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Euclid

Euclid (Εὐκλείδης; fl. 300 BC) was an ancient Greek mathematician active as a geometer and logician. Considered the "father of geometry", he is chiefly known for the Elements treatise, which established the foundations of geometry that largely dominated the field until the early 19th century. His system, now referred to as Euclidean geometry, involved new innovations in combination with a synthesis of theories from earlier Greek mathematicians, including Eudoxus of Cnidus, Hippocrates of Chios, Thales and Theaetetus. With Archimedes and Apollonius of Perga, Euclid is generally considered among the greatest mathematicians of antiquity, and one of the most influential in the history of mathematics.

Very little is known of Euclid's life, and most information comes from the scholars Proclus and Pappus of Alexandria many centuries later. Medieval Islamic mathematicians invented a fanciful biography, and medieval Byzantine and early Renaissance scholars mistook him for the earlier philosopher Euclid of Megara. It is now generally accepted that he spent his career in Alexandria and lived around 300 BC, after Plato's students and before Archimedes. There is some speculation that Euclid studied at the Platonic Academy and later taught at the Musaeum; he is regarded as bridging the earlier Platonic tradition in Athens with the later tradition of Alexandria.

In the Elements, Euclid deduced the theorems from a small set of axioms. He also wrote works on perspective, conic sections, spherical geometry, number theory, and mathematical rigour. In addition to the Elements, Euclid wrote a central early text in the optics field, Optics, and lesser-known works including Data and Phaenomena. Euclid's authorship of On Divisions of Figures and Catoptrics has been questioned. He is thought to have written many lost works.

Traditional narrative

The English name 'Euclid' is the anglicized version of the Ancient Greek name Eukleídes (Εὐκλείδης). It is derived from 'eu-' (εὖ; 'well') and 'klês' (-κλῆς; 'fame'), meaning "renowned, glorious". In English, by metonymy, 'Euclid' can mean his most well-known work, Euclid's Elements, or a copy thereof, and is sometimes synonymous with 'geometry'.

As with many ancient Greek mathematicians, the details of Euclid's life are mostly unknown. He is accepted as the author of four mostly extant treatises—the Elements, Optics, Data, Phaenomena—but besides this, there is nothing known for certain of him. The traditional narrative mainly follows the 5th century AD account by Proclus in his Commentary on the First Book of Euclid's Elements, as well as a few anecdotes from Pappus of Alexandria in the early 4th century.

According to Proclus, Euclid lived shortly after several of Plato's ( BC) followers and before the mathematician Archimedes (c. 287 BC); specifically, Proclus placed Euclid during the rule of Ptolemy I ((r. 305/304 – 282) BC). Euclid's birthdate is unknown; some scholars estimate around 330 or 325 BC, but others refrain from speculating. It is presumed that he was of Greek descent, but his birthplace is unknown. Proclus held that Euclid followed the Platonic tradition, but there is no definitive confirmation for this. It is unlikely he was a contemporary of Plato, so it is often presumed that he was educated by Plato's disciples at the Platonic Academy in Athens. Historian Thomas Heath supported this theory, noting that most capable geometers lived in Athens, including many of those whose work Euclid built on; historian Michalis Sialaros considers this a mere conjecture. In any event, the contents of Euclid's work demonstrate familiarity with the Platonic geometry tradition.

In his Collection, Pappus mentions that Apollonius studied with Euclid's students in Alexandria, and this has been taken to imply that Euclid worked and founded a mathematical tradition there. The city was founded by Alexander the Great in 331 BC, and the rule of Ptolemy I from 306 BC onwards gave it a stability which was relatively unique amid the chaotic wars over dividing Alexander's empire. Ptolemy began a process of hellenization and commissioned numerous constructions, building the massive Musaeum institution, which was a leading center of education. Euclid is speculated to have been among the Musaeum's first scholars. Euclid's date of death is unknown; it has been speculated that he died c. 270 BC.

Identity and historicity

Euclid is often referred to as 'Euclid of Alexandria' to differentiate him from the earlier philosopher Euclid of Megara, a pupil of Socrates included in dialogues of Plato with whom he was historically conflated. Valerius Maximus, the 1st century AD Roman compiler of anecdotes, mistakenly substituted Euclid's name for Eudoxus (4th century BC) as the mathematician to whom Plato sent those asking how to double the cube. Perhaps on the basis of this mention of a mathematical Euclid roughly a century early, Euclid became mixed up with Euclid of Megara in medieval Byzantine sources (now lost), eventually leading Euclid the mathematician to be ascribed details of both men's biographies and described as Megarensis (lit. 'of Megara'). The Byzantine scholar Theodore Metochites (c. 1300) explicitly conflated the two Euclids, as did printer Erhard Ratdolt's 1482 editio princeps of Campanus of Novara's Latin translation of the Elements. After the mathematician Bartolomeo Zamberti appended most of the extant biographical fragments about either Euclid to the preface of his 1505 translation of the Elements, subsequent publications passed on this identification. Later Renaissance scholars, particularly Peter Ramus, reevaluated this claim, proving it false via issues in chronology and contradiction in early sources.

Medieval Arabic sources give vast amounts of information concerning Euclid's life, but are completely unverifiable. Most scholars consider them of dubious authenticity; Heath in particular contends that the fictionalization was done to strengthen the connection between a revered mathematician and the Arab world. There are also numerous anecdotal stories concerning to Euclid, all of uncertain historicity, which "picture him as a kindly and gentle old man". The best known of these is Proclus' story about Ptolemy asking Euclid if there was a quicker path to learning geometry than reading his Elements, which Euclid replied with "there is no royal road to geometry". This anecdote is questionable since a very similar interaction between Menaechmus and Alexander the Great is recorded from Stobaeus. Both accounts were written in the 5th century AD, neither indicates its source, and neither appears in ancient Greek literature.

Any firm dating of Euclid's activity c. 300 BC is called into question by a lack of contemporary references. The earliest original reference to Euclid is in Apollonius' prefatory letter to the Conics (early 2nd century BC): "The third book of the Conics contains many astonishing theorems that are useful for both the syntheses and the determinations of number of solutions of solid loci. Most of these, and the finest of them, are novel. And when we discovered them we realized that Euclid had not made the synthesis of the locus on three and four lines but only an accidental fragment of it, and even that was not felicitously done." The Elements is speculated to have been at least partly in circulation by the 3rd century BC, as Archimedes and Apollonius take several of its propositions for granted; however, Archimedes employs an older variant of the theory of proportions than the one found in the Elements. The oldest physical copies of material included in the Elements, dating from roughly 100 AD, can be found on papyrus fragments unearthed in an ancient rubbish heap from Oxyrhynchus, Roman Egypt. The oldest extant direct citations to the Elements in works whose dates are firmly known are not until the 2nd century AD, by Galen and Alexander of Aphrodisias; by this time it was a standard school text. Some ancient Greek mathematicians mention Euclid by name, but he is usually referred to as "ὁ στοιχειώτης" ("the author of Elements"). In the Middle Ages, some scholars contended Euclid was not a historical personage and that his name arose from a corruption of Greek mathematical terms.

Elements

Euclid is best known for his thirteen-book treatise, the Elements (Στοιχεῖα; ), considered his magnum opus. Much of its content originates from earlier mathematicians, including Eudoxus, Hippocrates of Chios, Thales and Theaetetus, while other theorems are mentioned by Plato and Aristotle. It is difficult to differentiate the work of Euclid from that of his predecessors, especially because the Elements essentially superseded much earlier and now-lost Greek mathematics. The classicist Markus Asper concludes that "apparently Euclid's achievement consists of assembling accepted mathematical knowledge into a cogent order and adding new proofs to fill in the gaps" and the historian Serafina Cuomo described it as a "reservoir of results". Despite this, Sialaros furthers that "the remarkably tight structure of the Elements reveals authorial control beyond the limits of a mere editor".

The Elements does not exclusively discuss geometry as is sometimes believed. It is traditionally divided into three topics: plane geometry (books 1–6), basic number theory (books 7–10) and solid geometry (books 11–13)—though book 5 (on proportions) and 10 (on irrational lines) do not exactly fit this scheme. The heart of the text is the theorems scattered throughout. Using Aristotle's terminology, these may be generally separated into two categories: "first principles" and "second principles". The first group includes statements labeled as a "definition" (ὅρος or ὁρισμός), "postulate" (αἴτημα), or a "common notion" (κοινὴ ἔννοια); only the first book includes postulates—later known as axioms—and common notions. The second group consists of propositions, presented alongside mathematical proofs and diagrams. It is unknown if Euclid intended the Elements as a textbook, but its method of presentation makes it a natural fit. As a whole, the authorial voice remains general and impersonal.

Contents
Book 1 of the Elements is foundational for the entire text. It begins with a series of 20 definitions for basic geometric concepts such as lines, angles and various regular polygons. Euclid then presents 10 assumptions (see table, right), grouped into five postulates (axioms) and five common notions. These assumptions are intended to provide the logical basis for every subsequent theorem, i.e. serve as an axiomatic system. The common notions exclusively concern the comparison of magnitudes. While postulates 1 through 4 are relatively straightforward, the 5th is known as the parallel postulate and particularly famous. Book 1 also includes 48 propositions, which can be loosely divided into those concerning basic theorems and constructions of plane geometry and triangle congruence (1–26); parallel lines (27–34); the area of triangles and parallelograms (35–45); and the Pythagorean theorem (46–48). The last of these includes the earliest surviving proof of the Pythagorean theorem, described by Sialaros as "remarkably delicate".

