Will Whiskey Rebels Unravel the Union?
WITH CONGRESS ADJOURNED, THE President looked forward to a visit to Mount Vernon to talk with his new overseer. He had scarcely arrived in his beloved home when trouble flared in another part of America—the western counties of Pennsylvania. There were about seventy thousand pioneers in this part of the Keystone State. They—and compatriots in the western counties of Virginia and North Carolina and Maryland—still nursed a grievance against the federal government’s 1791 decision to lay a tax on the most lucrative product of their labors—whiskey. Almost every good-sized farm had a still where grain was turned into alcohol.1
The tax was crucial to Secretary of the Treasury Hamilton’s plan to reduce the national debt. That made the President and the Secretary doubly sensitive to protests from the region, which were frequent. In 1792 and 1793, there were mass meetings, and angry demands for repeal of the tax were forwarded to Philadelphia. The government tried to meet some of these objections. Congress agreed to reduce the tax, and exempted farmers from paying it in cash, which was scarce on their side of the mountains. In June 1794, Congress dropped the requirement that accused violators had to travel all the way to Philadelphia to be tried in a federal court. Local state courts were permitted to handle the cases.
But resentment remained strong. Not a little of it was fanned by the growth of Citizen Genet’s brainchild, the Democratic Societies. The original, personally founded by the envoy in Philadelphia, had been busy exporting the idea that the federal government was in the hands of would be aristocrats and British sympathizers. Democratic-Republican newspapers frequently said the same thing. The slander found an enthusiastic reception in the West. Local Democratic Societies became proponents of extreme measures to oppose the tax.
Federal collectors were beaten up as they travelled the roads; some were tarred and feathered. A character named “Tom the Tinker” sent threatening letters to owners of large stills that were complying with the law. Those who did not respond had their tanks shot full of holes—a gesture the rebels called Tom’s way of “mending” a still. Several of Tom’s friends torched the house of John Neville, the regional supervisor in charge of collecting the tax. A bullet whistled close to the federal marshal who was protecting him.
On August 1, 1794, some seven thousand protestors gathered at Braddock’s Field, near Pittsburgh. The site was named for the British general, Edward Braddock, whose army had been routed there by the French and their Indian allies in 1755. A young George Washington had been the luckless general’s aide. The principal orator at the gathering was a popular attorney named David Bradford, who appeared in the uniform of a major general, and urged the mob to join him in forming a new state—or better, an independent country. Other speakers called Pittsburgh, “Sodom,” and recommended looting and burning it. Women among the rioters talked eagerly of the fine clothes they hoped to procure from the houses of the Sodomites before they went up in smoke.
Above the mob floated a flag with six stripes, representing four Pennsylvania counties and two in Virginia. Everyone knew that Kentucky, the next state down the mountain line, was already talking about secession, and the word was soon adopted by the orators. One speaker revealed his admiration for France’s Jacobins by urging the construction of a guillotine and the formation of a Committee of Safety. No one knew that by this time Robespierre and many of his fellow fanatics had been guillotined in yet another transfer of power in Paris.2
Similar unrest erupted in western Maryland when emissaries from the Pennsylvania protestors arrived, looking for additional guns and ammunition. They told wild stories of the federal government’s plan to tax wheat, rye, and oats, and even male and female children. Soon there was talk of attacking the federal arsenal at Frederick. Liberty poles went up in Hagerstown and violence erupted when less convinced residents tried to tear them down. Maryland Governor Thomas Simms Lee ordered eight hundred militia, backed by artillery and cavalry, to crush the insurrection. One government supporter declared “ANTIFEDERALISM” was the rebels’ order of march.”3
Studying reports of what was being said at Braddock’s Field, President Washington concluded that most of the listeners were “dupes.” But it was clear that “artful and designing men” were in charge of things. For the President, it was a replay of Shays’ Rebellion, whose tentacles had also reached into nearby states. In both cases, the underlying threat was the destruction of the Union. It was time to act.
Washington summoned his cabinet to discuss the situation. Hamilton, Knox, and the new attorney general, William Bradford, favored force. Secretary of State Randolph feared an army would enrage Democratic-Republicans in other states. The President asked Pennsylvania Governor Thomas Mifflin to summon his state militia to intimidate the rioters. Displaying his concealed hatred of Washington, the governor declined to act. He claimed local law enforcement officials could handle the situation. Washington did not even bother to reply to this absurdity.
On August 7, the President issued a proclamation, calling on the protestors to disperse, and announcing his intention to summon thirteen thousand militia from Pennsylvania, Maryland, Virginia, and New Jersey. As a last-ditch effort to achieve a peaceful solution, he asked Attorney General Bradford and two distinguished Pennsylvanians, U.S. Senator James Ross and state Supreme Court Justice Jasper Yeates, to go to Pittsburgh and negotiate with the rebels.
