Burlington, Vermont

“ He seems to have assured Haldimand’s agent that “I shall do everything in my power to make this state a British province.” In March 1781 he wrote to Congress, with characteristic bluster, “I am as resolutely determined to defend the independence of Vermont as congress that of the United States, and rather than fail will retire with the hardy Green Mountain Boys into the desolate caverns of the mountains and wage war with human nature at large.” He removed to Burlington, Vermont, in 1787, and died there on the 11th of February 1789. ”

“ He was a member of the state legislature, and succeeded in obtaining the recognition of Vermont as an independent state. He published in 1784 Reason the only Oracle of Man, the first publication in the United States openly directed against the Christian religion. It has been frequently reprinted and is still popular in America. Died Burlington, Vermont, 13 Feb. 1789. A statue is erected to him at Montpelier, Vermont.
Allsop (Thomas) . “The favorite disciple of Coleridge,” b. 10 April, 1794, near Wirksworth, Derbyshire, he lived till 1880. A friend of Robert Owen and the Chartists. ”

“ Soon after the declaration of war, recruiting offices were opened in the State, a cantonment for troops was established at Burlington, and small bodies of volunteers were stationed at several points on the northern frontier. On either side of the scattered settlers of this region lay the forest,—on this, the scarcely broken wilderness of northern Vermont ”

“ The city is a wholesale distributing centre for all northern Vermont and New Hampshire, and is one of the principal lumber markets in the east, most of the lumber being imported from Canada. It is the port of entry for the Vermont customs district, whose exports and imports were valued respectively in 1907 at $8,333,024 and $5,721,034. A charter for a town to be founded here was granted by the province of New Hampshire in 1763, but no settlement was made until 1774. Burlington was chartered as a city in 1865. ”

“ Population. The population grew from 85,425 in 1790 to 280,652 in 1830. Since that year the growth has been very slow, the number being, in 1890, 332,422, and in 1900, 343,641. The State ranked twelfth in population in 1790, twenty-first in 1840, and fortieth in 1900. There has been a large influx of foreigners. The foreign-born, in 1900, numbered 44,747, of whom 25,540 were Canadians. Vermont has the smallest percentage of urban population of any of the North Atlantic States. Burlington, the largest city, had, in 1900, 18,640 inhabitants ”

“ From Portland, the general would have been well pleased to continue his route to the extremity of the state of Maine, but time was wanting; he therefore retraced his steps towards Burlington, passing through Windsor, Woodstock, Montpelier, &c. Although Vermont is very mountainous, which rendered the road more difficult, we travelled with extreme rapidity, advancing almost all the time more than nine miles an hour, relays of horses having been well disposed by the inhabitants, in order that the general might not be retarded in his progress to New York. ”

“ Burlington, home of the sparkling Burdette, is another hill city; and also a beautiful one; unquestionably so; a fine and flourishing city, with a population of twenty-five thousand, and belted with busy factories of nearly every imaginable description. It was a very sober city, too—for the moment—for a most sobering bill was pending ”

“ To the eye of a wearied dweller in a dense city all villages appear beautiful in summer, but Burlington is eminently so when compared with others.
We left the metropolis of the lake for Plattsburgh about noon. On our left, as we emerged from the harbor, were the Four Brothers, small islands swarming with water-fowl, and the bald point of Rock Dunder, a solitary spike rising, shrubless and bare, about twenty feet above the water. Before us spread out the two Heros (North and South) , green islands, which belonged to the Allen family during the Revolution. ”

“ There is a medical school attached. Burlington carries on an extensive trade in lumber, and has the most important share in the shipping traffic of the lake. Its harbour is defended by a breakwater, and a lighthouse was erected at the mouth of the bay in 1862. To the north of the Onion River, but united to Burlington by a bridge, lies the flourishing village of Winooski, with factories and mills. The history of Burlington only dates from 1783 ”

“ Peace was indeed welcome to a people so long deprived of an accessible market as had been the inhabitants of Vermont.
The potash fires were relighted; the lumberman's axe was busy again in the bloodless warfare against the giant pines; new acres of virgin soil were laid bare to the sun, and added to the broadening fields of tilth. White-winged sloops and schooners, and unwieldy rafts, flocked through the reopened gate of the country, and the clumsy Durham boat spread its square sail to the favoring north wind, and once more appeared on the broad lake where it had so long been a stranger. ”

“ The beat of the little wheel, the hum of the great wheel, the ponderous thud of the loom, were household voices in every Vermont homestead, whether it was the old log-house that the forest had first given place to, or its more pretentious framed and boarded successor. All the womenfolk knitted stockings and mittens while they rested or visited, the click of the needles accompanied by the chirp of the cricket and the buzz of gossip.
For workday and holiday, the household was clad in homespun from head to foot, save what the hatter furnished for the first and the traveling cobbler for the last. ”

“ I wish they would come to the mill now. I would put them between the millstones or under the water-wheel! They have sold us like an old horse! They have no business with our affairs. We know no such body of men!" Another prominent worthy, who was in the secret of the Haldimand correspondence, said, "We're fixin' up a pill that'll make the Yorkers hum." Another declared in a public house that, "as long as the King and Parliament of Great Britain approved of and would maintain the State of Vermont, he was determined to drive it, and so were its leaders." ”

“ The river here is broad and deep, and is spanned by the railroad bridge of the Chicago, Burlington and Quincy Railroad. Burlington is connected by steamboat lines with important points on the Mississippi, and its river commerce is important. The industries are the manufacture of machinery, wagons, wheels, desks, furniture, lumber, agricultural implements, screens, mattresses, brooms, soap, flour, linseed oil, etc.; pork-packing and the quarrying of limestone found in the vicinity. The extensive machine and repair shops of the Chicago, Burlington and Quincy Railroad are located here. ”

