The Haldimand Affair (also called the Haldimand or Vermont Negotiations) was a series of negotiations conducted in the early 1780s (late in the American Revolutionary War) between Frederick Haldimand, the British governor of the Province of Quebec, his agents, and several people representing the independent Vermont Republic.
Vermonters had been battling Indian raids, sponsored by the British, and engaged in a long-running dispute with New York State over jurisdiction of the territory. At issue was Vermont officially rejoining the British Empire. Just as Haldimand offered generous terms for reunion in 1781, the British army surrendered after the Battle of Yorktown. Vermont, surrounded on three sides by American territory, rejected the British overtures and successfully negotiated terms to enter the United States as the 14th state in March 1791. The secret nature of the negotiations, which excluded significant portions of Vermont's political power structure, has led to accusations of treason against some of the negotiators, notably Ethan Allen.
Background
In 1749, Benning Wentworth, the British provincial governor of New Hampshire, began issuing land grants for territory west of the Connecticut River. This area, now the United States state of Vermont, was also claimed by the Province of New York.Wardner, p. 13 In 1764, King George III issued an order-in-council resolving the territorial dispute in favor of New York.Wardner, p. 49 New York refused to honor the grants issued by Wentworth, who had persisted in issuing grants even after he had agreed to stop issuing them in light of the territorial dispute. Holders of Wentworth's grants, to validate their claims, were effectively required to repurchase their grants at higher prices from New York, to which the land-rich and cash-poor grantees objected.
Following a pro forma rejection of the Wentworth grants in 1770 by New York's Supreme Court, which included members who held competing New York grants for some of the territory, the area's settlers, led by Ethan Allen and Seth Warner, formed the Green Mountain Boys and organized resistance to attempts by New York to assert control over the area. Using methods that stopped shy of lethal force, the resistance at times forcibly removed New York's judges, land surveyors, and other figures of provincial authorities and disrupted efforts by holders of New York land grants to settle their lands. The incidents were reaching a critical point when the American Revolutionary War broke out in April 1775. General Frederick Haldimand, in command of British military forces in New York City, refused to become involved in the dispute.Kingsford, p. 75.
Ethan Allen and the Green Mountain Boys captured Fort Ticonderoga in May 1775, and also participated in the invasion later that year of the Province of Quebec. In the latter effort, Allen was captured following a poorly-organized attempt to capture Montreal in September 1775. Allen was held as a prisoner of war by the British until May 1778, when he was exchanged for a British officer. During much of the time, he lived in New York City on parole and was, by his own account, approached in late 1776 by a British officer with an offer to join the British side.Hall, pp. 164–167.
The Wentworth grantholders, led by Ira Allen and Thomas Chittenden, declared independence from New York, establishing the Vermont Republic in July 1777.Wardner, p. 443. While there was significant anti-New York sentiment in the territory, there was also significant popular support for the Continental Congress, and the republic's founders regularly petitioned the Congress for admission as the fourteenth state. However, New York and New Hampshire's representatives expressed reservations over its admission until the competing land claims and jurisdictional issues could be resolved and effectively blocked any actions by Congress.
First contact In 1779, Lord George Germain, the British Secretary of State for the Colonies, instructed General Sir Henry Clinton, the military commander-in-chief in North America, and Haldimand, then serving as governor of Quebec, to open negotiations with the Vermonters over the possibility of establishing Vermont as a separate British province.Kingsford, p. 76. By 1780 these instructions included detailed offers to convey, including military commissions to Ethan Allen and Thomas Chittenden.Kingsford, p. 77.
The first documented communication was a letter sent to Ethan Allen in March 1780 by Beverley Robinson, a noted New York Loyalist. Robinson claimed to have heard that many Vermonters still harbored Loyalist sympathies and suggested that the British would support Loyalist regiments raised in the territory. Because of difficulties in infiltrating an agent into Vermont, Allen did not receive the letter until July.Hall, p. 168. On consultation with the Vermont council, Allen made no response to the letter.
Congress took up the subject of the territorial dispute in June but decided to defer discussion until September due to other pressing concerns. While Congress subsequently discussed the issue at length that September, it again postponed taking any sort of action.Hemenway, p. 941. Chittenden wrote to Congress' president in July, specifically denying that Congress had the right to adjudicate their claims and reserving the right of the Vermont administration to negotiate with the British.Kingsford, pp. 77–78. In August, Chittenden wrote a letter to Haldimand, offering a truce and parley terms to discuss the exchange of prisoners. Haldimand accepted the offer, and appointed Justus Sherwood, a Loyalist from Vermont who eventually became his spy chief, as his principal negotiator.Fryer, pp. 277–278.
