The Gods of the Hills

Vermonters and the Struggle for Liberty

A Publication of TrueNorthRadio.com

Compiled by Robert Maynard Editor

4/30/2007

After the end of the Cold War, Americans breathed a collective sigh of relief.  Many were convinced that the supposed end of tyranny would usher in a golden era of peace and prosperity.

This prediction may yet turn out to be true, but only if we remain vigilant in the defense of freedom against yet another of its foes.  Today we face what was, until September 11th 2001, an ignored threat to our ideal of liberty under law.  That is the threat of Islamic Terrorism.

When speaking about the cause of freedom in his classic work “Common Sense”, Thomas Paine wrote:

"The sun never shined on a cause of greater worth.  'Tis not the affair of a city, a country, a province or a kingdom, but of a continent - of at least one eighth part of the habitable globe. 'Tis not the concern of a day, a year, or an age; posterity are virtually involved in the contest, and will be more or less affected, even to the end of time, by the proceedings now."

Indeed, posterity has been involved in this all important struggle between tyranny and freedom and the battle now concerns the entire globe.  We here in Vermont are no stranger to the battle for freedom against the forces of tyranny.  Vermont has a long history of leading such battles.  Calvin Coolidge once said that:

“If the spirit of liberty should vanish in other parts of the union and support of our institutions should languish, it could all be replenished from the generous store held by the people of this brave little state of Vermont.”

Due to a unique set of historical circumstances, early Vermonters developed a passionate commitment to the ideal of liberty.  This commitment led them to often contribute more than their share to the struggle against tyranny.  We shall turn now to see how such a commitment developed and how Vermonters have historically reacted to the struggle for liberty.

The Gods of the Hills

Perhaps the best place to start in our search to examine the pro-liberty values developed by early Vermonters is a chapter of John McClaughry’s and Frank Bryan’s book “The Vermont Papers: Recreating Democracy on a Human Scale”.  The chapter is entitled “The Gods of the Hills”.

The year was 1770 - to the men who had hoped to settle in the inviting lands of the Green Mountains, a year of dark foreboding. They had land grants from the governor of New Hampshire, Benning Wentworth. But Wentworth was far away, the right of New Hampshire to grant the lands was not at all certain, and those in control of the government of the Colony of New York were determined that the New Hampshire Grants, comprising much of what is modem-day Vermont, belonged to New York, and could be settled only by men bearing New York title.

Josiah Carpenter, a New Hampshire grantee in the town of Shafts­bury, had been served with ejectment papers by a Yorker sheriff and was summoned to Albany to stand trial.  ]ustice, Yorker style, was swift. Carpenter, the court summarily found, had no right or title to his farm.  He was told to get off or be thrown in jail. It was obvious that Albany's legal profession, its judges, its sheriffs, and its great landowners were working smoothly together to make sure that Vermont farmers would pay their price-or be driven away.

Assisting Carpenter's defense counsel in the trial at Albany was that magnificent, brawling, boozing, blasphemous giant, Ethan Allen, recently arrived in the grants. The Yorker land barons rightly had some apprehensions about what angry farmers led by such a man might do to disrupt the King's peace. They recalled, for instance, that when their Yorker sheriff arrived two years earlier to dispossess a New Hampshire Grants farmer named John Breakenridge, a large number of the vic­tim's neighbors had rather ominously appeared "to help him harvest his com." The neighbors, curiously, had brought long rifles to help in the harvest process, and when called upon to disperse in the name of the King and the Colony of New York, they had shown a marked reluctance to comply. In fact they sat on tree stumps, spit on the ground, and made some rather truculent conjectures about the future health of the New York visitors. Breakenridge's last remark to the York­ers, before they packed up and retreated empty-handed to the west, was also ominous: "I hope you will not try to take any advantage of us, for our people do not understand law."

To forestall just such trouble, two of the most accomplished Albany land jobbers, Attorney General John Tabor Kempe and James Duane, a prominent lawyer, decided to seek out this Green Mountain rustic and try to enlist his influence on their side of the matter. They came to Allen at his tavern as he was preparing to return to report to the Hampshire Grants landowners assembled in Bennington.

At first the Yorkers were suave and considerate. They told Allen that all this conflict was really unnecessary. If only someone held in high repute by the "Bennington Mob" - himself, for instance - were to go back and counsel the New Hampshire claimants correctly, all might be worked out agreeably to the rightful owners in Albany without undue disturbance. He who accomplished this, they made it clear, would be in the way of receiving a large land grant for his services in the cause of peace and harmony. But if things went on as they were going, Kempe and Duane observed darkly, the rightful owners, with might as well as right on their side, would find it necessary to eject the squatters by force.

Ethan Allen may have been unlettered in the law. He was certainly, as the historian Walter Crockett later observed, "not distinguished for modesty or refinement." But he knew at once what was being pro­posed to him. He looked Kempe in the eye and replied with the cryp­tic but compelling line that has echoed down through two centuries of Vermont history: "Sir, the gods of the hills are not the gods of the valleys." Historian Richard Carlson, referring to Allen's reference to the "gods of the hills," put it simply and well: "If every society needs to possess a mythical moment of creation, this is Vermont's."

