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The Great Wolf Hunt: The Popular Response in Vermont to the Patriote Uprising of 1837

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  16 January 2009

John Duffy  and
H. Nicholas Muller
John Duffy
Affiliation:
Johnson State College, Vermont
H. Nicholas Muller
Affiliation:
University of Vermont
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Extract

During the 1830s Vermonters had largely come to accept the sobering fact that their golden age had ended, that no longer would an investment be almost certain to be rewarded nor would rapid growth take up slack and obscure economic problems. After having been the fastest growing state in the Union at the turn of the century, in the 1830s Vermont's population increased by only 11,000 souls, a meagre four per-cent. Without the old boom psychology for support during this turbulent decade, Vermonters coped with chronic cholera epidemics and severe economic dislocations and at the same time experienced a virtual exodus that caused one-third of their towns to lose population. The social fabric clearly reflected the strain as the society desperately sought outlets, and flocked to a variety of movements. Many readily responded to revivalism and, forgetting the teaching of their orthodox divines, easily adopted the word of prophets and millennialists. They turned to egalitarian reforms, anti-slavery agitation, and abolitionism. In politics they rejected the tradional parties of J. Q. Adams and Henry Clay or Jackson and Van Buren for the social nostrums of Anti-Mason candidates.

Type
Research Article
Information
Journal of American Studies , Volume 8 , Issue 2 , August 1974 , pp. 153 - 169
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1974

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References

1 Many of the leaders of the patriotes had connexions with the United States beyond the fact of their exile after the rebellions failed. Dr Coté received his medical degree from the University of Vermont in 1832. Robert Nelson received honorary M.A. degrees from Vermont in 1837 and Dartmouth in 1831 and held an appointment at the University of Vermont Medical College, which later granted him an honorary degree. See Link, Eugene P., ‘Vermont Physicians and the Canadian Rebellion of 1837’, Vermont History, 37 (Summer, 1969), 178–9Google Scholar. T. S. Brown grew up in Middlebury, and Dr O'Callaghan practised medicine in Albany from 1837 to 1841, thereafter devoting full time to editing documents in New York history, including eleven volumes in the series entitled Documents Relating to Colonial History of the State of New York (Albany, 1853–1861).Google Scholar

2 The first major work on the causes of the 1837 rebellion, the famous Report issued by Lord Durham after his missions to the Canadas, found it, in his often-quoted phrase, ‘a struggle not of principles, but of races’, precipitated by ‘the remains of an ancient civilization’, possessing ‘no history and no literature’ (Lucas, C. P., ed., Lord Durham's Report on the Affairs of British North America [Oxford, 1912], vol. 2, pp. 16, 291 and 294)Google Scholar. Partially in an attempt to answer Durham's charges, the first nationalist interpretation, F. X. Garneau's classic History of Canada (Montreal, 1862)Google Scholar, reinforced the role of racial conflict. Other work such as DeCelles, Alfred D.Louis-Joseph Papineau (Toronto, 1910)Google Scholar has echoed Garneau. The most blatantly nationalist (and largely undocumented) treatment, labelling the English-Canadians villains who ‘considéraient le pays et les Canadiens comme un vaste champs d'exploitation et de gain matériel’, was Filteau, Gerard's Histoire Des Patriotes, 3 vols. (Montreal, 1938–1942), 1, 33Google Scholar.

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3 Vermont Watchman (Woodstock), 29 January 1838.Google Scholar

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9 While the fight at St Denis raged, patriotes had mutilated the body of Lieutenant George ‘Jock’ Weir, who had been taken prisoner the previous night. This unhappy incident and the years of antipathy as exemplified by the frequent riots between patriotes and loyalists in the streets of Montreal before the rebellion lent a particularly nasty overtone to the affair.

10 Public Archives of Canada (hereafter PAC), S, vol. 391, p. 58. From Wells, H., Postmaster of Henryville, Lower Canada; 6 December 1837.Google Scholar

11 Communications between imperial forces in Canada and Federal troops in Vermont and New York seem to have been cordial and close. General Wool, commander of a small United States Army force, wrote to Lord Colborne on 3 March 1838: ‘I have the honor to inform you that Doctors Nelson and Coté… surrendered themselves to me with all their forces, cannon, small arms, and ammunition’. PAC, Co. 42, vol. 280, enclosure #5 (microfilm). In writing to the Colonial Secretary, Lord Glenelg, Colborne refers to intelligence gained from General Wool's aide-de-camp, Captain Smith, and a Mr. Cody, brother of a United States Marshal.

12 One of the most interesting and detailed accounts of the activities of the Lower Canadian rebels in the United States is a voluntary deposition given by a state prisoner at the Montreal prison in November 1838, an extract of which is published in translation in Report of the State Trials Before a General Court Martial Held at Montreal in 1838–9 Exhibiting A Complete History of the Late Rebellion in Lower Canada (Montreal, 1839), vol. 2, appendix 13, pp. 548–61Google Scholar. Though the deposition is anonymous and the circumstances surrounding its recording not clear, most major details are corroborated by other documents, thus backing its credibility.

13 Ibid., p. 548.

14 Ibid., pp. 548–9.

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17 State Trials, vol. 2, p. 549.Google Scholar

18 Ibid., pp. 549 and 557; and Catlin MSS, Wilbur Collection, Bailey Library, University of Vermont, Burlington, Vermont, Robert Nelson to Alec Catlin, St Albans, 11 October 1838 and Charles Bryant to Alec Catlin, 13 January 1839.

