My plan is to overhaul this study. Edit it for content, add chapters on topics not covered, make it current and ready if for publication. But for now I am publishing this here in it's raw form. This was the final draft just before it went to my Advisor and faculty readers.
Introduction
Vermont is said to be one of
the most liberal state in the union. Progressive may be the more
accurate wording, but regardless of terms, both of these
descriptions fail to capture what is at the core of it all:
independence. When the events are looked at, it's the willingness to
go it alone when the government fails to meet the needs of its
citizens that is the hallmark of the story of Vermont.
The
most glaring example is in Vermont's representatives in Washington,
D.C., who act as the collective voice of all Vermonters. Most notable
is Vermont's lone congressman Bernie Sanders. Former mayor of
Burlington and self-described Democratic-Socialist, Sanders is the
longest serving socialist congressman in the history of the United
States. It's impressive enough to be elected without the financial
backing and political infrastructure that national parties provide,
but also to overcome eighty years of red scare propaganda. While
serving as mayor of Vermont's largest city, a letter to the editor in
a local newspaper read; “I don't know anything about socialism, but
Sanders is doing a fine job repaving the streets” (Sanders 64).
This is a simple example of how taking care of your constituents can
get you much further than political alliance.
Senator
James Jeffords, a longtime republican, served in the state
legislature and as attorney general in the sixties. He was elected to
the U.S. Congress in 1974 and represented Vermont until 1988 when he
was elected to the U.S. Senate. Early in 2002, Senator Jeffords left
the Republican Party and became an Independent, a move that shifted
the balance of power in a 50-50 Senate. He had become increasingly
distant from his party and was disillusioned with the Republican
leadership.
In
his many years as a Republican he often voted across party lines, he
voted for the Civil Rights Act of 1991, the Brady Bill, the Family
and Medical Leave Act, an end to the ban on gays serving in the
military, and was a strong supporter of President Clinton's national
health care plan. As an independent he would caucus with the
Democrats and chair a number of committees in the
Democratic-controlled senate.
Patrick
Leahy, senior Democratic senator, has, throughout his career, stayed
true to the core conservative values that has kept Vermont from
social, economic and environmental ruin. Leahy is successor to
Vermont's most famous politician of the twentieth century, George
Aiken, longtime Republican senator and governor who, as a minority
Republican governor, opposed Roosevelt's new deal, not on party
lines, but on the grounds that it made people rely less on community
action and more on the federal government. Aiken was one of the
few senators to oppose military action in Vietnam and when asked what
should be done about the situation said, “Let's declare we've won
and get out.”
Although
Vermont's representatives may come from different backgrounds and
political affiliations, they have usually served the interest of
Vermont before the interest of the federal government. One of the
points in Republican governor Jim Douglas re-election campaign was
Vermont's many law suits with the federal government. One of the
strengths of Vermont voters is the ability to look beyond party
affiliation and elect the candidate who will best serve. In 1990
Vermont elected a Republican for governor, a Democrat for
lieutenant-governor, and a Socialist to Congress.
When
asked whence this spirit of independence came, many people would
credit it to the influx of liberals in the latter half of the
twentieth century, and if one were going by Joe Sherman's Fast Lane
on a Dirt Road this might be the only conclusion one could arrive at,
but I see a thread that has linked this spirit since settlement began
in Vermont. I searched out many interpretations of this idea but
found the historians getting in the way of the facts. Although
in many cases the historian is an able guide through time and space,
in this study I wanted to tell the story from my understanding of the
events, quoting documentation gathered by historians rather than
quoting the historians themselves. I gathered facts, names and dates,
to make a timeline of events, and from that, made an attempt to
understand the cause-and-effect relationship among these facts.
Although the interpretation from some historians lingered in my brain
and couldn't be ignored, it is in the synthesis of these ideas that
the real learning occurs.
It
has been said that Vermont has more history per capita than any other
state. With towns whose charters date back as far as the 1750's, and
with most records held by town clerks or local historical societies,
so much of the primary documentation is still available to view. This
allows historians to gather the facts and synthesize them into a
cohesive picture without direct influence of the work of prior
historians.
These are some of my notions:
Vermont is unique in being the only state that truly created itself.
It was never in the plans for the United States; no royal charter was
ever issued. Vermont is the bastard child of the American Revolution.
After a period of appeal when it was clear that no government would
recognize or legitimize the claims of the settlers who cleared and
worked the land, an independent state was created from within. New
Hampshire had abandoned the settlers and appeals to New York had
turned violent.
Autonomy came about out of
necessity, and was given validation by a declaration of independence
and a constitution. Vermont maintained itself with its own coinage,
postal system, and unique system of government that worked on the
most grassroots level of town meeting (which still exists strongly
today). Vermont took part in international trade and negotiation, and
operated as a sovereign nation for fourteen years between 1777 and
1791 without the authority of Great Britain or the United States.
In trying to find answers to
how the revolutionary history of Vermont has continued to have a
tenacious effect on the politics and the people, I looked to several
contemporary histories, and a few that date back as far as the mid
nineteenth century. I began trying just to understand the facts of
that period in which American independence was achieved and how
Vermont got skipped over. I began to see a thread that linked today's
independent spirit in Vermont directly to the land disputes in the
New Hampshire Grants during the period leading into the American
Revolution, out of which rose Ethan Allen and his Green Mountain
Boys.
I found that the independent
spirit in Vermont is a learned trait, and has been passed down for
two centuries. Each generation has witnessed or been a part of
Vermont's independent spirit. This statement is supported by former
senator and governor of Vermont, George Aiken; “Vermonters for two
hundred years have handed down certain attitudes of mind from
generation to generation. Some folks called us old fashioned and
backward-looking for adhering to the ideals and principles
characteristic of the people who settled our state. We value our
heritage of ideals” (qtd. in Sherman 607) Since joining the Union,
Vermont has maintained its individual identity and has stood up to
federal authority when it seemed inconsistent with the laws of the
state, nature or the Vermont way of life.
Short
of studying the entire history of every state I will support the
claim that far from a band of rogue citizens in the United States,
the people of Vermont are the conscience and the voice of reason for
the entire nation. In a speech delivered at Bennington in 1928,
President Calvin Coolidge said, “If the spirit of liberty should
vanish from the rest of the union, and our institutions should
languish, it all could be restored by the generous store held by the
people of this brave little state of Vermont.”
This supports my notion (or
perhaps just a strong personal belief) that if Vermont continues to
work from the grassroots and stand up for what is right and not
necessarily easy, it can save the United States and hence the
world from self-destruction.
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