Memorable Moments from the Past

Colonial Period

March 13, 1775: Sheriff’s Deputies seize a courthouse, beginning what becomes known as the Westminster Massacre, an early step toward independence.

July 24, 1776: Vermont colonists gather for the Dorset Convention and declare Vermont an Independent Republic.

June 4, 1777: At the suggestion of Dr. Thomas Young, a friend of Ethan Allen’s from Pennsylvania, the state’s name is changed to Vermont.

March 4, 1791: The Republic of Vermont becomes the 14th US state and officially enters the Union.

19th Century

September 11, 1814: US vessels meet a superior British force for the Battle of Plattsburgh on Lake Champlain. After two hours of fighting the British fleet surrenders.

March 21, 1843: Followers of religious leader William Miller give away their worldly goods to prepare for Christ’s return.

June 27, 1844: Vermonter Joseph Smith, Mormon prophet, is killed in Illinois when a mob surrounds the jail where he is being held.

July 4, 1846: The state militia helps management put down Irish workers striking for back pay.

July 13, 1854: The second state Republican Party in the nation is formed at the statehouse in Montpelier.

September 20, 1881: The day after James Garfield dies of a bullet wound Chester Arthur becomes the first US President from Vermont.

Progressive Era

March 3, 1903: Democrat James Burke defeats a Republican incumbent and becomes Burlington mayor.

June 28, 1906: The Independent and Democratic Parties create a statewide Fusion ticket to challenge the Republicans.

January 16: 1909: The Vermont Supreme Court rules that Burlington can develop a public wharf on its waterfront in Burlington v. Central Vermont Railway, Co.

September 3, 1909: Mayor James Burke prevents anarchist Emma Goldman from speaking in Burlington.

February 17, 1912: Residents of Barre, Bethel and Waterbury express solidarity with a strike in Lowell, Massachusetts by taking 200 of their children into their homes.

August 2, 1923: Warren Harding dies suddenly in San Francisco, making Calvin Coolidge President.

Depression Era

April 1, 1933: Barre granite workers begin a two-month strike that shuts down six major companies.

October 18, 1935: A strike begins against Vermont Marble.

March 3, 1936: The Green Mountain Parkway is defeated in a statewide referendum.

April 7, 1937: Vermont becomes the first state to declare the sit-down strike illegal.

Post-War Period

March 9, 1954: US Senator Ralph Flanders challenges Joseph McCarthy for spreading confusion and sowing division.

May 14, 1965: House of Representatives votes to reduce its size from 245 to 150 seats and elect each member based on population ("one man, one vote") rather than geography.

May 1 1966: United Stone and Allied Products Workers union members vote to strike at Vermont Marble, demanding a union shop and a 15-cent an hour pay increase.

April 23, 1971: The Bilderberg Group meets in Woodstock for what they call “an international peace conference.”

July 7, 1972: Local 522 begins a strike against Pizzagalli Construction and nine other companies.

Modern Progressive Era

March 3, 1981: Independent socialist Bernie Sanders defeats Democratic incumbent Gordon Paquette to become Burlington mayor, launching a new progressive movement.

August 13, 1991: Richard Snelling dies unexpectedly, making Howard Dean governor.

December 10, 1999: State Supreme Court rules in Baker v. Vermont that gay couples have a right to the same benefits provided to straight couples.

21st Century

June 23, 2003: Howard Dean launches his presidential campaign at a mass rally on Church Street in Burlington.

January 19, 2004: Howard Dean loses the Iowa Caucuses.

May 3, 2006: Governor Jim Douglas recognizes the historical Abenaki for the contributions they made to the state.

March 4, 2008: Voters in Brattleboro and Marlboro pass a symbolic resolution that instructs local police to arrest George Bush and Dick Cheney for "crimes against our Constitution" if they ever step foot in either town.

April 7, 2009: Over a veto from Governor Jim Douglas, Vermont becomes the first in the country to allow marriage for same-sex couples.

December 10, 2010: Bernie Sanders stages a mini-filibuster to protest a tax cut for the wealthy.

December 20, 2010: Mayor Kiss announces a “letter of cooperation” with Lockheed Martin.

