biography
| sex:
| male
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| lived:
| (1738–89)
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| biography:
| American soldier, born in Litchfield, Connecticut, USA. He and his brothers acquired large landholdings in the ‘New Hampshire Grants’, as Vermont was then known. He spent his career trying to achieve independence for the Green Mountain area that is now the state of Vermont, commanding (1770–5) an irregular force called the Green Mountain Boys. At the outbreak of the War of Independence (1775–83) he helped take Fort Ticonderoga (with Benedict Arnold), in the first colonial victory of the war. On an expedition to Canada he was captured by the British at Montreal and held prisoner (1775–8). He continued the campaign for Vermont's statehood, which was not achieved until just after his death. He also published a deist tract, Reason, the Only Oracle of Man, often called ‘Ethan Allen's Bible’. |
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