Ethan Allen

The man who almost single-handedly brought the state of Vermont into the Union, Ethan Allen was blessed with an extraordinary intellect and a predisposition for action. Allen projected himself as a populist frontier philosopher on horseback. His prolific writings and heroic actions inspired many Americans, including Thomas Paine and James Madison. Although he embodied the virtues and vices of the nation's Founding Fathers more colorfully than any of his more venerated and aristocratic counterparts, Allen is most often defined by his daring predawn attack on Fort Ticonderoga in 1775.

From Pulitzer Prize finalist Willard Sterne Randall, Ethan Allen is the first comprehensive portrait of the frontier Founding Father in half a century. Randall, whose previous works include Thomas Jefferson: A Life, draws from an impressive collection of new source material, including previously ignored evidence of Allen's inhuman treatment as a prisoner of war. He vividly chronicles Allen’s upward struggle from childhood poverty to command of the largest American paramilitary force on the eve of the Revolution.

One of eight children, Allen was largely self-educated. A determined populist and creative leader, Allen wanted to build a new state in which hard-working people of modest means could own and maintain the land with little government interference. He decried classism and believed that success should be measured by personal merit. All his life, he fought against tyranny and intolerance, insisting on separation of church and state and championing the right to speak out freely against both.

For five years, Allen systematically thwarted the Crown officials who claimed that New Hampshire had no right to have sold settlers some three million acres of hardwood forests in the Green Mountains. At the behest of the settlers, Allen organized and trained a regiment of men to intercept and rebuff sheriffs attempting to seize homesteads for resale by New York’s royal officials. The largest paramilitary force in North America, Allen’s Green Mountain Boys defended the 29 settlements between Lake Champlain and the Connecticut River in the border war over conflicting land grants.

A month after the start of American Revolutionary War, Allen led the Green Mountain Boys in an early morning surprise attack on the British-manned Fort Ticonderoga in northern New York. Allen famously hollered for the British commander to “come out of there, you damned old rat.” The fort yielded a large store of cannons and munitions, which would later prove pivotal in ending the Siege of Boston.

Ethan Allen is the seminal biography of a man whose resilience and determination helped define a nation. Randall succeeds in capturing Allen in all his complexity.