Rowland Evans Robinson

“ With the echo of its first thunder came President Lincoln's call for troops, and Vermont responded with a regiment of her sons, as brave, though their lives had been lapped in peace, as the war-nurtured Green Mountain Boys of old. The military spirit had been but feebly nursed during many tranquil years, yet, at the first breath of this storm, it blazed up in a fervor of patriotic fire such as never before had been witnessed.
At the outbreak of the Rebellion, no Northern State was less prepared for war than Vermont. ”

“ Where now is the beautiful city of Burlington, the unbroken forest sloped to the placid shores of Petowbowk; and the Winooski, from its torrential [Pg 55] source to where its slow current crawls through the broad intervales to the lake, turned no mills, and, but for its one block-house and the infrequent cabins of adventurous pioneers, was as wild as when its devious course was but the warpath of the Waubanakee. Thence to Canada stretched the Wilderness, its solitude as supreme as when, a century and a half before, the French explorer first beheld its snow-clad mountain peaks. ”

“ Sometimes they were sent to the mountains at West River and the Great Falls, "to lodge on ye top," and from these lofty watch-towers the keen eyes of the rangers scanned the mapped expanse of forest, when it was green with summer leafage, or gorgeous as a parterre with innumerable autumnal hues, or veiled in the soft haze of Indian summer, or gray with the snows of winter and the ramage of naked branches, "viewing for smoaks" of hostile camp-fires. ”

“ On this historic field Vermont has marked with monuments the position held by her troops. Where the war-worn First Brigade stood waiting but uncalled to stem the tide of battle, a crouching lion, alert for the onslaught, rears his majestic front, like the lion couchant of the Green Mountains. Another monument stands where the Second Brigade beat back the impetuous fury of the rebel charges; another where the Vermont cavalry dashed like a billow of fire and steel upon the foe ”

“ Farmers and sons of farmers, while serving in the colonial armies, had noted during their painful marches through it what goodly soil slept in the shadow of this wilderness; keen-eyed rangers, chosen from hunters and trappers for their skill in woodcraft, when on their perilous errands had penetrated its depths wherever led an Indian trail or wound a stream to float a canoe, and knew what it held for men of their craft, and each had planned, when peace should come, to return to the land that gave such promise of fruitful fields or the easier garner of peltry. ”

“ It constitutes the most unique feature of the history of the commonwealth; and though it retarded its settlement, and afterward for years its admission into the Union, it was the real cause of its becoming an independent State. For undoubtedly, if the claims of either province had been undisputed by the other, the region would have quietly taken its place as part of that, and have had no individual existence. But the aggressions which the people were compelled to resist schooled them to a spirit of independence that most naturally led them to establish a separate government. ”

“ All the various industries have been given an impetus by the railroad system which now meshes the State, and knits it closer to the others of the Union.
With these changes in business and methods, and this constant intercourse with all inhabitants of the republic, the quaint individuality of the earlier people is fast dissolving into commonplace likeness, so that now the typical Green Mountain Boy of the olden time endures only like an ancient pine that, spared by some chance, rears its rugged crest above the second growth, still awaiting the tempest or the axe that shall lay it low ”

“ I am confident that Congress will not dispute my sincere attachment to the cause of my country, though, I do not hesitate to say, I am fully grounded in opinion that Vermont has an indubitable right to agree on terms of cessation of hostilities with Great Britain, provided the United States persist in rejecting her application for a union with them; for Vermont, of all people, would be most miserable were she obliged to defend the independence of the United claiming States, and they at the same time at full liberty to overturn and ruin the independence of Vermont. ”

“ Around this glowing centre the family gathered in the evening, the always busy womenfolk sewing, knitting, and carding wool; the men fashioning axe-helves and ox-bows, the children popping corn on a hot shovel, or conning their next day's lessons; while all listened to the grandsire's stories of war and pioneer life, or to the schoolmaster's reading of some book seasoned with age, or of the latest news, fresh from the pages of a paper only a fortnight old. ”

“ Nature was the only neighbor of the new-comers, kind or unkind, according to her impartial mood to all her children, now a friend and consoler, with sunshine and timely shower, flowers and birdsong and hymns of wind-swept pines, now relentless, assailing with storm and bitter stress of cold. Miles of weary forest path marked only by blazed trees, or miles of toilsome waterway, lay between them and their kind, or help or sympathy in whatever trouble might befall them. ”

“ The enormous mineral wealth of the State lay for years hidden or unheeded, copper and copperas in the hills of Vershire and Strafford, granite in the bald peaks of Barre, slate in long lines of shelving ledges here and there, and marble cropping out in blotches of dull white among the mulleins and scrubby evergreens of barren sheep pastures. Some of these resources developed slowly to their present importance, others have flourished and languished and flourished again, and others sprang from respectable existence into sudden importance. ”

