 1888 a system of county instead of town supervision was introduced, which after an unsatisfactory trial was abolished in 1890, and the town superintendent was restored. He now has a general charge over the schools in his town, but the teachers are licensed by a county examiner appointed by the governor and state superintendent.

The common schools are now supported entirely at public expense, and are free to every child between the ages of five and twenty, and in all large villages there are free high schools, so that it is now rare to find a child of ten or twelve years who cannot read and write, and a fair education is within the reach of the poorest.

By the act of 1782, already referred to, thejudges of the county courts were authorized to appoint trustees of county schools in each county, and, with the assistance of the justices of the peace, to lay a tax for the building of a county schoolhouse in each. In most of the townships granted by Vermont, one right of land was reserved for the support of a grammar school or academy; but as less than one half of the towns were so granted, many of the schools derived little aid from this source, and in fact the establishment of county schools was not generally effected; and though there are many grammar schools and academies in the State, few of them are endowed, but depend on the tuition fees for their support. The Rutland County grammar school at Castleton was established in 1787, and is the oldest chartered educational institution in Vermont. This school, together with the Orange County and Lamoille County grammar schools, became a State Normal School in 1867. These three institutions are under the supervision of the State Superintendent of Education, and the State offers to pay the tuition of one student from each town, thus encouraging the better preparation of teachers for the common schools.[100]

The union of the sixteen New Hampshire towns with Vermont brought Dartmouth College within the limits of the latter State. After the dissolution of the union in 1785, Vermont, upon application of the president of the college, granted atownship of land to that institution in view of "its importance to the world at large and this State in particular,"[101]and, encouraged by this success, the trustees asked for the sequestration to their use of the glebe and society lots granted in the New Hampshire charters, and of the lands granted by Vermont for educational purposes, promising, in return, to take charge of the affairs of education in the State. This gave rise to an agitation of the subject which resulted in the establishment of the University of Vermont at Burlington, for which purpose Ira Allen offered to give, himself, £4,000. A bill incorporating the university was passed in 1791. Three years later land was cleared, and a commodious house built for the president and the accommodation of a few students. Ten years later the erection of the university building was begun, and so far completed in 1804 that the first commencement was held in that year. During the War of 1812 the building was used for the storage of arms, and as quarters for the soldiery. President, professors, and students retired before this martial invasion, and collegiate exercises were suspended till the close of the war. This building was destroyed by fire in 1821 and rebuilt in 1825, the corner-stone being laid by General Lafayette. The medical department of the university was fully organized in 1822, and a course of lectures was kept up for eleven years, when they were suspended, but resumed later.The department is now flourishing and of acknowledged importance, and occupies a fine building erected especially for its use. Large endowments and valuable gifts, made by generous and grateful sons of the university, have erected handsome new buildings, notably the fine library edifice, and improved the old to worthy occupancy of the noble site.

Upon the suggestion of Dr. Dwight, who visited Middlebury during his travels in New England, a college charter was obtained of the legislature, but all endowment by the State was refused. The institution was immediately organized with seven students, and held its first commencement in 1802. The first building, erected four years before, was of wood, but the college now occupies three substantial structures of limestone.

A military academy, under the superintendence of Captain Alden Partridge, was established in 1820 at Norwich. Some years later this was incorporated as Norwich University. It was removed to Northfield in 1866. Its distinctive feature is the course of instruction in military science and civil engineering. It contributed 273 commissioned officers to the Mexican and Civil wars,[102]and many, especially in the latter war, served their country with distinction.

The first course of medical lectures in Vermont was given in Castleton, by Doctors Gridley, Woodward, and Cazier in 1818, and laid the foundationof a medical academy at that place, which in 1841 was incorporated as Castleton Medical College. This, and another medical college established at Woodstock some years previously, no longer exist.

The State now gives thirty scholarships to each of her three colleges, which pays the tuition and room-rent of a student. These appointments are made by the state senators, or by the trustees of the colleges. Though there is much interest in all these higher institutions of learning, as well as in the normal schools and academies, many of which are prosperous and important, yet the common schools more particularly engage the attention of the people and of the successive legislatures, resulting in a complication of school laws scarcely balanced by the improvement in the school system.