February 9, 2011. Citizens crowd City Hall Auditorium to challenge Mayor Kiss’s development deal with Lockheed Martin. October 19, 2011: Republican mayoral candidate Kurt Wright proposes the sale of the Burlington Electric Department to reduce the city's debt.

^^

March 6, 2012: Almost 60 Vermont communities vote for a US Constitutional Amendment to overturn the Supreme Court's Citizens United decision; Burlington voters elect the first Democratic mayor in 31 years.


*These events and many more are explored in the book.

Vermonters Go for the White House

September 20, 1881: James Garfield's assassination makes Chester Arthur the first US President from Vermont.

August 2, 1923: Warren Harding dies suddenly, making Calvin Coolidge President.

________

Two Vermonters, so far, have become president of the United States – Republicans Chester Arthur and Calvin Coolidge. But others have made the attempt, most recently Howard Dean and now Bernie Sanders. Another Vermont Republican, George Aiken, also considered it seriously in the 1930s -- against FDR! -- and the state's first Democratic Governor, Phil Hoff, was briefly a prospect in 1968.

The earliest candidate was the Mormon leader Joseph Smith, one of those restless Vermonters who struck out for the west in revival days. He ran as a champion of homesteading rights. The next was Stephen Douglas, known as the “Little Giant” because of his short stature and huge political skills. Born in Brandon in 1813, he had made his name in Illinois as attorney general, Supreme Court judge and US Congressman.

Stephen Douglas

In 1852, and again four years later, Douglas unsuccessfully went after the Democratic Party nomination. The path was finally clear in 1860, but by then the Party was hopelessly split. He easily became the Northern Democratic candidate, but the party’s southern, pro-slavery wing didn’t trust his ambiguous position and separately nominated Vice President John C. Breckinridge.

There was also a standard bearer for the Constitution Party, which hoped to avoid civil war through regional compromise. But most of all, there was Abraham Lincoln, nominated in Chicago at the Republican Convention. The two men knew each other well, especially from a famous series of debates they had waged when Lincoln challenged Douglas for his US Senate seat two years before.

Douglas finished second in the popular vote for president with 29 percent but carried only Missouri and half of New Jersey’s electors. Breckinridge swept the south but won only 18 percent nationally. Lincoln carried 18 northern states, including Vermont and Illinois, and received 39.8 percent, or 1,865,593 of the 4.6 million votes cast that year.

As soon as Lincoln was elected, southern states began to secede. When war came in April 1861 Douglas urged his followers to support the union. But he died just a few weeks later and his position on slavery has been disputed ever since.

Twenty years after Douglas tried for the White House and failed Chester Arthur succeeded -- without actually running for president himself. Arthur was the son of a Baptist minister who emigrated to North America from Ireland. His official biography says that he was from Fairfield, a town near the Canadian border, born on October 5, 1830. Yet there have been persistent rumors that he was really born in Canada, and that his official birth date may be off by a year.

After college and law school in upstate New York Arthur briefly returned to Vermont in the early 1850s, as principal of an academy in North Pownal, before joining a law firm in New York City. For a while he was a Whig, but joined the Republicans early and was appointed engineer-in- chief by New York’s governor, then acting quartermaster-general for the state during the Civil War. After the war he rose in the Republican hierarchy, becoming collector of the Port of New York in 1871 and chair of the Party’s state committee. 

Chester Arthur

In 1880 he backed former President Grant to succeed Rutherford B. Hayes, but the convention delegates went with another general, James Garfield. Arthur’s support for Grant and position in New York politics made him a practical choice to join Garfield on the ticket. The team was elected and Vice President Arthur began to preside over a US Senate so evenly divided that he frequently had to break ties.

On July 2, 1881, only four months into his term, Garfield was shot at a Washington railway station by Charles Guiteau, an unstable officer-seeker. The president lingered for two months but died from an infection on September 19 after doctors contaminated the bullet wound. The next day Arthur became the first President from Vermont.*

It was a relatively prosperous period for the country. President Arthur spent much of his time dealing with domestic issues – building projects, disputes with Native American tribes, cowboy violence in the Arizona territory, and hostility to Chinese immigrants and Mormons.

In 1884, when the Republicans met again in Chicago for their nominating convention, Arthur lost to James C. Blaine, a leading Republican moderate who had briefly been his Secretary of State. He died two years later, having served as president for three and half years without winning an election on his own.

