Moses Chase, in Cornish, one month before the meeting of the first legislature of Vermont at Windsor. The eleven towns which formed its original constituency had now been joined by six others. All that is certainly known about this Cornish session of the COMMITTEES is the time and place of meeting, and the fact that the call for it announced that it was "to confer upon matters of importance;" but it is altogether probable that it arranged the details of the scheme which was presented to the Vermont Legislature a month later for uniting with that State all the New Hampshire towns outside the Mason Grant.

On March 12, 1778, the first legislature of Vermont met at Windsor, and the new State Government was formally organized. Promptly on the first day of the session a delegation from the UNITED COMMITTEES, which body was assembled at Cornish, on the opposite bank of the Connecticut, came over to propose that Vermont take into union with her the Grafton and Cheshire towns then represented in the COMMITTEES, and all others east of the river that might be desirous of such a union. The proposition was received with surprise and disfavor by the Bennington party, and was at first rejected by a decisive vote, whereupon the members from the Gloucester County towns threatened to withdraw and unite with the COMMITTEES at Cornish, in opposition to both New Hampshire and Vermont. With a view to gain time and to provide a possible way of escape from so serious a dilemma, the matter was compromised by referring it to the Vermont towns for settlement. Of the forty-seven towns whose vote was returned, thirty-five favored the union, and twelve opposed it. The Bennington party, however, complained that the vote had been taken upon the supposition that New Hampshire was indifferent to the movement, whereas the real attitude of the Exeter Government was one of uncompromising hostility to it, and that the college party had wilfully misrepresented the facts. The Bennington party were at a further disadvantage in their opposition to the union, from the fact that a great number of towns west of the mountains, where most of their strength lay, had been abandoned by their inhabitants at the time of Burgoyne's advance the year before, and were now neither represented in the Legislature nor in a situation to vote upon this question. Besides, it is important to observe it was not the direct vote of the people, but the vote by towns, that was regarded in deciding it.

Accordingly, at the next session of the Legislature, held at Bennington on June 4, 1778, fifteen New Hampshire towns, together with the College District of Dresden, were formally admitted into union with Vermont, and invested with all the powers and privileges accorded to the other towns of that State, provision being made at the same time for the admission of such

other towns east of the river as might desire it upon the same terms. The college also, on petition of the trustees, was taken under the protection of Vermont, and President Wheelock appointed a justice of the peace. During the interval between this and the October session of the Legislature many more towns, principally in Grafton County, accepted the Act of Union, and declared themselves confederated with Vermont. During the same interval, however, the Exeter Government issued precepts for the election of members to its third General Assembly, containing a direction. to the people to instruct the Assembly, if they saw fit, through their representatives, to call a new constitutional convention. Many of the disaffected towns, even of those who had voted to join Vermont, were disposed to look with favor upon this concession, and to await further developments before proceeding to any greater length in any direction. It thus happened that only Dresden and nine of the towns which had expressly entered into union with Vermont sent representatives to its Legislature in October, as its constitution and the terms of the union required them to do. But among these representatives were most of the leading spirits of the college party east of the river; and it is probable that, but for the untoward and unlooked-for events which soon followed, they would have succeeded in carrying over to Vermont most of the towns outside the Mason Grant, and then, by sheer weight of numbers, have brought the seat of government to the banks of the Connecticut, and secured to themselves that ascendancy in public affairs to which they felt their abilities entitled them, especially as the people of New Hampshire rejected by an overwhelming majority a new constitution framed and submitted to them a few months later.

The UNITED COMMITTEES met again on June 24, 1778, at Colonel Morey's house in Orford, and recommended to the towns that had joined Vermont to strictly obey all military orders emanating from that State, but at the same time to heed, so far as might be, the wishes of the Continental officers, as well as to co-operate with the New Hampshire militia in all matters pertaining to the common defence. Various other recommendations were passed looking to the proper adjustment of the towns to their new relations, and a letter was despatched to the Exeter Government announcing the secession, and bespeaking a continuance of the amicable relations then subsisting between the two States.