The early inhabitants of Vermont, though, for the most part, they were rough backwoodsmen, were imbued with a strong desire for useful and instructive reading, and this led to the formation of circulating libraries in several towns, almost as soon as the settlers had fairly established themselves in their new homes. This was notably the case in Montpelier, where a library was begun in 1794, only seven years after the first pioneer's axe broke the shade and solitude of the wilderness. Its two hundred volumes were well chosen, being histories, biographies, and books of travel and adventure, while all works of fiction and of a religious nature were excluded, the one class being deemed of an immoral tendency, the other apt to breeddissension in the sparse and interdependent community.[103]In many other towns similar libraries were formed; though perhaps not with like restrictions, yet, as far as one may judge now by the scattered volumes, they were of excellent character. A rough corner cupboard in the log-house kitchen, or a closet of the "square room," held the treasured volumes of gray paper in unadorned but substantial leather binding. What a treasure they were to those isolated settlers, to whom rarely came even a newspaper, can scarcely be imagined by us who are overwhelmed with the outflow of the modern press.

It is a pathetic picture to look back upon, of the household reading of the one volume by the glare of the open fire, spendthrift of warmth and light, eldest and youngest member of the family listening eagerly to the slow, high-keyed words of the reader, while between the pauses was heard the long howl of the wolf, or the pitiless roar of the winter wind. Yet it is questionable if they were not richer with their enforced choice of a few good books than we with our embarrassment of riches and its bewildering encumberment of dross. In 1796 an act was passed incorporating the Bradford Social Library Society,[104]the first corporate body of the kind of which there is any record.Similar associations in Fairhaven and Rockingham were incorporated soon after.

In recent years several large public libraries have been instituted, such as the libraries of St. Johnsbury, St. Albans, Rutland, and Brattleboro, the Norman Williams Library at Woodstock, the Fletcher Free Library at Burlington, and others, founded by wealthy and public-spirited Vermonters. The library of the Vermont University comprises forty thousand volumes, including the valuable gift of George P. Marsh. This now occupies one of the finest edifices of the kind in New England, the Billings Library Building. Such a wealth of literature as is now accessible to their descendants could hardly have been dreamed of by the old pioneers, even while they laid its foundation.

The first printing-office in Vermont was established at Westminster in 1778 by Judah Paddock Spooner and Timothy Green,[105]the first of whom and Alden Spooner were appointed state printers. The enactments of the two preceding legislatures had been published only in manuscript, a method of promulgation which one would think might have curbed verbosity. Judah Spooner and his first partner began the publication of the pioneer newspaper of the State, the "Vermont Gazette, or Green Mountain Post Boy," at Westminster in February, 1781. It was printed on a sheet of pot size, issued every Monday. Its motto, characteristic of its birthplace, was:—

"Pliant as Reeds where Streams of Freedom glide,Firm as the Hills to stem Oppression's tide."

Its publication was continued but two years. "The Vermont Gazette or Freeman's Depository," the second newspaper of the State, was published at Bennington in 1783, and continued for more than half a century. About this time George Hough removed the Spooner press to Windsor, and in company with Alden Spooner began the publication of a weekly newspaper entitled "The Vermont Journal and Universal Advertiser," which was continued until about 1834. The fourth paper, "The Rutland Herald or Courier," was established in 1792 by Anthony Haswell, and is still continued in weekly and daily issues, being the oldest paper in the State. William Lloyd Garrison edited "The Spirit of the Times," at Bennington, not long before he became the foremost standard-bearer of the anti-slavery cause, with which his name was so intimately associated. In 1839 "The Voice of Freedom" was begun at Montpelier, as the organ of the anti-slavery society of the State, and was afterward merged in "The Green Mountain Freeman," published in the interest of the political Abolitionists or Liberty Party. The publication of "The Vermont Precursor," the first paper established at Montpelier, was begun in 1806, and soon after changed its name to "The Vermont Watchman." For more than fifty years this paper was conducted by the Waltons, father and sons, and is still continued. In 1817 they began the publicationof "Walton's Vermont Register," which is issued annually, bearing the name of its founder, and is a recognized necessity in every household and office in the State. Eliakim P. Walton, one of the sons, also rendered his State most valuable service in editing the records of the governor and council.