“ I have felt, in the depths of my soul, that the eyes, of all Vermont were on me in a reflective way. As the moon is sometimes permitted to shine before the sun goes down, I have added the light of my little feminine luminary to the flood of public homage that surrounds the greatest and best man that our State ever gave to the world. ”

“ From the turbulent day of her birth through the period during which she maintained a separate and independent existence, and during the hundred years that she has borne her faithful part as a member of the great republic, the history of Vermont is one that her people may well be proud of. ”

“ All was silence and desolation on this side of the island. No one walked its pavements, and the laundresses wheeling their barrows to town from the lower end, instinctively chose the inhabited quarter to pass.
‘A man might rot to carrion here,’ said Dr. Vermont, as he stood between the battered walls of the tower, and looked up at the weeping heavens, and then down at the sullen and swollen river. ”

“ There was a pleasant mixture of people in the square of Burlington, such as cannot be seen elsewhere, at one view; merchants from Montreal, British officers from the frontier garrisons, French Canadians, wandering Irish, Scotchmen of a better class, gentlemen of the South on a pleasure tour, country squires on business; and a great throng of Green Mountain boys, with their horse-wagons and ox-teams, true Yankees in aspect, and looking more superlatively so, by contrast with such a variety of foreigners. ”

“ 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. ”

“ From their inauguration, the great railroad systems of the West have made another and continuous drain upon the best population of the East; and in every department of the enormous business men of Vermont birth and training are found conspicuously honored for their ability and integrity.
The rapidly growing cities, the immense sheep and cattle ranches, and all the new enterprises of the whole West, have drawn great numbers of ambitious young Vermonters to every State and Territory of the wonderful region. ”

“ When, early in October, 1780, the British, as already stated, came up the lake with eight large vessels and more than a thousand men, their designs were against New York and not against Vermont, as the British policy was then to favor Vermont, with a view to future operations. ”

“ It is the centre of an agricultural and stock-raising district, in the principal products of which it has considerable trade, is supplied with good water-power, and contains flour-mills. The city has a public library. ”

“ John was absorbed in business and house-building, and Grandpa and Grandma Burton were contented and well cared for. There really seemed to be no reason why Mrs. John should not go away, if she wished--and she apparently did wish. It was at about this time, too, that certain Vermont villages--one of which was the Honorable John Burton’s birthplace--were stirred to sudden interest and action. A persistent, smiling-faced woman had dropped into their midst--a woman who drove from house to house, and who, in every case, left behind her a sworn ally and friend, pledged to serve her cause. ”

“ Vermont condescended to plan for their amusement.
‘Let us suppose ourselves singing Les Neiges d’Antan, and toasting our old acquaintances. We shall awaken into a new century, just the same as the old. The more it changes, the more it will be the same. Are you not prospectively tired of it already?’
He looked round gravely upon the young men, and excitement died out of each glance under the sad indifference of his. They felt upon their honour to be no less weary and cynical than he. ”

“ CHAPTER V ORLANDO HAS AN ADVENTURE Burlingame had the best practice of any lawyer in Askatoon, although his character had its shady side. The prairie standards were not low; but tolerance is natural where the community is ready-made; where people from all points of the compass come together with all sorts of things behind them; where standards have at first no organized sanction. Financially Burlingame was honest enough, his defects being associated with those ancient sources of misconduct, wine and women—and in his case the morphia habit as well. ”

“ Indeed, there is not a State in the Union in which some Vermonters have not made their home; but however far they may have wandered from the land of their birth, they cherish the mountaineer's love of home, and a just pride in the goodly heritage of their birthright.
Wherever in their alien environment they have congregated to any considerable number, they are associated as Sons of Vermont. Chicago boasts the largest society, as its State does the greatest number of citizens, of Vermont birth. ”

“ Vermont has given him the first place among her heroes, has set his marble effigy in the national capitol, in her own, and on the monument that marks his grave; yet to that brave and modest soldier, Seth Warner, the knightliest figure in her romantic history, the State he served so well has not given so much as a tablet to commemorate his name and valorous deeds. It is as if, in their mouldering dust, the character of the living men was preserved, the one still self-asserting, the other as unpretentious in the eternal sleep as he was in life. ”

“ Though party spirit was rancorous enough, [Pg 264] the elevation of men to office, more for their political views than for their fitness, did not obtain in the politics of Vermont till the bad example had for some years been set by the party in power at the seat of national government.
Until 1808, the legislature of Vermont wandered from town to town, like a homeless vagrant, having held its sessions in fifteen different towns, one of which, Charlestown, was outside the present limits of the commonwealth, though then in its Eastern Union. ”

“ DEAR SISTERS:—After all, this city of New York is a wonderful institution. Vermont has its specialties, such as maple-sugar, pine shingles, and education; but in such things as style, fashion, and general gentilities, I must say this great Empire City isn't to be sneezed at, even by a Green Mountainer. Of course we are ahead in religion, morality, decorum, and a kind of politics that consolidates all these things into great moral ideas—as rusticoats, greenings and Spitzenbergen apples are ground down into one barrel of such sweet cider as we used to steal through the bunghole with a straw. ”

“ I'm glad you acknowledge it so readily, Dick. I have found some people who would not admit it at first, and I was compelled to talk and persuade them of the fact, a labor that ought to be unnecessary. The truth should always speak for itself. Vermont isn't the most fertile state in the Union and it's not the largest, but it's the best producer of men, or I should say the producer of the best men. ”