The second Vermonter to lead the country also got the job due to death at the top. But there is no dispute about the birthplace of Calvin Coolidge. He was born in Plymouth Notch on July 4, 1872, the only president whose birthday is Independence Day.

Like his predecessors Coolidge left the state to pursue his ambitions. He moved to Massachusetts and became, first a city official, then mayor, state legislator, lieutenant governor and ultimately governor of the state in 1918. It was a steady and conventional political rise, aside from the one decision that brought him to national attention – breaking a police strike in Boston.

When the Republican convention deadlocked in 1920, party bosses gathered in what became known as their “smoke-filled room” and selected a little-known Ohio Senator, Warren G. Harding. To balance the ticket Coolidge was picked for Vice President. Disgusted with Woodrow Wilson at the close of World War I, Democrats joined the unusual Republican base to give Harding the biggest landslide victory in US history – more than 60 percent of the popular vote.

The Harding administration became infamous for corruption, but Coolidge managed to stay clean. Disillusionment set in and few expected anything to change until the next election. But on August 2, 1923, in the middle of a goodwill tour, Harding dropped dead suddenly in San Francisco.

Coolidge was a dramatic change of pace, at least in temperament and style. Harding looked and lived like a Matinee idol. “Silent Cal” was an austere and private family man, legendary for his stinginess and allegedly incurious nature. But he and his predecessor did have one thing in common – affection for business.

In 1924, he won re-election in a landslide using a slogan that revealed control and awareness of his image, “Keep Cool and Keep Coolidge.” Technically, he could have run again, but declined with what is likely the shortest political exit speech ever made by a president: “I do not choose to run for President in 1928.”

A year later, Herbert Hoover was leading the country, at the brink of the Great Depression.

Calvin Coolidge and Mother Jones in 1924

* Note: It is commonly claimed that Chester Arthur became president immediately after Garfield's death on September 19, 1881. However, Arthur was in New York City at the time and took the oath of office on September 20 at his residence before Judge John R. Brady, a New York Supreme Court Justice. On September 22 the oath was administered again, formally, in the Vice-President's room in the Capitol by Chief Justice Waite.

Attempted Fusion: The Age of Burke 2

James Burke’s political vision stretched beyond the borders of Burlington by 1906. He was deeply embroiled in an effort to wrest control of the governor’s office from the Republicans. To attempt this he forged a delicate personal alliance with Percival Clement, railroad tycoon and owner of the Rutland Herald, who was warring with Proctor marble interests. A joint ticket emerged with Democrat and Independent candidates, and Clement at the top.

     That summer, as Burke traveled the state attacking Republican graft and rule, he continued to call President Roosevelt “the greatest Republican since Lincoln and the greatest Democrat since Jefferson.”

     The Burke-Clement alliance was largely rooted in political expediency. Both men wanted to be governor and knew that no Democrat could win statewide. Both had also been mayors, Clement in Rutland, though his control of the Rutland Railroad didn’t ease negotiations about the Burlington waterfront, which was owned by Clement’s line and Central Vermont. But there was also an ideological affinity that bridged the class barrier between them. Both were ardent supporters of the “local option” to issue saloon licenses and vocal critics of graft by marble and coal interests dominating the GOP.

     The day Theodore Roosevelt found out he was going to be president he was riding with Clement on his railroad. The Vice President had been visiting Vermont Lieutenant Governor Nelson Fisk at Isle LaMotte when word came through that the President had been shot. By 1906, Roosevelt was on the attack against the beef, oil and tobacco trusts, while in Vermont Clement was warring with marble interests, especially Fletcher Proctor, the Republican candidate for governor.

     Burke had won another term as mayor over Walter Bigelow, the 40-year-old chairman of the state Republican Party and night editor at the Burlington Free Press.  He saw a “bright and glorious future” for the city and wanted people to move beyond “a narrow or partisan point of view.” But the logic of progressive reform impelled him to influence the movement Clement was building.

     At first it was called the “Bennington idea,” referring to the town where a petition first circulated for Clement to lead an independent movement that aimed to “save the state” after 50 years of Republican rule. But Clement’s supporters decided that a fusion with Democrats was essential, so they tried to induce Burke to join the ticket.