No, the gods of the Vermont hills are not the gods of the Hudson Valley, or of the flatlands and the cities to the south. For Vermont, from its unique circumstances and from the character of its early leaders, developed a unique set of values. Those values, both social and polit­ical, have come down to us through history, even as the economics and culture of the state have experienced drastic change. They exist in that dim region just below our consciousness, unrecognized and unseen but always living. They are there, flowing through the cen­turies, as the subterranean waters have coursed since time began through the limestones of Danby and Proctor. On rare occasions they bubble up, like Cold Boiling Spring at the foot of Wheeler Mountain in Westmore, to shape our perceptions and influence the choices that Vermonters make about their society's future.

One such occasion occurred more than a century and a half after the Allen-Yorker faceoff. In 1935, in the depths of the Great Depres­sion, Vermont's most famous statesman, George Aiken, issued his own version of the gods of the hills. The situation was the same. A great central government was trying to con and bully Vermont into swapping liberty for gold.

Short of stature, mild of manner, and soft of tone, Aiken, then lieu­tenant governor and soon to become governor, was in many ways the antithesis of Ethan Allen. He made his mark raising wildflowers, not applying floggings to Albany sheriffs. But on one dimension they were exactly alike: they both understood the code. Allen acted to save Ver­mont from the Colony of New York. Aiken acted to save Vermont from the government of the United States. Allen spoke his words in a bar in Albany; Aiken wrote his in a book, Speaking from Vermont.

In the summer of 1934 agents of Washington moved into Vermont with the intention of buying up "submarginal land" and trans­ferring the people on this land down into the valley towns where they would be given federal loans to get started on new farms. How much of Vermont did they try to buy? Fifty-five percent!

The agents from Washington hit a snag almost immediately: the mountain people didn't want to sell. Aiken: ". . . then the boys from Washington resorted to other means by which to get options on the land. They told them that if they did not sell to the government, schools and roads in these areas would be given up and they would be left in isolation." Threats and lies: the muskets of twentieth century tyranny, the way the big control the small, the rich the poor, the cities the country.

With individual land purchases not going well, officers of the Resettlement Administration came to the Vermont legislature in Mont­pelier in the winter of 1935 to try for a package deal. Aiken: "Such a display of flattery-attorneys, theorists, scientists, doctors of all degrees - converged on us. We should have been honored. This was February, and usually federal officials arrange to do their work in Vermont between June and October."

The argument of the federal administrators was old and, one must imagine, tiresome for the Vermonters in Montpelier. Worse, it was couched in insult. It was an insult Ethan Allen would have recognized. Aiken: "They placed before the members of the Legislature the aston­ishing story that, not only were these people in certain areas of the State very unhappy because of their condition, but that the State itself was very unhappy because such people existed in such areas. Ver­mont was very, very sick. It would continue to be sick until fifty-five percent of its area had been transferred to Federal control; What of the fact that the people in the areas concerned did not care to be moved from their homes? Well, possibly these people weren't of high enough mental capacity to understand that they really were unhappy."

Aiken and his colleagues kept their humor. A committee was appointed to confer with the federal officials. Aiken notes irony in the fact that he himself, who lived on a very submarginal farm, was named to the committee. He continues: "There was a bit more irony in this legislative action in making the Speaker of the House a member of the board, for the legislators knew that the Speaker lived comfortably in an area which was rated as a hundred percent submarginal for twenty miles in all directions from his home." What the federal author­ities didn't realize, of course, is that a majority of Vermont's House of Representatives lived in submarginal areas and so evidently were not of sufficient "mental capacity" to understand how unhappy they were. That is why "The Vermont legislators exchanged strange looks on hearing the story from Washington. Some of them indulged in sly grins. Others maintained poker faces. The majority kept tongues in their cheeks. But all listened courteously."

The final offer worked out by the federal government was that Ver­mont would turn over half the state to it. Recreation and forest areas would be created. And more. Aiken: "Miles of road would be abandoned, relieving the State and towns of the necessity of keeping them repaired. Schools could be abandoned, saving more expense." The fed­eral government would then turn its 55 percent of Vermont back to the state on a long-term lease, retaining all rights over minerals and other natural products. Aiken: "All the state had to do to take advan­tage of the munificent offer was to agree that it would maintain and operate these areas in such manner as the Federal authorities might direct and pay the expenses of maintenance forever." Then Aiken adds: "And also that we would never again permit any of this land to be occu­pied as homes." He'then pauses to begin a new paragraph - a short, blunt, one-line paragraph: "The Federal government did not buy any submarginal land in Vermont."

