Founding
Following controversy between the holders of the New York grants and the New Hampshire grants, Ethan Allen and his militia of "Green Mountain Boys" suppressed Loyalists. On January 15, 1777, a convention of representatives from towns in the territory declared the region independent, choosing the name the Republic of New Connecticut (although it was sometimes known colloquially as the Republic of the Green Mountains). On June 2 of that year, the name of the fledgling nation was officially changed to "Vermont" (from the French, les Verts Monts, meaning the Green Mountains) upon the suggestion of Dr. Thomas Young, a Boston Tea Party leader and mentor to Ethan Allen.
John Greenleaf Whittier's poem The Song of the Vermonters, 1779 describes the period in ballad form. First published anonymously, the poem had characteristics in the last stanza that were similar to Ethan Allen's prose and caused it to be attributed to Allen for nearly 60 years. The last stanza reads:
Come York or come Hampshire, come traitors or knaves,If ye rule o'er our land ye shall rule o'er our graves;
Our vow is recorded—our banner unfurled,
In the name of Vermont we defy all the world!
Read more about this topic: Vermont Republic
Famous quotes containing the word founding:
“... there is no way of measuring the damage to a society when a whole texture of humanity is kept from realizing its own power, when the woman architect who might have reinvented our cities sits barely literate in a semilegal sweatshop on the Texas- Mexican border, when women who should be founding colleges must work their entire lives as domestics ...”
—Adrienne Rich (b. 1929)
“The responsible business men of this country put their shoulders to the wheel. It is in response to this universal demand that we are founding today, All-American Airways.”
—John Dos Passos (1896–1970)
“The Founding Fathers in their wisdom decided that children were an unnatural strain on parents. So they provided jails called schools, equipped with tortures called an education. School is where you go between when your parents can’t take you and industry can’t take you.”
—John Updike (b. 1932)