Ethan Allen From Philosopedia

Ethan Allen From Philosopedia

Allen, Ethan [Colonel] (21 January 1738 - 12 February 1789)

A hero of the American Revolution, Allen in 1784 wrote, “I have generally been denominated a Deist, the reality of which I have never disputed, being conscious that I am no Christian, except mere infant baptism makes me one; and as to being a Deist, I know not, strictly speaking, whether I am one or not.” He found trinitarianism “destitute of foundation, and tends manifestly to superstition and idolatry.”

His deistic views were similar to those of Franklin and Jefferson (and to rituals of the Masonic Lodge) as shown in his Reason the Only Oracle of Man (1784). Like a watchmaker, the deists hypothesized, the Supreme Architect created his work, then moved on. Analogously, people who have a watch care little who designed their watch and have no way of determining who actually made it; it is to their benefit to keep the watch repaired and working well–life’s purpose is therefore not to find out which individual or committee made an object, deists explained. They rejected claims of supernatural revelation and of formal religion. With such a philosophy, they skirted the need for a Church of America (inasmuch as the enemy George III could hardly continue to be accepted as God’s representative on earth) and wrote a Constitution placing the onus on man, not outside forces, to rule himself under law.

Reason, the Only Oracle of Man was the first openly anti-Christian book published in North America, and Allen credited many of its ideas to his fellow nonconformist in religious thought, Dr. Thomas Young. The two planned upon writing the book together, but Young died before they could finish it. The book was widely used by Universalists. Shortly after the printing, a fire broke out in the printer’s warehouse and the fearful printer would not agree to publishing any further freethought books. “Ethan Allen’s Bible,” as the book was called among his neighbors, although it may in part have been written by Young, hit hard at Calvinist theology.

Allen “in the name of the Great Jehovah and the Continental Congress” defeated the British at Fort Ticonderoga, and he was a popular contributor to the secularization and dechristianizing of early American intellectual thought.

The story is told by Valery Countryman, a St. Louis author, that Allen defied a state statute that prohibited smallpox inoculations because they were said to be “a sin against God.” At a local tavern Allen convinced his physician, Thomas Young, to publicly inoculate him. Allen was then quickly arrested for the crime of blasphemy. During the trial he cursed the judge by saying, “May (you) be in Hell a thousand years and every little insipid Devil shall come by and ask why.” Ms. Countryman also describes Allen’s decision to remarry after the death of his estranged spouse. “Do you promise to live in agreement to God’s law?” the officiating judge inquired. “Hold on!” Allen complained. “Whose god are you talking about?” The judge eventually was persuaded to amend the offending phrase to “laws as written in the Book of Nature.”

A little-known section of Israel Potter (1855) by Herman Melville describes Allen during his period of captivity by the British, when he was displayed in the port of Falmouth, “Samson Among the Philistines”:

• Like some baited bull in the ring, crouched the Patagonian-looking captive, handcuffed as before; the grass of the green trampled, and gored up all about him, both by his own movements and those of the people around. Except some soldiers and sailors, these seemed mostly townspeople, collected here out of curiosity. The stranger was outlandishly arrayed in the sorry remains of a half-Indian, half-Canadian sort of dress, consisting of a fawnskin jacket–the fur outside and hanging in ragged tufts–a half-rotten, bark-like belt of wampum; aged breeches of sagathy; bedarned worsted stockings to the knee; old moccasins riddled with holes, their metal tags yellow with salt-water rust; a faded red woolen bonnet, not unlike a Russian night-cap, or a portentous, ensanguined full-moon, all soiled, and stuck about with bits of half-rotted straw. He seemed just broken from the dead leaves in David’s outlawed Cave of Adullam. Unshaven, beard and hair matted, and profuse as a corn-field beaten down by hailstorms, his whole marred aspect was that of some wild beast; but of a royal sort, and unsubdued by the cage.

According to legend, Allen’s wife called for a preacher as he lay dying. The man, although he knew Allen had once stated, “That Jesus Christ was not God is evident from his own words,” attempted to persuade Allen to pray. “Angels are waiting for you,” Allen was told. “Waiting, are they?” Allen retorted. “Well, God damn them, let them wait!”

Vermont eventually erected a forty-two-foot high granite memorial topped by an eight-foot angel decades after Allen’s death and at a site where no one was sure where the body lay. A previous marker had been blasted away by lightning sixty-six years earlier.