Later Years
As the war had ended with the 1783 Treaty of Paris, and the United States, operating under the Articles of Confederation, resisted any significant action with respect to Vermont, Allen's historic role as an agitator became less important, and his public role in Vermont's affairs declined. Vermont's government had also become more than a clique dominated by the Allen and Chittenden families due to the territory's rapid population growth.
In 1782, Allen's brother Heber died at the relatively young age of 38. Allen's wife Mary died in June 1783 of consumption, to be followed several months later by their first-born daughter Loraine. While they had not always been close, and Allen's marriage had often been strained, Allen felt these losses deeply. A poem he wrote memorializing Mary was published in the Bennington Gazette.
Read more about this topic: Ethan Allen
Famous quotes containing the word years:
“The unruly waywardness that infirm and choleric years bring with them.”
—William Shakespeare (1564–1616)
“We need not have the loftiest mind to understand that here is no lasting and real satisfaction, that our pleasures are only vanity, that our evils are infinite, and, lastly, that death, which threatens us every moment, must infallibly place us within a few years under the dreadful necessity of being forever either annihilated or unhappy.”
—Blaise Pascal (1623–1662)