     He wasn’t persuaded. Giving Clement the Democratic nomination would effectively put him in control of the party. If a Democrat won the presidency in 1908, Clement would get to hand out patronage. Thus, Burke remained a potential candidate for governor himself even after a Barre Democrat agreed to join Clement on a slate.

     The Democrats were still divided on June 28, the day of both the Independent and Democratic state conventions in Burlington.

     While the Independents convened in City Hall and the Democrats met at the armory, a joint committee worked out an agreement to divide the state ticket. The Democrats would field candidates for one half of the slate, Independents would take the rest. After accepting the Independent nod Clement walked with Burke to the Strong Theater for a joint assembly.

     Debate on fusion was heated, some people accusing Burke of opposing the idea because he couldn’t head the ticket. Speaking for himself, Burke reminded the audience that he had backed fusion under Clement four years earlier. But the “local option” for alcohol[1] was no longer a galvanizing issue and Clement was, after all, still basically a Republican.

     The Democrats rejected Burke’s advice and approved a joint slate headed by Clement and Democrat C. Herbert Pape. With more than a thousand people packing the theater, Clement took center stage, Burke at his side, and launched into a long, fiery attack on the Republic machine, the marble companies, and the inefficiency and graft that was robbing the people.

     Burke actively backed Clement’s war on the Proctor Republicans, spending much of his time that summer on the campaign trail. As usual, his rhetoric was rich with praise of Roosevelt.

     “Reform is in the air,” he shouted from the back of the candidate’s private train, “and Vermont will share in the benefits that come from the general revolt being made against ring rule and graft.” He envisioned a popular coalition of Lincoln Republicans and Jefferson Democrats that would wipe out party lines. It might even combat corporate lobbying on labor issues like the nine-hour day and minimum wage.

     But Fusion was defeated by Republicans united behind Proctor in November. And the following March, Burke came up short in his first mayoral race in five years – to Walter Bigelow. The defeat was devastating for political allies who lost their jobs and watched old opponents return to power.

     Clement eventually became governor in 1918 – as a Republican. 

See also: Censoring Red Emma and The Public Power Story

Next: On the Waterfront

[1] In 1902 a referendum gave towns the option of granting licenses. Four years later the authority was transferred to the Secretary of State, and in 1917 to the Commissioner of Taxes. In 1921, the old liquor laws were repealed and replaced by a system that conformed to the 18^th Amendment. When prohibition was repealed in 1933, the state re-assumed the power to regulate the sale and use of alcohol.

In Person: Progressive Movements and the Vermont Way

An Evening of Green Mountain History with Greg Guma

Wednesday, Aug. 29, 7:00 p.m.
Vermont History Center, 60 Washington Street, Barre, VT 05641

Anticipating a recreation of Teddy Roosevelt 1912 visit to Vermont during his Progressive Party run for president, writer, editor, historian, activist and progressive manager Greg Guma comes to the Vermont History Center in Barre with an evening of stories and thoughts about the evolving nature of progressive politics in Vermont. Including a preview from the upcoming multi-part documentary, The Vermont Movie, and also:

     * How the Anti-Masons briefly took the state

     * Burlington’s first progressive mayor and an early fusion movement

     * Progressive Republicans in the 1930 and 40s

     * Phil Hoff’s Democratic breakthrough and civil rights fights 

     * Why the Green Mountain Parkway never happened

     * Speaking truth to McCarthy-ism

     * Plus, the rise of Bernie Sanders

For more information, please contact 

Tess Taylor, tess.taylor@state.vt.us 

(802) 479-8505 

or visit the Vermont Historical Society website. 

How Vermont Went Republican

July 13, 1854: The second US Republican Party is formed.

The 1840 Convention of the Vermont Whig Party was the largest ever staged in New England. Almost 20,000 people came to Burlington, attending an enormous parade in support of William Henry Harrison.

During the gathering Vermont Whig leader and US Congressman William Slade encouraged Party members to take a stronger stand on slavery. That January Slade had delivered the first abolitionist address ever made in Congress, calling for the immediate end of human slavery. Still, he felt that the country wasn’t ready for an abolitionist president.

