The war of independence soon gave opportunity for the British authorities on the Canada side to seek to detach the Vermonters from their relations to the revolting colonies.[437] The last of the royal governors of New Hampshire had fled in Sept., 1775, and a congress at Exeter had assumed executive control in Jan., 1776. The next year (1777) a convention framed a constitution, and by a stretch of power, as is told in Ira Allen’s _Hist. of Vermont_, it was adopted without recurrence to the people’s vote. In March, 1778, the state government was fully organized. The dispute with New York went on. Gov. Clinton issued a proclamation. Ethan Allen answered in an _Animadversary Address_ (Hartford, 1778),[438] and in Dec., 1778, a convention of the people of the grants was held, and their resolution was appended to a document prepared by a committee of the assembly, called _A public defence of the right of the New Hampshire grants (so called) on both sides Connecticut river, to associate together, and form themselves into an independent state. Containing remarks on sundry paragraphs of letters from the president of the Council of New Hampshire to his Excellency Governor Chittenden, and the New Hampshire delegates at Congress_.[439] The same year the legislature of New York directed the preparation of a _Collection of evidence in vindication of the territorial rights and jurisdiction of the state of New York, against the claims of the commonwealth of Massachusetts and New Hampshire, and the people of the grants who are commonly called Vermonters_. It was prepared by James Duane, James Morrin Scott, and Egbert Benson, and is printed in the _Fund Publications_ of the New York Historical Society, 1870 (pp. 277-528). On the other side, Ethan Allen published _A vindication of the opposition of the inhabitants of Vermont to the government of New York, and of their right to form an independent state_;[440] and in 1780, in connection with Jonas Fay, and by order of the governor and council, he published _A concise refutation of the claims of New Hampshire and Massachusetts Bay, to the territory of Vermont; with occasional remarks on the long disputed claim of New York to the same_.[441] In 1782, Ethan Allen again brought out at Hartford his _The present state of the controversy between the states of New York and New Hampshire on the one part, and the state of Vermont on the other_.[442] The arguments and proofs were rehearsed in 1784, when the question was to be presented to court, in a brief by James Duane, called _State of the evidence and argument in support of the territorial rights of jurisdiction of New York against the government of New Hampshire and the claimants under it, and against the Commonwealth of Massachusetts_. An amicable adjustment prevented the publication of this document, and it was first printed in the _N. Y. Hist. Soc. Coll._ for 1871.[443]