These federal commissioners soon reported that there was no sign of a willingness to accept even a truce. The rebels were full of bravado; they talked of fighting to the death. The President asked Secretary of War Knox to call out the militia, and announced he would put Governor Henry Lee of Virginia in command of it. This was good politics—bringing the largest state in the Union into the game. The President told Lee the upheaval was “the first formidable fruit” of the Democratic Societies.
Soon, thirteen thousand men were marching west through Pennsylvania. The President added to the rebels’ apprehension by announcing that he would join the army as they advanced from Carlisle in late September. Simultaneously, he issued another proclamation, calling on the rest of the nation for support. “The people of the United States,” he declared, had been permitted, thanks to “divine favor,” the freedom to elect their own government. He hoped that gratitude for this “inestimable blessing” would inspire “firm exertions to maintain the Constitution and the laws.”4
Welcome news came from the President’s brother-in-law, Burgess Ball, who told him that Virginia’s militia were with him heart and soul and ready to reinforce the army if he needed them. Similar news arrived from other states. Washington’s prestige and the impact of his proclamations had aroused a widespread detestation of the whiskey rebels. Democratic-Republicans by the hundreds declared themselves ready to join Governor Lee’s army. They saw it was their only hope of retaining some popularity.5
One of the most ironic examples of this turnaround was Governor Mifflin. Having sniffed the political winds, he became all warrior. Trying to certify his aging manhood, he drank so hard he gave confused commands that resulted in Pennsylvania cavalry firing on a detachment of New Jersey militia. Fortunately, the bullets flew high. Washington with, we can be sure, not a little pleasure, urged the governor to concentrate on making sure the army was well supplied. The words were a wry reference to the fact that Mifflin had been quartermaster general of the Continental Army in 1778 until he resigned to play anti-Washington intriguer.
On September 30, en route to join the army, the President heard news that enormously strengthened his hand. Major General Anthony Wayne reported that his army, still called the Legion of the United States, had won a huge victory over the largest Indian army ever assembled on the continent. The warriors had chosen to fight in a part of a forest that had been struck by a tornado, leaving hundreds of felled trees in a gigantic tangle. The site (not far from present-day Toledo, Ohio) already had a name, Fallen Timbers. To the Indians, it seemed heaven sent as a place that Wayne’s cavalry could not penetrate and his infantry would find difficult to attack in a compact mass, wielding the weapon the Indians feared, the bayonet.
The Indians’ opening volley killed the two leaders of Wayne’s advanced guard, and the rest of the Americans began falling back, firing as they retreated, not a few turning to run. It had all the appearances of the rout that had led to the massacre of the army led by General St. Clair. The howling warriors charged from their tangled timber defense line expecting a harvest of scalps. They collided with the main body of Wayne’s well-trained army and found themselves fighting in tall grass and open forest, where American marksmanship took a stunning toll.
“Charge the damned rascals with the bayonet!” General Wayne roared, and his men obeyed with alacrity. The Indians took one look at the oncoming “long knives” and ran. A company of white Canadians recruited by Governor General Lord Dorchester tried to make a stand but Kentucky militia hit them from the flank. The entire enemy line broke in disorder. Some fled across open ground and Wayne’s cavalry ruthlessly rode them down.
The fugitives headed for nearby Fort Miami, which the British had built to encourage the tribes to resist the Americans. The fort’s commanding officer refused to open the gates. The humiliated warriors could only continue their panicky flight. It was the end of their illusion that the British were on their side, ready to help drive the Americans east of the mountains. The battle of Fallen Timbers also annihilated British hopes of siding with the whiskey rebels, and recruiting them into an army strong enough to create a separate frontier nation beholden to Britain.
The victory sent an unnerving chill through the bravado that was animating the whiskey rebels. They turned their anger against people of wealth and property. A rider cantered through the streets of Pittsburgh, waving a tomahawk, and chanting: “It is not the excise law that must go down; your district and associate judges must go down; your high offices and salaries. A great deal more is to be done. I am but beginning yet.” The majority of these protestors had little or nothing to do with making or selling whiskey. They had almost no land and no knowledge of how to build a still.6
In Europe, the British and French governments were watching the crisis. The British minister in Philadelphia, George Hammond, was convinced that the United States was too large and geographically divided to survive as a nation. Hammond thought most Americans had a “rooted aversion” to a central government. This belief had been bolstered by clandestine visits from westerners “of very decent manners and appearance,” who told him they were “dissatisfied with the U.S. government and were determined to separate from it.”
The Spanish minister, Joseph de Jaudene, received similar visits. Secretary of the Treasury Hamilton learned of the reports both ministers were sending to their governments, and informed President Washington. The information had further convinced him of the need for a massive display of federal force.7
After reviewing the militia army, Washington received a visit from two envoys from the rebels, Congressman William Findley, and David Redick, a former member of the Pennsylvania Executive Council. They did their utmost to dissuade the federal army from marching to Pittsburgh. They told the President that the protestors were now ready to pay the tax. They claimed there was evidence of “a vengeful spirit” in the army—another reason why they should not be allowed to pillage and plunder in their search for culprits.
