Altered America (15 page)

             
He thumbed through the letters and pulled one to his nose. “Is this the same George Washington that I gave a commission to back in... oh, what year was it?”

             
“1759, My Lord.”

             
“Yes, yes, 1759. I understand he tweaked old Howe’s nose at the battle for Long Island, forced him to move the rest of the army onto Brooklyn Heights, captured the whole damn lot of them. Putnam, Sullivan, Chester, and we even killed a handful of the junior captains. Can you imagine what a mess this whole colonial affair might have been if I had not commissioned this Washington?”

             
The captain smiled. “No, sir, I could not.”

Guns of the Green Mountains

by Ryan McCall

Vermont Republic, 1802

              Matthew Lyon carefully watched the line of Redcoats on horseback as they made their way along the road. He was positioned in the branches of a sturdy pine tree, and using a telescope to get a better view of them. He spotted the officer he was looking for near the front of the line—the British captain who had ordered many of his friends and comrades to their deaths. Now it was time for Matthew to repay the blood debt.

             
He waved his hand to give the signal to the men below him. They quickly passed it along. Matthew remained in the tree and continued to watch the horsemen. After a few minutes the sound of gunfire erupted through the forest. Several of the Redcoats were hit and went down; some of them started firing back, but they were soon cut down as well. By the time it was all over, roughly one third of the British soldiers lay dead along the road, another third were captive, and the remaining third had fled.

             
Matthew climbed down the tree, his wrinkled hands gripping the rough branches, and he felt a few of his muscles protest in pain.

             
I’m getting too old for this,
he thought.

             
He had fought in four wars, including this one, and sometimes wondered if it was all he was destined to do. First had been the Revolutionary War—those days Matthew looked back on rather fondly. Not the starting days, when he served under the tyrannous General Gates, but later, when he joined Seth Warner’s regiment in Vermont’s Green Mountain Boys. Back then it seemed as if everyone was full of hope and idealism, but it hadn’t lasted.

             
The Allen brothers, Ethan and Ira—the founders of Vermont’s militia—had grown disillusioned with the revolution. They had opened negotiations with the British in the last years of the war, but the British defeat had rendered it meaningless. Matthew had not been pleased with the Allen brothers, their actions bordering on treason, so when the Army Crisis came, both he and Seth Warner had remained firm on not contacting the British, believing that the United States was still the best choice for Vermont.

             
Unfortunately, the idea of the United States had not proven to be as viable in practice as in theory.

             
It had all started at Newburgh. The end of the war had many in the Continental Army feeling as if Congress was going to renege on its promise of pay for their years of service. They had marched on Congress. Whether they had actually intended violence or not had not mattered. Something had gone wrong. Shots were fired in the chaos, and congress members ended up dead. General Horatio Gates had imprisoned those who hadn’t been shot and set up a military government with the support of Alexander Hamilton, who had always been in favour of a centralised government.

             
With the rump Congress busy solidifying military control over the nation, New York had taken matters into its own hands and invaded Vermont. Matthew had never been so unhappy to be wrong. The war with New York had taken the lives of both Allen brothers and Seth Warner.

             
Matthew himself had been injured during the Battle of Middlebury and spent the rest of the war recuperating. He rubbed his left shoulder and felt the bulbous scar tissue there. He had suffered a shrapnel hit from New Yorker cannon fire that had blasted his command building to pieces.

             
Vermont had eventually prevailed, waging a successful war along the Hudson Valley against the New Yorkers. Matthew had signed the treaty on behalf of Vermont, settling the border between the states at Bennington and Rutland.

             
A few years later came the next war, the one that finally ended the United States as a nation. Hamilton’s assassination set off events that had the federal army fighting the state militias.

             
After two years of brutal war, what was left were separate and independent nations; which had long given up on the heavy handed and corrupt federal dictatorship of Gates. Matthew had been proud to sign the Republic of Vermont’s Constitution, alongside the first president Thomas Newburn.

             
The rest of the New England colonies had re-joined Great Britain. A great deal of loyalists had settled there and the local governments welcomed the stability of British rule as opposed to the chaotic years they had been through under Hamilton and Gates. Calling themselves the Confederation of New England, they were part of the British Empire, but were in control of their own internal affairs.

             
Gates still ran a dictatorship, retaining control of Pennsylvania and New Jersey, though the more southerly states were in the midst of reforming their own, separate governments, just as New York had.

             
And now this new war with the British came. Matthew had been Vermont’s foreign minister and he had tried to deal with border issues diplomatically, but it had all been for nought. Radical elements in Vermont had taken matters into their own hands and attacked towns in New Hampshire to defend against foreign encroachment.

             
The British and New England armies quickly occupied the entirety of the nation. Vermont’s National Army hadn’t stood a chance, so now the only fight left was the latest version of the Green Mountain Boys.

             
Matthew had fled the state capitol after the Vermont Armies were beaten and he had organized what remained of them into guerrilla groups.

             
They picked their fights carefully and strategically. The redcoats seemed even less capable of dealing with guerrillas than they had been during the Revolutionary War and after six months of this Matthew was sure they were beginning to feel the strain.

             
He winced as he scraped his fingers roughly on the last branch before dropping to the ground. Maybe trees weren’t the best place to command from anymore.

             
His officers were walking back to report. The bright morning sunlight had penetrated the trees and highlighting their figures.

             
Seth Warner, Junior, the son of his old comrade, approached him. He was a brown-haired fellow of twenty-five with a young looking face, though his eyes betrayed the experience that the death of family brings.

