Travel in Time with Dan | Bennington, Vermont — the Bennington Mob Era
⚠️ Author’s Note: The following is a fictional historical interview. Ethan Allen (1738–1789) and Seth Warner (1743–1784) were real American patriots who led the Green Mountain Boys — a militia that began as a rough frontier resistance group and evolved into a critical force in the American Revolution. In the years before the Revolution, the land that would become Vermont was disputed between New Hampshire and New York. When King George III ruled in New York’s favor, New York officials began evicting New Hampshire settlers from their homes or forcing them to repurchase land they already owned. Ethan Allen responded by creating a de facto autonomous zone, enforced by his “Bennington Mob,” which used intimidation and violence to drive New York officials out of the region. Seth Warner provided the tactical discipline that kept the operation functional. When the Revolution began, the Green Mountain Boys pivoted from local resistance to continental rebellion… helping capture Fort Ticonderoga, fighting at the Battle of Bennington on August 16, 1777, and contributing directly to the American victory at Saratoga, the turning point of the war. Vermont declared independence from both England and New York in 1777, briefly considered calling itself the New Connecticut Republic, and ultimately chose the name Vermont… from the French vert and mont, meaning green mountain… operating as an independent republic from 1777 to 1791 before joining the United States. This imagined conversation takes place during the Bennington Mob era, before the Revolution has begun and before history has decided whether these men are heroes or criminals. The historical facts are real. The dialogue is creative fiction, inspired by Allen’s documented firebrand personality, Warner’s tactical steadiness, and the genuine moral complexity of what they were doing.
📍 Setting: A tavern in Bennington, in the disputed territory that is not yet Vermont — early 1770s. The room is warm and loud and smells of woodsmoke and argument. At a corner table, two men are leaning over a rough map of the territory, their conversation low enough to be private but with an intensity that keeps the space around them clear. Ethan Allen is the larger presence… physically broad, loud in his gestures even when his voice is quiet, with the bright and slightly dangerous energy of a man who has convinced himself completely of something and finds the world’s failure to agree with him more amusing than troubling. Seth Warner, beside him, is quieter in every dimension… compact, watchful, with the particular stillness of a man who is always thinking two steps further than the conversation currently requires. Allen looks up first as I approach, with the open confidence of someone who has never once wondered whether he is worth talking to. Warner looks up a half-second later, evaluates me in a single glance, and then returns his eyes to the map before he has finished deciding I am not a threat.
Allen: (Before I have fully sat down, extending a hand with the energy of a man who starts conversations the way some men start fires — immediately and with commitment)
You’ve come at a good time. We were just discussing what to do about a New York sheriff who has gotten it into his head that he can ride into this territory and serve ejectment papers on a family that has been farming that land for eleven years. Pull up a chair. This should interest you.
Warner: (Without looking up from the map) It may not interest him, Ethan.
Allen: Everything interests everyone if you tell it right.
Dan: Mr. Allen. Mr. Warner. Thank you for speaking with me. Let me ask the uncomfortable question first, since I suspect you’ve both heard it and will hear it again. What you’re doing here… the intimidation, the threats, the violence against New York officials… by any legal standard of this time, you are criminals. How do you answer that?
Allen: (Leaning back, entirely untroubled)
By any legal standard of this time, the King of England has decided that land my neighbors have cleared and farmed and built their lives on belongs to New York, and New York has decided that means they can ride up here and throw those families into the road. So I would ask you to be precise about which law we are discussing. Because the law that says the King’s word supersedes eleven years of a man’s labor… that law I do not recognize. And a law I do not recognize has no particular claim on my behavior.
Dan: That is a very convenient position for a man who has decided the law is wrong.
Allen: (With a grin that acknowledges the point without conceding it)
All positions are convenient to someone. The New York sheriff finds the law very convenient. The families he is throwing out of their homes find it considerably less so. I am simply on the side of the families, and I have chosen to make that side uncomfortable to argue with.
Warner: (Still looking at the map, but joining now with the calm of a man who has had this argument many times and has it better organized than Allen does)
The legal question and the just question are not always the same question. That is worth saying plainly. We are not arguing that what we are doing is legal. We are arguing that what the New York government is doing to these settlers is wrong, and that someone with the means to stop it has an obligation to do so regardless of whether the stopping is itself legally sanctioned. Those are two separate arguments and it does not serve anyone to confuse them.
Dan: Seth, you’re the tactical mind here. Ethan is the voice. How did that division happen, and does it ever create friction between you?
Warner: (A slight pause, the first suggestion of something like dry humor)
Ethan creates friction with most things. I have found it more productive to direct it than to resist it.
Allen: (To Dan, cheerfully) He means that as a compliment.
Warner: I mean it accurately. Ethan has qualities that are genuinely rare… the ability to walk into a room and make everyone in it believe that what he is proposing is not only possible but inevitable. That is not nothing. In fact, in our current circumstances, it is very nearly everything, because what we need more than anything else is for the New York officials to believe that entering this territory is more trouble than it is worth. Ethan makes them believe that. He is very good at it.
(Finally looking up)
What Ethan is less naturally suited to is the question of what happens the morning after the dramatic entrance. The organization. The decisions about when to press and when to hold. The difference between a show of force that accomplishes something and one that simply makes us feel righteous. That is what I contribute. We have an arrangement that I think serves the purpose.
Allen: (Without offense) He is not wrong. I have never pretended to be a patient man.
