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.
