Party spirit had begun to embitter the politics of the State, and the growing minority of Republicans was hotly arrayed against the still predominant Federalists. The Federal strength was further weakened by the imprisonment, under the sedition law, of Matthew Lyon, one of the Vermont members of Congress. His free expression of opinion concerning the conduct of the administration of President Adams would not now be considered very extravagant, but for it he was sentenced to four months' imprisonment, and to pay a fine of $1,000. While in prison at Vergennes, he wrote letters which it was thought would cause his re-arrest before he could leave the State to take his seat in Congress, to which he had been reelected while in prison. Measures were taken for the payment of his fine in indisputably legal tender, one citizen of the State providing the sum in silver dollars, and one ardent Republican of North Carolina coming all the way from that State on horseback with the amount in gold. But Lyon's many political friends desired to share the honor of paying his fine, and it was arranged that no person should pay more than one dollar. No sooner had he come forth from prison than his fine was paid, and he was placed in a sleigh and driven up the frozen current of Great Otter to Middlebury, attended, it is said, by an escort in sleighs, the train extending from the one town to the other, a distance of twelve miles. With half as many, he might boast of a greater following than had passed up the Indian Road under any leader since the bloody days of border warfare when Waubanakee chief or Canadian partisan led their marauding horde along the noble river. Lyon was of Irish birth, and came to America at the age of thirteen under an indenture for his passage money. This was sold for a pair of steers to one of the founders of Danville, Vermont, and Lyon was wont to swear "By the bulls that redeemed me." He served in the Vermont troops in the Revolution, and for a time was paymaster in Warner's regiment. He was a member of the Dorset convention, and for several years took a prominent part in the politics of the State, of which he was an enterprising and useful citizen. His second wife was the daughter of Governor Thomas Chittenden. In 1801 he removed to Kentucky, and was eight years a member of Congress from that State. He died at the age of seventy-six, in the territory of Arkansas, soon after his election as delegate to Congress. Four years after the arbitrary measures against Lyon by a Federalist majority in the legislature, the opposite party gained the ascendency in that body, though Tichenor had been reelected by a majority of the freemen of the State.