Aiken understood what was meant by "the gods of the hills are not the gods of the valleys." He summed up:

Why do folks live in the hills? Why do they persist in clinging to steep, rocky slopes and in living under conditions which modem humanitarianism says can only produce unhappiness for them, when some of them, at least, have the means to move out and go elsewhere and go in debt all over just like other folks? The reason is that some folks just naturally love the mountains, and like to live up among them where freedom of thought and action is logical and inherent

I look off to the east and see Mount Monadnock rearing its peak through the clouds. Tonight the lights of the neighbors' houses twinkle in friendliness and neighborliness from a dozen locations.

Some of these neighboring houses are better than mine, some of them not quite so good. None of us would willingly move away.

These are the words of a man who accepts the covenant established by Ethan Allen: freedom in the context of neighborliness; liberty and community - the gods of the hills.       

       .

Two decades after the Resettlement Administration imbroglio, when McCarthyism was at white heat in the valleys of America, things were calm up in the hills of Vermont. Nevertheless a former congress­man, Charles Plumley, got the anticommunist jitters. He convinced a neighbor to introduce a bill in the Vermont legislature creating a state board to ensure that school books were free of subversive intent.

Vermont's House of Representatives at the time had a legislator from each town. There were 246 of them, representing less than 400,000 people - about 1,500 men, women, and children per member. When the bill got to the floor - that infamous bastion of "conserva­tives" representing what the progressives of the time were calling "rotten boroughs" - it faced the judgment of 84 farmers, 35 house­wives, and 20 blue-collar workers (among others). Over half the members had been born in the nineteenth century. Less than 40 percent had a college education. Only 25 of the 246 called themselves Dem­ocrats. More important, only about a quarter of them were out-of-staters. If ever there was a legislature which, according to the urban ­based elite in America, would exhibit the reactionary pathologies they assumed were festering in the rural backwaters of the nation, this was it. Yet when the time for voting came, the roll call was: McCarthy 11, Hillbillies 202. There would be no censorship committee established to review textbooks. And that was that. The gods of the hills had spoken.

Another twenty-five years passed. Once again federal officials vis­ited Vermont in search of land, and again there was bubbling in the deep waters of Vermont's consciousness. This time the feds were look­ing only for a small parcel for a very specific purpose-a nuclear­ waste dump. At Blue Mountain High School in the town of Newbury (population 1,699) two thousand people came down from the hills and jammed themselves into the auditorium for a public hearing. The federal officials were very, very kind and understanding. No, the chances were slim that a dump would be located in Vermont and, yes, they understood how Vermonters felt about the issue.

After a prolonged period of give and take, questions and answers, there came a point when the visitors had been pushed ever so gently against a wall of argumentation which, quite irrationally of course, went as follows: "We don't care what you say, just keep the hell out of Vermont." One federal representative, with great care and patience, explained the notion of national sovereignty and then suggested, with an I'm-sorry-to-have-to-remind-you smile, that if Washington wanted the land and Vermont didn't cooperate, the federal government could, after all, simply, well. . . take it

There followed a moment of dead silence, the packed audience of two thousand was seemingly checkmated. Then, from deep in the bleachers a commoner's hoarse cry crashed toward the podium. "Hey, have you guys ever heard of Ethan Allen and the Green Mountain Boys?" The roar (half laughter, half defiance) that followed originated deep in centuries past. Every soul in the gymnasium understood at once. They were Vermonters, and when push comes to shove the gods of the hills, still, were not the gods of the valleys. The covenant holds. (The dump ended up in Nevada.)

Specifically, what are the values of the covenant? Perhaps it was George Aiken who provided the best summary. "The first ideal that prompted the settlement of Vermont was the love of liberty," said the governor in 1938. "And it is this love of liberty that today prompts Vermont to revolt against the approach toward that type of central­ized government which history has so often proven undesirable." Their Love of liberty, coupled with their belief in self-reliance, thrift, and gen­uine liberalism, said Aiken, "have inspired Vermonters to the great­est, most satisfying of all ideals-self respect."

…

Because the early Vermonters were willing to pack up and leave more comfortable places to civilize a wilderness, they also had the values and virtues of pioneers everywhere. Jealous regard for their liberties. A willingness to fight if necessary to defend their right of private property ownership. Rugged independence of thought and action. Self-reliance tempered with the willingness to come to the aid of the common good.

Such people, clawing out a toehold on a wild frontier, did not spend their evenings poring over Locke's theory of the social contract, but in their hearts, placed there by a tradition stretching back over cen­turies of English heritage, was a deep understanding of the essentials of republican liberty. The foundation of this heritage was in the sanc­tity of freehold property. Every man was to be an owner of his own property, from which he provided the sustenance of his own family, property which could not be invaded by others without his consent nor taken from him but through due process of law, and then only with just compensation. Every man was to be a citizen, in the fullest sense of the word: not only a voter, but an active and responsible par­ticipant in the public life of his community, as selectman, constable, juror, or fence viewer. And every citizen was to be a defender of the independence of the town meeting, the descendant of the mark-moot and shire-moot, "the chief council of the ancient nation who possessed the district in independence" in the Saxon England of a thousand years before.

