A Republic, But Not Yet a State
On July 4, 1777, Vermont was not celebrating Independence Day with fireworks, parades, cookouts, bunting, or speeches about national unity. Vermont was not even a state yet.
It was a newborn republic, barely six months removed from declaring itself independent, not only from Great Britain, but also from New York’s claim over the New Hampshire Grants. And while delegates met in Windsor to hammer out Vermont’s first constitution, British General John Burgoyne was moving south from Canada with an army, threatening the northern frontier and forcing American troops to abandon one of the most important military positions in the region.
In other words, Vermont’s first Fourth of July was not a party. It was a constitutional convention held under military pressure.
Building a Government From Scratch
The convention had opened in Windsor on July 2, 1777, at Elijah West’s tavern, now remembered as the Old Constitution House. The task before the delegates was no small thing. They were trying to turn a disputed territory into a functioning government. Vermont had already declared itself independent in January 1777, first under the name New Connecticut before adopting the name Vermont. Now it needed a constitution, courts, elections, and some claim to legitimacy beyond armed resistance and local defiance.
The constitution completed on July 8, 1777, was bold even by Revolutionary standards. It declared Vermont a “free and independent State,” grounded government in the authority of the people, rejected New York’s land claims, and laid out a frame of government for the new republic. It also included protections for speech, religion, property, trial by jury, and public education. Most famously, it barred adult slavery, making Vermont’s constitution one of the most radical governing documents in North America at the time.
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While the British Advanced
But none of this happened in a calm room detached from events outside.
As the delegates argued in Windsor, Burgoyne’s invasion was unfolding around Lake Champlain. British forces surrounded Fort Ticonderoga and Mount Independence beginning July 2. The American position, commanded by General Arthur St. Clair, was badly exposed once the British gained the high ground at Mount Defiance. By the night of July 5 and early morning of July 6, the Americans evacuated Fort Ticonderoga.
That news hit Vermont hard.
Ticonderoga was not some distant battlefield. It guarded the corridor from Canada into the Hudson Valley. If Burgoyne could push south successfully, the British might split New England from the rest of the colonies. For western Vermont settlers, the danger was immediate. Families fled. Militias stirred. The political question in Windsor was suddenly joined by the military question on the frontier: could this new republic even survive long enough to govern itself?
A Constitution Written Under Pressure
That is what makes Vermont’s first Fourth of July so interesting.
The delegates were not writing theory in peacetime. They were forming a government while an invading army was advancing nearby. The traditional account says that on July 8, as some delegates considered adjourning because of the British threat, a violent thunderstorm trapped them inside long enough to finish the work. Whether every detail of that story is exact or embellished by memory, the larger point holds: Vermont’s constitution was completed in the middle of crisis.
That gives the document a different flavor.
This was not merely Vermont imitating Philadelphia. The United States had declared independence one year earlier, but Vermont was in a stranger position. It was fighting the British, resisting New York, and still seeking recognition from the Continental Congress. Its founders were not simply asking whether monarchy was legitimate. They were asking whether distant government, disputed land titles, and political control from outside the territory were legitimate.
The answer they wrote into their constitution was blunt: government comes from the people who live under it.
More Than a Holiday
That principle has echoed through Vermont ever since, sometimes nobly, sometimes stubbornly, and sometimes with the usual Vermont habit of turning every public question into a town-meeting knife fight. But in July 1777, it was not folklore. It was survival.
The irony is that America’s July 4 holiday marks the signing of a declaration, while Vermont’s first July 4 as an independent republic found its delegates still building the machinery to make independence real. They were not waving flags over a finished nation. They were trying to construct one while the enemy was still moving.
A few weeks later, Vermont and New Hampshire militia would play a major role in stopping Burgoyne’s campaign at the Battle of Bennington. That defeat weakened Burgoyne before his eventual surrender at Saratoga, one of the turning points of the Revolutionary War.
So the picture of Vermont’s first Fourth of July should not be fireworks over a village green. It should be a tavern room in Windsor, delegates sweating through arguments over rights and representation, couriers bringing bad news from the north, settlers fleeing from the Champlain Valley, and a small, defiant republic deciding that it was going to exist anyway.
That is a better founding image than any parade.
Vermont’s first Fourth of July was not a celebration of independence already secured. It was a wager that independence, self-government, and local authority were worth risking everything for.