Then Again: The trial of Thomas Chittenden

In targeting Chittenden, prosecutors were trying to make an example of one of the most revered and influential men in Vermont.

By Mark Bushnell
June 2, 2024, 7:01 am



Late in his tenure, Vermont’s first governor, Thomas Chittenden, was put on trial for violating federal liquor laws. Image from the Vermont Historical Society

Thomas Chittenden must have known the knock was coming. Weeks earlier, on May 20, 1797, a federal judge had issued a summons for him to appear in court in Windsor to face trial. Word of the indictment likely reached Chittenden quickly. Vermont was, after all, a small place, with only a quarter of its population today, and Chittenden was among the best connected people in the new state. He was, indeed, its governor.

The summons finally arrived on July 21, when Deputy U.S. Marshal Samuel Fitch left the document at Chittenden’s Williston farmhouse. It ordered the governor to appear in court on Aug. 7 to face charges of violating federal liquor laws, which were a major flashpoint during the final decade of the 1700s.

If you have never heard of this incident, cut yourself some slack. The dramatic case, involving a sitting state governor being charged with breaking federal laws, doesn’t appear in histories of Vermont; intriguingly, it wasn’t even covered in newspapers at the time.

Almost as soon as the court documents were created in 1797, they were filed away. For more than two centuries, the case was forgotten. Then, recently, historian Gary Shattuck, who focuses on legal cases in the early years of Vermont, noticed Chittenden’s name on a list of defendants in federal cases.

[...]