Of course this commitment to liberty made Vermonters an important ally to the colonies in the war for independence.  (Vermont joined forces with the other 13 colonies as an independent Republic.)  In addition, Vermont was located in a strategic position.  According to the Vermont Historical Society:

Control of Lake Champlain was a crucial military objective during the Revolutionary War. The British strategy was to unite their Canadian forces with those in New York.  If they succeeded they would cut off New York and New England from the other colonies. The Champlain Valley was the site of several bloody encounters.  Settlers in this no man’s land fled their homes for the duration of the war, fearful of the British and their Iroquois Indian allies.  The British had several victories but the Americans fought hard and delayed their advance south.  These delays allowed the American armies to regroup. When the British were defeated at Bennington and again at Saratoga, they gave up their plan to control Lake Champlain.  This was a turning point in the war, as it allowed the Continental Army to turn southward and convinced France to enter the war as an ally of the Americans.”

May 10, 1775—The capture of Fort Ticonderoga by Ethan Allen and the Green Mountain Boys was a major victory for America during the early part of the American Revolution.

September 25, 1775—While leading a losing effort against the British at Montreal, Canada, Ethan Allen is captured. He will remain a British prisoner of war until May 31, 1778.

June 1776—The Americans begin building a fort across the lake from Fort Ticonderoga in the present town of Orwell, Vermont. Later that summer it is named Mount Independence by the troops in honor of the Declaration of Independence. At its strongest, over 12,000 troops are stationed in this fortification.

On July 2, 1777, as the British army advanced down the Champlain Valley, delegates met in Windsor and approved the constitution creating the republic of Vermont.

Delegates elected Thomas Chittenden, Nathan Clark, Jonas and Joseph Fay, Moses Robinson, Ira and Heman Allen, and Matthew Lyon to the Council of Safety, the interim government. These men faced the daunting task of putting together a government in the middle of a war.

Only five days after the constitution was approved, Americans were defeated at the Battle of Hubbardton after abandoning Fort Ticonderoga and Mt. Independence. Terrified settlers fled their homes on the western side of the state. Urgent pleas were sent to Massachusetts and New Hampshire for reinforcements, local militias were called into service, and the American army regrouped. The British were defeated just outside of Bennington on August 16, 1777.

At the same time, the Council had to contend with the politicking of New York’s delegation in the Continental Congress. New York still insisted upon its land claims and passed resolutions trying to stop the formation of the new state. Writing a rebuttal, Ira Allen linked New York’s opposition to its leaders’ ties with the British, hoping to win votes for the new state. Meanwhile, on March 3, 1778, elections were held for representatives to Vermont’s General Assembly, which convened for the first time on March 12, 1778.

Vermont’s constitution was written to legitimize the state in the eyes of the people of the Grants and the Continental Congress. The writers gave as their reason for creating the new state the premise that governments were created to provide for the security, support, and protection of the community and the natural rights of individuals. They believed the British king and New York authorities had failed them and by common consent they could change their government. Therefore, they were declaring their independence and establishing the new state of Vermont.

The writers of Vermont’s constitution used the Pennsylvania constitution as a model, but they included some important changes. The Bill of Rights abolished slavery and gave voting privileges to all freemen. To this day, the state constitution remains the final reference for defining the legal balance between individual rights and those of Vermont’s communities.  

A Bill of Sale From God Almighty

Vermont’s commitment to the cause of liberty continued to shine brightly in the years leading up to the Civil War.  Vermont’s constitution was the first to outlaw slavery.  Vermont was also a key participant in the “Underground Railroad”.  The following passages are from “Rowland T. Robinson, Rokeby, and the Underground Railroad in Vermont”

Vermont and many other northern states, had passed a personal liberty law to circumvent the provisions of the Fugitive Slave Law of 1793. These state laws required masters or slave catchers to seek warrants before apprehending fugitives, and some guaranteed runaways a jury trial before a certificate of removal could be granted.

Consider also the following from “The Underground Railroad Mural” by Sam Kerson:

Vermont has a long history of opposition to slavery. Many Vermonters opposed slavery and assisted runaway slaves throughout the pre-Civil War period. In 1777, Vermont's constitution became the first in the country to abolish slavery. While the federal Fugitive Slave Law of 1793 supported he "rights" of Slave-owners to reclaim their "property" in any state of the Union, many Vermonters secretly or openly resisted the law, and the legislature and the courts made it as difficult as possible for slave-owners to remove escaped slaves from Vermont.

Judge Theophilus Harrington was a farmer who lived in Clarendon and served as Justice of the Vermont Supreme Court from 1803-1813. In one case he tried at Middlebury, a slave owner came to Harrington to recover a slave who had escaped to Vermont. The slave owner showed bills of sale for both the slave and for the slave's mother. Harrington said, "You do not go back to the original proprietor." When the slaver's attorney asked what he would need for proof of ownership, Harrington replied, "A bill of sale from God Almighty!" The escaped slave was set free.

By 1836 there were 89 anti-slavery societies active in Vermont. In 1840 many of these fervent abolitionists formed the Liberty Party and successfully proposed a personal liberty law that guaranteed fugitives an attorney, required first that the slaver post $1,000 bond and then be fined if he lost the case. If the slaver further attempted to capture the fugitive, he was liable for kidnapping.