Book 2 is traditionally understood as concerning "geometric algebra", though this interpretation has been heavily debated since the 1970s; critics describe the characterization as anachronistic, since the foundations of even nascent algebra occurred many centuries later. The second book has a more focused scope and mostly provides algebraic theorems to accompany various geometric shapes. It focuses on the area of rectangles and squares (see Quadrature), and leads up to a geometric precursor of the law of cosines. Book 3 focuses on circles, while the 4th discusses regular polygons, especially the pentagon. Book 5 is among the work's most important sections and presents what is usually termed as the "general theory of proportion". Book 6 utilizes the "theory of ratios" in the context of plane geometry. It is built almost entirely of its first proposition: "Triangles and parallelograms which are under the same height are to one another as their bases".

From Book 7 onwards, the mathematician Benno Artmann notes that "Euclid starts afresh. Nothing from the preceding books is used". Number theory is covered by books 7 to 10, the former beginning with a set of 22 definitions for parity, prime numbers and other arithmetic-related concepts. Book 7 includes the Euclidean algorithm, a method for finding the greatest common divisor of two numbers. The 8th book discusses geometric progressions, while book 9 includes the proposition, now called Euclid's theorem, that there are infinitely many prime numbers. Of the Elements, book 10 is by far the largest and most complex, dealing with irrational numbers in the context of magnitudes.

The final three books (11–13) primarily discuss solid geometry. By introducing a list of 37 definitions, Book 11 contextualizes the next two. Although its foundational character resembles Book 1, unlike the latter it features no axiomatic system or postulates. The three sections of Book 11 include content on solid geometry (1–19), solid angles (20–23) and parallelepipedal solids (24–37).

Other works

In addition to the Elements, at least five works of Euclid have survived to the present day. They follow the same logical structure as Elements, with definitions and proved propositions.
 * Catoptrics concerns the mathematical theory of mirrors, particularly the images formed in plane and spherical concave mirrors, though the attribution is sometimes questioned.
 * The Data (Δεδομένα), is a somewhat short text which deals with the nature and implications of "given" information in geometrical problems.
 * On Divisions (Περὶ Διαιρέσεων) survives only partially in Arabic translation, and concerns the division of geometrical figures into two or more equal parts or into parts in given ratios. It includes thirty-six propositions and is similar to Apollonius' Conics.
 * The Optics (Ὀπτικά) is the earliest surviving Greek treatise on perspective. It includes an introductory discussion of geometrical optics and basic rules of perspective.
 * The Phaenomena (Φαινόμενα) is a treatise on spherical astronomy, survives in Greek; it is similar to On the Moving Sphere by Autolycus of Pitane, who flourished around 310 BC.

Lost works
Four other works are credibly attributed to Euclid, but have been lost.
 * The Conics (Κωνικά) was a four-book survey on conic sections, which was later superseded by Apollonius' more comprehensive treatment of the same name. The work's existence is known primarily from Pappus, who asserts that the first four books of Apollonius' Conics are largely based on Euclid's earlier work. Doubt has been cast on this assertion by the historian Alexander Jones (classicist), owing to sparse evidence and no other corroboration of Pappus' account.
 * The Pseudaria (Ψευδάρια; lit. 'Fallacies'), was—according to Proclus in (70.1–18)—a text in geometrical reasoning, written to advise beginners in avoiding common fallacies. Very little is known of its specific contents aside from its scope and a few extant lines.
 * The Porisms (Πορίσματα; lit. 'Corollaries') was, based on accounts from Pappus and Proclus, probably a three-book treatise with approximately 200 propositions. The term 'porism' in this context does not refer to a corollary, but to "a third type of proposition—an intermediate between a theorem and a problem—the aim of which is to discover a feature of an existing geometrical entity, for example, to find the centre of a circle". The mathematician Michel Chasles speculated that these now-lost propositions included content related to the modern theories of transversals and projective geometry.
 * The Surface Loci (Τόποι πρὸς ἐπιφανείᾳ) is of virtually unknown contents, aside from speculation based on the work's title. Conjecture based on later accounts has suggested it discussed cones and cylinders, among other subjects.

Legacy

Euclid is generally considered with Archimedes and Apollonius of Perga as among the greatest mathematicians of antiquity. Many commentators cite him as one of the most influential figures in the history of mathematics. The geometrical system established by the Elements long dominated the field; however, today that system is often referred to as 'Euclidean geometry' to distinguish it from other non-Euclidean geometries discovered in the early 19th century. Among Euclid's many namesakes are the European Space Agency's (ESA) Euclid spacecraft, the lunar crater Euclides, and the minor planet 4354 Euclides.

The Elements is often considered after the Bible as the most frequently translated, published, and studied book in the Western World's history. With Aristotle's Metaphysics, the Elements is perhaps the most successful ancient Greek text, and was the dominant mathematical textbook in the Medieval Arab and Latin worlds.

The first English edition of the Elements was published in 1570 by Henry Billingsley and John Dee. The mathematician Oliver Byrne published a well-known version of the Elements in 1847 entitled The First Six Books of the Elements of Euclid in Which Coloured Diagrams and Symbols Are Used Instead of Letters for the Greater Ease of Learners, which included colored diagrams intended to increase its pedagogical effect. David Hilbert authored a modern axiomatization of the Elements.

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Errol Morris

Errol Mark Morris (born February 5, 1948) is an American film director known for documentaries that interrogate the epistemology of their subjects, and the invention of the Interrotron. In 2003, his documentary film The Fog of War: Eleven Lessons from the Life of Robert S. McNamara won the Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature. His film The Thin Blue Line placed fifth on a Sight & Sound poll of the greatest documentaries ever made. Morris is known for making films about unusual subjects; Fast, Cheap & Out of Control interweaves the stories of an animal trainer, a topiary gardener, a robot scientist and a naked mole rat specialist.

Early life and education
Morris was born on February 5, 1948, into a Jewish family in Hewlett, New York. His father died when he was two and he was raised by his mother, a piano teacher. He had one older brother, Noel, who was a computer programmer. After being treated for strabismus in childhood, Morris refused to wear an eye patch. As a consequence, he has limited sight in one eye and lacks normal stereoscopic vision.

In the 10th grade, Morris attended The Putney School, a boarding school in Vermont. He began playing the cello, spending a summer in France studying music under the acclaimed Nadia Boulanger, who also taught Morris's future collaborator Philip Glass. Describing Morris as a teenager, Mark Singer wrote that he "read with a passion the 14-odd Oz books, watched a lot of television, and on a regular basis went with a doting but not quite right maiden aunt ('I guess you'd have to say that Aunt Roz was somewhat demented') to Saturday matinées, where he saw such films as This Island Earth and Creature from the Black Lagoon—horror movies that, viewed again 30 years later, still seem scary to him."

College
Morris attended the University of Wisconsin–Madison, graduating in 1969 with a Bachelor of Arts in history. For a brief time, Morris held small jobs, first as a cable-television salesman, and then as a term-paper writer. His unorthodox approach to applying for graduate school included "trying to get accepted at different graduate schools just by showing up on their doorstep." Having unsuccessfully approached both the University of Oxford and Harvard University, Morris was able to talk his way into Princeton University, where he began studying the history of science, a topic in which he had "absolutely no background." His concentration was in the history of physics, and he was bored and unsuccessful in the prerequisite physics classes he had to take. This, together with his antagonistic relationship with his advisor Thomas Kuhn ('You won't even look through my telescope.' And his response was 'Errol, it's not a telescope, it's a kaleidoscope.') ensured that his stay at Princeton would be short.

Morris left Princeton in 1972, enrolling at Berkeley as a doctoral student in philosophy. At Berkeley, he once again found that he was not well-suited to his subject. "Berkeley was just a world of pedants. It was truly shocking. I spent two or three years in the philosophy program. I have very bad feelings about it", he later said.

Career
After leaving UC Berkeley, he became a regular at the Pacific Film Archive. As Tom Luddy, the director of the archive at the time, later remembered: "He was a film noir nut. He claimed we weren't showing the real film noir. So I challenged him to write the program notes. Then, there was his habit of sneaking into the films and denying that he was sneaking in. I told him if he was sneaking in he should at least admit he was doing it."

Unfinished project on Ed Gein
Inspired by Hitchcock's Psycho, Morris visited Plainfield, Wisconsin in 1975, where he conducted multiple interviews with Ed Gein, the infamous body snatcher who resided at Mendota State Hospital in Madison. He later made plans with German film director Werner Herzog, whom Tom Luddy had introduced to Morris, to return in the summer of 1975 to secretly open the grave of Gein's mother to test their theory that Gein himself had already dug her up. Herzog arrived on schedule, but Morris had second thoughts and was not there. Herzog did not open the grave. Morris later returned to Plainfield, this time staying for almost a year, conducting hundreds of hours of interviews. Despite this, his plans to either write a book or make a film (which he would call Digging up the Past) were left unfinished at the time. In an October 2023 interview with Letterboxd, Morris mentioned that he has since returned to the project, saying "I started rewatching Psycho, because I’m making a movie about Ed Gein."