A majority of the newspapers have displayed with justifiable pride the name of the State in their titles. A number have had but a brief existence, scarcely remembered now but for the names of their founders or their own strange titles, such as the "Horn of the Green Mountains," "The Post Boy," "Tablet of the Times," "Northern Memento," and "The Reformed Drunkard." The Spooners seem to have been intimately connected with early newspapers and printing in the young commonwealth, for at least four of this name were engaged in such business. The famous Matthew Lyon edited for a while "The Farmer's Library," and Rufus W. Griswold the "Vergennes Vermonter;" D. P. Thompson, the novelist, "The Green Mountain Freeman," and C. G. Eastman, the poet, "The Spirit of the Age," and "The Argus."

The dingy little papers of the olden time, with their month-old news, the brief oracular editorial comments, their advertisements of trades and industries now obsolete, their blazoning of lotteries and the sale of liquors, now alike illegal, were welcome visitors in every household; and the weekly round of the post-rider was watched for with an eagerness that can hardly be understood by peopleto whom come daily and hourly, by mail and telegraph, news of recent events in all quarters of the globe. To those old-time readers of blurred type on gray paper, scanned by the ruddy glare of pine knots or the feeble light of tallow-dips, the tidings of foreign events which had happened months before came fresher than to us what but yesterday first stirred the heart of Europe.

Now, every considerable village in the State has its weekly paper, the larger towns these and daily papers. When Zadock Thompson published his "Vermont Gazetteer" in 1840, there were thirty papers published in the State, where now are, according to Walton's Register for 1891, sixty-one daily, weekly, and monthly periodicals.

For many years liquor-drinking was a universal custom, and a householder suffered greater mortification if he had no strong waters to set before his guest than if the supply of bread and meat was short. The cellar of every farmhouse in the apple-growing region had its generous store of cider, some of which went to the neighboring still to be converted into more potent apple-jack, here known as cider-brandy. This and New England rum were the ordinary tipple of the multitude, and the prolific source of hilarity, maudlin gabble, and bickerings at bees, June trainings, and town meetings. Drunkenness was disgraceful, but the limit was wide, for a man was not held to be drunk as long as he could keep upon his feet. When he fell, and clung to the grass to keep himself from rolling off the heavingearth, he became open to the charge of intoxication, and fit for the adornment of the stocks. Many a goodly farm, that had been uncovered of the forest by years of labor, floated out of its owner's hands in the continual dribble of New England rum and cider-brandy.

The signboard of the wayside inn swung at such frequent intervals along the main thoroughfares that the traveler must be slow indeed who had time to grow thirsty between these places of entertainment. The old-time landlord was a very different being from his successor, the modern hotel proprietor. Though a person of consideration, and maintaining a certain dignity, he received his guests with genial hospitality, and at once established a friendly relationship with them which he considered gave him a right to their confidence. Ensconced in his cage-like bar, paled from counter to ceiling, the landlord drew from his guests all the information they would give of their own and the world's affairs,—their whence-coming and whither-going,—while he dispensed foreign and domestic strong waters, or made sudden sallies to the fireplace where lay the ever-ready flip-iron, blushing in its bed of embers. Good old Governor Thomas Chittenden was a famous tavern-keeper, and as inquisitive concerning his guests' affairs as other publicans of those days. He used to tell with relish of a rebuff he got from a wayfarer who stopped to irrigate his dusty interior at the governor's bar. "Where might you come from, friend?" the governor asked.

"From down below," was the curt reply.

"And where might you be going?"

"To Canada."

"To Canada? Indeed! And what might take you there?"

"To get my pension."

"A pension? And what might you get a pension for, friend?"

"For what you never can, as I judge."

"Indeed! And what is that?"

"For minding my own business."

Temperance began to have earnest advocates, men who, for the sake of their convictions, suffered unpopularity and persecution. A Quaker miller refused to grind grain for a distillery, and the owners brought a suit against him to compel him to do so. After a long and vexatious suit, the case was decided against him, but he persisted in his refusal, and the distillery was finally abandoned. Some would no longer comply with the old custom of furnishing liquor to their help in haymaking and to their neighbors who came to give a helping hand at bees, and by this infraction of ancient usage made themselves unpopular till a better sentiment prevailed.

There were zealots who cut down acres of thrifty orchard, as if there were no use for apples but cider-making. Through moral suasion and the honest example of good men, a great change was wrought in the sentiment of the people, till at last temperance became popular enough to become amatter of politics. Moral suasion was in the main abandoned, and the old workers dropped out of sight.

