The United States offered to ask Maine to accept the Saint John River as the boundary, which the British rejected.[4] In 1836 Maine took a special census. Penobscot County Census Representative Ebenezer Greeley thus began a census of the upper Aroostook River territory.[5] Governor John Harvey of New Brunswick had Greeley arrested. Letters from New Brunswick accused the Governor of Maine of bribery and threatened military action if Maine continued to exercise jurisdiction in the basins of the Aroostook river and its tributaries.