One of his earliest acts was to recall by proclamation a brigade of the state militia in service at Plattsburgh. In this the governor acted on the ground that it was unconstitutional to call the militia beyond the limits of the State without permission from the governor, their commander-in-chief, a view of the case supported by the Supreme Court of Massachusetts, and adhered to by most of the other New England States; and, further, that the militia of Vermont were more needed for the defense of their own State than for that of its stronger sister commonwealth. A number of the Vermont officers returned a protest whose vigor was weakened by its insolence. They refused to obey the proclamation of their captain-general, but nevertheless the rank and file, tired of inaction, less irksome to the officers, returned to their homes before the term of enlistment expired, and the affair passed without further notice. The muskrats had long been housed in their lodges on the frozen marshes, and all waterfowl but the loons and mergansers had flown southward, when Macdonough withdrew his fleet from the stormy lake into Otter Creek, whose current was already thick with drifting anchor-ice. The craft were moored in a reach of the river known as the Buttonwoods, three fourths of a mile above Dead Creek, the ice closed around them, and they slept inert until the return of spring. The sap had scarcely begun to swell the forest buds when Vergennes, eight miles upstream, where the first fall bars navigation, was astir with the building of other craft for the Champlain navy. A throng of ship carpenters were busy on the narrow flat by the waterside; the woods were noisy with the thud of axes, the crash of falling trees, and the bawling of teamsters; and the two furnaces were in full blast casting cannon-shot for the fleet. Forty days after the great oak which formed the keel of the Saratoga had fallen from its stump, the vessel was afloat and ready for its guns. Several gunboats were also built there, and early in May, their sappy timbers yet reeking with woodsy odors, the new craft dropped down the river to join the fleet at the Buttonwoods.