ABSTRACT
The beginning of the American Revolution represented a new chapter in the saga of Ethan Allen and the Green Mountain Boys. The Boys were crucial to early military victories in the north, helping Allen and Benedict Arnold capture Ticonderoga and assisting Seth Warner in the capture of Crown Point. Shifting the focus from Allen to his surrounding community, Robert E. Shalhope's Bennington and the Green Mountain Boys provided a penetrating portrait of the diverse political, economic, and cultural forces that converged in the Grants and helped spawn liberal democracy. Allen was also spurred to action by the tactics of terror employed earlier by the Stamp Act resisters and the anti-rent insurgents along the Hudson River, who were also locked in controversy with wealthy and powerful landlords. Allen and the Boys were noble and staunch patriots, defenders of liberty and early symbols of liberal democracy.
