Page:Henry Adams' History of the United States Vol. 4.djvu/259

249 embargo had lasted less than four months, when April 19 the President at Washington was obliged to issue a proclamation announcing that on Lake Champlain and in the adjacent country persons were combined for the purpose of forming insurrections against the laws, and that the military power of the government must aid in quelling such insurrections. Immense rafts of lumber were collecting near the boundary line; and report said that one such raft, near half a mile long, carried a ball-proof fort, and was manned by five or six hundred armed men prepared to defy the custom-house officers. This raft was said to contain the surplus produce of Vermont for a year past,—wheat, potash, pork, and beef,—and to be worth upward of three hundred thousand dollars. The governor of Vermont ordered out a detachment of militia to stop this traffic, and the governor of New York ordered another detachment to co-operate with that of Vermont. May 8 rumors of a battle were afloat, and of forty men killed or