“ When Congress in 1850, after a fierce storm of debate, passed the odious Fugitive Slave Law, which made United States marshals, and at their behest every citizen of the republic, servants of the arrogant slave power, and withheld from whoever might be claimed as a slave the right of testifying in his own behalf, Vermont was faithful to freedom and the spirit of her Constitution. ”

“ Notwithstanding its losses and dire hardships, the expedition was successful in the infliction of a chastisement that the Indians of St. Francis never recovered from and never forgot, and which relieved the New England frontier from the continual dread of the bloody incursions that it had so long suffered. Throughout the whole of it, in leading it to victory and in retreat, in sharing their hardships and in heroic efforts to succor and save his men, Rogers's conduct was such as should make his name honorably remembered in spite of the suspicions which tarnished it in after years. ”

“ It is a pathetic picture to look back upon, of the household reading of the one volume by the glare of the open fire, spendthrift of warmth and light, eldest and youngest member of the family listening eagerly to the slow, high-keyed words of the reader, while between the pauses was heard the long howl of the wolf, or the pitiless roar of the winter wind. ”

“ There were yet logging-bees for the piling of logs in a clearing, and raising-bees when a new house or barn was put up; drawing-bees when one was to be moved to a new site, with all the ox-teams of half a township; and bees when a sick or short-handed neighbor's season-belated crops needed harvesting.
When the corn was ripe came the husking-bee, in which old and young of both sexes took part, their jolly labor lighted in the open field by the hunter's moon or a great bonfire, around which the shocks were ranged like a circle of wigwams ”

“ It was a brush fight, wherein the scouts had no shelter but such forest cover as their assailants also took advantage of. But three of the scouts were killed; the loss of the Indians, though great, was never known, as when one fell his nearest comrade crept to the body and attached a line to it, by which it was withdrawn to cover. During the fight, the scouts frequently beheld the ghastly sight of a dead Indian gliding away and fading from view in the haze of undergrowth, as if drawn thither by some superhuman power. ”

“ Sometimes they heard the resonant crack of trees under stress of frost, or the breaking of an over-laden bough, the whir of startled grouse, the sudden retreat of a deer or a giant moose tearing through the undergrowth; and sometimes they heard the stealthy tread of their brothers, the wolves, sneaking from some point of observation near their path, but in this remoteness from human haunts, and this deadness of winter, never a sound to alarm men so accustomed to all strange woodland noises. ”

“ Though there were yet vast tracts in Vermont awaiting the axe and the plough, the fertile lands of the West began to draw from the State a steadily increasing flow of emigration. The tales of illimitable acres unencumbered by forest, and warmed by a genial climate, were attractive to men tired of warfare with the woods, and the beleaguering of bitter winters. ”

“ Of this great trade Burlington is the centre, and one of the busiest lumber marts in New England.
The pine-tree displayed on the escutcheon of Vermont is now no more significant of the products of the commonwealth than is the wheat sheaf it bears; for almost the last of the old pines are gone with the century that nursed their growth, and the ponderous rafts of spars and square timber that once made their frequent and unreturning voyages northward have not been seen for more than half a century. The havoc of deforesting is not stayed, nor like to be while forest tracts remain. ”

“ The good, bad, and indifferent butter of a whole township went as barter to the village store, where with little assorting it was packed in large firkins, and by and by went its slow way to the city markets, in winter in sleighs, in the open seasons on lumbering wagons or creeping boats, with cargoes of cheese, pork, apples, dried and in cider sauce, maple sugar, potash, and all yields of farm and forest. Even after such long journeying, the mixed product of many dairies retained some flavor of the hills that commended it to the palates of city folk, and was in favor with them. ”

“ The pioneers of Vermont aged early under the constant strain of anxiety and hardship which their life entailed, and though most of the leaders were spared amid the dangers of the frontier, the perils of war, and intestine feuds, few reached the allotted term of man's life. Warner, whose vigorous constitution was sapped by the stress of continuous campaigns, died in 1785, aged only forty-two, six years before the State in whose defense he first drew his sword became a recognized member of the nation to whose service he unselfishly devoted the best years of his brave life. ”

“ There was a flavor of discovery and adventure in their weary toil that gave it zest, as, with no guide but the compass, they were led through sombre depths of the primeval forest, where the footsteps of civilized man had never before fallen, and set the bounds of ownership where had never been sign of possession but the mark of the patient beaver's tooth, bark frayed by the claw of the bear, the antler of the moose, and the brands of the brief camp-fire of the savage. ”