In the fall of 1976, Herzog visited Plainfield again, this time to shoot part of his film Stroszek.

First films
Morris accepted $2,000 from Herzog and used it to take a trip to Vernon, Florida. Vernon was nicknamed "Nub City" because its residents participated in a particularly gruesome form of insurance fraud in which they deliberately amputated a limb to collect the insurance money. Morris's second documentary was about the town and bore its name, although it made no mention of Vernon as "Nub City", but instead explored other idiosyncrasies of the town's residents. Morris made this omission because he received death threats while doing research; the town's residents were afraid that Morris would reveal their secret.

After spending two weeks in Vernon, Morris returned to Berkeley and began working on a script for a work of fiction that he called Nub City. After a few unproductive months, he happened upon a headline in the San Francisco Chronicle that read, "450 Dead Pets Going to Napa Valley." Morris left for Napa Valley and began working on the film that would become his first feature, Gates of Heaven, which premiered in 1978. Herzog had said he would eat his shoe if Morris completed the documentary. After the film premiered, Herzog publicly followed through on the bet by cooking and eating his shoe, which was documented in the short film Werner Herzog Eats His Shoe by Les Blank.

Gates of Heaven was given a limited release in the spring of 1981. Roger Ebert was a champion of the film, including it on his ballot in the 1992 Sight & Sound critics' poll. Morris returned to Vernon in 1979 and again in 1980, renting a house in town and conducting interviews with the town's citizens. Vernon, Florida premiered at the 1981 New York Film Festival. Newsweek called it, "a film as odd and mysterious as its subjects, and quite unforgettable." The film, like Gates of Heaven, suffered from poor distribution. It was released on video in 1987, and DVD in 2005.

After finishing Vernon, Florida, Morris tried to get funding for a variety of projects. The Road story was about an interstate highway in Minnesota; one project was about Robert Golka, the creator of laser-induced fireballs in Utah; and another story was about Centralia, Pennsylvania, the coal town in which an inextinguishable subterranean fire ignited in 1962. He eventually got funding in 1983 to write a script about John and Jim Pardue, Missouri bank robbers who had killed their father and grandmother and robbed five banks. Morris's pitch went, "The great bank-robbery sprees always take place at a time when something is going wrong in the country. Bonnie and Clyde were apolitical, but it's impossible to imagine them without the Depression as a backdrop. The Pardue brothers were apolitical, but it's impossible to imagine them without Vietnam." Morris wanted Tom Waits and Mickey Rourke to play the brothers, and he wrote the script, but the project eventually failed. Morris worked on writing scripts for various other projects, including a pair of ill-fated Stephen King adaptations.

In 1984, Morris married Julia Sheehan, whom he had met in Wisconsin while researching Ed Gein and other serial killers. He would later recall an early conversation with Julia: "I was talking to a mass murderer but I was thinking of you," he said, and instantly regretted it, afraid that it might not have sounded as affectionate as he had wished. But Julia was actually flattered: "I thought, really, that was one of the nicest things anyone ever said to me. It was hard to go out with other guys after that."

The Thin Blue Line
In 1985, Morris became interested in Dr. James Grigson, a psychiatrist in Dallas. Under Texas law, the death penalty can only be issued if the jury is convinced that the defendant is not only guilty, but will commit further violent crimes in the future if he is not put to death. Grigson had spent 15 years testifying for such cases, and he almost invariably gave the same damning testimony, often saying that it is "one hundred per cent certain" that the defendant would kill again. This led to Grigson being nicknamed "Dr. Death." Through Grigson, Morris met the subject of his next film, 36-year-old Randall Dale Adams.

Adams was serving a life sentence that had been commuted from a death sentence on a legal technicality for the 1976 murder of Robert Wood, a Dallas police officer. Adams told Morris that he had been framed, and that David Harris, who was present at the time of the murder and was the principal witness for the prosecution, had in fact killed Wood. Morris began researching the case because it related to Dr. Grigson. He was at first unconvinced of Adams's innocence. After reading the transcripts of the trial and meeting David Harris at a bar, however, Morris was no longer so sure.

At the time, Morris had been making a living as a private investigator for a well-known private detective agency that specialized in Wall Street cases. Bringing together his talents as an investigator and his obsessions with murder, narration, and epistemology, Morris went to work on the case in earnest. Unedited interviews in which the prosecution's witnesses systematically contradicted themselves were used as testimony in Adams's 1986 habeas corpus hearing to determine if he would receive a new trial. David Harris famously confessed, in a roundabout manner, to killing Wood.

Although Adams was finally found innocent after years of being processed by the legal system, the judge in the habeas corpus hearing officially stated that, "much could be said about those videotape interviews, but nothing that would have any bearing on the matter before this court." Regardless, The Thin Blue Line, as Morris's film would be called, was popularly accepted as the main force behind getting its subject, Randall Adams, out of prison. As Morris said of the film, "The Thin Blue Line is two movies grafted together. On one simple level is the question, Did he do it, or didn't he? And on another level, The Thin Blue Line, properly considered, is an essay on false history. A whole group of people, literally everyone, believed a version of the world that was entirely wrong, and my accidental investigation of the story provided a different version of what happened."

The Thin Blue Line ranks among the most critically acclaimed documentaries ever made. According to a survey by The Washington Post, the film made dozens of critics' top ten lists for 1988, more than any other film that year. It won the documentary of the year award from both the New York Film Critics Circle and the National Society of Film Critics. Despite its widespread acclaim, it was not nominated for an Oscar, which created a small scandal regarding the nomination practices of the academy. The academy cited the film's genre of "non-fiction", arguing that it was not actually a documentary. It was the first of Morris's films to be scored by Philip Glass.

A Brief History of Time, Fast Cheap & Out of Control and later films
Morris wanted to make a film about Albert Einstein's brain and approached Amblin Entertainment about it. Gordon Freeman had acquired the rights to Stephen Hawking's bestseller A Brief History of Time and Steven Spielberg suggested Morris direct it. After reading Hawking's book, Morris agreed to direct a documentary adaptation of it, having studied the philosophy of science at Princeton. Morris's film A Brief History of Time is less an adaptation of Hawking's book than a portrait of the scientist. It combines interviews with Hawking, his colleagues and his family with computer animations and clips from movies like Disney's The Black Hole. Morris said he was "very moved by Hawking as a man", calling him "immensely likable, perverse, funny...and yes, he's a genius."

Morris's Fast, Cheap & Out of Control interweaves interviews with a wild animal trainer, a topiary gardener, a robot scientist and a naked mole rat specialist with stock footage, cartoons and clips from film serials. Roger Ebert said of it, "If I had to describe it, I'd say it's about people who are trying to control things - to take upon themselves the mantle of God." Morris agreed there was a "Frankenstein element", adding "They're all involved in some very odd inquiry about life. It sounds horribly pretentious laid out that way, but there's something mysterious in each of the stories, something melancholy as well as funny. And there's an edge of mortality. For the end of the movie I showed the gardener clipping the top of his camel, clipping in a heavenly light, and then walking away in the rain. You know that this garden is not going to last much longer than the gardener's lifetime." The film was scored by Caleb Sampson of the Alloy Orchestra and photographed by Robert Richardson. Morris dedicated the film to his mother and stepfather, who had recently died. It was named by several critics as one of the best films of 1997.

In 2002, Morris was commissioned to make a short film for the 75th Academy Awards. He was hired based on his advertising resume, not his career as a director of feature-length documentaries. Those interviewed ranged from Laura Bush to Iggy Pop to Kenneth Arrow to Morris's 15-year-old son Hamilton. Morris was nominated for an Emmy for this short film. He considered editing this footage into a feature-length film, focusing on Donald Trump discussing Citizen Kane (this segment was later released on the second issue of Wholphin). Morris went on to make a second short for the 79th Academy Awards in 2007, this time interviewing the various nominees and asking them about their Oscar experiences.

In early 2010, a new Morris documentary was submitted to several film festivals, including Toronto International Film Festival, Cannes Film Festival, and Telluride Film Festival. The film, Tabloid, features interviews with Joyce McKinney, a former Miss Wyoming, who was convicted in absentia for the kidnap and indecent assault of a Mormon missionary in England during 1977.

The Fog of War
In 2003, Morris won the Oscar for Best Documentary for The Fog of War, a film about the career of Robert S. McNamara, the Secretary of Defense during the Vietnam War under Presidents John F. Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson. In the haunting opening about McNamara's relationship with U.S. General Curtis LeMay during World War II, Morris brings out complexities in the character of McNamara, which shaped McNamara's positions in the Cuban Missile Crisis and the Vietnam War. Like his earlier documentary, The Thin Blue Line, The Fog of War included extensive use of re-enactments, a technique which many had believed was inappropriate for documentaries prior to his Oscar win.

