The building of the boats and the collecting of supplies soon was known to all the community and lent force to the rumors of a conspiracy. John Graham, Secretary of the Orleans Territory, had now been assigned by President Jefferson to pick up Burr’s trail and to report back on his findings. He reached Marietta on his quest in the middle of November. There he met Blennerhassett who by now had returned home from Kentucky. As previously mentioned, Blennerhassett, supposing Graham to be one of Burr’s adherents, talked to him freely. He confided to him that he thought the West would profit by getting out of the Union. He said Burr was of the same opinion but added that the reaction to the articles by Querist indicated that the public was not yet ripe for the move. In the Pittsburgh area Burr’s lieutenant, Comfort Tyler, was assembling supplies and enlisting recruits. Reports were gaining currency that as many as a thousand young men had responded favorably to the appeal for volunteers. But when the time came for departure the party consisted of not more than thirty men distributed among four boats. The immediate objective of Tyler’s contingent was Blennerhassett Island. There the flotilla arrived on December 7. While Graham was in Marietta he learned that a committee of citizens, stirred by the President’s proclamation, had been organized in Wood County, Virginia, opposite the island, to oppose any illegal scheme that might be in the making. On November 21 Graham met with this group at the courthouse near Parkersburg, and Col. Hugh Phelps, commander of the Wood County militia, told him he had been urged by Blennerhassett to join the expedition. According to Phelps, Blennerhassett assured him that General Andrew Jackson had promised 1,000 men, that 800 were expected to join the expedition from Kentucky, and from 200 to 300 from Pittsburgh. Alexander Henderson, another Wood County man who was at the meeting, said he was not free to give details, but advised that the United States send a strong military force to New Orleans at once. It was then that Graham set out in haste to catch Governor Edwin Tiffin of Ohio, who was at Chillicothe, and lay what evidence he had before him. With equal dispatch the Governor sent a message to the Ohio Legislature stating that Blennerhassett had approached two gentlemen of great respectability and invited them to join in an expedition planned by Burr to seize New Orleans by force, take possession of $2,000,000 known to be in the bank there, and also the military stores and two brass cannon belonging to the French.