In 1842, the state legislature passed resolutions favoring a Constitutional amendment to abolish slavery and bar admittance to the Union, of states allowing slavery. Resolutions calling for the repeal of the Fugitive Slave Law, for the abolition of slavery and for barring slave states from joining the Union continued throughtout the pre-Civil War period. In 1843, the 1840 act was replaced by a strengthened act that also barred sheriffs, jailers and citizens from holding or detaining fugitives.

In 1850, the state legislature resolved to use constitutional means to repeal or modify the Fugitive Slave Law at the national level and guaranteed fugitives in Vermont the right to habeas corpus and a trial by jury.

It also required immediate notification of state's attorneys so that they could defend the fugitives.

The Underground Railroad was especially active in Vermont from 1830 to 1860. Most of the fugitives who went to Canada through New England passed through Vermont, with the majority passing on the route from Brattleboro to Montpelier. While there are no clear records on the total number of fugitives to pass through Vermont, one Underground Railroad agent in Norwich, which was not one of the main routes, assisted 600 escaped slaves.

When the Civil War broke out Vermonters stepped forward to put their life on the line for the cause of liberty.  The following passages are from “Vermont, an Illustrated History”, by Alan J. Fortney and David E. Robinson:

The first regiment of seven hundred men was the initial wave of a flood of Vermont volunteers and draftees sent south in defense of the Union. With a population of 315,000 in 1860, Vermont sent 34,238 men, out of 37,000 military eligibles, to federal service before the war ended at Appom­atox, Virginia, in 1865. The mortality rate was 40 percent-13,695 men by wounds, disease, or accidents.

The cost to the state's economy in taxes col­lected for war purposes was also heavy. In char­acteristic Yankee precision on tax matters, the record shows that $9,087,353.40 of public monies were expended by Vermont. Of that sum towns in Vermont raised $5,215,787.70 for war expenses.

The deep feelings stirred in Vermonters by the war, as one contemporary remarked, drew men to the federal army who “are a Cromwellian sort . . . who make some conscience of what they do." The average age was twenty-four. The first regiment to go south in May 1861 for the defense of Washington struck onlookers in the mid-At­lantic states for the extraordinary number of tall men in their ranks. John W. Phelps, their com­mander from Brattleboro, was well over six feet tall and wore an enormous campaign hat with a large black ostrich plume. A Manhattanite saw Phelps in uniform standing on a comer of Broad­way and wondered aloud, "Who's that Vermont colonel?" Invoking a homegrown heroic tradi­tion, one of Phelps' men replied, "Oh, that's old Ethan Allen resurrected!"

Vermonters participated in all of the major bat­tles in Virginia, Maryland, and Pennsylvania. Some also served in the Deep South under the notorious General Ben Butler in Louisiana. After a promotion to Brigadier General in 1861, John Phelps was sent to the Gulf of Mexico where he organized the first Negro troops in federal ser­vice at New Orleans in 1862. When Butler or­dered Phelps to organize the ex-slaves into labor companies, the Vermonter resigned his commis­sion, rather than become a slave driver himself.

The exploits of the Second Vermont Brigade under General George Stannard at Gettysburg earned the highest praise. On July 4, 1863, Robert E. Lee's push into the North through Pennsyl­vania appeared ready to turn out a crushing vic­tory for the South with the driving force of a final charge by Pickett's Confederate brigade. The bat­tle had been waging for three days when the Vermont Brigade came to aid Meade's Army of the Potomac, a force outnumbered two-to-one by the Confederates under Lee. After receiving one­ and-a-half hours of heavy cannon bombardment, Stannard's Vermonters executed a series of dis­ciplined, regimental-sized maneuvers more likely to be accomplished on a dress parade field than a field of mortal combat. The Vermonters ad­vanced in three regimental flank attacks and completely broke the rebel army's back at Get­tysburg. Stannard's battle report recounted the extraordinary behavior of his men and concluded with Stannard's own recognition that he had led exceptional men in a devastating display of skill and power:

 The movements I have described were executed in the open field, under a heavy    fire of shell, grape, and musketry, and they were performed with the prompt­ness and precision of battalion drill. They ended the contest on the center, and substantially closed the battle.

Officers and men behaved like veterans, although it was, for most of them, their first battle, and I am content to leave it to the witnesses of the fight, whether or no they sustained the credit of the service, and the honor of our Green Mountain State.

Total Union and Confederate casualties at Get­tysburg reached nearly 8,000 killed and 35,000 wounded, rivaling the carnage of Napoleon's de­feat at Waterloo. Robert E. Lee's drive north into Pennsylvania cost him half of his army. Had he won at Gettysburg, then Baltimore, Philadel­phia, and New York would have been seriously threatened. Washington would most likely have fallen to the Confederacy in a few days and a Confederate government recognized by Euro­pean powers. Stannard's aide-de-camp, GeorgeG. Benedict, observed in 1870 that Lee's failure at Gettysburg was "the rebellion's failure." The Second Vermont Brigade's precision flanking at­tacks on Pickett were the decisive blow to cause that failure.