Commercials
Although Morris has achieved fame as a documentary filmmaker, he is also an accomplished director of television commercials. In 2002, Morris directed a series of television ads for Apple Computer as part of a popular "Switch" campaign. The commercials featured ex-Windows users discussing their various bad experiences that motivated their own personal switches to Macintosh. One commercial in the series, starring Ellen Feiss, a high-schooler friend of his son Hamilton Morris, became an Internet meme. Morris has directed hundreds of commercials for various companies and products, including Adidas, AIG, Cisco Systems, Citibank, Kimberly-Clark's Depend brand, Levi's, Miller High Life, Nike, PBS, The Quaker Oats Company, Southern Comfort, EA Sports, Toyota and Volkswagen. Many of these commercials are available on his website.

In July 2004, Morris directed another series of commercials in the style of the "Switch" ads. This campaign featured Republicans who voted for Bush in the 2000 election giving their personal reasons for voting for Kerry in 2004. Upon completing more than 50 commercials, Morris had difficulty getting them on the air. Eventually, the liberal advocacy group MoveOn PAC paid to air a few of the commercials. Morris also wrote an editorial for The New York Times discussing the commercials and Kerry's losing campaign.

In late 2004, Morris directed a series of noteworthy commercials for Sharp Electronics. The commercials enigmatically depicted various scenes from what appeared to be a short narrative that climaxed with a car crashing into a swimming pool. Each commercial showed a slightly different perspective on the events, and each ended with a cryptic weblink. The weblink was to a fake webpage advertising a prize offered to anyone who could discover the secret location of some valuable urns. It was in fact an alternate reality game. The original commercials can be found on Morris's website.

Morris directed a series of commercials for Reebok that featured six prominent National Football League (NFL) players. The 30-second promotional videos were aired during the 2006 NFL season.

In 2013, Morris stated that he has made around 1,000 commercials during his career. Since then he has continued in the field, including a 2019 campaign for Chipotle.

In 2015, Morris made commercials for medical technology firm Theranos, and interviewed its founder, Elizabeth Holmes. After the company fell in disgrace, Morris was criticized by The Telegraph for seeming "captivated" by Holmes, and for contributing to Holmes' mythical persona as a visionary. In a 2019 New Yorker interview, Morris reflected, "To me, what really is interesting about Elizabeth [Holmes] ... did she really see herself as a fraud? Was it calculation? I have a hard time squaring that with my own experience. Could I have been self-deceived, delusional? You betcha. I'm no different than the next guy. I'd like to think I'm a little different. But I'm still fascinated by her."

Writings and documentary shorts
Morris has also written long-form journalism, exploring different areas of interest and published on The New York Times website. A collection of these essays, titled Believing is Seeing: Observations on the Mysteries of Photography, was published by Penguin Press on September 1, 2011. In November 2011, Morris premiered a documentary short titled "The Umbrella Man"—featuring Josiah "Tink" Thompson—about the Kennedy assassination on The New York Times website.

In 2012, Morris published his second book, A Wilderness of Error: The Trials of Jeffrey MacDonald, about Jeffrey MacDonald, the Green Beret physician convicted of killing his wife and two daughters on February 17, 1970. Morris first became interested in the case in the early 1990s and believes that MacDonald is not guilty after undertaking extensive research. Morris explained in a July 2013 interview, prior to the reopening of the case: "What happened here is wrong. It's wrong to convict a man under these circumstances. And if I can help correct that, I will be a happy camper." He now states that he does not believe that Macdonald is guilty, but thinks it possible that Macdonald is guilty.

Style and legacy
To conduct interviews, Morris invented a machine, called the Interrotron, which allows the interviewer and his subject to make eye-contact with each other while both staring through the camera lens itself. He explains the device as follows:

"Teleprompters are used to project an image on a two-way mirror. Politicians and newscasters use them so that they can read text and look into the lens of the camera at the same time. What interests me is that nobody thought of using them for anything other than to display text: read a speech or read the news and look into the lens of the camera. I changed that. I put my face on the Teleprompter or, strictly speaking, my live video image. For the first time, I could be talking to someone, and they could be talking to me and at the same time looking directly into the lens of the camera. Now, there was no looking off slightly to the side. No more faux first person. This was the true first person."

Author Marsha McCreadie, in her book Documentary Superstars: How Today's Filmmakers Are Reinventing the Form, had paired Morris with Werner Herzog as practitioners and visionaries in their approach in documentary filmmaking.

Morris employs the use of narrative elements within his films. These include but are not limited to: stylized lighting, musical score, and re-enactment. The use of these elements is rejected by many documentary filmmakers who followed the cinema vérité style of the previous generations. Cinema vérité is characterized by its rejection of artistic additions to documentary film. While Morris faced backlash from many of the older-era filmmakers, his style has been embraced by the younger generations of filmmakers, as the use of re-enactment is present in many contemporary documentary films.

Morris advocates the reflexive style of documentary filmmaking. In Bill Nichols's book Introduction to Documentary he states that reflexive documentary "[speaks] not only about the historical world but about the problems and issues of representing it as well." Morris uses his films not only to portray social issues and non-fiction events but also to comment on the reliability of documentary making itself.

His style has been spoofed in the mockumentary series Documentary Now.

Even when interviewing controversial figures, Morris does not generally believe in adversarial interviews:"I don't really believe in adversarial interviews. I don't think you learn very much. You create a theater, a gladiatorial theater, which may be satisfying to an audience, but if the goal is to learn something that you don't know, that's not the way to go about doing it. In fact, it's the way to destroy the possibility of ever hearing anything interesting or new. .... the most interesting and most revealing comments have come not as a result of a question at all, but having set up a situation where people actually want to talk to you, and want to reveal something to you."

Feature films

 * Gates of Heaven (1978)
 * Vernon, Florida (1981)
 * The Thin Blue Line (1988)
 * The Dark Wind (1991), fiction movie
 * A Brief History of Time (1991)
 * Fast, Cheap & Out of Control (1997)
 * Mr. Death: The Rise and Fall of Fred A. Leuchter, Jr. (1999)
 * The Fog of War: Eleven Lessons from the Life of Robert S. McNamara (2003)
 * Standard Operating Procedure (2008)
 * Tabloid (2010)
 * The Act of Killing (executive producer) (2012)
 * The Unknown Known (2013)
 * The Look of Silence (executive producer) (2014)
 * Happy Father's Day (video) (2015)
 * Uncle Nick (executive producer) (2015)
 * The B-Side: Elsa Dorfman's Portrait Photography (2016)
 * National Bird (executive producer) (2016)
 * American Dharma (2018)
 * Enemies of the State (executive producer) (2020)
 * My Psychedelic Love Story (2020)
 * The Pigeon Tunnel (2023)

Short films

 * Survivors (2008)
 * They Were There (Documentary short) (2011)
 * El Wingador (Documentary short) (2012)
 * Three Short Films About Peace (2014)
 * Leymah Gbowee: The Dream (Documentary short) (2014)
 * Nina & Irena (Documentary short) (2023)

Television

 * Errol Morris Interrotron Stories: Digging Up the Past (TV miniseries documentary) (1995)
 * First Person (TV series documentary) (17 episodes) (2000)
 * Op-Docs (TV series documentary trilogy)
 * The Umbrella Man about Umbrella man (JFK assassination) (2011)
 * November 22, 1963 (2013)
 * A Demon in the Freezer (2016)
 * P.O.V. (executive producer) (2014–2016)
 * It's Not Crazy, It's Sports (TV documentary series) (2015)
 * The Subterranean Stadium (TV movie) (2015)
 * The Streaker (TV movie) (2015)
 * The Heist (TV movie) (2015)
 * Most Valuable Whatever (TV movie) (2015)
 * Chrome (TV movie) (2015)
 * Being Mr. Met (TV movie) (2015)
 * Zillow Hiram's Home (TV movie) (2016)
 * Wormwood (miniseries) (2017)
 * A Wilderness of Error (docuseries on FX) (2020)

Accolades

 * Gates of Heaven (1978) was long featured on Roger Ebert's list of the ten greatest films ever made.
 * Golden Horse for Best Foreign Film at the Taiwan International Film Festival for The Thin Blue Line (1988)
 * New York Film Critics Circle and the National Society of Film Critics Best Documentary for The Thin Blue Line (1988)
 * Washington Post Best Film of the Year for The Thin Blue Line (1988)
 * Edgar Award for Best Motion Picture, from the Mystery Writers of America, for The Thin Blue Line (1989)
 * Guggenheim Fellowship (1989)
 * MacArthur Fellowship (1989)
 * Emmy for Best Commercial for PBS commercial "Photobooth" (2001)
 * In December 2001, the United States' National Film Preservation Foundation announced that Morris's The Thin Blue Line would be one of the 25 films selected that year for preservation in the National Film Registry at the Library of Congress, bringing the total at the time to 325.
 * 2002 International Documentary Association list of the 20 all-time best documentaries: The Thin Blue Line (#2), Fast, Cheap & Out of Control (#14)
 * Best Documentary of the Year awards for The Fog of War (2003): the National Board of Review, the Los Angeles Film Critics Association, the Chicago Film Critics, and the Washington D.C. Area Film Critics.
 * In 2003, The Guardian put him seventh in its list of the world's 40 best active directors.
 * Academy Award for Documentary Feature The Fog of War (2004)
 * Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences (2007)
 * Jury Grand Prix Silver Bear at the 2008 Berlin International Film Festival for Standard Operating Procedure
 * Columbia Journalism Award (2013)
 * In 2019, The Fog of War was selected by the Library of Congress for preservation in the National Film Registry for being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant".

