Jacob J. Brown — the general and victor at Sackets Harbor — was a smuggler.
For Augustus Sacket — founder of that village — the job was to stop smugglers. Much to the chagrin of President Thomas Jefferson's administration, he was hard-pressed in that mission.
And Hart Massey could do little more when he inherited Mr. Sacket's headache — but he tried.
Three pioneer settlers of a county named for Jefferson played prominent roles on the local front of a 19th century international tightrope. And the whole thing didn't even start in the environs of Lake Ontario or the St. Lawrence River. The hostilities in the north evolved from an event in the waters off Norfolk, Va., 200 years ago this month — on June 22, 1807.
Salisbury Pryce Humphreys, commander of the British frigate HMS Leopard, was in pursuit of Royal Navy deserters and asked permission to board the American frigate USS Chesapeake to seek out the missing men. Commodore James Barron, commander of the Chesapeake, refused.
The British commander responded by firing his guns broadside at the American craft and then dispatching a boarding party. Four defenders died and 17 others were wounded in the assault.
Humphreys found his deserters aboard the Chesapeake, but only one of them was actually British born. That man and three others — two African-Americans and one native of the United States — were taken to Halifax, Nova Scotia, for trial. The Englishman was hanged, another died in captivity, and the remaining two were not freed until after the War of 1812 broke out.
Anti-British sentiments stirred by the Chesapeake-Leopard affair were reflected in an editorial in the New York Evening Post.
"We are ready to say that we consider the national sovereignty has been attacked, the national honor tarnished," the paper declared on July 14, 1807. Without reparations, "war ought to be resorted to by force of arms."
The young nation's initial response was the Embargo Act, legislation that would prove unpopular and quite difficult to enforce.
New York City-born Augustus Sackethad the misfortune of being appointed collector when the United States formed a customs district extending from Franklin County to Mexico Bay in what is now Oswego County. It was in this widespread customs district that the 38-year-old founder of Sackets Harbor presided when the first attempt at an embargo against both England and France was enacted in December 1807.
The law targeted Britain and France because they, being at war, were each trying to hinder American trade with the other. President Jefferson and Congress in the Embargo Act prohibited American vessels from landing in any foreign port unless specifically authorized by the president, and trading vessels were required to post a bond of guarantee equal to the value of both the ship and its cargo in order to ensure compliance.
President Jefferson's secretary of Treasury, Albert Gallatin, was against the legislation, correctly predicting it would be an enforcement nightmare. And he warned of the public's reaction: "Government prohibitions do always more mischief than had been calculated."
Despite his misgivings, Mr. Gallatin was responsible for seeing to it that local appointees such as Mr. Sacket did their jobs.
"The district of Sackets Harbour," Mr. Gallatin wrote in a letter dated Oct. 9, 1808, "was through the conduct of Mr. Sacket a notorious place of illegal exportation to Canada, either directly or through Oswegatchie."
The Embargo Act placed a particular hardship upon settlers in the Northeast because much of their livelihood was focused on trade with the English in Canada.
Merchandise that was sold in the region was imported from Montreal.
Northern New York pioneers sold them potash, a byproduct from the burning of waste timber. This was a necessity used by the British to make lye, glass, soap, fertilizer and the gunpowder their soldiers and sailors needed to fight the French.
Even after clearing forestland to build their homes and stock firewood, the Northern New York pioneers had a more than ample supply of potash for trade with their neighbors across the border. Hardwood could generate ashes at the rate of 60 to 100 bushels per acre.
With the embargo, the price of potash rose to $320 a ton in Montreal, making "the inducements for smuggling even greater," C. Gerard Hoard wrote in his biography of Gen. Jacob Jennings Brown.
"One of those who had profited most from the sale of potash was Jacob Brown," the biography continues. "Jacob, like his neighbors, needed ready cash and was not opposed to the money that the potash market brought to him."
The Quaker-born Brown, a native of Bucks County, Pa., had come north during the winter of 1798-99 to explore the region for a land agent and to make a settlement in an appropriate location. The sound of a waterfall attracted the 23-year-old explorer to the area now named for him: Brownville.
Politically, Brown was a Federalist, which placed him in opposition to the philosophies of Thomas Jefferson, particularly the Embargo Act.
As the north country traders carried on their relations with agents in Canada during that first winter of the embargo, they did so quite legally. The new law specified trade by "vessels," but the river ice presented a natural walkway. No boats were needed.
Mr. Sacket pointed out to Mr. Gallatin this significant lapse in the law. Indeed, Mr. Gallatin responded, "the exportation of produce in carts, sleighs or other land carriages, is not prohibited by the Embargo Law."
Congress quickly filled in the gaps in 1808, amending the law in January, March and April. The latter two actions responded to the problems occurring in Mr. Sacket's district. Exporting of any goods was prohibited, either by land or by sea, and then in April the law was given more teeth, with port authorities being empowered to seize cargos without a warrant. They were told to bring to trial any merchant who was thought even to be contemplating a violation of the law.
Smuggling continued nearly unabated, however. Mr. Sacket, having difficulty collecting his government wages, overwhelmed by the geographic area he and his subordinates were enforcing, and probably unhappy about the developing enmity of his neighbors, sent a letter of resignation to Mr. Gallatin on April 24, 1808.
The following year, Mr. Sacket sold his land holdings in Jefferson County and moved to Long Island.
Next in line for the job: Hart Massey. He was sworn to duty in July 1808. That same month, about 75 members of the state militia were dispatched from Niagara and from Central New York to beef up enforcement in the Sackets Harbor district.
