spent the night alone concerting plans to raise the money, early in the morning proposed that the Council appoint Commissioners of Sequestration, who should seize on all the property of those who had joined the enemy, sell it at auction and pay the money to a treasurer, to be appointed, for the use of the State. The plan was adopted which, it is supposed, confiscated the first property of the kind in the United States. The treasury was well supplied with money to defray the expenses of the government and to pay bounty, wages, and equip a regiment fit for service, under the command of Colonel Samuel Herrick, in about fifteen days." I need scarcely add that the member who walked his room all that night; who devised the plan, and who wrote this modest record in which his name does not appear, was the youngest member of the council, Colonel Ira Allen. Soldiers: I have laid before you only one of a multitude of material facts which are as yet unrecorded in Vermont historical literature. I have had a double object in preparing this paper. I wished to bring before you some of the services of this the youngest and most efficient member of the Council of Safety; but more especially, by a specimen chapter to show you how much of the early history of Vermont remains to be written. No competent critic has given much attention to the subject without discovering that no State has an early history so interesting, instructive or dramatic as that of Vermont, and without knowing that it has never been adequately written. I began to collect the materials for it in early life, and the time has been when I cherished the hope of myself writing it. But I cherish that hope no longer. With me, the time has come when desire fails and the grasshopper becomes a burden. My hope now is that these materials may not be scattered, but kept together until some Vermonter comes to perform the duty which I have neglected. I hope he will take them and write a history of early Vermont and her founders that will be faithful to the truth and worthy of the State we love. Following the reading of Mr. Chittenden's paper the following toasts were offered: "Vermont," response by Gen. J. G. McCullough; "The President of the United States," Hon. John V. Carney; "The Rank and File,” Sergeant H. E. Taylor; "The Army Chaplains," Rev. R. B. Tozer; "Our Society," Col. F. G. Butterfield; "The Sons of Veterans,” Harry T. Cushman, THIRTY-FIFTH REUNION. MONTPELIER, OCTOBER 26, 1898. The Society met for its thirty-fifth Reunion in the General Committee Room in the State House, October 26, 1898, at 3 o'clock p. m., with its President, Col. F. G. Butterfield, in the chair. The Nominating Committee reported a list of officers and it was adopted as follows: ville. OFFICERS FOR 1898-9. President, Sergeant Z. M. Mansur, Newport. First Vice-President, Capt. S. E. Burnham, Rutland. Secretary and Treasurer, Lieut. F. E. Smith, Montpelier. Executive Committee, Z. M. Mansur, F. G. Butterfield, and R. S. Parker of Newport. In spite of a drizzling rain the hall of the House of Representatives was filled with members of the society and of the legislature, and gentlemen and ladies. The Montpelier band furnished appropriate and excellent music. Prayer was offered by Rev. Andrew Gillies, chaplain of the Senate. The orator of the evening was Gen. John G. McCullough of Bennington, who spoke of the Spanish War. GENERAL M'CULLOUGH'S ADDRESS. Gentlemen of the Officers' Reunion Society, Ladies and Gentlemen: Permit me to say a few words upon the Spanish war. For a generation or more you have been holding your annual reunions and have been accustomed to listen to able and interesting addresses upon themes more or less closely related to the War of the Rebellion. That was a great war— great in the numbers involved, great in the sacrifices made, great in the principles at stake, in the results attained. It was a domestic war. This year we have been engaged in a foreign war. It is our first foreign war since we became firmly established as one of the great powers of the world. It would seem from our history that about every generation has its war. First came the Revolution, which made us an independent nation. That was a revolt against authority and government, so wisely conducted that upon the ruins of the government destroyed our forefathers erected a representative republic, with the rights of life, liberty and property so deeply planted in its soil and so firmly imbedded in its constitution, that our institutions have outlived all the political and social changes of the 19th century; and if we and our posterity continue to exercise the same wise foresight the future centuries will but record the growing glories of the growing republic. The next generation brought us the war of 1812. It was the natural outgrowth of the failure of Great Britain to carry out the stipulations of the treaty of 1783. The field of this war was chiefly upon the water, and it was there that the victories of Hull and Bainbridge and Macdonough and Decatur and Perry shed new lustre upon our flag. And as in the revolution we conquered an independence upon land, so by the war of 1812 we conquered an independence upon sea. The next generation gave us the Mexican war. Slavery was the cause of this war. It was inaugurated in the interest of human bondage, and it was but one step in a series of acts to extend that institution over free territory and bring under its baneful influence some of the fairest portions of this fair land. As proof, we have but to recall the enactment of the Missouri compromise, the annexation of Texas, the Mexican war, the filibustering schemes of the buccaneers, Lopez and Walker, the Ostend conference; the repeal of the compromise, the contests upon the plains of Kansas, the Lecompton constitution, the Dred Scott decision, and, finally, before another generation had fully dawned, the dread appeal to the sword in the unholy crusade to overthrow free government. The civil war revealed to our people and to the world the strength of our federal union. At the time when the martial tread of our armies was rocking this earth, in the very midst of the gigantic struggle that made our globe reel with its convulsions, and that cost hundreds of thousands of lives, and thousands of millions of treasure, this government had the courage and the strength to strike the shackles from four millions of slaves, scattered over numerous States, and still was able to uphold and maintain the supreme authority of the Union throughout all its wide borders, and serenely and majestically to march on in its wonderful career upward and onward of national growth and splendor; and when the conflict was over, to present to mankind the unparalleled and sublime spectacle of quietly disbanding its mighty armies, whose members once again became the peaceful and prosperous citizens of a free republic. Daniel Webster's reply to Hayne was an amendment to the constitution. "The inexorable logic of events" for the four years of civil war vindicated the logic and the majestic speech of the great expounder, and the amendment was ratified at Vicksburg and Gettysburg. The problems of the Union and the constitution were solved and settled at Appomattox. Since then a third of a century has passed. Since then a new generation has come to manhood. During these years questions of reconstruction, of tariff, of civil service reform, of different systems of currency, of improvement in the government of cities, have occupied the attention of our people. But our people are Anglo-Saxon. In their blood is the spirit of enterprise and adventure. We belong to a race whose restless energies for a thousand years have been the |