The President assured the envoys he would handle this supposed problem. He made it clear he was no longer interested in an easily broken promise to resume paying the tax. He wanted “unequivocal proofs of absolute submission” to federal authority and a confession from the rebels that they had committed treason by attacking Tax Supervisor John Neville and his federal marshal escort.8
Another reason for Washington’s sternness was the season of the year. By now his militiamen were feeling the chilly winds of October. He wanted to complete this demonstration of federal authority before the freezing temperatures of November arrived. Meanwhile, he made sure that the story of his reviewing the army was published in newspapers throughout America.
Beside Washington strode Governor Lee and his fellow officers, many of them also veterans of the struggle for independence. The President told the soldiers it was not their task to punish the whiskey rebels unless they resisted their orders. Courts of law would decide who was guilty of treason, and determine their fate.9
On October 21, the army marched west in two columns. The President headed back to Philadelphia, where Congress was gathering for its next session. Secretary of the Treasury Hamilton was left behind to supervise—but not to command—the army. Nonetheless, Democratic-Republican newspapers went berserk, claiming Hamilton’s “appointment” was a first step to a dictatorship. Unperturbed and confident, the President reached the City of Brotherly Love in ample time to work on his address to Congress.
In western Pennsylvania, there were sporadic bursts of resistance, such as the appearance of liberty poles along the army’s line of march. But the size of the army dissolved any organized resistance. The would-be leader of the proto-revolution, David Bradford, fled west into Indian territory, followed by several hundred of his followers. The would-be Robespierre who recommended importing a guillotine presumably went with him. The army eventually rounded up about 150 suspects, who were not treated gently while in captivity. But only two people were killed—an amazingly low figure, considering the ferocity of the defiance voiced in Braddock’s Field and elsewhere.
In Philadelphia, the President went before Congress in mid-November. Most of his speech was devoted to the Whiskey Rebellion. He described how “symptoms of riot and violence” began to appear when “certain self-created societies” began condemning the federal government. Next came attempts to intimidate “federal officers” by “the vengeance of armed men,” which destroyed their ability to sustain the laws. He discussed his attempt to achieve a peaceful solution and his decision to order the army to march when he saw that “malevolence was not pointed merely to a single law…A spirit inimical to all order actuated many of the offenders.” He closed with the hope that all Americans would continue to support “that precious depository of American happiness, the Constitution of the United States.”10
In the Senate, there was widespread approval for the President. The solons made a point of endorsing his condemnation of the “self-created” Democratic Societies. But in the House, there was antipathy. James Madison later told James Monroe that Washington’s attack on the Societies was “the greatest error of his political life.”11
At Monticello, Thomas Jefferson took an even darker view. He called Washington’s denunciation of the Democratic Societies “one of the most extraordinary acts of boldness of which we have seen so many from the faction of the monocrats.” He could only wonder why and how “the President should have permitted himself to be the organ of such an attack on the freedom of discussion, the freedom of writing, printing and publishing.”12
Washington had done no such thing. For six years, he had tolerated the freest imaginable press in Philadelphia and other cities. His condemnation of the Democratic Societies was specific—their role in fomenting rebellion and disunion. Jefferson’s generalizations were easy to proclaim from Monticello’s hilltop, several hundred miles from the mob in Braddock’s Field, calling for guillotines and looting defenseless Pittsburgh.
Several months later, the ex-secretary of state wandered even further into disdainful unrealism, telling James Monroe, in distant Paris, that “an insurrection was announced and proclaimed and armed against but could never be found.”13
In their reply to the President’s speech, Madison and the House Democratic-Republicans omitted the term “self-created societies” in their message. But they made it clear that they too denounced the insurrection and were devoted to the Constitution. “When viewed in its true light,” the House (in Madison’s words) told Washington, the “spectacle” of the insurrection and its collapse demonstrated “the virtues of the American character and the value of republican government.”
Washington did not change his mind about the Democratic Societies. In a letter to John Jay around this time, he wrote “that the self-created societies have been the fomenters of the Western disturbances admits of no doubt in the mind of anyone who will examine their conduct.” This was what Jefferson and Madison refused to do. They had as little interest in the violence that had swirled beyond the Allegheny Mountains as they had in the gruesome realities of the French Revolution.14
Within a year, the victor in this contest would become all too apparent. The replacement of Citizen Genet and France’s repudiation of his reckless schemes—and the overthrow of the Jacobins in Paris—made the Democratic Societies and their wild-eyed, pro-French rhetoric look foolish. President Washington’s condemnation of their call for disunion only underscored their extremism. They dwindled from thirty-five to five, and these survivors disappeared before the end of his second term.
The presidency and the American people had survived the greatest test of their commitment to the Union until the Civil War. But an even more difficult challenge awaited Washington in history’s wings: John Jay’s treaty with Great Britain.15