Vermont Bar Journal, Vol. 40, No. 2 Winter 2014, Vol. 39, No. 4 | Page 10

Ruminations: The Bradleys of Westminster from $40,000 to $900, saving him thousands of dollars.15 That may have been the reason he left, but whatever it was it must have been grievous. Stephen Rowe Bradley, formerly of Westminster, became a resident of Walpole, New Hampshire. Whatever perceived wrong drove him across the river, the fact of his emigration, in light of his iconic status as a patriot and public servant, must be seen as an abandonment of all he had worked for in his life. Four expulsions, four redirections, constitute monuments in the lives of these two Vermonters. But those transitions are not why they are remembered. Vermont’s Appeal to the Candid and Impartial World Stephen Rowe Bradley was Vermont’s lawyer. His argument for Vermont independence, approved by the governor and council in December of 1779, was his brief. It is the first legal analysis of the state’s claims for its existence.16 It was printed by the firm of Hudson & Goodwin of Hartford, Connecticut, and widely distributed. The Appeal consists of several parts, each dedicated to persuading a different audience, beginning with the “world,” then separately addressing the General Congress of the United States, and the inhabitants of the United States. Bradley wrote for a committee of three agents appointed by the Council of Safety to seek recognition of the infant state, but the voice is Bradley’s. Vermonters “view themselves intitled with the rest of the world, to that liberty which heaven bequeathed to Adam, and equally to all of his posterity.” We do not expect to stand upon any derived power from an arbitrary king; we cannot conceive human nature fallen so low, as to be dependent on a crowned head for liberty to exist; we expect to stand justified to the world, upon that great principle of reason, 10 that we were created with equal privileges in the scale of human beings, among which is that essential right of making our own laws, and chusing our own form of government; and that we, nor our fathers, have never given up that right to any kingdom, colony, province, or state, but retain it