Warner, his right-hand man, were masterly beyond criticism. He had no artillery, no cavalry, no transportation, no commissariat but the women on the farms. Half of his troops were without bayonets, and even ammunition had to be husbanded. He lacked everything but men, and his men lacked everything but hardihood and indomitable resolution. Upon all known rules and experience of warfare, the successful storming, by a hastily organized militia, of an intrenched position at the top of a hill, held by an adequate regular force, would have been declared impossible. But it was the impossible that happened, in a rout of the veterans that amounted to destruction. History and literature, eloquence and poetry have combined to enshrine in the memory of mankind those decisive charges, at critical moments, by which great battles have been won and epochs in the life of nations determined. I set against the splendor of them all that final onset up yonder hill and over its breastworks of those New England farmers, on whose faces desperation had kindled the supernatural light of battle which never shines in vain. That field was the last hope of the Hampshire Grants. They were fighting for all they had on earth, whether of possessions or of rights. They could not go home defeated, for they would have had no homes to go to. The desolate land that Burgoyne would have left New York would have taken. Not a man was there by compulsion, or upon the slightest expectation of personal advantage or reward. The spirit which made the day possible was shown in that Stephen Fay, of Bennington, who had five sons in the fight. When the first-born was brought home to him dead,

"I thank God," he said, "that I had a son willing to give his life for his country."

Such, in merest and briefest outline, was Bennington. Its story, imperfectly preserved, comes down to us only in flashes, but they are flashes of glorious light. Its consequences were immediate and far-reaching. It was the first success of the Revolution which bore any fruit. Its guns sounded the first notes in the knell which announced that the power of Great Britain over the colonies she had created and had sacrificed was passing away. Burgoyne heard it, and knew what it meant. Washington heard it, and, hearing, took heart again. Confidence replaced despair. Gates succeeded Schuyler in command at Saratoga, and the militia poured into his camp. The invincibility of the British commander was gone. He fought desperately, but in vain. On the 17th of October he surrendered.

If Bennington had not been fought, or had been fought without success, the junction between Clinton and Burgoyne could not have been prevented, and his surrender would not have taken place. "If I had succeeded there," he wrote to his government, "I should have marched to Albany."

But Bennington was only an episode in the early life of Vermont. Striking, heroic, conspicuous, yet still but an episode. The outbreak of the Revolution found the people of the Hampshire Grants already engaged in a contest with the powerful Colony of New York, which had for ten years taxed their utmost resources. The first to occupy the unbroken wilderness which is now Vermont, they had taken and paid

for their titles to the lands, as a part of the Colony of New Hampshire, under regular grants from its governor as vicegerent of the British Crown. They had organized townships, built roads, cleared forests, and established their homes. Up to that time the territory had been universally regarded as a part of New Hampshire, and the early maps so laid it down. New York, for more than a hundred years from the date of her charter, had attempted no jurisdiction over it. But after the New Hampshire grants had been made and occupied, New York set up the claim that her eastern boundary was the Connecticut River. The line between that province and New Hampshire was so loosely defined in the charters, issued when the geography of the country was almost unknown, that it was impossible to be determined by their language. The charters were, in fact, conflicting. The greater influence of New York, and her better means of prosecuting her case before the Privy Council, obtained from the Crown, in 1764, an order establishing the Connecticut as the dividing line. But this was only the arbitrary adjustment of a boundary, incapable of other settlement. Its legal effect was prospective, not retroactive. It established jurisdiction, it did not invalidate titles previously vested, under which a prior and adverse possession existed, and which had been derived from the common source of title, the King, of whom the contesting governors were alike the agents, and while the territory was de facto a part of New Hampshire. Nor was it the intention of the Crown or of the Privy Council that it should have such an effect. When in 1767, three years later, the settlers, resisting the efforts of New York to confiscate their lands, suc

ceeded by great exertions in bringing the case again before that body, upon its unanimous and emphatic judgment, further grants by New York of lands granted by New Hampshire prior to 1764 were positively prohibited by the King.

Notwithstanding this explicit order, the Colonial government of New York continued to make grants, in large quantities, of lands occupied adversely under the New Hampshire titles, without the least regard to the rights of the inhabitants, or the distressing consequences in which they would be involved. These grants were made not to settlers, but to speculators and political favorites, upon payment of enormous fees to the governor. Not even compensation was offered for the improvements which had given the lands all the value they had, rescued them from the savage and the wild beast, and made them habitable by man. No greater outrage had been attempted under the forms of English law since the days of Jeffreys. It would not only have been in violation of fundamental principles if it had been done by the Crown, but it was in direct contravention of the orders of the Crown, based upon the judgment of the Privy Council.

The occupants of the Hampshire Grants had no means of legal resistance. They were without money, without counsel, without influence. They made one effort at defence in a suit tried at Albany, but soon found they had no justice to expect in that quarter. Then they set the authority of New York at defiance, and resolved to protect themselves. Sheriffs who came into the Grants to execute writs were turned back. Militia sent to support them were repulsed. Rights

which the law should have defended were maintained by force.

But with the first guns of the Revolution, the people of the Grants threw themselves into that struggle, without regard to its effect upon the contest, to them much more important, in which they were already engaged. Ticonderoga was taken by Ethan Allen, and Crown Point by Warner. They marched in force upon the disastrous expedition against Canada, where Allen was left a prisoner. They turned out on the approach of Burgoyne to garrison Ticonderoga, in such strength that men enough were not left at home to transport the supplies, which, out of their slender resources, they poured into that fortress. They were with Arnold in his desperate battles on Lake Champlain. They fought under Warner at Hubbardton, before Bennington, and with Gates at Bemis Heights and Saratoga afterwards. They pursued the British who retreated from Ticonderoga after Burgoyne's surrender, capturing the last prisoners, and firing the last shots at the remains of that expedition.

When the authority of Great Britain was thrown off by the Declaration of Independence, the organization of a separate government by the inhabitants of the Grants became unavoidable. The jurisdiction of New Hampshire over them had ceased after the royal order of 1764, and with New York they were at war. As early as July, 1776, in convention assembled at Dorset, they adopted articles of association for the purposes of the war as well as of domestic government. In January, 1777, they resolved to form an independent State under the name of New Con