Vermont's generous response to repeated calls to defend the Union between 1861 and 1865 was accomplished through the efficient civil organi­zation of the community. Governors Frederick Holbrook and then John Gregory Smith were given responsibility by the legislature for raising, outfitting, and sustaining Vermont's volunteers and draftees with funds from the state treasury until they officially entered federal service. In addition the state paid relief monies to families who suffered economic hardship from the loss of male labor. Soldiers were carried on a state payroll while on federal service. 

Despite the low military readiness of Vermont in early 1861, state government raised the first and every subsequent levy by drawing on the state organization into towns, or little republics, as some Vermonters liked to call them. Gover­nors appointed the selectmen of each town to act as recruiting agents. With an efficient tele­graphic communication system in operation since the mid-1850s and a railway network linking the larger towns, men were moved quickly from even the most remote mountain villages in the north­ east sections of the state to troop gathering places at the railways in St. Johnsbury, Brattleboro, Rut­land, and Burlington.

The Fight for Freedom in the 20th Century

Vermont’s contribution to liberty continued on in the 20th Century.  More from “Vermont, an Illustrated History”, by Alan J. Fortney and David E. Robinson:

Vermont as a community responded to the nation's call with the same commitment it had shown during the Civil War. Anticipating Washington's call for men in early 1917, Governor Horace Gra­ham instructed the listers of Vermont's towns to enroll all able-bodied males between the ages of eighteen and forty-five as liable for military duty. In World War I, however, the federal government took some of its first giant leaps of expansion. In a single day, June 5, 1917, under the national direction of Provost Marshall General Crowder in Washington, Governor Horace Graham in Montpelier supervised by telephone and tele­graph the Selective Service registration of 27,244 Vermonters.

With the call-up of Vermont's National Guard regiment, in addition to volunteers and draftees, a total of 17,000 of Vermont's men and women served in World War I, most of the army per­sonnel with the Twenty-Sixth or Yankee Divi­sion, and others in the Marine Corps and Navy.  Vermonters also served in foreign armies during the First World War, with almost 150 of them in the Canadian Army. Vermonters experienced 2,000 casualties. Many succumbed after the Ar­mistice of November 10, 1918, from the influenza epidemic that swept Europe and America in 1919.

In less than twenty months Vermont raised a war effort of substantial size in materials as well as manpower. Agricultural productivity in­creased and, except when national building in­dustry declines cut into demands for marble and granite, Vermont's industrial production grew-­especially in textiles and munitions manufac­tured for war supplies.

The impact of World War II on Vermont was of the order of earlier powerful events such as the Civil War and the Flood of 1927. Human re­sources were efficiently mustered in response to urgent calls from Montpelier and Washington.  Economic resources were also generously de­voted to the cause of defeating Fascism in Europe and Imperial Japan in the far reaches of the Pa­cific Ocean. Lives were lost, as in those earlier events, and social arrangements, especially in political affairs, were revised when the veterans returned from the war.

Vermont entered the conflict even before Con­gress officially declared war on Japan, Italy, and Germany. In September 1940 President Franklin Delano Roosevelt called the National Guard into federal service. The Vermont National Guard's 172nd Infantry Regiment went to Camp Bland­ing, Florida, for training in March 1940. In order to pay a state bonus to guardsmen on federal service, the General Assembly declared a state of "Armed Conflict" on September 11, 1941. As­signed as a unit of the 43rd Division, the 172nd Infantry Regiment sailed in late 1942 from Cali­fornia on the USS Calvin Coolidge, destination: New Zealand. Despite a mine sinking the Cool­idge in the New Hebrides Islands, the 43rd, com­manded by General Leonard "Red" Wing of Rutland, fought in New Georgia, Munda, and the bloody battle for Guadalcanal. Known as the "Winged Victory" Division for their commander, the 43rd, including the renamed 172nd Infantry Combat Team, which was reduced to 40 percent Vermonters by 1944, also caught the attention of the Japanese propaganda broadcaster "Tokyo Rose." She called them the "Munda Butchers." On January 9, 1945, with Vermonters by then reduced to 25 percent of their original strength in the 172nd, the "Winged Victory" 43rd Division participated in the battle for the Philippines, as­saulting the beach at Lingayen Gulf. 

Before the Japanese surrender on September 2, 1945, ended World War II, nearly 50,000 Ver­monters had served in various branches of the armed forces in every theater of action. As a per­centage of the state's population, Vermont's manpower contribution to World War II ex­ceeded by 2 percent the enormous levy of men for the Civil War. In the Second World War, how­ever, Vermont lost only 1,233 out of 3,870 casualties. 