Within two years, however, the growth of the anti-slavery Liberty Party convinced Slade to “abolitionize” Vermont’s Whigs. In 1842, therefore, the state Party’s platform called slavery a “moral and political evil” that should be removed.

When Henry Clay emerged as the Whig candidate for president in 1844, Vermonters were rightly suspicious about his position. Clay was equivocating on whether Texas should be annexed since it would eventually become another slave state. To compensate, the Whigs picked Slade to run for governor. Not only did he win, Clay carried the state. But Democrat James K. Polk became president.

As it worked out, annexation of the Lone Star State led to a war with Mexico, another decision Vermont Whigs opposed. In 1848, Green Mountains Whigs were again unhappy with their candidate. This time it was Zachery Taylor, a slave owner and hero of the Mexican War.

By this time Slade was fed up and decided to move on to the Free Soil Party. An outgrowth of the Liberty Party, it was strongly abolitionist – Free Soil for Free Men, it proclaimed – and drew its leadership from a coalition of Democrats, Whigs and former Liberty Party supporters. Although Carlos Coolidge, a Whig – and distant relative of future president Calvin Coolidge – defeated the new coalition in the governor’s race, the opposition of most Vermonters to slavery or its extension into new territories remained undiminished.

Political allegiances were shifting rapidly. Between 1849 and 1853, the state’s Democratic Party went into a steep decline. Joining forces with the Free Soilers had undermined their status as a credible alternative to the Whigs. In a desperate move, the Party’s leaders choose opposition to temperance as a cause. A temperance referendum had passed, but the vote was close and Democrats felt that it didn’t truly reflect public opinion. The real problem, though, was the Party’s unpopular position on slavery.

The turning point came in 1854 after a series of mass meetings was held across the state. The leaders at those spontaneous events weren’t the old political players but instead a group of insurgents. The state was at the edge of another political rebellion.

That summer the Whigs, split between realists and stalwarts, could only agree on a provisional slate to be headed by Stephen Royce, an abolitionist State Supreme Court Judge whose selling point as a gubernatorial candidate was that he had “never mingled in the slightest degree with party politics.” The Free Soilers, running this time under the “unionist” banner, looked to an elderly newspaperman, Ezekiel. P. Walton, who announced that he was ready to step aside for someone else.

The Democrats weren’t even in the running, further undermined by the nomination of Franklin Pierce for President. Pierce supported the return of runaway slaves under the Fugitive Slave Act, as well as the Nebraska Act, which made slavery a blatant state’s right issue. Ironically, the Act had been proposed by former Vermonter Stephen Douglas. Rather than helping Democrats, the Illinois senator’s return home for a political appearance in February had accelerated the Party’s collapse in the state.

The timing was perfect for a new party that could appeal to the many Vermonters disillusioned with the political establishment. In June, Ezekiel Walton called for a mass state convention, and on July 13 around 600 people showed up at the statehouse in Montpelier to form the second state Republican Party in the nation.

“Our rallying cry shall henceforth be the repeal of the Fugitive Slave Law,” its platform announced, “the abolition of slavery in the District of Columbia, the prohibition of slavery in all the Territories of the United States, and the admission of no more slave states into the Union.”

Provisional Whig candidate Royce became the new party’s nominee and went on to win in November with 62 percent of the vote. By the next year the Republican Party had spread across the northern states and installed one of its own as Speaker of the US House.

In Vermont there was a brief challenge from the American Party, electoral arm of a growing nativist movement known as the Know-Nothings. But the Republicans managed to attract enough nativist support by attacking the Know-Nothing penchant for secrecy while sympathizing with its dislike of Irish immigrants. In a diluted form nativist sentiment was absorbed by Republican Party, finding expression later in exceptionalist rhetoric.

The state’s political landscape had been transformed, with confusion replaced by unity. In 1856, John Charles Frémont, the Republican candidate for president, won about 80 percent of Vermont’s popular vote. Two years later Pennsylvania reformer Thaddeus Stevens, a native Vermonter, re-entered Congress as a Republican and rapidly assumed leadership of the House, where his strong abolitionist sentiments and legislative skills gave him tremendous power.

Two years after that, in 1860, Vermonters gave Abraham Lincoln the largest margin of victory of any state in the nation. The Green Mountains remained solid Republican territory for the next 100 years.