Ethan Allen

Allen, Ethan

(1738–1789) soldier, Vermonter; born in Litchfield, Conn. He and his brothers acquired large landholdings in the "New Hampshire Grants" as Vermont was then known. He formed the Green Mountain Boys, and resisted all efforts by New York and New Hampshire to control the Vermont area. He and Benedict Arnold jointly captured Fort Ticonderoga (1775) but he was then captured by the British during an attack on Montreal. After his imprisonment (1775–78), he returned to the new Republic of Vermont. He sought to represent Vermont as an independent political entity—he even negotiated with the British in pursuit of this goal. He died two years before Vermont achieved statehood.

The Cambridge Dictionary of American Biography, by John S. Bowman. Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1995. Reproduced with permission.

The following article is from The Great Soviet Encyclopedia (1979). It might be outdated or ideologically biased.

Allen, Ethan

 

Born Jan. 21, 1738, in Litchfield; died Feb. 11, 1789, in Burlington. American educator. Participant in the North American War of Independence (1775—83), commander of partisan forces in Vermont. Author of the first antireligious pamphlet in America, Reason—the Only Oracle of Man (1784), most copies of which were burned. Allen opposed the biblical myths by supporting rational knowledge of the laws of nature.

WORKS

In Russian translation:
Amerikanskie prosvetiteli: Izbr. proizv., vol. 1. Moscow, 1968.

REFERENCES

Gol’dberg, N. M. Svobodomyslie i ateism v SShA (XVIII-XIX vv.). Moscow-Leningrad, 1965. Chapter 3.
Pell, J. Ethan Allen. Boston, 1929.
Holbrook, S. Ethan Allen. Portland, 1958.

B. E. BYKHOVSKII

The Great Soviet Encyclopedia, 3rd Edition (1970-1979). © 2010 The Gale Group, Inc. All rights reserved.