[FN-2] Respecting this manifesto, John Jay wrote to Governor Morris--"Ethan Allen has commenced author and orator. A philippic of his against New-York is handed about. There is quaintness, impudence, and art in it."
Meantime Governor Clinton, inflexibly determined to preserve the disputed jurisdiction, was exerting himself to the utmost for that object; and in order, apparently, to bring the question to a test, several persons were arrested in the course of the Summer of 1781, within the territory of the Grants, under the pretext of some military delinquency. This procedure was the signal for another tempest. Governor Chittenden wrote to officers of New-York, demanding the release of the prisoners taken from the Grants--asserting their determination to maintain the government they had "set up," [FN-1] and threatening that, in the event of an invasion of the territory of New-York by the common enemy, unless those prisoners were given up, they would render no assistance to New-York. This letter also contained an admonition, "that power was not limited only to New-York." [FN-2] Nor was this all. While the country was threatened by invasion both from the north and the west, the spirit of the Vermont insurgents began to spread among the militia in the northern towns east of the Hudson, belonging to General Gansevoort's own brigade. Thus, on the one hand, General Stark was calling upon him for assistance against the enemy apparently approaching from Lake Champlain, at the same time that Governor Clinton was directing him to quell the spirit of insubordination along the line of the New Hampshire Grants; and both of these duties were to be discharged, with a knowledge that a portion of his own command was infected with the insurgent spirit. Added to all which was, the necessity of watching, as with an eagle's eye, the conduct of the swarms of loyalists within the bosom of Albany and in the towns adjacent; while for his greater comfort, he was privately informed that the Green Mountain Boys were maturing a plot for his abduction. Meantime the government of the Grants had effected an organization of their own militia, and disclosures had been made to the government of New-York, imputing to the leading men of the Grants a design, in the event of a certain contingency, of throwing the weight of their own forces into the scale of the Crown. The following letter may be considered important in this connexion:--