Honorary degrees

 * Middlebury College, Hon. D.F.A. (2010)
 * Brandeis University, Hon. D.H.L. (2011)
 * University of Wisconsin–Madison, Hon. D.H.L. (2013)

Books

 * A Wilderness of Error: The Trials of Jeffrey MacDonald (Penguin Press, 4 September 2012)
 * The Ashtray (Or the Man Who Denied Reality) (University of Chicago Press, 2018)
 * The Ashtray (Or the Man Who Denied Reality) (University of Chicago Press, 2018)

license: Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/

title: Errol Morris


text:
Ethan Allen

Ethan Allen (January 21, 1738 – February 12, 1789) was an American farmer, writer, military officer and politician. He is best known as one of the founders of Vermont and for the capture of Fort Ticonderoga during the American Revolutionary War, and was also the brother of Ira Allen and the father of Fanny Allen.

Allen was born in rural Connecticut and had a frontier upbringing, but he also received an education that included some philosophical teachings. In the late 1760s, he became interested in the New Hampshire Grants, buying land there and becoming embroiled in the legal disputes surrounding the territory. Legal setbacks led to the formation of the Green Mountain Boys, whom Allen led in a campaign of intimidation and property destruction to drive New York settlers from the Grants. He and the Patriot-aligned Green Mountain Boys seized the initiative early in the Revolutionary War and captured Fort Ticonderoga in May 1775. In September 1775, Allen led a failed attempt on Montreal which resulted in his capture by the British. He was imprisoned aboard ships of the Royal Navy, then paroled in New York City, and finally released in a prisoner exchange in 1778.

Upon his release, Allen returned to the New Hampshire Grants which had declared independence in 1777, and he resumed political activity in the territory, continuing resistance to New York's attempts to assert control over the territory. Allen lobbied Congress for Vermont's official state recognition, and he participated in controversial negotiations with the British over the possibility of Vermont becoming a separate British province.

Allen wrote accounts of his exploits in the war that were widely read in the 19th century, as well as philosophical treatises and documents relating to the politics of Vermont's formation. His business dealings included successful farming operations, one of Connecticut's early iron works, and land speculation in the Vermont territory. Allen and his brothers purchased tracts of land that became Burlington, Vermont. He was married twice, fathering eight children.

Early life

Allen was born in Litchfield, Connecticut Colony, the first child of Joseph and Mary Baker Allen, both descended from English Puritans. The family moved to the town of Cornwall shortly after his birth due to his father's quest for freedom of religion during the Great Awakening. As a boy, Allen already excelled at quoting the Bible and was known for disputing the meaning of passages. He had five brothers (Heman, Heber, Levi, Zimri, and Ira) and two sisters (Lydia and Lucy). His brothers Ira and Heman were also prominent figures in the early history of Vermont.

The town of Cornwall was frontier territory in the 1740s, but it began to resemble a town by the time that Allen was a teenager, with wood-frame houses beginning to replace the rough cabins of the early settlers. Joseph Allen was one of the wealthier landowners in the area by the time of his death in 1755. He ran a successful farm and had served as town selectman. Allen began studies under a minister in the nearby town of Salisbury with the goal of gaining admission to Yale College.

First marriage and early adulthood
Allen was forced to end his studies upon his father's death. He volunteered for militia service in 1757 in response to the French siege of Fort William Henry, but his unit received word that the fort had fallen while they were en route, and they turned back. The French and Indian War continued over the next several years, but Allen did not participate in any further military activities and is presumed to have tended his farm. In 1762, he became part owner of an iron furnace in Salisbury. He also married Mary Brownson from Roxbury in July 1762, who was five years his senior. They first settled in Cornwall, but moved the following year to Salisbury with their infant daughter Loraine. They bought a small farm and proceeded to develop the iron works. The expansion of the iron works was apparently costly to Allen; he was forced to sell off portions of the Cornwall property to raise funds, and eventually sold half of his interest in the works to his brother Heman. The Allen brothers sold their interest in the iron works in October 1765.

By most accounts, Allen's first marriage was unhappy. His wife was rigidly religious, prone to criticizing him, and barely able to read and write. In contrast, his behavior was sometimes quite flamboyant, and he maintained an interest in learning. Nevertheless, they remained together until Mary's death in 1783. They had five children together, only two of whom reached adulthood.

Allen and his brother Heman went to the farm of a neighbor whose pigs had escaped onto their land, and they seized the pigs. The neighbor sued to have the animals returned to him; Allen pleaded his own case and lost. Allen and Heman were fined ten shillings, and the neighbor was awarded another five shillings in damages. He was also called to court in Salisbury for inoculating himself against smallpox, a procedure that required the sanction of the town selectmen.

Allen met Thomas Young when he moved to Salisbury, a doctor living and practicing just across the provincial boundary in New York. Young taught him a great deal about philosophy and political theory, while Allen shared his appreciation of nature and life on the frontier with Young. They eventually decided to collaborate on a book intended as an attack on organized religion, as Young had convinced Allen to become a Deist. They worked on the manuscript until 1764, when Young moved away from the area taking the manuscript with him. Allen recovered the manuscript many years later, after Young's death. He expanded and reworked the material, and eventually published it as Reason: the Only Oracle of Man.

Heman remained in Salisbury where he ran a general store until his death in 1778, but Allen's movements are poorly documented over the next few years. He lived in Northampton, Massachusetts in the spring of 1766, where his son Joseph was born and where he invested in a lead mine. The authorities asked him to leave Northampton in July 1767, though no official reason is known. Biographer Michael Bellesiles suggests that religious differences and Allen's tendency to be disruptive may have played a role in his departure. Allen briefly returned to Salisbury before settling in Sheffield, Massachusetts with his younger brother Zimri. It is likely that his first visits to the New Hampshire Grants occurred during these years. Sheffield was the family home for ten years, although Allen was often absent for extended periods.

New Hampshire Grants
New Hampshire Governor Benning Wentworth was selling land grants west of the Connecticut River as early as 1749, an area to which New Hampshire had always laid claim. Many of these grants were sold at relatively low prices to land speculators, with Wentworth also reserving for himself a share of each grant. In 1764, King George issued an order resolving the competing claims of New York and New Hampshire in favor of New York. New York had issued land grants that overlapped some of those sold by Wentworth, and authorities there insisted that holders of the Wentworth grants pay a fee to New York to have their grants validated. This fee approached the original purchase price, and many of the holders were land-rich and cash-poor, so there was a great deal of resistance to the demand. By 1769, the situation had deteriorated to the point that surveyors and other figures of New York authority were being physically threatened and driven from the area.

A few of the holders of Wentworth grants were from northwestern Connecticut, and some of them were related to Allen, including Remember Baker and Seth Warner. In 1770, a group of them asked him to defend their case before New York's Supreme Court. Allen hired Jared Ingersoll to represent the grant-holder interest in the trial, which began in July 1770 and pitted Allen against politically powerful New York grant-holders, including New York's Lieutenant Governor Colden, James Duane who was prosecuting the case, and Robert Livingston, the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court who was presiding over the case. The trial was brief and the outcome unsurprising, as the court refused to allow the introduction of Wentworth's grants as evidence, citing their fraudulently issued nature. Duane visited Allen and offered him payments "for going among the people to quiet them". Allen denied taking any money and claimed that Duane was outraged and left with veiled threats, indicating that attempts to enforce the judgment would be met with resistance.

Many historians believe that Allen took these actions because he already held Wentworth grants of his own, although there is no evidence that he was issued any such grants until after he had been asked to take up the defense at the trial. He acquired grants from Wentworth to about 1000 acre in Poultney and Castleton prior to the trial.

Green Mountain Boys
On Allen's return to Bennington, the settlers met at the Catamount Tavern to discuss their options. These discussions resulted in the formation of the Green Mountain Boys in 1770, with local militia companies in each of the surrounding towns. Allen was named their Colonel Commandant, and cousins Seth Warner and Remember Baker were captains of two of the companies. Further meetings resulted in creating committees of safety; they also laid down rules to resist New York's attempts to establish its authority. These included not allowing New York's surveyors to survey any land in the Grants, not just land owned through the Wentworth grants. Allen participated in some of the actions to drive away surveyors, and he also spent much time exploring the territory. He sold some of his Connecticut properties and began buying land farther north in the territory, which he sold at a profit as the southern settlements grew and people began to move farther north.

Friction increased with the provincial government in October 1771, when Allen and a company of Green Mountain Boys drove off a group of Scottish settlers near Rupert. Allen detained two of the settlers and forced them to watch them burn their newly constructed cabins. Allen then ordered them to "go your way now, and complain to that damned scoundrel your Governor, God damn your Governor, Laws, King, Council, and Assembly". The settlers protested his language but Allen continued the tirade, threatening to send any troops from New York to Hell. In response, New York Governor William Tryon issued warrants for the arrests of those responsible, and eventually put a price of £20 (around £3.3k today, or $4.4k) on the heads of six participants, including Allen. Allen and his comrades countered by issuing offers of their own.

