from $40,000 to $900, saving him thou- sands of dollars.15
That may have been the
reason he left, but whatever it was it must have been grievous. Stephen Rowe Brad- ley, formerly of Westminster, became a res- ident of Walpole, New Hampshire. What- ever perceived wrong drove him across the river, the fact of his emigration, in light of his iconic status as a patriot and public ser- vant, must be seen as an abandonment of all he had worked for in his life. Four expulsions, four redirections, con- stitute monuments in the lives of these two Vermonters. But those transitions are not why they are remembered.
Vermont’s Appeal to the Candid and Impartial World
Stephen Rowe Bradley was Vermont’s
lawyer. His argument for Vermont inde- pendence, approved by the governor and council in December of 1779, was his brief. It is the first legal analysis of the state’s claims for its existence.16
that we were created with equal priv- ileges in the scale of human beings, among which is that essential right of making our own laws, and chusing our own form of government; and that we, nor our fathers, have never given up that right to any kingdom, colony, province, or state, but retain it now among ourselves as sacred as our nat- ural existence.17
The brief for the State of Vermont re- lies on the various orders of “his Majesty in Council,” from 1740, 1744, and 1764, and the New Hampshire Council of 1772, as ev- idence that New Hampshire had given up all of its claims. As for Massachusetts, its claims were extinguished by those same orders. New York’s claims were disputed by Bradley on grounds that the Dutch never held title to lands in Vermont, and so could not have conveyed any rights to New York, who never “had the least pretended right to this territory” before 1764.18
After that, It was printed by
the firm of Hudson & Goodwin of Hartford, Connecticut, and widely distributed. The Appeal consists of several parts, each dedicated to persuading a different audience, beginning with the “world,” then separately addressing the General Con- gress of the United States, and the inhabit- ants of the United States. Bradley wrote for a committee of three agents appointed by the Council of Safety to seek recognition of the infant state, but the voice is Bradley’s. Vermonters “view themselves intitled with the rest of the world, to that liberty which heaven bequeathed to Adam, and equally to all of his posterity.”
We do not expect to stand upon any derived power from an arbitrary king; we cannot conceive human nature fall- en so low, as to be dependent on a crowned head for liberty to exist; we expect to stand justified to the world, upon that great principle of reason,
the settlers of the New Hampshire Grants “opposed them with all our might and strength even to blood.” The king had no right to grant the fee of this land to New York or to “abridge the Americans of that great privilege, of making their own laws, and chusing their own form of govern- ment.” We paid for this land, by order of the king, Bradley argued, and he had no right to sell it a second time. We reject his attempt to “abridge mankind of their nat- ural liberties without their consent,” and assert that “if Vermont had not a right to resist that act of oppression, America has now no right to resist, but ought to sub- mit to all the usurpations of the British crown.”19 Bradley’s Appeal is the most articulate
argument for Vermont independence. Its principal purpose was to convince the Con- gress that no decision on Vermont should be made without its participation and con- sent, to gain statehood for Vermont. The Congress refused to allow him to read
the Appeal or appear before the assem- bly, but all of Bradley’s correspondence, as well as the Appeal, were read into the re- cord by others. Benjamin H. Hall, who re- lied on William Czar Bradley’s memories in writing about the father, described the Ap- peal as “written with vigor, [not wanting] those flowers of rhetoric which adorn, and not unfrequently, strengthen argument.”20 Charles Miner Thompson faulted its “florid prose.”21 Vermont’s voice had been heard be-
fore Bradley’s Appeal, from Ethan Allen, who was writing and publishing arguments against the claims of New York to lands west of the Connecticut River as early as 1775, in his Brief Narrative of the Proceed- ings of the State of New York. In early 1779, he published Vindication of the Opposition of the Inhabitants of Vermont to the Gov- ernment of New-York, and of their right to form into an independent state, submit- ted to the consideration of the impartial world.”22
As robust and florid as Ethan Al- len was in person, on paper his argument, by comparison to the Appeal, is wooden and sullen. It uses the same documents, but it does not inspire or persuade, except perhaps to the partisan. Bradley addresses the world; Allen addresses the choir. The prose of this twenty-five year-old Bradley must rank with Paine or Burke. No other piece of writing of his compares with the passion and wit of the Appeal.
The Prodigal Son
Nearly twenty years later, in 1794, Wil- liam Czar Bradley’s “The Rights of Youth,” with a subtitle, “Composed, Revised, and Submitted to the Candid Reader,” was published in Westminster.23
He was twelve
when he wrote this short essay, and John Gould, a Westminster printer, published it. You can see the hand of the father at work here, so proud of his son’s work that he has it set to type and printed for distribution. The theme is obedience, running to obei- sance. Youth’s duty is to take the advice of your elders, trusting not to your own judg- ment, but to that of your superiors. “You should hear others, but seldom be heard yourself, unless asked.” That duty means exercising the rules of behavior and decen- cy.24
The piece is a deep bow of a good son to a wise and brilliant father. Stephen Rowe Bradley was forty in 1794, a U.S. senator, a proud father, and a candid, but likely not impartial, reader.
William Czar Bradley was a prodigy, and he almost had to be with a father with such reputation and experience. By the age of nine, William (in early years called “Billa Czar”) had read the Bible through seven times.25
His home schooling was rigorous,
and he responded to the challenge, writ- ing poetry by age six, and admitted to Yale
10 THE VERMONT BAR JOURNAL • WINTER 2014
www.vtbar.org
Ruminations: The Bradleys of Westminster
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