Editor’s note: Mark Bushnell is a historian and writer who lives in Middlesex.
The people of northwestern Vermont were up in arms. In fact, they thought they needed more arms. On Dec. 11, 1837, they gathered in St. Albans and petitioned the governor, beseeching him to send weapons from the state arsenal. Without it, they feared they would be overrun by British troops.
Their concern was reasonable. They had been through this sort of thing before. Older residents could still remember the series of British invasions during the American Revolution, some 60 years earlier. And more recently, only about two decades earlier, the British had attacked the region during the War of 1812.
It didn’t take much imagination to picture British troops pouring over the Canadian border again. And the British had reason to want to attack again; Vermont was now home to rebels seeking to topple the British government of Canada.
The rebellion had started as a political fight over a multitude of complex issues. The rebels wanted the British government to institute reforms that would make the Canadian provinces more democratic and that would benefit farmers rather than the small, wealthy elite who usually profited from government spending. They also sought to weaken the power of the Anglican Church in politics and give more representation to French-Canadians.
When the British government refused to make the reforms, the opposition organized demonstrations and soon created a paramilitary force. During the fall of 1837, the Patriotes, as the rebels called themselves, launched attacks. They won a couple of skirmishes with British troops, and by early December, Montreal was under martial law.
But for the most part, the Patriotes were outmatched. British Regulars regularly killed Patriotes in battle and captured others. The British executed some of the prisoners and shipped others to far-off colonies. Those who evaded capture dispersed into the countryside, many slipping over the U.S. border into Vermont and upstate New York.
It was in this context that that group of Vermonters gathered in St. Albans. Judge Asa Aldis addressed the crowd “with much spirit,” and a committee was formed to ask the governor for weapons to defend the area.
When Gov. Silas Jenison denied the request, it only increased Vermonters’ “sympathy for the French Patriots, and created a bitter feeling against the governor of our state, and our citizens did not hesitate to express their sentiment on the subject…,” wrote Henry Kingman Adams in his 1899 book, “A Centennial History of St. Albans.”
To be fair, Gov. Jenison didn’t leave the northern edge of his state undefended from the British. On Dec. 13, 1837, two days after the St. Albans meeting, he issued a proclamation for the preservation of the frontier and called out the state militia.
But the governor was hardly on the rebels’ side either. Jenison understood that the United States government didn’t want to be dragged yet again into armed conflict with Britain and so had to remain neutral in this Canadian dispute. So Jenison took pains to avoid the appearance that Vermont was aiding the rebellion. Accordingly, Vermont militia members were ordered to shoot any rebels who attacked Canada and then crossed back into the state.
In contrast, many Vermonters were supportive of the rebel cause and eager to help anyone who would serve as a thorn in the side of the British. Nearly a dozen Vermont communities held rallies to support the rebels and Vermonters established more than 100 secret “hunters’ lodges” to help rebels launch attacks across the border.
Patriotes established a pair of newspapers — an English-language paper in Swanton and a French one in Burlington — to gain support for the cause. “All through this rebellion, the sympathies of the people dwelling in the frontier towns were with these Canadian patriots or radicals,” the historian Adams wrote.
The rebels’ presence increased tensions along the border. British Loyalists in Canada threatened to kidnap American citizens and burn villages in retaliation. Loyalists burned the homes and barns of supposed rebel sympathizers just on the Canadian side of the border. Rebels responded by venturing across the line to burn the property of Loyalists.
In late February 1838, U.S. Gen. John E. Wool, whose forces patrolled the northern border, wrote to inform Jenison that the rebels were mobilizing. “No time is to be lost, everything is to be done in a few days,” Wool wrote. “I have not the least doubt that I shall defeat their plans; still I think nothing should be left undone to defeat their diabolical purpose, which is nothing short of a war between this country and Great Britain.”
Gov. Jenison raced to the border, where he was relieved to learn that rebel attacks against British forces had failed. More worrying for Jenison, however, many Patriotes were fleeing south. They weren’t shot when they reached Vermont. Instead, soldiers forced them to turn over their arms before being allowed to enter the United States.
“Seeing at once their situation between two fires, the British in front, and the United States in their rear, they laid down their arms,” Adams wrote. “The eruption was smothered, and for a time the volcano slumbered.”
Many Vermonters condemned Jenison and Wool for their actions, which they saw as aiding the British. Four hundred people signed a petition to Congress protesting any law that would forbid them from selling arms and ammunition and other military provisions to aid the rebels.
To keep order, U.S. Army Regulars landed at St. Albans Bay during the summer of 1838 and marched to Swanton. “Up to the spring of 1839, several buildings were burned in our frontier towns (by Loyalists),” wrote Orrin Edward Tiffany in his 1905 book “The Relations of the United States to the Canadian Rebellion of 1837-38.”
Things gradually quieted down along the border and the U.S. troops were withdrawn.
Many Patriotes tried to return home but were captured as they did so by order of Lord Durham, Governor General of Canada. Durham had some of the Patriotes shipped to the colonies of Australia and Bermuda without trial. Durham’s action provoked an uproar. Both houses of the British Parliament censured him for an act that members said ran counter to the Magna Carta, which prohibited such summary actions.
Patriotes who faced trial in Vermont fared better. After the unsuccessful raids, American authorities arrested two rebel leaders, Drs. Cyrille Cote and Robert Nelson, charging them with violating the neutrality laws of the United States in connection with a failed attack launched from Alburg. Both men had strong ties to Vermont and the region. Cote had received his medical degree from the University of Vermont. Nelson had graduated from Dartmouth and received an honorary master’s degree from UVM in 1837.
One year later, in May 1838, Nelson and Cote went on trial in Windsor. The proceedings attracted rebel sympathizers, who gathered in town to support the defendants. The court proved equally sympathetic, acquitting both men.
Soon afterward, a banquet was held in their honor in Montpelier. The Montpelier Watchman and Journal reported that 20 toasts were offered that night. Guests drank to “Green Mountain Juries,” “Exiled Canadians,” “Liberty,” and “Vermont.”
For all the levity that night in Montpelier, the Patriotes’ cause was doomed. Over the next few years, rebels laid down their arms and, with the British government’s permission, most of them returned home. British authorities enacted changes, some aimed at mollifying the Patriotes, but others targeted at further diluting the power of French-Canadians.
As the Patriotes headed home, Vermonters lost their zeal for the cause and, for a time, the border area was again a peaceful place.