19 State Trials, vol. 2, p. 549.Google Scholar

20 Burlington Free Press, 5 January 1838.Google Scholar

21 Burlington Free Press, 26 January 1838Google Scholar; and Hemenway, Abby M., ed., Vermont Historical Gazetteer (Claremont, N.H. 1877), v, 374.Google Scholar

22 James Marsh MSS, Wilbur Collection, Bailey Library, University of Vermont, Burlington, Vermont (photocopy).

23 Marryat, , Diary in America, p. 167.Google Scholar

24 James Marsh MSS (hereafter JMC), Wilbur Collection, Bailey Library, University of Vermont, Burlington, Vermont (photocopy).

25 Vermont Mercury, 29 December 1837.Google Scholar

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27 JMC, James Marsh to David Read, 11 January 1838.

28 North Star [Danville], 6 January 1838.Google Scholar

29 Ibid., 20 January 1838.

30 Burlington Free Press, 5 January 1838.Google Scholar

31 Vermont Mercury, 22 December 1838Google Scholar. The closest thing to a transatlantic menace was reported in the Burlington Free Press, 2 February 1838Google Scholar: ‘Three armed tories came across the line at Highgate last Thursday; what their object was we do not learn’.

32 PAC, S., vol. 391, p. 252, Memorial from E. T. Stoddart, Preventive Officer, Stanstead, Lower Canada, in which he claims his low pay does not compensate for the risks the job has come to involve.

33 Ibid., vol. 392–1, p. 18, James Pritchard to Lord Gosford, East Sherington, Lower Canada, 3 November 1837.

34 2 November 1837.

35 28 November 1837.

36 12 January 1838.

37 PAC, CO 42, vol. 274, p. 136 (microfilm) and Quebec Mercury, 21 December 1838. Historians have also generally accepted the view that American support for the patriotes comes from the lower classes. The leading student of the issue, Corey, A. B., Crisis of 1830–1842Google Scholar maintains that the noise was made by Americans in general and Vermonters in particular ‘the greater part of whom belonged to the inarticulate masses’, and suggests therefore ‘the meetings fell into the hands of the more conservative elements of society’, which ‘gave the meetings, as a rule, an atmosphere of respectability’ (pp. 29 and 33). Corey does not explain why the ‘inarticulate, if noisy, masses’, as he calls them a second time, elected conservatives as their leaders, or, more to the point, why the same conservatives took the initiative in calling and organizing the public meetings in the first place. Corey might be correct in asserting that the leaders ‘discouraged’ any ‘overt actions’, but this does not necessarily mean, as he suggests, that the leaders were more conservative than their fellow townsmen, who, inarticulate and blind, dumbly turned leadership over to their betters.

38 North Star, January, 1838Google Scholar; and Walton, E. P. (ed.), Walton's Vermont Register and Almanac, 1837 (Montpelier, 1837), p. 125.Google Scholar

39 Vermont Mercury, 29 December 1837Google Scholar; and Walton's Register, 1837, pp. 91, 92, 124 and 125.Google Scholar

40 Vermont Mercury, 29 December 1837Google Scholar. A similar pattern existed for meetings at Danville (25 January 1838), Ludlow, (10 January 1838)Google Scholar, and Royalton, (10 January 1838)Google Scholar, where justices of peace, a town clerk, church deacons, selectmen, postmasters, doctors, lawyers and others made up the leadership. See Walton's Register, 1837, pp. 78, 79, 88, 94, 114 and 115Google Scholar; North Star, February 1838Google Scholar; and Vermont Mercury, 26 January 1838Google Scholar. The socio-economic composition of the leadership presents a number of interesting features that deserve more intensive research. There is a close occupational similarity between the leaders of the public meetings in Vermont and the patriote leadership, which was dominated by doctors, lawyers, notaries (comparable to a justice of peace in Vermont) and politicians. In many cases those most active in the Vermont meetings, if not local notables themselves, were related to the most prominent figures in the town. The number of federal employees involved is striking.

41 Catlin MSS, Butler, O. W. to Catlin, Alexander, 11 March 1839.Google Scholar

42 Ibid., DrNelson, Robert to Catlin, Alexander, Albans, St, 11 October 1838Google Scholar; Demaray, to Catlin, Alexander, Albans, St, 29 June 1838Google Scholar; and Bryant, Charles G. to Catlin, Alexander, Albans, St, 13 January 1839Google Scholar and Burlington, , 6 May 1838.Google Scholar

43 Burlington Free Press, 2 March 1838Google Scholar. Ignoring, as did most other British officials, that there had been little contact, spiritual or otherwise, between France and her former colony on the St Lawrence since the French Revolution, Lord Gosford thought that French officers had been imported to aid the rebels. See PAC, CO. 42, vol. 274. Gosford to Glenelg, 6 November, 1837 (microfilm).

44 State Trials, 11, p. 549.Google Scholar

45 Ibid., pp. 549–50.

46 Burlington Free Press, 15 December 1837.Google Scholar

47 Vermont Watchman, 12 February 1838.Google Scholar

48 15 December 1837.

49 Marryat, , Diary in America, p. 167.Google Scholar