The situation deteriorated further over the next few years. Governor Tryon and the Green Mountain Boys exchanged threats, truce offers, and other writings, frequently written by Allen in florid and didactic language while the Green Mountain Boys continued to drive away surveyors and incoming tenants. Most of these incidents did not involve bloodshed, although individuals were at times manhandled, and the Green Mountain Boys sometimes did extensive property damage when driving tenants out. By March 1774, the harsh treatment of settlers and their property prompted Tryon to increase some of the rewards to £100.

Onion River Company
Allen joined his cousin Remember Baker and his brothers Ira, Heman, and Zimri to form the Onion River Company in 1772, a land-speculation organization devoted to purchasing land around the Winooski River, which was known then as the Onion River. The success of this business depended on the defense of the Wentworth grants. Early purchases included about 40000 acre from Edward Burling and his partners; they sold land at a profit to Thomas Chittenden, among others, and their land became the city of Burlington.

The outrage of the Wentworth proprietors was renewed in 1774 when Governor Tryon passed a law containing harsh provisions clearly targeted at the actions of the "Bennington Mob". Vermont historian Samuel Williams called it "an act which for its savage barbarity is probably without parallel in the legislation of any civilized country". Its provisions included the death penalty for interfering with a magistrate, and outlawing meetings of more than three people "for unlawful purposes" in the Grants. The Green Mountain Boys countered with rules of their own, forbidding anyone in the Grants from holding "any office of honor or profit under the colony of N. York".

Allen spent much of the summer of 1774 writing A Brief Narrative of the Proceedings of the Government of New York Relative to Their Obtaining the Jurisdiction of that Large District of Land to the Westward of the Connecticut River, a 200-page polemic arguing the position of the Wentworth proprietors. He had it printed in Connecticut and began selling and giving away copies in early 1775. Historian Charles Jellison describes it as "rebellion in print".

Westminster massacre
Allen traveled into the northern parts of the Grants early in 1775 for solitude and to hunt for game and land opportunities. A few days after his return, news came that blood had finally been shed over the land disputes. Most of the resistance activity had taken place on the west side of the Green Mountains until then, but a small riot broke out in Westminster on March 13 and led to the deaths of two men. Allen and a troop of Green Mountain Boys traveled to Westminster where the town's convention adopted a resolution to draft a plea to the King to remove them "out of so oppressive a jurisdiction". It was assigned to a committee which included Allen. The American Revolutionary War began less than a week after the Westminster convention ended, while Allen and the committee worked on their petition.

Capture of Fort Ticonderoga
Allen received a message from members of an irregular Connecticut militia in late April, following the battles of Lexington and Concord, that they were planning to capture Fort Ticonderoga and requesting his assistance in the effort. Allen agreed to help and began rounding up the Green Mountain Boys, and 60 men from Massachusetts and Connecticut met with Allen in Bennington on May 2, where they discussed the logistics of the expedition. By May 7, these men joined Allen and 130 Green Mountain Boys at Castleton. They elected Allen to lead the expedition, and they planned a dawn raid for May 10. Two small companies were detached to procure boats, and Allen took the main contingent north to Hand's Cove in Shoreham to prepare for the crossing.

On the afternoon of May 9, Benedict Arnold unexpectedly arrived, flourishing a commission from the Massachusetts Committee of Safety. He asserted his right to command the expedition, but the men refused to acknowledge his authority and insisted that they would follow only Allen's lead. Allen and Arnold reached an accommodation privately, the essence of which was that Arnold and Allen would both be at the front of the troops when they attacked the fort.

The troops procured a few boats around 2 a.m. for the crossing, but only 83 men made it to the other side of the lake before Allen and Arnold decided to attack, concerned that dawn was approaching. The small force marched on the fort in the early dawn, surprising the lone sentry, and Allen went directly to the fort commander's quarters, seeking to force his surrender. Lieutenant Jocelyn Feltham was awakened by the noise, and called to wake the fort's commander Captain William Delaplace. He demanded to know by what authority the fort was being entered, and Allen said, "In the name of the Great Jehovah and the Continental Congress!" Delaplace finally emerged from his chambers and surrendered his sword, and the rest of the fort's garrison surrendered without firing a shot. The only casualty had been a British soldier who became concussed when Allen hit him with a cutlass, hitting the man's hair comb and saving his life.

Raids on St. John
On the following day, a detachment of the Boys under Seth Warner's command went to nearby Fort Crown Point and captured the small garrison there. On May 14, following the arrival of 100 men recruited by Arnold's captains, and the arrival of a schooner and some bateaux that had been taken at Skenesboro, Arnold and 50 of his men sailed north to raid Fort St. John, on the Richelieu River downstream from the lake, where a small British warship was reported by the prisoners to be anchored. Arnold's raid was a success; he seized the sloop HMS Royal George (1776), supplies, and a number of bateaux.

Allen, shortly after Arnold's departure on the raid, decided, after his successes at the southern end of the lake, to take and hold Fort St. John himself. To that end, he and about 100 Boys climbed into four bateaux, and began rowing north. After two days without significant food (which they had forgotten to provision in the boats), Allen's small fleet met Arnold's on its way back to Ticonderoga near the foot of the lake. Arnold generously opened his stores to Allen's hungry men, and tried to dissuade Allen from his objective, noting that it was likely the alarm had been raised and troops were on their way to St. John. Allen, likely both stubborn in his determination, and envious of Arnold, persisted.

When Allen and his men landed above St. John and scouted the situation, they learned that a column of 200 or more regulars was approaching. Rather than attempt an ambush on those troops, which significantly outnumbered his tired company, Allen withdrew to the other side of the river, where the men collapsed with exhaustion and slept without sentries through the night. They were awakened when British sentries discovered them and began firing grapeshot at them from across the river. The Boys, in a panic, piled into their bateaux and rowed with all speed upriver. When the expedition returned to Ticonderoga two days later, some of the men were greatly disappointed that they felt they had nothing to show for the effort and risks they took, but the capture of Fort Ticonderoga and Crown Point proved to be important in the Revolutionary War because it secured protection from the British to the North and provided vital cannon for the colonial army.

Promoting an invasion
Following Allen's failed attempt on St. John, many of his men drifted away, presumably drawn by the needs of home and farm. Arnold then began asserting his authority over Allen for control of Ticonderoga and Crown Point. Allen publicly announced that he was stepping down as commander, but remained hopeful that the Second Continental Congress was going to name "a commander for this department ... Undoubtedly, we shall be rewarded according to our merit". Congress, for its part, at first not really wanting any part of the affair, effectively voted to strip and then abandon the forts. Both Allen and Arnold protested these measures, pointing out that doing so would leave the northern border wide open. They both also made proposals to Congress and other provincial bodies for carrying out an invasion of Quebec. Allen, in one instance, wrote that "I will lay my life on it, that with fifteen hundred men, and a proper artillery, I will take Montreal". Allen also attempted correspondence with the people of Quebec and with the Indians living there in an attempt to sway their opinion toward the revolutionary cause.

On June 22, Allen and Seth Warner appeared before Congress in Philadelphia, where they argued for the inclusion of the Green Mountain Boys in the Continental Army. After deliberation, Congress directed General Philip Schuyler, who had been appointed to lead the Army's Northern Department, to work with New York's provincial government to establish (and pay for) a regiment consisting of the Boys, and that they be paid Army rates for their service at Ticonderoga. On July 4, Allen and Warner made their case to New York's Provincial Congress, which, despite the fact that the Royal Governor had placed a price on their heads, agreed to the formation of a regiment. Following a brief visit to their families, they returned to Bennington to spread the news. Allen went to Ticonderoga to join Schuyler, while Warner and others raised the regiment.

Allen loses command of the Boys
When the regimental companies in the Grants had been raised, they held a vote in Dorset to determine who would command the regiment. By a wide margin, Seth Warner was elected to lead the regiment. Brothers Ira and Heman were also given command positions, but Allen was not given any position at all in the regiment. The thorough rejection stung; Allen wrote to Connecticut Governor Jonathan Trumbull, "How the old men came to reject me I cannot conceive inasmuch as I saved them from the incroachments of New York."

The rejection likely had several causes. The people of the Grants were tired of the disputes with New York, and they were tired of Allen's posturing and egotistic behavior, which the success at Ticonderoga had enhanced. Finally, the failure of the attempt on St. John's was widely seen as reckless and ill-advised, attributes they did not appreciate in a regimental leader. Warner was viewed as a more stable and quieter choice, and was someone who also commanded respect. The history of Warner's later actions in the revolution (notably at Hubbardton and Bennington) may be seen as a confirmation of the choice made by the Dorset meeting. In the end, Allen took the rejection in stride, and managed to convince Schuyler and Warner to permit him to accompany the regiment as a civilian scout.

Capture

The American invasion of Quebec departed from Ticonderoga on August 28. On September 4, the army had occupied the Île aux Noix in the Richelieu River, a few miles above Fort St. John, which they then prepared to besiege. On September 8, Schuyler sent Allen and Massachusetts Major John Brown, who had also been involved in the capture of Ticonderoga, into the countryside between St. John and Montreal to spread the word of their arrival to the habitants and the Indians. They were successful enough in gaining support from the inhabitants that Quebec's governor, General Guy Carleton, reported that "they have injured us very much".