Mr. Gallatin wasted little time in putting Mr. Massey on notice that Mr. Sacket had left plenty of room for improvement.
"Your predecessor had grossly misconstrued the law," he wrote in August 1808, adding, "Through the misconduct of Mr. Sacket, the exportations have been glaring and made openly to an immense amount through the usual and most noted channels."
Mr. Massey, then 36, brought to the job prior experience as deputy sheriff for the region under the sheriff at Oneida and as a member of the militia. He had served as quartermaster and more recently as an adjutant.
A native of New Hampshire, he had accompanied his brother Isaiah in a pioneering trek in 1800 to settle 90 acres that eventually became part of Arsenal Street and Public Square in Watertown.
With his new duties, Mr. Massey soon found that he was "an object of dread and aversion" and that "men sometimes felt at liberty to hold him a personal enemy," his son Solon Massey wrote in series of recollections titled "Links in a Chain."
And there was the time that Hart's wife, Lucy, feared his job had cost him his life.
One day at Sackets Harbor, he and a collector from Oswego, under secret instructions, boarded a revenue cutter from Oswego. He had not had time to alert his family about the assignment, Solon Massey wrote.
"Circumstances beyond their control kept them on the St. Lawrence six weeks instead of six days, as they had anticipated," he wrote.
Mrs. Massey, "being unable to get any clue to his whereabouts, had made up her mind that his life had fallen a sacrifice to the desperate hate of some smuggling party."
The intensified enforcement did much to shut down the regular potash route to Kingston, Ontario, but where Mr. Massey found success, he also met resistance. After he had seized 54 barrels of potash and pearl ash and 20 barrels of pork at Cape Vincent, a force of armed men came down from Kingston and stole the entire cargo.
There may have been other, similar raids by "Canadian Tories," prompting a Watertown resident to write to the Albany Register, "I fear we have Tories among us that are at the bottom of this. ... I expect they will come to Watertown next and take away our cattle."
Jacob Brown, meanwhile, became creative in laying out a new smuggling route from what was then called Brownsville, according to his biographer:
"This road left Brownsville and passed through Perch River, LaFargeville and emerged on the St. Lawrence River between French Creek and Alexandria Bay. The road came to be known as the 'Embargo Road' or 'Brown's Smuggler's Road.'"
Aside from being called general, Mr. Brown would have to endure being called "Potash Brown" the rest of his life, Mr. Hoard wrote.
Tempers flared after enforcers of the Embargo Act trespassed upon the private property of an Ellisburg resident in September 1808. The New York militia from Oswego, commanded by Lt. Asa Wells, seized a quantity of potash, then extended their mission by entering the home of a Capt. Fairfield. With just the lady of the house present to defend the property, Lt. Wells ordered his men to seize and carry away a small cannon belonging to the captain.
The woman fled to seek help from a local magistrate, who issued a warrant for the arrest of Lt. Wells. A constable was called upon to serve the warrant, and he formed a posse of at least 30 armed men to confront the troops.
The band of farmers was no match for the militia, and about 20 of them abandoned the effort. Those who stood their ground were disarmed and bound and taken to Oswego, along with Fairfield's cannon.
Some 200 angry Ellisburg residents gathered at a meeting, and 70 to 80 of them took up arms, readying for a march upon Oswego. Their mission: to free their neighbors and arrest the lieutenant and a couple of his officers on a warrant for breaking into a house. Fearing the outcome of an armed confrontation, a conference of magistrates urged the men to disband, in order that a peaceful resolution might be found. Cooler heads prevailed.
The magistrates of Jefferson County, being labeled as Federalists who were willing to use force to resist laws of the United States, drafted a statement that was printed in newspapers in Utica, Albany and elsewhere.
They wrote in part that government actions were taking "rapid strides towards despotism and martial law, the establishment of which must occasion a total deprivation of the rights for which our fathers and many of us have fought and bled."
Among the signers of the statement, which pleaded for residents of the state "to aid us in apprehending and bringing to justice the said Lieut. Wells," was Augustus Sacket.
Documentation is found indicating that Lt. Wells was held answerable to the home invasion, and he was assessed a $206 penalty in 1811. His military career was not interrupted, however. He was a captain in the militia during the War of 1812.
Since no documentation is found pertaining to the fate of the Ellisburg people taken prisoner by Lt. Wells, we can only assume they were liberated in short order.
Congress repealed the Embargo Act three days before Jefferson left office in March 1809, replacing the law with an equally unenforceable Non-Intercourse Act.
Hart Massey continued to serve as collector and inspector for the Sackets Harbor Customs district until 1814 and lived to be 82.
Augustus Sacket (whose name was interchangeably spelled with one or two t's) eventually returned to the community he settled. He died April 29, 1827, in Albany, having been suddenly taken ill while en route to Jefferson County.
As for Gen. Brown, we can expect to hear more from him as the march toward the War of 1812 continues.
Certain quotes used in this account were taken from original documents obtained by Gary Gibson from the New York University Gallatin Papers Project, the National Archives and The Public Papers of New York Gov. Daniel D. Tompkins, compiled in 1902 by J.B. Lyon. We additionally referred to county histories written by Franklin B. Hough, Harry F. Landon and Edgar C. Emerson, a biography of Jacob J. Brown by C. Gerard Hoard, and general historical information in Wikipedia on the Internet. The signatures of Brown, Massey and Sacket are taken from original documents preserved in the Jefferson County Historical Society archives.