Vermont followed the lead of Maine in legislation for the suppression of the liquor traffic, and in 1852 passed a prohibitory law. Each succeeding assembly has legislated to increase the stringency and efficiency of the prohibitory statutes. Yet the fact remains that, after forty years' trial, prohibition does not prohibit, and presents the anomaly of an apparently popular law feebly and perfunctorily enforced.

It is a question whether the frequent and unnoticed violations of this law, and the many abortive prosecutions under it, have not made all laws less sacredly observed, and the crime of perjury appear to the ordinary mind a merely venial sin.

[99]Conant,Geography, History, and Civil Gov. of Vermont.

[100]Conant,Geography, History, and Civil Gov. of Vermont.

[101]Thompson'sVermont.

[102]Conant,Geography, History, and Civil Gov. of Vermont.

[103]History of Montpelier, by Daniel P. Thompson. D. P. Thompson is best known as the author ofThe Green Mountain Boys,The Ranger, and other tales that picture quite vividly early times in Vermont.

[104]Governor and Council, vol. iv.

[105]Vermont, by Zadock Thompson, an invaluable history.

When the tide of emigration began to flow from New England to the newly opened land of promise in the West, Vermont still offered virgin fields to be won by the enterprising and ambitious young men of the older States. Thousands of acres, capable of bounteous fruitfulness, still lay in the perpetual shadow of the woods, untouched by spade or plough; and the forest growth of centuries was itself a harvest worth the gathering, while wild cataracts still invited masterful hands to tame them to utility.

Some decades elapsed before the young State began to furnish material for the founding and growth of other new commonwealths, except such restless spirits as can never find a congenial place but in the foremost rank of pioneers. Such an one was Matthew Lyon, who, having borne his part in the establishment of the first State of his adoption, early in the century removed to Kentucky, then farther westward to Missouri, in whose territorial government he had become the most prominent figure when death set a period to his enterprise and ambition.

Though there were yet vast tracts in Vermont awaiting the axe and the plough, the fertile lands of the West began to draw from the State a steadily increasing flow of emigration. The tales of illimitable acres unencumbered by forest, and warmed by a genial climate, were attractive to men tired of warfare with the woods, and the beleaguering of bitter winters. The blood of their pioneering fathers was fresh in their veins, and impelled them to found new homes and new States.

The first migrations were made in wagons drawn by horses or oxen, and beneath whose tent-like covers were bestowed the bare necessities of household stuff and provision for the tedious journey.

After leave-takings as sad as funerals, the emigrants sorrowfully yet hopefully set forth. Slowly the beloved landmarks of the mountains sank as the miles lengthened behind them, and slowly unfolded before them level lands and sluggish streams. The earlier stages of the journey were relieved by trivial incidents, and the new experience of gypsy-like nightly encampment by the wayside; but as day after day and week after week passed, the new and unfamiliar scenes, still stranger and less homelike, grew wearisome to the tired men and jaded, homesick women and children, and incident became a monotonous round of discomfort.

In 1825 a swifter and easier path was opened to the West when, two years after the Champlain Canal had connected the waters of Lake Champlain and the Hudson, the Erie Canal was completed. Thenew thoroughfare was thronged with emigrants, of whom Vermont furnished her full share of families, and of enterprising young men seeking to better their fortunes in the land of plenty known there in common speech as "The 'Hio," or in that farther region of prairies whose western bound was the golden sunset, and where they whose plough had turned no virgin soil till the axe had first cleared its path should behold the miracle of fertile plains that had never been shadowed by forest. When the long journey was accomplished, a quarter of the continent lay between them and the old home; and though they lived out the allotted days of man, the separation of kindred and friends was often as final as that of death.

Mails were weeks in making the passage that is now accomplished in a few days; and the grass might be green on the graves of kindred and friends in the old or the new home before tidings of their death brought a new and sudden grief from the distant prairie, or from the New England hillside, where its pain had already grown dull with accustomed loss.

The course of emigration tended westward nearly within the parallels of latitude that bound New England, and but few pioneers of Vermont birth diverged much below the southward limit of a region whose climate, kindred, emigrants, and familiar institutions, transplanted from the East, most attracted them.

The fertile lands of Ohio were chosen by many,while more were drawn to Michigan, Wisconsin, Indiana, Illinois, and Iowa, in all of whom Vermonters took their place as founders of homes and free commonwealths, and gave each some worthy characteristic of that from which they came. When gold was discovered in California, many Vermonters flocked thither in quest of fortune, and many remained there to become life-long citizens of the State in whose marvelous growth they were a part.

