Transitioning from a complicated war footing to an organized civil society at the close of the Revolution proved every bit as difficult as the nation’s early leaders feared. Thirteen proud colonies surrendering aspects of their hard-fought independence in exchange for a new form of federal government generated significant hesitancy after the guns silenced. The placeholder Articles of Confederation (1781-1789) provided some assurance of order at first, but hardly as well as the Constitution did when it took center stage.
As a result, the entire rule of law practiced throughout the new-found states changed virtually overnight, including the state admitted into the fold in 1791, Vermont. In the rush to accommodate the demands made by fledgling federalism in this historically tumultuous region, one of its first leaders, Gov. Thomas Chittenden (1730-1797), soon fell victim to the changed legal landscape. Upon suffering the indignity of being compelled to appear in a newly created federal courtroom in 1797 to go before a jury of his peers, charged with committing a federal offense, he faced immediate imprisonment upon their finding of guilt, only to escape that fate by dying soon after; the only governor among eighty-two others in state history to experience such an ignoble end. 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 document titled “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. Now, in the physically weakened autumn of his life, instead of basking in the glow of his accomplishments among friends, he faced the conviction for a federal crime for his alcohol-infused gregariousness, penalized for doing what so many others did.