When he returned from that expedition eight days later, Brigadier General Richard Montgomery had assumed command of the invasion due to Schuyler's illness. Montgomery, likely not wanting the troublemaker in his camp, again sent Allen out, this time to raise a regiment of French-speaking Canadiens. Accompanied by a small number of Americans, he again set out, traveling through the countryside to Sorel, before turning to follow the Saint Lawrence River up toward Montreal, recruiting upwards of 200 men.

On September 24, he and Brown, whose company was guarding the road between St. John's and Montreal, met at Longueuil, and, according to Allen's account of the events, came up with a plan in which both he and Brown would lead their forces to attack Montreal. Allen and about 100 men crossed the Saint Lawrence that night, but Brown and his men, who were to cross the river at La Prairie, did not. General Carleton, alerted to Allen's presence, mustered every man he could, and, in the Battle of Longue-Pointe, scattered most of Allen's force, and captured him and about 30 men. His capture ended his participation in the revolution until 1778, as he was imprisoned by the British. General Schuyler, upon learning of Allen's capture, wrote, "I am very apprehensive of disagreeable consequences arising from Mr. Allen's imprudence. I always dreaded his impatience and imprudence."

Imprisonment
Much of what is known of Allen's captivity is known only from his own account of the time; where contemporary records are available, they tend to confirm those aspects of his story.

Allen was first placed aboard HMS Gaspée (1773), a brig anchored at Montreal. He was kept in solitary confinement and chains, and General Richard Prescott had, according to Allen, ordered him to be treated "with much severity". In October 1775, Gaspée went downriver, and her prisoners were transferred to the merchant vessel Adamant, which then sailed for England. Allen wrote of the voyage that he "was put under the power of an English Merchant from London, whose name was Brook Watson: a man of malicious and cruel disposition".

On arrival at Falmouth, England, after a crossing under filthy conditions, Allen and the other prisoners were imprisoned in Pendennis Castle, Cornwall. At first his treatment was poor, but Allen wrote a letter, ostensibly to the Continental Congress, describing his conditions and suggesting that Congress treat the prisoners it held the same way. Unknown to Allen, British prisoners now included General Prescott, captured trying to escape from Montreal, and the letter came into the hands of the British cabinet. Also faced with opposition within the British establishment to the treatment of captives taken in North America, King George decreed that the men should be sent back to America and treated as prisoners of war.

In January 1776, Allen and his men were put on board HMS Soledad, which sailed for Cork, Ireland. The people of Cork, when they learned that the famous Ethan Allen was in port, took up a collection to provide him and his men with clothing and other supplies. Much of the following year was spent on prison ships off the American coast. At one point, while aboard HMS Mercury, she anchored off New York, where, among other visitors, the captain entertained William Tryon; Allen reports that Tryon glanced at him without any sign of recognition, although it is likely the New York governor knew who he was. In August 1776, Allen and other prisoners were temporarily put ashore in Halifax, owing to extremely poor conditions aboard ship; due to food scarcity, both crew and prisoners were on short rations, and scurvy was rampant. By the end of October, Allen was again off New York, where the British, having secured the city, moved the prisoners on-shore, and, as he was considered an officer, gave Allen limited parole. With the financial assistance of his brother Ira, he lived comfortably, if out of action, until August 1777. Allen then learned of the death of his young son Joseph due to smallpox.

According to another prisoner's account, Allen wandered off after learning of his son's death. He was arrested for violating his parole, and placed in solitary confinement. There Allen remained while Vermont declared independence, and John Burgoyne's campaign for the Hudson River met a stumbling block near Bennington in August 1777. On May 3, 1778, he was transferred to Staten Island. Allen was admitted to General John Campbell's quarters, where he was invited to eat and drink with the general and several other British field officers. He stayed there for two days and was treated politely. On the third day Allen was exchanged for Colonel Archibald Campbell, who was conducted to the exchange by Colonel Elias Boudinot, the American commissary general of prisoners appointed by General George Washington. Following the exchange, Allen reported to Washington at Valley Forge. On May 14, he was breveted a colonel in the Continental Army in "reward of his fortitude, firmness and zeal in the cause of his country, manifested during his long and cruel captivity, as well as on former occasions," and given military pay of $75 per month. The brevet rank, however, meant that there was no active role, until called, for Allen. Allen's services were never requested, and eventually the payments stopped.

Return home
Following his visit to Valley Forge, Allen traveled to Salisbury, arriving on May 25, 1778. There he learned that his brother Heman had died just the previous week and that his brother Zimri, who had been caring for Allen's family and farm, had died in the spring following his capture. The death of Heman, with whom Allen had been quite close, hit him quite hard.

Allen then set out for Bennington, where news of his impending return preceded him, and he was met with all of the honor due to a military war hero. There he learned that the Vermont Republic had declared independence in 1777, that a constitution had been drawn up, and that election had been held. Allen wrote of this homecoming that "we passed the flowing bowl, and rural felicity, sweetened with friendship, glowed in every countenance". The next day he went to Arlington to see his family and his brother Ira, whose prominence in Vermont politics had risen considerably during Allen's captivity.

Politics
Allen spent the next several years involved in Vermont's political and military matters. While his family remained in Arlington, he spent most of his time either in Bennington or on the road, where he could avoid his wife's nagging. Shortly after his arrival, Vermont's Assembly passed the Banishment Act, a sweeping measure allowing for the confiscation and auction by the republic of property owned by known Tories. Allen was appointed to be one of the judges responsible for deciding whose property was subject to seizure under the law. (This law was so successful at collecting revenue that Vermont did not impose any taxes until 1781.) Allen personally escorted some of those convicted under the law to Albany, where he turned them over to General John Stark for transportation to the British lines. Some of these supposed Tories protested to New York Governor George Clinton that they were actually dispossessed Yorkers. Clinton, who considered Vermont to still be a part of New York, did not want to honor the actions of the Vermont tribunals; Stark, who had custody of the men, disagreed with Clinton. Eventually the dispute made its way to George Washington, who essentially agreed with Stark since he desperately needed the general's services. The prisoners were eventually transported to West Point, where they remained in "easy imprisonment".

While Allen's service as a judge in Vermont was brief, he continued to ferret out Tories and report them to local Boards of Confiscation for action. He was so zealous in these efforts that they also included naming his own brother Levi, who was apparently trying to swindle Allen and Ira out of land at the time. This action was somewhat surprising, as Levi had not only attempted to purchase Allen's release while he was in Halifax, but he had also traveled to New York while Allen was on parole there and furnished him with goods and money. Allen and Levi engaged in a war of words, many of which were printed in the Connecticut Courant, even after Levi crossed British lines. They would eventually reconcile in 1783.

Early in 1779, Governor Clinton issued a proclamation stating that the state of New York would honor the Wentworth grants, if the settlers would recognize New York's political jurisdiction over the Vermont territory. Allen wrote another pamphlet in response, entitled An Animadversory [sic] Address to the Inhabitants of the State of Vermont; with Remarks on a Proclamation under the Hand of his Excellency George Clinton, Esq; Governor of the State of New York. In typical style, Allen castigated the governor for issuing "romantic proclamations ... calculated to deceive woods people", and for his "folly and stupidity". Clinton's response, once he recovered his temper, was to issue another proclamation little different from the first. Allen's pamphlet circulated widely, including among members of Congress, and was successful in casting the Vermonters' case in a positive light.

In a dispatch to Clinton from Westminster, two prisoners from New York sentenced after Allen's intervention pleaded with the governor to free them from being at “the disposal of Ethan Allin [sic] which is more to be dreaded than Death with all its Terrors.”

In 1779, Allen published the account of his time in captivity, ''A Narrative of Colonel Ethan Allen's Captivity ... Containing His Voyages and Travels, With the most remarkable Occurrences respecting him and many other Continental Prisoners of Observations. Written by Himself and now published for the Information of the Curious in all Nations''. First published as a serial by the Pennsylvania Packet, the book was an instant best-seller; it is still available today. While largely accurate, it notably omits Benedict Arnold from the capture of Ticonderoga, and Seth Warner as the leader of the Green Mountain Boys.

Negotiations with the British
Allen appeared before the Continental Congress as early as September 1778 on behalf of Vermont, seeking recognition as an independent state. He reported that due to Vermont's expansion to include border towns from New Hampshire, Congress was reluctant to grant independent statehood to Vermont. Between 1780 and 1783, Allen participated, along with his brother Ira, Vermont Governor Thomas Chittenden, and others, in negotiations with Frederick Haldimand, the governor of Quebec, that were ostensibly about prisoner exchanges, but were really about establishing Vermont as a new British province and gaining military protection for its residents. The negotiations, once details of them were published, were often described by opponents of Vermont statehood as treasonous, but no such formal charges were ever laid against anyone involved.

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.

Publication of Reason
In these years, Allen recovered from Thomas Young's widow, who was living in Albany, the manuscript that he and Young had worked on in his youth and began to develop it into the work that was published in 1785 as Reason: the Only Oracle of Man. The work was a typical Allen polemic, but its target was religious, not political. Specifically targeted against Christianity, it was an unbridled attack against the Bible, established churches, and the powers of the priesthood. As a replacement for organized religion, he espoused a mixture of deism, Spinoza's naturalist views, and precursors of Transcendentalism, with man acting as a free agent within the natural world. While historians disagree over the exact authorship of the work, the writing contains clear indications of Allen's style.