Sherwood in Vermont On September 26, Major Christopher Carleton left Quebec on a raiding expedition into the upper Hudson River valley, causing some alarm in Vermont.Van de Water, p. 259 Fears in the republic were heightened further by a British raid into its territory in October. Sherwood and a small company of men also left Quebec; these headed up Lake Champlain for Skenesboro (present-day Whitehall, New York). They were eventually met by Vermont militia, and Sherwood was taken to Castleton. There, he met openly with Vermont officials to formally discuss prisoner exchanges and arrange a truce, but he also had a private meeting with Ethan Allen.Kingsford, p. 78 Sherwood made offers of allegiance to the Crown in the meeting. According to Sherwood's report, Allen countered by demanding Vermont to be made a separate province with its own military command and insisted that negotiations on the subject remain secret and end if Vermont was recognized by Congress as a state.Hall, p. 171
While that was going on, word reached Haldimand of the exposure of Benedict Arnold's plot to surrender West Point, the latter's flight to British protection in New York City, and the hanging of Arnold's British co-conspirator, Major John André.Fingerhut, p. 279 As a precaution, Haldimand ordered Carleton, who was preparing to leave Fort Ticonderoga for Quebec, to remain there until Sherwood's safety could be assured.Fingerhut, p. 210 Sherwood returned safely to Quebec in late November.Fryer, p. 280
Following the meetings, Allen rode to Bennington to report to Chittenden and the Vermont legislature. His report to the latter apparently raised more questions than it answered, and suspicious legislators demanded more information. Allen angrily resigned his general's commission and stormed out of the session.Van de Water, p. 260 While the legislature was able to mollify Allen, Chittenden assigned Allen's brother Ira and Joseph Fay to lead further negotiations with the British. Both met with Sherwood and George Smyth, a Loyalist doctor who had fled north from Albany. Mutually distrustful, with the British wary over the safety of their agents in light of André's hanging, they agreed only for the Vermont representatives to meet with Haldimand that winter.Van de Water, p. 262 No such meeting took place.
Chittenden wrote to the governors of New Hampshire and Massachusetts, suggesting a united defense against British threats if they relinquished claims to Vermont territory. Massachusetts, with only weak claims to that territory, agreed to give up any claims when Vermont was granted statehood. New York Governor George Clinton turned a more demanding letter from Chittenden over to his legislature in February 1781 and noted that it was "insolent in its nature and derogatory to the honor of this state."Van de Water, p. 263 The New York Senate, however, expressed concern over the fact that Vermont might ally itself with the British in Quebec and voted, to the shock of Clinton, to send commissioners to Vermont to negotiate the release of its claims. Clinton, threatening to dissolve the legislature, insisted successfully for the idea to be dropped.Van de Water, p. 265
New Hampshire's response to Vermont's proposals was complicated by the desire of communities on either side of the Connecticut River to belong to the same state, either Vermont or New Hampshire. A convention of the communities meeting in Charlestown, New Hampshire in January 1781 voted on one day to join New Hampshire and the next, following diplomatic concessions by Ira Allen, to join with Vermont.Van de Water, pp. 263–264
Evasions and acquisitions In February 1781, Beverley Robinson, having received no response from Ethan Allen to his first letter, sent a second letter in which he enclosed a copy of the first.Kingsford, p. 84 Shortly thereafter, Allen's friend Seth Warner, who still held a colonel's commission in the Continental Army, spoke with him about the ongoing negotiation and his concern that about their potentially treasonous character.Van de Water, p. 266 In response to ongoing suspicions, Allen sent the letters to Congress, noting that he had never responded to them. Congress, preoccupied with the war, did not deal substantively with the dispute in early 1781.Kingsford, p. 86
Also in February 1781, Lord George Germain wrote a letter addressed to Haldimand in which he seemed to assume the alliance was a done (or nearly-done) deal and suggested that Haldimand propose joint British–Vermont actions. The letter was carried aboard a British packet ship that was captured by the French. The letter was delivered to Benjamin Franklin in Paris; he forwarded it to Congress, where it arrived in July. Haldimand, on the other hand, was somewhat pessimistic about the whole affair, writing to Germain, "Ethan Allen is endeavoring to deceive both the Congress and us."Van de Water, p. 267 When the letter was read in Congress on July 31, it caused an uproar and cries of treason.