In the fall of 1794, 20 year old Meriwether Lewis enlisted as an ensign in a Virginia militia unit commanded by General Daniel Morgan, the famed commander of “Morgan’s Riflemen,” the sharpshooters who played a prominent role in defeating General Burgoyne at Saratoga. The Virginians went to western Pennsylvania to suppress an armed uprising against the federal government called the Whiskey Rebellion. It was a popular revolt against a new excise tax which taxed whiskey at its place of origin at the manufacturer’s still, rather than at the retail level. The tax had been created in 1791 to pay for the federal government assuming the states’ war debts. Liberty poles were raised and the cry against tyranny was heard in the Monongahela River area south of Pittsburgh, where 1,200–1,300 rye whiskey stills were located—an estimated one quarter of all the stills in America.51
Large distilleries didn’t mind the tax, because they could pass the cost onto customers and it might force small distilleries out of business. Distilleries in the Pittsburgh area sent an estimated 100,000 gallons of whiskey to New Orleans in 1794.52 Small producers, however, received very little cash income from whiskey, which instead they used for barter to obtain goods from storekeepers. A farmer rarely saw $20 in cash in a year.53 The rebellion was centered in Washington County in the southwestern corner of the state.
There was a concern as to whether Great Britain or Spain, might intervene on behalf of the rebels.54 In addition, there was speculation that Secretary of Treasury Alexander Hamilton had deliberately provoked the crisis in order to demonstrate a need for a standing army.55 In 1794 Hamilton and President George Washington organized a coalition of nearly13,000 state mi litia draftees and gentlemen volunteers to go across the Appalachian mountains to western Pennsylvania to restore order.
The 62 year old president, accompanied by Hamilton, went to war in a carriage. Washington was revisiting the scenes of his youth when he had served as an aide to British General Braddock during the French and Indian War. He had also been a surveyor in the Ohio River Valley, and was still a leading land owner. The president returned to the nation’s capitol at Philadelphia after visiting Fort Cumberland, Maryland, and Hamilton proceeded on as the unofficial civilian head of the expedition. Hamilton had been Washington’s most trusted staff aide during the Revolutionary War.
In the end, it proved to be a non-starter as a war. Twenty low level rebels were brought back to Philadelphia, but only two stood trial, and they were pardoned. Over 2,000 of the hard core rebels moved farther west to escape prosecution.56 General Anthony Wayne’s decisive victory at the Battle of Fallen Timbers in August, 1794—which marked the end of the Indian Wars in the Ohio River Valley—opened the region for exploration and settlement.
Fifteen hundred of Morgan’s men remained in the Monongahela region over the winter of 1794–95 to maintain order.57 Lewis’s unit camped on the farm of one of the rebel leaders, Andrew McFarlane. His brother James McFarlane had been killed in an attack on tax collector’s John Neville’s house, an event which triggered the crisis.
Lewis wrote to his mother on November 24, 1794 from “McFarlin’s Farm” that he was fifteen miles below Pittsburgh on the Monongahela River, and he intended to visit Kentucky in six months time when his enlistment was up. He wanted her to send the papers concerning land titles in Kentucky, and money to pay the taxes. He ended with the request to tell all his relations and acquaintances that: “I am quite delighted with a soldier’s life.”58
In a letter dated December 7th, he explained that the man who carried the letter to her could be entrusted with the papers and money for the Kentucky taxes and that he himself was employed in building huts. He wrote:
Remember me to all the girls of the neighborhood as well as all my relations and acquaintances and hope you will never find me less than your affectionate son.59
He wrote to his mother on Christmas Eve:
The situation of the soldairy is truly deplorable exposed to the inclemency of the weather … without any shelter more than what eight men can derive from a small tent. Many are sick but fortunately few have died as yet. My old Friend Capt. Thos. Walker has for a fortnight past been very much indisposed and has this day removed to the country where comfortable lodgings have been procured for him and all appearances indicate a speedy recovery….60
However to my great comfort I have this day been so fortunate as for the price of one dollar to procure a quart of Rum for a chrismas dram. [I] would thank you to send me four shirts and a pice of nankeen… I had the misfortune to have good part of my linin borrowed from me the other day with some other of my best clothes and am not able to repair the loss in consequence of these articles being extremely high in this country.61
By April 6th, 1795, the 21 year old Meriwether Lewis was writing about getting married and staying out west:
I am sorry to find from my brother s letter that my absence is a cause of uneasiness to you … from the present situation of the Back country I find so great an opening for acquiring lands that I have declined returning until the fall … Remember me to Aunt and uncle Thomson and all the girls, and tell them that I shall bring an insurgiant Girl to see them next fall bearing the title of Mrs. Lewis.62
Nothing more is heard of the insurgent girl. General Morgan’s volunteers were disbanded in the spring of 1795 and Lewis en listed in the Legion of the United States on May 1, 1795. He was in Pittsburgh taking a small pox inoculation when he announced in a letter to his mother dated May 22:
… your kind intreaty to return, yet notwithstanding all, so violently opposed is my governing passion for rambleing to the wishes of all my friends that I am led intentionally to err and then have vanity enough to beg for forgiveness…. I have mentioned to Rubin my having joined the fideral Army which puts it out of my power to leave this Country until the conclusion of this summer’s campaign is over…. I must conclude by signing myself your ever sincair tho’ wanderong son.63
He addressed the letter to “Cittizen Lucy Markes,” following the trend of the new Democratic-Republican societies, who were calling everyone “citizen” in the spirit of sympathy with the French Revolution. James McFarlane had been the chairman of the Society of United Freemen of Mingo Creek, one of three Democratic-Republican societies in western Pennsylvania accused of inciting the Whiskey Rebellion.
In a letter dated May 23rd, Lewis wrote to the father of Thomas Walker that he had taken care of placing a tombstone on the grave of his son—his “old friend”—who had died on January 15, 1795. Lewis wrote:
Before I left McFarlings Farm every arrangement was made that I could conceive necessary either to interment of the remains or to perpetuate the memory of your son. Sir, the willows that you sent me were carefully planted, but unfortunately few of the slips have any appearance of living. There are representative trees of that kind in this place. I’ll send some of the slips by an officer belonging to the garrison who has promised me he will plant them with great care himself. There being no locusts in the neighborhood, I was obliged to make use of black walnut for both post ends and railing. His grave was handsomely set on a high knoll. We erected a well polished stone two feet and a half in breth and five feet in length and on it is engraved the following inscription: In memory of Capt. Thomas Walker who died January 15, 1795 in the 20th year of his age.64
It seems likely that Thomas Walker was a schoolmate friend of Lewis’s, and that his home was near Jump Mountain, about 70 miles west of Charlottesville. It is a sad commentary on the death of Meriwether Lewis that no one—family, friends, government officials, or Masonic lodge brothers—took the same care with his grave site at the time of his death in 1809.
East side of Mississippi River, south of Kentucky
This map says it all—why the land south of Kentucky was so irresistible to westerners and foreign governments. It was good agricultural land, adjacent to the Mississippi River and the Gulf of Mexico and a natural location for a new independent country. The Chickasaw, Choctaw and Creek Indians still lived there. It is a central theme of the early American Republic and the story of James Wilkinson.