From their inauguration, the great railroad systems of the West have made another and continuous drain upon the best population of the East; and in every department of the enormous business men of Vermont birth and training are found conspicuously honored for their ability and integrity.

The rapidly growing cities, the immense sheep and cattle ranches, and all the new enterprises of the whole West, have drawn great numbers of ambitious young Vermonters to every State and Territory of the wonderful region. Indeed, there is not a State in the Union in which some Vermonters have not made their home; but however far they may have wandered from the land of their birth, they cherish the mountaineer's love of home, and a just pride in the goodly heritage of their birthright.

Wherever in their alien environment they have congregated to any considerable number, they are associated as Sons of Vermont. Chicago boasts the largest society, as its State does the greatest number of citizens, of Vermont birth.[106]St. Louishas a large association of the kind, as have other Western cities. Even so near their old home as Boston,[107]Worcester, Providence, and Brooklyn, the Sons of Vermont gather annually to refresh fond memories, and celebrate the virtues of their beloved State.

To fill the place left by this constant drain on its population, the State has for the most part received a foreign element, which, though it keeps her numbers good, poorly compensates for her loss.

Invasions of Vermont from Canada did not cease with the War of the Revolution, nor with the later war with Great Britain. On the contrary, an insidious and continuous invasion began with the establishment of commercial and friendly relations between the State and the Province. Early in the century, a few French Canadians, seeking the small fortune of better wages, came over the border, and along the grand waterway which their noble countryman had discovered and given his name, and over which so many armies of their people had passed, sometimes in the stealth of maraud, sometimes in all the glorious pomp of war. At first the few new-comers were tenants of the farmers, for whom they worked by the day or month at fair wages, for the men were expert axemen, familiar with all the labors of land-clearing, and as handy asYankees with scythe and sickle; while their weather-browned wives and grown-up daughters could reap and bind as well as they, and did not hold themselves above any outdoor work.

After a while some acquired small holdings of a few acres, or less than one, and built thereon log houses, that with eaves of notched shingles and whitewashed outer walls, with the pungent odor of onions and pitch-pine fires, looked and smelled as if they had been transplanted from Canada with their owners.

When the acreage of meadow land and grain field had broadened beyond ready harvesting by the resident yeomen, swarms of Canadian laborers came flocking over the border in gangs of two or three, baggy-breeched and moccasined habitants, embarked in rude carts drawn by shaggy Canadian ponies. After a month or two of haymaking and harvesting, they jogged homeward with their earnings, whereunto were often added some small pilferings, for their fingers were as light as their hearts. This annual wave of inundation from the north ceased to flow with the general introduction of the mowing-machine; and the place in the meadow once held by the rank of habitants picturesque in garb, swinging their scythes in unison to some old song sung centuries ago in France, has been usurped by the utilitarian device that, with incessant chirr as of ten thousand sharded wings, mingling with the music of the bobolinks, sweeps down the broad acres of daisies, herdsgrass, and clover.

Many Canadians returned with their families to live in the land which they had spied out in their summer incursions, and so in one way and another the influx continued till they have become the most numerous of Vermont's foreign population.

For years the State was infested with an inferior class of these people, who plied the vocation of professional beggars. They made regular trips through the country in bands consisting of one or more families, with horses, carts, and rickety wagons, and a retinue of curs, soliciting alms of pork, potatoes, and breadstuffs at every farmhouse they came to, and pilfering when opportunity offered. In the large towns there were depots where the proceeds of their beggary and theft were disposed of. They were an abominable crew of vagabonds, robust, lazy men and boys, slatternly women with litters of filthy brats, and all as detestable as they were uninteresting. They worked their beats successfully, till their pitiful tales of sickness, burnings-out, and journeyings to friends in distant towns were worn threadbare, and then they gradually disappeared, no one knows whither.

