♪ Voice: In 1770, I built a house, dam, saw and grist mills on the west side of the Connecticut River.

Here I was in easy circumstances, and as independent as my mind ever wished.

John Peters.

Narrator: Before the war, Yale-educated John Peters had been the most respected man in the small settlement of Moretown in Vermont, where he lived with his wife Ann and their children.

In 1774, his neighbors had picked him to represent them in the First Continental Congress.

But when Peters got to Philadelphia and sensed the other delegates "meant to have a serious rebellion," he refused to take part and left for home.

On the way back, suspicious Patriots detained him 4 times-- in Wethersfield, Hartford, Springfield, and finally in Moretown itself, where "another mob threatened to execute him," he remembered, "as an enemy to Congress."

His own father, a colonel in Connecticut's rebel militia, urged his fellow Patriots to use "severity" on his son to make him "a friend to America."

[Indistinct shouting] Voice: The mob again and again visited me.

They confined me to the limits of the town and threatened me with death if I transgressed their orders.

[John Peters] Narrator: Even then, Peters refused to betray his "King and Conscience."

Instead, he put his head down and hoped to stay out of the fight.

Voice: I little thought the troubles would be so great, or if they did, would last so long.

I endeavored to be quiet, but it would not do.

The madness of the people was daily growing.

[John Peters] ♪