Not the least of Haldimand’s difficulties was that he had to negotiate peace and wage war at the same time, for, while directing or controlling border raids at other points on the Canadian frontier, he had on his hands, from 1779 onwards, troublesome and in the end abortive negotiations with the settlers in the present state of Vermont. Of the character of these settlers he seems to have had but a poor opinion, their lawless antecedents no doubt not being to his mind. Ethan Allen and the Green Mountain Boys had not been animated by American patriotism alone when at the beginning of the war they took Ticonderoga. They had in their minds to put themselves in evidence and to vindicate their claim to be free of New York. While the war went on, and after it ended, their determination to be an independent state was as strong as ever; and their negotiations with Canada were an intimation to Congress that the price of their continued adhesion to the continental cause must be recognition of their local independence. The policy had the immediate merit of giving them a respite from Canadian raids, and it left open a choice of future issues. The Vermont men knew the value or the weakness of their geographical position as regards Canada. It was patent then as it was in the later war of 1812. In a private letter to Lord North, dated the 24th of October, 1783,[153] Haldimand wrote, ‘Since the provisional treaty has been made public, several persons of influence in the state of Vermont have been here at different times, they all agree in describing these people as very averse to Congress and its measures.... They made no scruple of telling me that Vermont must either be annexed to Canada or become mistress of it, as it is the only channel by which the produce of their country can be conveyed to a market, but they assured me that they rather wished the former.’ The Vermont settlers were, in short, like many states and many individuals before and since, on the fence; but in the end they were neither annexed to Canada nor did they become mistress of her, for in 1791 Vermont became a state of the American Union, and Canada worked out her own salvation.