The book was a complete financial and critical failure. Allen's publisher had forced him to pay the publication costs up front, and only 200 of the 1,500 volumes printed were sold. (The rest were eventually destroyed by a fire at the publisher's house.) The theologically conservative future president of Yale, Timothy Dwight, opined that "the style was crude and vulgar, and the sentiments were coarser than the style. The arguments were flimsy and unmeaning, and the conclusions were fastened upon the premises by mere force." Allen took the financial loss and the criticism in stride, observing that most of the critics were clergymen, whose livelihood he was attacking.

Second marriage
Allen met his second wife, a young widow named Frances "Fanny" Montresor Brush Buchanan, early in 1784; and after a brief courtship, they wed on February 16, 1784. Fanny came from a notably Loyalist background (including Crean Brush, notorious for acts during the Siege of Boston, from whom she inherited land in Vermont), but they were both smitten, and the marriage was a happy one. They had three children: Fanny (1784–1819), Hannibal Montresor (1786–1813), and Ethan Alphonso (1789–1855). Fanny had a settling effect on Allen; for the remainder of his years he did not embark on many great adventures.

The notable exception to this was when land was claimed by the Connecticut-based owners of the Susquehanna Company, who had been granted titles to land claimed by Connecticut in the Wyoming Valley, in an area that is now Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania. The area was also claimed by Pennsylvania, which refused to recognize the Connecticut titles. Allen, after being promised land, traveled to the area and began stirring up not just Pennsylvania authorities but also his long-time nemesis, Governor Clinton of New York, by proposing that a new state be carved out of the disputed area and several counties of New York. The entire affair was more bluster than anything else, and was resolved amicably when Pennsylvania agreed to honor the Connecticut titles.

Allen was also approached by Daniel Shays in 1786 for support in what became the Shays's Rebellion in western Massachusetts. He was unsupportive of the cause, in spite of Shays's offer to crown him "king of Massachusetts"; he felt that Shays was just trying to erase unpayable debts.

In his later years, independent Vermont continued to experience rapid population growth, and Allen sold a great deal of his land, but also reinvested much the proceeds in more land. A lack of cash, complicated by Vermont's currency problems, placed a strain on Fanny's relatively free hand on spending, which was further exacerbated by the cost of publishing Reason, and of the construction of a new home near the mouth of the Onion River. He was threatened with debtors' prison on at least one occasion, and was at times reduced to borrowing money and calling in old debts to make ends meet.

Allen and his family moved to Burlington in 1787, which was no longer a small frontier settlement but a small town, and much more to Allen's liking than the larger community that Bennington had become. He frequented the tavern there, and began work on An Essay on the Universal Plenitude of Being, which he characterized as an appendix to Reason. This essay was less polemic than many of his earlier writings. Allen affirmed the perfection of God and His creation, and credited intuition as well as reason as a way to bring Man closer to the universe. The work was not published until long after his death, and is primarily of interest to students of Transcendentalism, a movement the work foreshadows.

Death
On February 11, 1789, Allen traveled to South Hero, Vermont with one of his workers to visit his cousin, Ebenezer Allen, and to collect a load of hay. After an evening spent with friends and acquaintances, he spent the night there and set out the next morning for home. While accounts of the return journey are not entirely consistent, Allen apparently suffered an apoplectic fit en route and was unconscious by the time they returned home. Allen died at home several hours later, without ever regaining consciousness. He was buried four days later in the Green Mount Cemetery in Burlington. The funeral was attended by dignitaries from the Vermont government and by large numbers of common folk who turned out to pay respects to a man many considered their champion.

Allen's death made nationwide headlines. The Bennington Gazette wrote of the local hero, "the patriotism and strong attachment which ever appeared uniform in the breast of this Great Man, was worth of his exalted character; the public have to lament the loss of a man who has rendered them great service". Although most obituaries were positive, a number of clergymen expressed different sentiments. "Allen was an ignorant and profane Deist, who died with a mind replete with horror and despair" was the opinion of Newark, New Jersey's Reverend Uzal Ogden. Yale's Timothy Dwight expressed satisfaction that the world no longer had to deal with a man of "peremptoriness and effrontery, rudeness and ribaldry". It is not recorded what New York Governor Clinton's reaction was to the news.

Family
Allen's widow Fanny gave birth to a son, Ethan Alphonso, on October 24, 1789. She eventually remarried. Allen's two youngest sons went on to graduate from West Point and serve in the United States Army. H.M. Allen was the 7th graduate, a member of the Class of 1804, and served until 1813. E.A. Allen was the 22nd graduate, a member of the Class of 1806, and served until 1821. His daughter Fanny achieved notice when she converted to Catholicism and entered a convent. Two of his grandsons were Henry Hitchcock, Attorney General of Alabama, and Ethan Allen Hitchcock, who served as a Union Army general in the American Civil War. Reportedly General Hitchcock strongly resembled his famous grandfather. Two of Henry Hitchcock's sons were Henry Hitchcock and Ethan Allan Hitchcock.

Disappearance of his grave marker
Sometime in the early 1850s, the original plaque marking Allen's grave disappeared; its original text was preserved by early war historian Benson Lossing in the 1840s. The inscription read:

In 1858, the Vermont Legislature authorized the placement of a 42-foot (13 m) column of Vermont granite in the cemetery, with the following inscription:

The exact location within the cemetery of his remains is unknown. While there is a vault beneath the 1858 cenotaph, it contains a time capsule from the time of the monument's erection. According to the official 1858 report on the Ethan Allen monument, the funeral of Ethan Allen had taken place within Green Mount Cemetery; however the reason his remains had not been found at his memorial plaque {tablet} was because "... by the fact that some twenty years since, the dead of the Allen family had been arranged in a square enclosed by stone posts and chains, by Herman Allen, the nephew of Ethan Allen, and this tablet, then lying upon a dilapidated wall of brick work, was reconstructed with cut stone work, and it is presumed that, as a matter of convenience in giving a regular form to the enclosure, was removed some feet from its original position ..." It was thus apparent it was actually a cenotaph tomb reconstruction that Benson Lossing sketched and presumed to be the actual tomb of Ethan Allen in his 1850 The Pictorial Field-book of the Revolution.

Likenesses
No likenesses of Allen made from life have been found, in spite of numerous attempts to locate them. Efforts by members of the Vermont Historical Society and other historical groups through the years have followed up on rumored likenesses, only to come up empty. Photographs of Allen's grandson, General Ethan Allen Hitchcock, are extant, and, Hitchcock's mother said that he bore a strong resemblance to her father. The nearest potential images included one claimed to be by noted Revolutionary War era engraver Pierre Eugene du Simitiere that turned out to be a forgery, and a reference to a portrait possibly by Ralph Earl that has not been found (as of Stewart Holbrook's writing in 1940). Alexander Graydon, with whom Allen was paroled during his captivity in New York, described him like this:

"His figure was that of a robust, large-framed man, worn down by confinement and hard fare; but he was now recovering his flesh and spirits; and a suit of blue clothes, with a gold laced hat that had been presented to him by the gentlement of Cork, enabled him to make a very passable appearance for a rebel colonel ... I have seldom met with a man, possessing, in my opinion, a stronger mind, or whose mode of expression was more vehement and oratorical. Notwithstanding that Allen might have had something of the insubordinate, lawless frontier spirit in his composition ... he appeared to me to be a man of generosity and honor."

Memorials
Allen's final home, on the Onion River (now called the Winooski River), is a part of the Ethan Allen Homestead and Museum. Situated in Burlington, Allen's homestead is open for viewing via guided tours.

Two ships of the United States Navy were named USS Ethan Allen in his honor, as were two 19th-century fortifications: a Civil War fort in Arlington County, Virginia and a cavalry outpost in Colchester and Essex, Vermont. The Vermont Army National Guard's facility in Jericho, Vermont is called the Camp Ethan Allen Training Site. A statue of Allen represents Vermont in National Statuary Hall of the United States Capitol. A city park in the Montreal borough of Mercier–Hochelaga-Maisonneuve commemorating his capture bears his name.

The Spirit of Ethan Allen III is a tour boat operating on Lake Champlain. Allen's name is the trademark of the furniture and housewares manufacturer, Ethan Allen Inc., which was founded in 1932 in Beecher Falls, Vermont. The Ethan Allen Express, an Amtrak train running from New York City to Burlington, Vermont, is also named after him.

The Ethan Allen School was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1988.

Publications
Allen is known to have written the following publications:
 * The 1779 edition of Allen's Narrative.
 * An 1849 edition of Allen's Narrative.
 * A 2000 edition of Allen's Narrative available at Amazon in March 2009
 * The essay is reprinted in four sections in this bound edition of The Historical Magazine and Notes and Queries: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4
 * The essay is reprinted in four sections in this bound edition of The Historical Magazine and Notes and Queries: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4
 * The essay is reprinted in four sections in this bound edition of The Historical Magazine and Notes and Queries: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4
 * The essay is reprinted in four sections in this bound edition of The Historical Magazine and Notes and Queries: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4

title: Ethan Allen