Almost to a man, the Canadians who settled in Vermont were devout Catholics when they came; but after they had been scattered for a few years among such a preponderant Protestant community, most of them were held very loosely by the bonds of mother church. Except they were residents of the larger towns they seldom saw a priest, and enjoyed a comfortable immunity from fasting, penance,and all ecclesiastic exactions on stomach or purse. On New Year's Day, perhaps the members of the family confessed to the venerable grandsire, but after that suffered no religious inconvenience until the close of the year. Now and then one strayed quite out of the fold and took his place boldly among the heretics, and apparently did not thereby forfeit the fellowship of his more faithful compatriots. But when the flock had become large enough to pay for the shearing, shepherds of the true faith were not wanting. With that steadfast devotion to the interests of their church which has always characterized the Catholic priesthood, these men began their work without ostentation, and have succeeded in drawing into the domination of their church a large majority of the Canadian-born inhabitants of Vermont and of their descendants, as completely as if they were yet citizens of the province, which Parkman truly says, is "one of the most priest-ridden communities of the modern world."

What this leaven may finally work in the Protestant mass with which it has become incorporated is a question that demands more attention than it has yet received.

The character of these people is not such as to inspire the highest hope for the future of Vermont, if they should become the most numerous of its population. The affiliation with Anglo-Americans of a race so different in traits, in traditions, and in religion must necessarily be slow, and may never be complete.

No great love for their adopted country can be expected of a people that evinces so little for that of its origin as lightly to cast aside names that proudly blazon the pages of French history for poor translations or weak imitations of them in English, nor can broad enlightenment be hoped for of a race so dominated by its priesthood.

Vermont, as may be seen, has given of her best for the building of new commonwealths, to her own loss of such material as has made her all that her sons, wherever found, are so proud of,—material whose place no alien drift from northward or over seas can ever fill.

[106]"The first president of this association was Guerdon S. Hubbard, a Vermonter, who was instrumental in founding and establishing the city of Chicago, who went there in 1819, and later, ten years afterwards, when Chicago only had a fort and one house."—George Edmund Foss.

[107]S. E. Howard.

There is little to interest any but the politician in the political history of the State during the uneventful years of three decades following the War of 1812. At the next election after the close of the war the Republican party proved strong enough to elect to the governorship its candidate, Jonas Galusha, who was continued in that office for the five succeeding terms. When, in consequence of the abduction of Morgan, the opposing parties were arrayed as Masonic and anti-Masonic in the battle of ballots, the Masonic party of Vermont went to the wall.

When the two great parties of the nation rallied under their distinctive banners as Whigs and Democrats, Vermont took its place with the first, and held it steadfastly alike through defeats and infrequent triumphs of the party until its dissolution. So constantly was its vote given to the state and national candidates of the Whigs that it gained the title of "The Star that never sets."

From the adoption of its Constitution[108]in 1777,which prohibited slave-holding, Vermont has been the opponent of slavery. The brave partisan leader, Captain Ebenezer Allen, only expressed the freedom-loving sentiment of the Green Mountain Boys when he declared he was "conscientious that it is not right in the sight of God to keep slaves," and set free those taken prisoners with the British troops on Lake Champlain.

It was natural that among the descendants of those people, the inhabitants of a mountain land such as ever nourishes the spirit of liberty and wherein slavery has never found a congenial soil, there should be found many earnest men ready to join the crusade which, under the leadership of Garrison, began in 1833 to assail the great national sin with a storm of denunciation.

They denounced the scheme of African colonization, which had a respectable following in Vermont, as a device of the slave power to rid itself of the dangerous element of free blacks, under pretense of Christianizing Africa while here gradual emancipation should be brought about; and thus they aroused the antagonism of the body of the clergy, who had been hoodwinked by the pious plausibility of the plan.

A line of the Underground Railroad held its hidden way through Vermont, along which many a dark-skinned passenger secretly traveled, concealed during the day in the quiet stations, at night passing from one to another, helped onward by friendly hands till he reached Canada andgained the protection of that government which in later years was to become the passive champion of his rebellious master.