The homefront in Vermont was also heavily mobilized. Fort Ethan Allen in Colchester was a scene of busy war preparations, as it had been in World War I. Shelburne Shipyards was the construction site for patrol torpedo boats that were sent off to the Pacific theater. With an ap­propriation of $35,000 from the legislature, Governor William H. Wills organized twelve companies of home guard by June 23, 1941, con­sisting of 111 officers and 1,361 men.

Of course no review of Vermonters military exploits would be complete without mention of our State’s National Guard.  This from the web site Global Security:

The Vermont Army National Guard maintains 26 armories, and is present in 22 communities.

The men and women of the Vermont National Guard are dedicated, combat ready citizen soldiers, committed to serving their community, state, and nation, while facing future challenges and opportunities united in spirit as one Guard. The Vermont Army National Guard went through many reorganizations in the 1960s. The Vermont Guard went from being part of the 43rd Division to the 50th Armored Division and in 1988 the Brigade rejoined the 26th Yankee Division. At the present time, Vermont's Brigade is part of the 42nd Infantry Division.

Vermont has a unique history of citizen soldiers that goes back to the beginning of the country. Tracing their legacy to the Green Mountain Boys of the Revolutionary War, today's Vermont National Guard is as relevant today as it carries on the militia tradition in our nation's defense.

The original militia company of the Vermont National Guard was formed on October 24, 1764. Eleven years later, on May 10, 1775, Ethan Allen and his Green Mountain Boys crossed Lake Champlain and captured Fort Ticonderoga during the Revolutionary War. According to Allens memoirs he demanded the surrender of the Fort "in the name of the Great Jehovah and the Continental Congress." Another account written just days after the daring conquest reported that Allen's words were decidedly more down-to-earth: "Come on out you old rat!" Some historians believe that it was the Vermont 2nd Brigade that turned the tide of the Civil War in favor of the North, when they flanked the confederate charge under General Pickett at the battle of Gettysburg on July 3, 1863.

The Spanish-American War saw the Vermont Militia again called into federal service. Vermont's 1st Regiment was mobilized on May 10, 1898 at Camp Olympia, presently Camp Johnson, in Colchester, Vermont. Olympia was the name of the flagship of Admiral George Dewey, a Vermonter, who led the victorious U.S. Navy Fleet into Manila Harbor earlier that same year.

The Regiment was returned to Vermont and mustered out of active service in late October and early November. Six months after being mustered out of federal service for the Mexican Border problems in 1916, the Vermont Guard was activated for World War I. The Vermont Regiment was incorporated into elements of the 26th "Yankee" Division which saw action in Europe. On February 24, 1941, the Vermont Army National Guard was mobilized as part of the 43rd Infantry Division. By the close of World War II, the 2nd Battalion of Vermont's 172 Infantry Regiment had earned a Presidential Unit Citation and Leonard "Red" Wing of Rutland, Vermont was the Division's Commanding General. From the day General Wing assumed command on October 7, 1943, "Winged Victory" became the 43rd Division's nickname.

The Vermonters were once again called to active duty as part of the 43rd Division during the Korean War. The Division served in Germany for two years. Elements of the Vermont Army National Guard also served in federal service during the Berlin Crisis of 1961-1962 and again in Vietnam from 1968-1969. In addition, units of the Vermont Army National Guard served in Southwest Asia during the Gulf War from January through May 1991.

According to a January 2007 U.S. News and World Report article Vermont’s history of military sacrifice for the cause of freedom continues to this day:

Army National Guard Sgt. Kevin Sheehan, 36, and his fellow guardsman, Spc. Alan Bean Jr., 22, killed in the same mortar attack south of Baghdad on May 25, 2004, were the first Vermont guardsmen to die in combat since the Korean War. They thus became members of a group that, to outsiders, seems an aberration in this Democratic state: Vermont has the nation's highest per capita death rate in Iraq.

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An analysis of Defense Department records last year by demographer William O'Hare for the University of New Hampshire's Carsey Institute found that rural states like Vermont and South Dakota have shouldered an inordinate war burden-they have per capita death rates far higher than urbanized states like Michigan and California. Indeed, in the quiet corners of the Green Mountain State the politics can harken back to Vermont's more conservative roots. And here-in hamlets like Milton and Bridport and Hardwick-military service has remained a time-honored tradition dating to the days of the Green Mountain Boys and the state's mythic Revolutionary War hero, Ethan Allen.

"Vermonters historically have been good soldiers," says historian Howard Coffin of Montpelier, author of books about the heroics of the state's Civil War fighting brigades. "They were rural kids, farm boys who grew up walking and were in good condition. And all of them could shoot."

Like many before him, Sheehan, a civil engineer, saw himself that way. "He always knew he wanted to serve his country," his 37-year-old widow said, as dusk settled over her husband's grave and she and the children climbed into the car for a short ride to the home she and Kevin bought seven years ago.

But with the tally of dead Americans hitting 3,000 at the end of 2006 and President Bush calling for more troops, many Vermonters are asking whether they've already sacrificed too much for a cause whose lofty original aims may be unreachable. The count of Vermont's war dead now ranges from 18 to 23, depending on how the list makers define the soldiers' state connections and whether the count includes National Guard Sgt. 1st Class John Stone, 52, of Norwich, killed in Afghanistan last year.

