Ethan Allen

...

Ethan Allen.

Ethan Allen?

As a proud Vermonter, Keefe, in the Revolutionary War, you never heard of the Green Mountain Boys?

I have, actually.

Well, Green Mountain Boys-

History minor at Hobart

... their leader was Ethan Allen.

Indeed, the earliest known uses of slew appear in a martial context from a historical novel by Daniel Pierce Thompson about Vermont and the Green Mountain Boys, a militia organized in Vermont during the American Revolution.

In one scene, one of the boys tells leader Ethan Allen that there's more than a hundred slew of men coming.

Later, British General Burgoyne is said to have drawn up a whole slew of cannon.

But despite this early military setting, slew is not limited to troops or artillery.

And so the Americans realized, the British did not, really.

The strategic importance of Fort Ticonderoga's cannon And so on May 10, 1775, a man named Ethan Allen, who was a Green Mountain boy.

These are rebels from what's now Vermont.

My ancestors were Green Mountain boys.

And the future, the best military commander the Americans had ever to become that, a man named Benedict Arnold, together...

It was really Ethan Allen's operation, but together they seized...

Fort Ticonderoga and the 120 cannon.

And this is

Parliament passed the Prohibitory Act in December 1775, but our listeners may know that the Battles of Lexington and Concord, which many regard as the first armed hostilities of the American Revolution, occurred in April 1775.

Nevertheless, even after the battles of Lexington and Concord, the taking of Fort Ticonderoga by Ethan Allen and the Green Mountain Boys in May 1775, and the Battle of Bunker Hill in June 1775, even when there was open conflict between British regulars and colonial militias, most American revolutionary leaders weren't seeking to split the colonies from Great Britain.

Rather, in July 1775, the Second

Continental

This resistance was essentially a rogue militia comprised of Bennington's men.

They named themselves the Green Mountain Boys and appointed Ethan Allen as their leader.

Did you know that Ethan Allen's not just a furniture store, it's named after a guy that started a militia?

No.

I had no idea, and I was gonna ask if he's related to Ethan Allen the furniture store.

The furniture store is named after a dude who started a militia?

Yeah.

The Green Mountain Boys also sounds like a really cool bluegrass band.

Hm.

Supposedly drunk by Ethan Allen, one of the founders of Vermont, before capturing a fort from the British garrison, presumably because the stone fence had put some hair on his chest.

[laughs]

Yeah, I guess.

The men were drilling and forming themselves into companies, ready to march to Boston at the first word of command.

In Vermont, called in your geographies, you remember, the Green Mountain State— the men had formed themselves into a company under their colonel ethan allen and called themselves the green mountain boys on the morning of the very day of the meeting of this congress which had made washington commander-in-chief ethan allen with a detachment of these volunteers set out to surprise fort ticonderoga arriving there in the early gray of the morning he found all but the sentries sound asleep Suddenly, that no time might be given for an alarm, Alan's band rushed into the fort, and making their way directly to the sleeping apartments of the commander, Alan, in a voice like thunder, so his followers say, demanded the instant surrender of the fort.

The commander, frightened and only half-dressed, threw open his door, saying, By whose authority do you? But Alan broke in upon him with, In the name of the great Jehovah and the Continental Congress do I command you to surrender.

No resistance was attempted, and so a large quantity of cannon and ammunition which the English had stored there, and which just then was so much needed by the troops at Boston, fell into the hands of the Americans, without the loss of a single man.

He was rallying the few remaining colonists, When a British officer who knew him, and knew what a power he was among his countrymen singled him out and shot him when general gage heard that warren was dead he said it is well that one man was equal to five hundred ordinary soldiers he had been an honorable citizen a skilled physician a noble senator and a brave warrior The loss of no one man in the whole war was mourned more, perhaps, than the loss of this hero, General Warren.

Chapter 18 The March to Quebec In 1775, the Americans began looking longingly towards Canada.

Ever since the success at Ticonderoga, Ethan Allen and Benedict Arnold had been saying, Send us to Montreal and Quebec.

Let us take them, as we took Crown Point and Ticonderoga.