A revolutionary soldier of legendary prowess and verve and the author of a number of controversial works, Ethan Allen was born to Joseph and Mary Baker Allen in Litchfield, Connecticut, the eldest of eight children. Little is known of his early life except that his preparation for college was cut short when his father died in 1755. After serving at Fort William Henry in 1757 during the French and Indian War he went to live in the New Hampshire Grants, and in 1762 he married Mary Brownson, who bore him five children (three of whom died before adulthood) before her death in 1783. The following year he married Mrs. Frances Montresor Buchanan, with whom he had three children.
Allen's talent for leadership became evident during the dispute in 1769 between New York and New Hampshire over the control of the New Hampshire Grants, which became Vermont. Remembered primarily as the "colonel commandant" of the Green Mountain Boys, a group organized during the dispute over Vermont, and as the military hero who captured Fort Ticonderoga on 10 May 1775, Ethan Allen's most respected literary achievement is A Narrative of Colonel Ethan Allen's Captivity (1779). Captured by the British while he was attempting to attack Montreal in September 1775, he was held prisoner until 6 May 1778, when he was at last exchanged for Col. Archibald Campbell. The narrative describing his captivity was a best-seller, appearing in five editions within the first two years of its publication. Promulgating the virtues of the Green Mountain Boys and condemning the British, the book's immense popularity helped to further Washington's efforts to keep the American cause alive.
Allen also wrote provocative newspaper articles, political pamphlets, and several other longer works. A substantial proportion of Allen's writings are defenses of Vermont containing arguments designed to persuade Congress to proclaim Vermont a state. The philosophical work in which he announced that he was not a Christian, Reason the Only Oracle of Man (1784), offended the public and was burned by its printer. The full title explains the stir caused by this first book opposing revealed religion to be published in America: Reason the Only Oracle of Man, or a Compenduous System of Natural Religion. Alternately Adorned with Confutations of a variety of Doctrines incompatible to it; Deduced from the most exalted Ideas which we are able to form of the Divine and Human Characters, and from the Universe in General.
Allen died in 1789 of apoplexy in Burlington, Vermont. In his last years he had settled in Sunderland, Vermont, to tend to his farms and local Vermont affairs, and his writing changed as his life became less vehemently political and more conducive to contemplation. Scholars portray Ethan Allen as a political hero, but his biographers admire his talent as a polemical writer and his consistently undaunted independence of mind.
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