Database Reveals Vermont Congressman Was a Slave Owner

[TexasTowelie]

Matthew Lyon fought in the Battle of Bennington during the Revolutionary War. He founded the Town of Fair Haven, whose post office is named after him.

And he championed free speech, winning reelection to Congress from the Vergennes jail cell where he was imprisoned for criticizing President John Adams.

The businessman, soldier, printer and newspaper publisher was also a slaveholder.

Census records from 1810 show that after moving from Vermont to Kentucky, Lyon owned 10 slaves, a fact that complicates his legacy and calls into question whether his portrait ought to continue hanging in the Statehouse.

“He was quite a rabble rouser,” said Paul Carnahan, a librarian at the Vermont Historical Society. “I wouldn’t put it past to him to own slaves.”

Read more: https://www.sevendaysvt.com/OffMessage/archives/2022/01/11/database-reveals-famed-vermont-historic-figure-was-a-slaveowner

[raging moderate]

1. He did not belong in Vermont, if he believed in slavery.

Vermont was NOT one of the original thirteen states in the Union. Vermont had already abolished slavery when it was an independent colony. I once listened to a public radio discussion of how Vermont became a state, on March 4, 1791. The Vermonters who went to investigate the possibility of statehood did not like what they learned, and almost half of the delegation voted NOT to join the Union, because of slavery. The dissenting delegates were said to have made dire predictions about the effects of slavery on the new United States of America: great inequalities would develop with an arrogant "aristocracy," a terrible war would eventually erupt between free states and slave states, and little children around the world would learn to curse the United States of America.

Maybe the founders of our country should have listened to these dissenting Vermonters.