Tea at Trianon: Revolutionary War Loyalties in Vermont

John Wilson Croker on Marie-Antoinette

"We have followed the history of Marie Antoinette with the greatest diligence and scrupulosity. We have lived in those times. We have talked with some of her friends and some of her enemies; we have read, certainly not all, but hundreds of the libels written against her; and we have, in short, examined her life with– if we may be allowed to say so of ourselves– something of the accuracy of contemporaries, the diligence of inquirers, and the impartiality of historians, all combined; and we feel it our duty to declare, in as a solemn a manner as literature admits of, our well-matured opinion that every reproach against the morals of the queen was a gross calumny– that she was, as we have said, one of the purest of human beings."

~from History of the Guillotine by John Wilson Croker, 1844

Edmund Burke on Marie-Antoinette

"It is now sixteen or seventeen years since I saw the queen of France, then dauphiness, at Versailles; and surely there never lighted on this orb, which she hardly seemed to touch, a more delightful vision. I saw her just above the horizon, decorating and cheering the elevated sphere she had just begun to move in, glittering like a morning star full of life and splendor and joy. Oh, what a revolution....Little did I dream that I should have lived to see such disasters fall upon her, in a nation of gallant men, in a nation of men of honor and of cavaliers! I thought ten thousand swords must have leaped from their scabbards, to avenge even a look which threatened her with insult. But the age of chivalry is gone; that of sophisters, economists, and calculators has succeeded...."

~Edmund Burke, October 1790

Thursday, August 13, 2020

Revolutionary War Loyalties in Vermont

From VTDigger:

The odd thing about this divide within Vermont’s first family is that it wasn’t odd at all. The Revolutionary War divided families like no other event in this nation’s history, even the Civil War, many historians argue. Perhaps that’s because the Civil War was largely a sectional conflict. The divisions during the Revolution ran through most communities and even families like the Chittendens.

In this, the Chittendens were in good company. Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson and John Hancock all had family members who backed the British cause. Ira and Ethan Allen witnessed their brother Levi trade with the British. John Adams had little company in being able to say afterwards, “I was happy that my Mother and my Wife … and all her near relations, as well as mine, had been uniformly of my Mind.”

These were uncertain times. To many, rebellion was anathema. Even some who thought it justified failed to endorse revolution out of fear of retribution from British authorities. Some creatively, if not honorably, found ways to have it both ways. They switched their allegiance based on which army controlled the area around them. Others backed the two sides simultaneously. One Massachusetts publisher printed two newspapers – one appealing to Revolutionaries, the other to those loyal to the Crown.

Judging simply from Chittenden’s and Evarts’ family histories, it would be hard to predict which side each man would take in the conflict. Both families had lived in East Guilford, Connecticut, for about a century before deciding to move to the new town of Salisbury, Connecticut. There, Chittenden lived as one of the wealthiest men in town and was a representative in the colonial assembly. Evarts was less wealthy, but still richer than most people in town. He was prominent enough to have served in the local government and to have married Chittenden’s sister Elisheba.

What set these men on their separate paths, and decided their fates, might have been a question of geography. During the early 1770s, they both decided to move north to see what opportunities they could find in the New Hampshire Grants. The region, which would later become Vermont, was divided into land grants by New Hampshire’s colonial governor. In 1772, Sylvanus Evarts settled in Castleton on land he purchased from one of the town’s original settlers. Soon afterwards, Chittenden started a farm on land he had secured in Williston, where he was the first settler. (Read more.)