At the next election, Isaac Tichenor was chosen governor. He was a native of New Jersey, and, becoming a resident of Vermont in 1777, he presently took an active part in the affairs of the State. For several years previous to his election to the first place in its gift, he had served it as a member of the council, chief justice, and United States senator. No choice was made by the people, though he received a plurality of the popular vote, and the election devolved upon the assembly. The Federalist party predominating therein, he was elected by a large majority. He was ten times reelected, and, such faith had the people in him, several times after his party was a minority in the State, although the acrimony of party strife had begun to embitter its politics. In the early part of Tichenor's administration, while the legislature was in session at Vergennes in the autumn of 1798, five chiefs of the Cognahwaghnahs presented a claim of their people to ancient hunting grounds in Vermont, bounded by a line extending from Ticonderoga to the Great Falls of Otter Creek, and in the same direction to the height of land dividing the streams between Lake Champlain and the river Connecticut, thence along the height of land opposite Missisque, and then down to the bay, and comprising about a third of the State. The Indians were handsomely entertained during their stay, and dismissed with a present of a hundred dollars, "well pleased with their own policy," says Williams, "and with that of the Assembly of Vermont, hoping that the game would prove still better another season." An investigation of this claim resulted in a decision that, if any such right ever existed, it had been extinguished by the cession of the lands in question to the United States by Great Britain, whose allies these Indians were in the late war. When, upon the passage of the alien and sedition laws by Congress, the legislatures of Virginia and Kentucky, in 1798, passed resolutions, which were sent to the legislatures of all the other States, declaring these acts null, the Assembly of Vermont made a firm, dignified, and forcible reply, denying the right of States to sit in judgment on the constitutionality of the acts of Congress, or to declare which of its acts should be accepted or which rejected. Considering the almost recent antagonism which had existed between Congress and the State of Vermont, the one by turns vacillating or threatening, the other boldly defiant and denying the right of interference with her affairs, it might be thought that the new commonwealth would be found arrayed among the extreme defenders of state rights rather than so stoutly opposing them.