Ethan Allen
Ethan Allen
Ethan Allen was a native of Salisbury, Connecticut, and moved to Vermont as a boy. He actively participated in public affairs from an early age to his death. He was undoubtedly a Rough and Ready.
Revolutionary War
After the battle of Lexington, he received orders from the General Assembly of Connecticut to go to Ticonderoga and Crown Point. About that time, Benedict Arnold had raised 400 men for the same purpose. On his arrival, he found Colonel Allen prepared to march with 300 men and became his aide in the expedition. On May 9, 1775, they arrived at the lake opposite Ticonderoga and, with great difficulty, landed 83 men near the garrison during the night. As the day approached, the Colonel was determined to make an immediate attack. He led his Spartan band to the wicket gate, where a sentinel snapped his gun at the bold intruders and fled into the fort, closely followed by the Green Mountain boys who rushed in and formed on the parade ground facing the two barracks and made the welkin ring with three loud huzzas. One of the guards who begged for a quarter pointed out the officers' apartment.
Colonel Allen entered with his sword drawn and demanded Captain De la Place surrender the fort. He jumped out of bed, rubbed his eyes, and asked by whose authority?
Taken Prisoner
The Colonel quickly replied, " I demand it in the name of the great Jehovah and the Continental Congress."
Crown Point surrendered the same day and, shortly after, the only British sloop of war, which gave Colonel Allen the mastery of Lake Champlain.
In the fall of that year, Colonel Brown pledged to act in concert in an attack upon Montreal. Still, failing to meet him, Colonel Allen was overwhelmed by numbers, taken prisoner, loaded with irons, and treated cruelly.
Allen was sent to England with a strong promise of a halter on his arrival. In 1776, he was returned to New York but was exchanged on May 6, 1778. Bad treatment had ruined his iron constitution. A base attempt was made to bribe him, which he resented with the dignity of an honest freeman. He wrote a history of the cruelties uniformly practiced upon the American prisoners. During his confinement in New York, he estimated that over 2,000 perished by hunger, cold, and disease produced by the impurity of the prisons and prison ships. Col. Allen was highly esteemed as a stern patriot, a good citizen, and an honest man. He died suddenly at his home in Colchester, Vermont, on February 13, 1789.
Source: The Sages and Heroes of the Revolutionary by L. Carroll Judson.