United States v. His Excellency Thomas Chittenden, Esq.: Guilty

• Citation: Vol. 50 No. 1
• Publication year: 2024

United States v. His Excellency Thomas Chittenden, Esq.: Guilty Vol. 50 No. 1 Pg. 22 Vermont Bar Journal March 2024

by Gary G. Shattuck, Esq.

Why was Vermont's first governor, Thomas Chittenden (1730-1797), convicted by a jury of a federal crime and then threatened with imprisonment only days before he died on August 24 (25?), 1797; the only governor among 82 others in state history to ever experience such an ignoble fate?^[1] His offense? Selling alcohol without a license and allowing its consumption in an unlicensed establishment.

That Chittenden ran afoul of the law in such a seemingly innocent way could not have surprised anyone who knew him. Greatly admired, his solid, pragmatic political reputation preceded him for more than two decades of public service, including as governor overseeing the region's coalescence and admission into the Union as the fourteenth state. At the same time, Chittenden was also well-known among his peers for his hail-fellow-well-met, bon vivant bearing. A surviving Wine Account for the General Assembly of 1787 provides ample evidence of the copious amounts of alcohol "His Excellency Gov. Chittenden" and other politicos consumed in their work environment.^[2]Now, in the physically weakened autumn of his life, instead of basking in the glow of his accomplishments among friends, he faced the prospect of conviction of a federal crime for his alcohol-infused gregariousness, penalized for doing what so many others did.

The question for modern day students of those times is why has this information of Chittenden's stumble not been revealed until now? Why did those in positions of power and a probing press at the time, each knowing full well of his problem, fail to publicly acknowledge or report it? For answers, it is necessary to inquire into not only the context of these turbulent times, but also the extant Vermont federal court records housed at the National Archives and Records Administration in Boston pertaining to Chittenden and some of his constituency receiving similar convictions.^[3]

In the process, it is worth remembering that "history records what people do, rather than what they are."^[4] Reserving judgment on Chittenden's personality, these documents will, with reasonable certainty, allow us to reconstruct what happened to finally reveal a missing part of that long-ago story.

Background

Following the end of the Revolutionary War and settling the lingering border dispute with New York, the recognition of Vermont as a state in 1791 meant the sudden introduction of federal laws and accompanying institutions into the Green Mountains, changes embraced by its inhabitants with varying degrees of enthusiasm. Foremost were those provisions surrounding the collection of revenues to fund the new nation's infrastructure, assure its operations, and retire its significant debt incurred fighting the

war. Accordingly, customs laws and the appointment of a supervising collector and his deputies gathering fees and operating customs houses suddenly appeared across the landscape. They worked zealously to bring malefactors before newly created federal judges presiding in district and circuit courthouses in Burlington, Rutland, and Windsor. They were backed up by a US marshal and his deputies, alongside bailiffs and clerks, solidifying an all-too-real federal presence in the state.

The will of strong-minded advocates of a national government, called Federalists, overlaying this new legal system across the existing, domestic one that independent Vermonters, including Chittenden, had already become familiar with presented its own unique challenges. Unaware of the disruptive changes awaiting them, some gathered on the eve of statehood in Rutland to celebrate. Their revels were attended by esteemed legal illuminati, including: "judges of the supreme federal court, the attorney general and other officers of the court." Then, to the sound of booming cannon, the assemblage raised their glasses in recognition of a new dawn. Making a series of rousing "federal toasts," they praised "his excellency governor Chittenden," prayed that "federal officers ... act with integrity and merit the confidence of the people," and wished that "may we never experience a less happy moment than the present under the federal government."^[5]

The timing of these events coincided precisely with those taking place only a few hundred miles away in Pennsylvania. There, violent opposition rose up against the same federal government that Vermonters welcomed. Indigent frontier settlers deeply resented the government's recent imposition of the Tariff of 1791 imposing an excise tax on the large quantities of spirits they distilled, with great difficulty, from their abundant grain crops. Their steady opposition soon escalated into the Whiskey Rebellion (1791-1794) forcing President George Washington to send in thousands of troops to quell. The response further prompted the government's prosecution of dozens of farmers for treason; an effort many viewed as heavy-handed overstepping, a trampling of the downtrodden by the powerful.

How national leaders handled the Pennsylvania problem generated significant interest in Vermont. Increasingly, after the arrival of federal personnel in 1791, the laws they enforced seemed to appear overnight. In addition to their courts, in May 1793 revenue officials established offices in each of Vermont's counties. They required their inhabitants to license every still producing spirits they operated and assessed unwelcomed fees on each, with fines for violators.^[6]These early, unpopular efforts to support the young federal government with its intrusive

laws soon tested Vermonters' tolerance for them and provide an important backdrop to Governor Chittenden's own impending legal problems.

Revenue Woes

Nobody likes to pay taxes. Vermont, of course, is endowed with an international border separating the USA from Canada, then also known as British North America. The onus of paying the customs duties for goods crossing south from Canada fell principally on those local Vermont importers. While the law initially imposed but modest duties on their shipments of alcohol (i.e., five cents for a gallon of beer, 10 cents for Jamaica proof spirits, 18 cents for Madeira wine, etc.), they became more burdensome, doubling on the heels of Pennsylvania's...