The Exeter authorities now threatened force to coerce the revolted towns, invoked the interference of the Continental Congress, and plied the Vermont Governor with protests and appeals. The Bennington leaders, encouraged by these demonstrations, secretly despatched General Ethan

Allen to Philadelphia on a mission purely tentative, as they claimed, but, as charged by the college party, hostile and corrupt. Allen arrived at Philadelphia on September 19th, and, according to the account which he brought back, his timely presence saved Vermont from summary annihilation. The New York and New Hampshire delegates having made common cause against the new State, the whole power of the Federal Government was about to be launched against it. By active and energetic lobbying among the members-for he does not appear to have had a hearing before Congress-Allen procured a postponement of its threatened interposition; meanwhile entering into a formal compact with the New Hampshire delegates, he stipulating to labor for a dissolution of the union with the New Hampshire towns, and they thereupon to break with New York and assist Vermont in procuring from Congress the recognition of her independence. Hurrying home, Allen, claiming now to have had the official sanction of Governor Chittenden for his mission, made a formal report to the Legislature, which had been convened at Windsor, on October 8, 1778, representing in the most positive manner that Congress was ready to concede the independence of Vermont, provided the claim to jurisdiction east of the Connecticut was not insisted upon; but if that claim were not abandoned at once, New York would be supported in her claim eastward to the river.

The college party, however, were now so far in the ascendant in the Legislature, that they had not only been able to elect for clerk Professor Woodward, of the college, who represented Dresden, but had also carried through a resolve declaring it to be the right of all the grants west of the Mason line to unite under one government, despite New Hampshire or New York, or even the Federal Congress, and proposing to the Exeter Government a plan for establishing the boundary between New Hampshire and the proposed eastern extension of Vermont. But, although this assertion of abstract right was carried in the face of Allen's report on the 20th of October, and although the Bennington party had signally failed in a direct attempt to dissolve the union with the New Hampshire towns, still, when the college party brought forward on the next day the simple practical measure of erecting those towns into a county, or of annexing them to an existing county, the measure was defeated-the sentiment of fear manifestly operating upon the minds of a sufficient number of members to give the Bennington party a temporary majority. The ruinous tendency of the peculiar political teachings of the college party was now given another exemplification.

This adverse vote upon a mere matter of administrative detail was im

mediately seized upon by the representatives from the valley towns on both sides of the river, and made the pretext for nullifying the solemn Act of Union, whose passage they had procured but a few months before. The eleven New Hampshire members, together with those from ten Vermont towns opposite, at once withdrew from the Assembly, and were speedily joined by three members of the Upper House (then called the Council) and by the Lieutenant-Governor, leaving barely a quorum of the Legislature remaining. After withdrawing, they assembled by themselves on October 22d, when they formulated and laid before the Legislature their solemn protest against its action of the 21st, declaring it to be an entire subversion and destruction of the Windsor Constitution, and a total absolution, not only of the New Hampshire towns, but of all the towns, from the bonds of confederation by which they had been held together as one State. The "Protesting Members," as they chose to style themselves, next passed over the river to Cornish, where they organized themselves into a cohesive body, after the manner of the United Committees of 1776, with Lieutenant-Governor Joseph Marsh as chairman, and Professor Woodward as clerk, and with the definite and avowed purpose of compelling Vermont, if possible, to rehabilitate itself (a singular inconsistency) by rescinding the vote of October 21st; or, failing in that, to revive the original scheme of the college party, and erect an independent State in the Connecticut Valley. To this end they called a convention, to meet at Cornish on December 9, 1778, to which the towns on both sides of the river were invited to send delegates. The constituencies of the PROTESTING MEMBERS fully confirmed their action, and sent delegates to this convention with instructions to pursue the course thus marked out for them.

That the seemingly erratic course of these towns was in reality in strict keeping with a well-defined and widely held political faith seems now sufficiently clear. According to that faith, each of the Wentworth Grants, or towns, having been chartered by the British Crown in the same manner that Massachusetts and Connecticut had been, acquired by the Declaration of Independence all the attributes of sovereignty which could be claimed by those larger States; and, in so far as those towns might enter into the formation of it, any new State must needs be, not a direct union of the people, regardless of their town incorporations, but a confederation of towns, to which primarily the people in each owed allegiance, and through which alone they were related to the State. The idea of a dual allegiance had small place in this political faith. From this extreme doctrine of town sovereignty it was but a step to the concomitant heresies of nullification and secession which followed. Hence, as we have seen, the result of its teaching

was that, whatever engagement a town might enter into, there was practically always reserved the right to recede from it, as pique or self-interest might prompt. The writer reserves for a further narrative an account of the extent to which, in the very midst of the struggle for national independence, these troublesome doctrines became disseminated in New Hampshire and Vermont, and of the dire confusion which resulted therefrom.