Say Anything Blog

Its nice to remember a hero once and a while. Here’s to the foreign nationals who helped us win the Revolutionary War! One from (some of) my ancestors homeland, Poland, and one from my homeland, the Vermont Republic (1777-1791).



Kazimierz Pulaski -

A member of the Polish landed nobility, he was a military commander for the Bar Confederation and fought against Russian domination of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. When this uprising failed, he emigrated to North America, where he became a General in the Continental Army during the American Revolutionary War. He died of wounds suffered in the Battle of Savannah.

Ethan Allen -

In the spring of 1775, following the beginning of the American Revolutionary War, Allen and Benedict Arnold led a raid to capture Fort Ticonderoga. ...the rebels moved north, managed to get a few dozen men across Lake Champlain (they had considerable trouble finding a boat and the one they found was quite small). In a dawn attack, as the other British soldiers appeared they were quickly subdued. Ethan Allen went directly to Captain Delaplace’s quarters and ordered for the captain to “Deliver this fort instantly!” After Delaplace asked “By what authority?”, Ethan Allen raised his sword and replied “In the name of the great Jehovah and the Continental Congress!” Delaplace ordered for his men to lay down their weapons and the fort was taken without the loss of a single life. ... Allen/Arnold’s rebels also quickly captured forts at Crown Point, Fort Ann on Isle La Motte near the present Canadian border, and the town of St John (now Saint-Jean-sur-Richelieu, Quebec). The huge stores of cannon and powder seized at Ticonderoga allowed the American rebels to break the stalemate at the siege of Boston, which caused the British to evacuate the city in March 1776.

And a couple factoids that wikipedia missed.

1) Benedict Arnold, the sole representative of the Continental Congress, was left on the Vermont side of the lake during the raid.

2)The Green Mountain boys, whose headquarters was a tavern, looted all the Brit’s rum and freed their slaves. This was the first act of abolitionism on North America. They wrote a letter to the King, apologizing for the rum.

Even though the Green Mtn. Boys fought in the Battles of Saratoga, Bennington, and Hubbardton... there was no shortage of animosity towards the New Yorkers and New Hampshire residents who strove to exert power over the Vermont frontier... as this poem by Whittier about hunting for two-legged game reveals...