"The war has been very personal in Vermont," says Sanders, whose stepson's childhood friend, National Guard 2nd Lt. Mark Procopio of Stowe, was killed in Ramadi in late 2005-one of six state guardsmen in Task Force Saber who died in that violent Sunni triangle city when they relieved a Marine unit. "We see the pain and the loss, and that has the effect of making people wonder why," Sanders said.

With the nation's second-smallest state population, 624,000, Vermonters know the dead. They know their children and parents and grandparents. There have been antiwar protests-a handful of folks still march in front of the Montpelier post office once a week down State Street from the Capitol, and 50 communities in 2005 passed referendums that asked the administration to reconsider its involvement in Iraq. But most displays have been quiet and respectful, like Russ Bennett's field south of Waitsfield, where small white flags honor U.S. soldiers killed in Iraq. The war has touched almost everyone, said state archivist Gregory Sanford, "but what do we do now?"

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Service. So military recruiters continue to hit pay dirt. Despite deep losses suffered by the Vermont National Guard-nine of the state's war dead are guardsmen, the others active duty-the guard's annual recruiting numbers at the end of November were the nation's best in terms of exceeding goals. …  There are 950 full-timers in Vermont's Army and Air National Guard and an additional 2,650 part-timers-those who attend drills one weekend a month and two full weeks a year. There have been 2,500 deployments to Iraq and Afghanistan from their ranks, including multiple air guard deployments for shorter assignments.

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Kevin Sheehan joined during peacetime and enjoyed the drill weekends with others like him-outdoorsmen who lived on country roads, often deep in the woods, and loved to hunt and fish. Military service for many was simply an extension of that lifestyle. The money helped, his wife said, "though it's not like we won the lottery." But when her husband called home on 9/11, she remembers thinking as she held little Alyson: "This could touch us."

Stories. A group of students at Norwich University in Norwich, the nation's oldest private military school, in recent months has been piecing together a documentary on just how intensely the war has touched the state. Vermont Fallen, a compilation of heart-rending interviews with families like the Sheehans who have lost loved ones in Iraq, will be shown to them for the first time this week. Norwich Prof. William Estill, who has overseen the project, says he hopes the video will eventually be shown to a wider audience. But it has already had the effect of connecting the families, known historically as Gold Star families, and in the process has helped create a statewide support group of those trying to live with the anguish of loss.

Just before Christmas, 10 Gold Star family members, including Sheehan, gathered at Sarducci's restaurant on the banks of the Winooski River in Montpelier to eat pasta and talk about what they've lost. They'd come wearing matching sweatshirts printed with the faces of the fallen and greeted each other with hugs and laughter. The tears, too, would come-but later.

"This is the final gift from our boys; that's why we're together," said Marion Gray, whose stepson, Jamie, 29, a National Guard sergeant, died in a roadside bomb attack in 2004. She's the group's "Mama Goose," the one who makes the phone calls, sends the E-mails, and visits the grieving, pulling together the families to share their stories.

"With this group, you almost feel normal again," added Kevin McLaughlin, here with his wife, Vicki. The McLaughlins and Gary and Janet Merchant, who were sitting at the end of the table, are all from tiny Hardwick (population 3,230) and lost their sons to violence in Ramadi within months of each other. Chris Merchant, who would have turned 33 on this day, was a school custodian and married father of four who wanted extra income to help his family and had hopes of becoming a teacher, his father said.

"I want Chris and the others to be remembered as heroes who fought for freedom," said Gary Merchant. "It's terrible to lose all of our boys, but they were doing what they were meant to do, and with a lot of courage."

Jamie Gray's father, Steve, who recently retired as head of Montpelier's public works department, opened up a scrapbook of his son's life. There was Jamie tapping a maple tree with his uncle on the farm the family lived on for seven generations, holding a string of fish caught at the family's fishing camp, standing by a deer strung up and ready to gut.

The Grays don't want the troops pulled out of Iraq. The president should be supported, said Marion, archly noting that the road to Canada is nearby. Though most at the table described themselves as nonpolitical, they said they know that things have gone wrong in Iraq. They talked of sympathy for the Iraqis, about how their boys loved the children there, and their hopes that the kindnesses their sons showed to the youngsters may make a difference someday.

"But now we're there, and it's messed up," said Kevin McLaughlin, who wears his son Scott's camouflage jacket. "We can't just leave. It would be a waste of my son's life."

As has been pointed out, the contest between freedom and tyranny is not restricted to one age or generation, but is a timeless battle.  The sacrifices made by our brave men and women in the armed forces today are linked in this noble cause to those made by Vermonters of the past   It is our duty to honor those brave souls who have laid there life on the line for liberty both past and present.  The best way to honor them is to renew our dedication to the cause for which they laid down their lives and ensure that victory is the end result.  In doing so we must always keep in mind Thomas Jefferson’s warning that: "The price of freedom is eternal vigilance."