             
Matthew had looked out for him after the death of his father, and after his own son and wife had been killed by Federal troops during the Separation War. He had been someone to share his grief and loss with. Now, the lad was determined to fight the Redcoats, and as much as Matthew didn’t want to see anything happen to him, he couldn’t deny him the right to fight for his country.  So, he had taken him into his guerrilla army, where Seth had proven himself to be every bit his father’s son.  An excellent soldier and natural leader, he was Matthew’s right-hand man in the guerrilla outfit.

             
“You were right,” Seth said.  “They weren’t prepared for us at all. Whoever gives you your information is a godsend.”

             
“Any casualties?” Matthew asked.

             
“No.” Seth knew he wasn't referring to the enemy. “A few flesh wounds—they managed to get off a few pistol shots at us—but nothing serious.”

             
Seth looked like he wanted to ask something, so Matthew inquired, “What is it?”

             
“Uh… we have a dozen prisoners. What should we do with them?”

             
He sounded reluctant to even ask the question. Matthew supposed he couldn’t blame him, after what he had ordered the last time.

             
His blood had been up in the aftermath of the massacre at Craftsbury.  The Redcoats had killed almost thirty Vermont citizens. It was only two days after the massacre when Matthew’s men had caught three British soldiers, and he’d had them executed on the spot. When further reports of what had really happened at Craftsbury made their way to the guerrillas, he’d soon regretted his actions. The soldiers had been looking for another guerrilla group led by Samuel O’Dee. O’Dee and his men had been hiding in the town and he had ordered an attack on the soldiers with the civilians still around. The Redcoats had of course responded, and the resulting battle had left many of the bystanders dead purely by chance.

             
Matthew deeply regretted killing the prisoners, O’Dee was as much to blame for the massacre as the redcoats—he should never have attacked them like that—but he had never been one for patience. He had escaped the Craftsbury battle and was still leading his small band somewhere further north.

             
After pondering and rubbing his greying hair, Matthew replied, “Take their supplies and weapons, and tie them up. We’ll leave them here, no doubt the ones who escaped will be leading a much bigger party this way soon enough.  Let them deal with them.”

             
Seth nodded and went to attend to the task.

             
Matthew rubbed his aching back as he watched Seth give his orders to the men who were scavenging the bodies of the fallen Redcoat soldiers and horses lying in the road.  Matthew knew he couldn’t lead the resistance forever, so he’d been giving Seth more and more responsibility recently.  It was his hope that the boy would follow in his father’s footsteps, to lead the Green Mountain Boys when the time came.

* * *

              Miles away from Matthew’s resistance group, Lieutenant Colonel Benjamin Tucker of the British Army was receiving news of the ambush from the surviving officer. The man was covered in dirt and his red uniform was messy and out of place. This was in contrast to the officers standing around the wooden-walled room, who were all perfectly immaculate.

             
Tucker dismissed the man who had reported to him and ordered a major to take a large group of soldiers to ferret out their attackers, though he knew it would be pointless. The rebels would be long gone by the time his men reached the area.

             
Benjamin was very familiar with the man leading the group up there. He and Matthew Lyon had been comrades a lifetime ago. Benjamin had been a member of Vermont’s militia even before the Revolutionary War. He had been captured after Ethan Allen’s disastrous attempt at seizing Montreal in 1775, and during his time as a prisoner he had chosen to throw in his lot with the British, earning him the ire of Allen and his men.

             
Tucker had questioned his decision when the British sued for peace, but the instability and collapse of the United States had proven that he had picked the right side. Without the empire’s guidance, the colonies had fallen to squabbling and split apart. Most of New England had elected to re-join Britain, though it was contingent on them retaining a certain level of independence.  No doubt, the southern states would also see the light before long and rejoin their British brethren.

             
Now here he was, sitting over charts in the warm, wooden garrison building, having to track down his old comrades and the Vermont resistance they led. Officially, Vermont was now part of the New England Confederation. Most of the Vermont Council had signed the surrender and annexation treaty, as they were actually getting a good deal out of it. They would maintain their own parliament and internal laws, and as part of the Confederation they wouldn’t have to worry about being attacked by New York or Pennsylvania again.  If either of the two aggressive nations tried it, they would have the full force of the entire Confederation as well as the British Empire to contend with.  But it seemed as if Matthew and a few other diehards simply couldn’t accept anything less than complete independence.

             
Benjamin’s background, experience, and familiarity with the ‘Green Mountain’ leaders were the reason he had been placed in charge of the garrison here at Montpelier.

             
He had managed to capture at least three of the guerrilla bands already, and as far as he could tell Matthew’s was one of the last remaining, along with the brute, O’Dee, who’d been something of a headache, attacking in the middle of towns, forcing civilian casualties.  The brute was making foolish moves, however—he had lost a lot of men at Craftsbury and even now, Captain Franklin Murray was running him down with his unit of horsemen.  It wouldn’t be long now.  He trusted Murray to deliver O’Dee, Murray being a man made for fighting guerrillas.

             
It was Matthew Lyon that was going to be the tough nut to crack. He seemed to know exactly when and where to strike, with just enough time to get away from the area before opposing forces moved in.

             
Benjamin suspected someone was feeding Seth information; unfortunately, he had no idea who. Normally he would look at Vermont’s local leaders, but none of the civilian leaders in Montpelier were privy to the rebel movements. Benjamin had had his men search all of the old militia bases, but it was to no avail. Not that he had really expected Matthew to be using the same old places after twenty seven years.