Escaped slaves used craggy pass

In the case of Vermont's famous Smugglers Notch, you can credit U.S. President Thomas Jefferson for (indirectly) naming the famous, canyon-like feature. When Jefferson signed the U.S. Embargo Act of 1807 into law, he helped drive illegal cross-border traders, Lake Champlain "pirates", and horse and cattle rustlers through the Notch which now bears their crooked names. In an effort to keep the U.S. out of the Napoleonic war waging in Europe, which involved Great Britain along with its firm hold on Canada, the Embargo Act was a bold, ill-fated attempt to stop American trade with Great Britain via Canada. Jefferson knew Americans along the northern border did a brisk business in trading with Great Britain through Canada. Since many Vermonters made their living trading with Canadians (and ergo their British allies), the Notch became the prime passageway for illegal goods being freighted by pack horse and mule trains heading south and north. With the Notch less than 100 miles from the Quebec border and the port of Montreal, the Notch served as a remote, secretive place to move contra-ban goods. Jefferson championed the Embargo Act as a way to stop all trade between the warring nations in Europe and the U.S. By doing so, he hoped these nations would come crawling back and ask the U.S. to lift the ban. But like most attempts to restrict international trade, the effort ultimately backfired on the Americans. "The embargo, which lasted from December 1807 to March 1809 effectively throttled American overseas trade. All areas of the United States suffered," according to historian and Jefferson biographer Dumas Malone. "In commercial New England and the Middle Atlantic states, ships rotted at the wharves, and in the agricultural areas… farmers and planters could not sell their crops on the international market…. The embargo was a financial disaster for the Americans because the British were still able to export goods to America… widespread disregard of the law meant enforcement was difficult." Later, even before the War Between the States broke out, fugitive slaves began to follow Vermont's underground-railroad which led through the Notch on an escape route into Canada. An escaped slave from Troy, N.Y., Lewis Washington, helped his African brothers and sisters through the Notch and on across Lake Champlain, near Rouses Point, to Canada. Washington had been a slave for 40 years before he bravely worked the underground-railroad between New York and Vermont. Of course there are plenty of legends of buried smuggler loot and slave hideaways. The purported lost artifacts are said to have been cached in tectonic caves throughout the craggy Notch.

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Escaped slaves used craggy pass

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