The star-guided fugitive might well feel an assurance of liberty when his foot touched the soil that in the old days had given freedom to Dinah Mattis and her child, and draw a freer breath in the State whose judge in later years demanded of a master, before his runaway slave would be given up to him, that he should produce a bill of sale from the Almighty.[109]

The abolitionists were no more given than other reformers to the choice of soft words in their objurgations of what they knew to be a sin against God and their fellow-men; yet they were men of peace, almost without exception,—non-resistants,—and freedom of speech was their right. It is humiliating to remember that there was an element in this State base enough to oppose them by mob violence. An anti-slavery meeting convened at the capital in 1835 was broken up by a ruffianly rabble, who pelted the speakers with rotten eggs, and became so violent in their demonstrations that it was unsafe for the principal speaker, Rev. Samuel J. May of Boston, to leave the building, till a Quaker lady quietly stepped forward, and, taking his arm, walked out with him through the turbulent crowd, which, though noisy and threatening, had decency enough to respect a lady and her escort. There were like disturbances in someother Vermont towns where the abolitionists gathered to advocate their cause, but the intensity of bitterness against them gradually wore away, and they continued to gain adherents, till the question of the extension of slave territory became the all-absorbing subject of political controversy.

In 1820 the representatives of Vermont in Congress opposed the admission of Missouri as a slave State, though her senators were divided. In 1825 the legislature passed resolutions deprecating slavery as an evil, and declaring, "This General Assembly will accord in any measures which may be adopted by the general government for its abolition in the United States that are consistent with the right of the people and the general harmony of the States." Ten years later, in the same year that the anti-slavery meeting was broken up by the rabble in the very shadow of the capitol, the legislature assembled there declared, that "neither Congress nor the state governments have any constitutional right to abridge the free expression of opinions, or the transmission of them through the public mail," and that Congress possessed the power to abolish slavery in the District of Columbia.

In 1841 the anti-slavery sentiment had so far increased in the State as to take political form, and votes enough were cast for the candidate of the Liberty party for governor to prevent an election by the people. Two years later the assembly enacted that no officer or citizen of the State should seize or assist in the seizure of "any person for thereason that he is or may be claimed as a fugitive slave," and that no officer or citizen should transport or assist in the transportation of such person to any place in or out of the State; and that, for like reason, no person should be imprisoned "in any jail or other building belonging to the State, or to any county, town, city, or person therein." When Congress in 1850, after a fierce storm of debate, passed the odious Fugitive Slave Law, which made United States marshals, and at their behest every citizen of the republic, servants of the arrogant slave power, and withheld from whoever might be claimed as a slave the right of testifying in his own behalf, Vermont was faithful to freedom and the spirit of her Constitution. Her legislature of the same year passed an act requiring States' attorneys "diligently and faithfully to use all lawful means to protect, defend, and procure to be discharged, every such person so arrested or claimed as a fugitive slave," and judicial and executive officers in their respective counties to inform their State's attorney of the intended arrest of any person claimed as a fugitive slave.

In many of the Northern States slave-hunting waxed hot and eager under the national law, but the hunters never attempted to seize their prey in the land of the Green Mountain Boys, though there were fugitive slaves living there, and an occasional passenger still fared along the mysterious course of the Underground Railroad.

Consequent upon the annexation of Texas camewar with Mexico,—a war waged wholly in the interest of slavery extension, and forced by the great republic upon her younger sister, weak and distracted by swiftly recurring revolutions.

Having a purpose so opposite to the interest and sentiment of the people of Vermont, no possible appeal to arms could have been less popular among them. Yet upon the call of President Polk for volunteers, a company was soon recruited in the State. Under Captain Kimball of Woodstock, it formed a part of the 9th regiment, whose colonel was Truman B. Ransom, a Vermonter, who had been a military instructor in the Norwich University, and in a similar institution at the South. The 9th was attached to the brigade of General Pierce, in General Pillow's division, under General Scott. The army of Americans, always outnumbered, often three to one, by the enemy, could not have fought more bravely in a better cause; and the little band of Green Mountain Boys gave gallant proof that, in the more than thirty years which had elapsed since they were last called forth to battle, the valor of their race had not abated. Colonel Ransom fell while leading his regiment in a charge at Chepultepec; and the Vermont company was one of the foremost at the storming of the castle, it being claimed for Captain Kimball and Sergeant-Major Fairbanks that they hauled down the Mexican colors, and raised the stars and stripes above the captured fortress.[110]

Upon the dissolution of the Whig party, the least subservient to the slavery propagandists of the two great political parties in the North, Vermont at once took her place under the newly unfurled banner of the Republicans,—a place which she has ever since steadfastly maintained through victory and defeat. In 1856 her vote was cast for Fremont, and four years later, by an increased majority, for Lincoln. Few who cast their votes at this memorable election foresaw that its result would so soon precipitate the inevitable conflict. But five brief months passed, and all were awakened to the terrible reality of war.

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