Dan: The people you’re protecting call you heroes. The New York government calls you criminals. King George certainly isn’t pleased. Does it matter to you which one history decides you are?
Allen: (Serious for the first time, the grin gone)
I will tell you honestly — in my best moments, no. In my worst moments, yes. A man who tells you he is entirely indifferent to how the world judges him is either lying or has stopped caring about the world entirely, and I have done neither. I care very much what happens here. I care what these families think of us. I care whether what we are building in this territory is worth the cost of building it.
What I do not care about is the judgment of the courts and the King and the New York government. Those judgments are made by men who have never spent a winter on this land. They are made from a very comfortable distance, and comfort tends to produce very confident opinions about things it has never actually touched.
(Leaning forward)
Let history decide what it wants. I know what I am doing and I know why, and that is enough to sleep on.
Warner: (Quietly) History will decide based on whether we succeed. That is the uncomfortable truth of it. The same actions that make us criminals today will make us founders tomorrow, if the outcome is right. That is not a cynical observation. It is simply how these things work. We do not get to know yet which side of that line we are standing on.
Dan: That is a sobering thing to acknowledge.
Warner: It is the honest thing to acknowledge. I prefer honest to comfortable.
Dan: Ethan, you have no legal authority here. The courts are against you. The King is against you. The established government of two colonies is against you. What makes a man decide to lead anyway, under those conditions?
Allen: (Simply, as though the answer is obvious)
The families. That is the whole of it. When you watch a family that has broken ground and built a house and raised children on land they earned with their own labor… when you watch a sheriff ride up with a piece of paper from a courtroom five hundred miles away and tell them to get out… you have a choice. You can say that is very unfortunate and the law is the law and walk away. Or you can decide that some things are more important than what the law says today, and that a man with the means to do something about it has no real option but to do it.
I had the means. I had the voice to gather people. I had… (a glance at Warner)… the sense to find someone who could make the gathering amount to something practical. Leadership did not start when anyone gave me permission to lead. It started when I looked at the situation and decided I was not going to walk away from it. That is always when it starts.
Warner: The authority comes later, if it comes at all. You do not wait for it. Waiting for authority to do what is right is how the families end up in the road.
Dan: Looking ahead, do you see this staying a local dispute, or does this become something larger?
Warner: (A careful pause, studying the map)
The disputes between the colonies and England are growing. Everyone in this room can feel it, even if no one is saying it plainly yet. What we have built here… the organization, the men, the knowledge of this territory… will be useful in ways that go beyond land titles in disputed Vermont. I think about that. I think about it considerably.
Allen: (With the grin returning, larger now)
I think we are going to have a great deal more to do before this is finished. And I think when it is finished, nobody is going to be talking about the Bennington Mob. They are going to be talking about something else entirely. (A beat) I just don’t know the name of it yet.
Dan: Last question for both of you. People will stand at a monument in Bennington someday, trying to understand what you started here. Heroes or vigilantes… what do you want them to decide?
Allen: (Standing, the map rolled under his arm)
I want them to ask the question honestly. Not just accept the answer that is convenient. Were we rough? Yes. Did we use force? Yes. Would I do it differently? (A long pause) Some of it, perhaps. Not the standing up. Never the standing up. The families deserved someone to stand up, and I am glad it was us.
Warner: (Rising more quietly, folding the map corner with precision)
I want them to understand that leadership before authority is not the same as leadership without principle. We had principles. We had reasons. We had people who needed protecting and the capacity to protect them. The authority came later. The obligation came first.
(Pulling on his coat)
If they take one thing from whatever we become… let it be that. You do not wait to be given permission to do what is right. You look at what needs doing, you gather the people who will do it with you, and you move. The permission sorts itself out afterward, one way or another.
They walked back out into the Bennington night — Allen loudly, Warner quietly, the same way they did everything.
What came next is history. Fort Ticonderoga fell to the Green Mountain Boys in May 1775 — Allen demanding its surrender in the name of the Great Jehovah and the Continental Congress, which was a remarkable thing to invoke on behalf of a congress that had not yet convened. Canada was attempted and failed, and Allen spent years in British captivity. The Battle of Bennington was fought on August 16, 1777, with Warner leading in Allen’s absence, and the British were driven back decisively. Saratoga followed, the turning point of the entire war, made possible in part by what happened on that field in Bennington.
Vermont declared itself a republic… briefly considered the name New Connecticut Republic, which history should be grateful they reconsidered… and called itself Vermont, green mountain, for fourteen years before joining the United States in 1791.
Heroes or vigilantes? The question Dan asked in that tavern is the right one, and it does not resolve cleanly. They started as a mob using force to protect their people from legal processes they considered unjust. They became founders. The same men, the same methods, the same conviction… reframed entirely by what they helped create.
The leadership lesson is the one both of them named, from different angles, in that tavern: leadership starts before authority. You do not wait for permission to stand up for what is right. The courts were against them. The King was against them. Two colonial governments were against them. They stood up anyway, gathered people who would stand with them, and moved.
The monument at Bennington stands 306 feet tall. You can see it from miles away.
It is not there because they waited for permission. 🏔️⚔️
Travel in Time with Dan is where travel, history, and leadership come together. Uncovering History. Inspiring Leadership.
📺 Watch the episode: YouTube | 🎙️ Listen to the podcast: Spotify | 📖 Read the blog: granddaddyssecrets.com | 📚 Dan’s book: Travel in Time in the Northeast
