were insulted and thwarted in the execution of their duty. Washington's next letter (September 7) has a touch of anger. He hated disorder and riot anywhere, but he was disgusted when they came from the very people for whose defense the Indian war was pushed and the excise made necessary. He approved of Hamilton's sending out an officer to examine into the survey, and said: "If, notwithstanding, opposition is still given to the due execution of the law, I have no hesitation in declaring, if the evidence of it is clear and unequivocal, that I shall, however reluctantly I exercise them, exert all the legal powers with which the executive is invested to check so daring and unwarrantable a spirit. It is my duty to see the laws executed. To permit them to be trampled upon with impunity would be repugnant to it; nor can the government longer remain a passive spectator of the contempt with which they are treated. Forbearance, under a hope that the inhabitants of that survey would recover from the delirium and folly into which they were plunged, seems to have had no other effect than to increase the disorder.".

A few weeks later he issued a proclamation, declaring formally and publicly what he had already said in private. He warned the people engaged in resistance to the law that the law would be enforced, and exhorted them to desist. The proclamation was effective in the south, and the opposition died out in North Carolina. Not so in Pennsylvania. There the Scotch-Irish border

ers who lived in the western counties were bent on having their way. A brave, self-willed, hotheaded, turbulent people, they were going to have their fight out. They had ridden rough-shod over the Quaker and German government in Pennsylvania before this, and they no doubt thought they could do the same with this new government of the United States. They merely made a mistake about the man at the head of the government; nothing more than that. Such mistakes have been made before. The Paris mob, for example, made a similar blunder on the 13th Vendémiaire, when Bonaparte settled matters by the famous whiff of grape-shot. There is some excuse for the error of our Scotch-Irish borderers in their past experience, more excuse still in the drift of other events that touched all men just then with the madness of France, and gave birth to certain democratic societies which applauded any resistance to law, even if the cause was no nobler than a whiskey still.

Perhaps, too, the Pennsylvanians were encouraged by the moderation and deliberate movement of the government. A lull came after the proclamation of 1792. Then every effort was made to settle the troubles by civil processes and by personal negotiation, but all proved vain. The disturbances went on increasing for two years, until law was at an end in the insurgent counties. The mails were stopped and robbed, there were violence, bloodshed, rioting, attacks on the officers

of the United States, and meetings threatening still worse things.

Meanwhile Washington had waited and watched, and bided his time. He felt now that the moment had come when, if ever, public opinion must be with him, and that the hour had arrived when he must put his fortune to the touch, and "try if it were current gold indeed.". On August 7 he issued a second proclamation, setting forth the outrages committed, and announcing his power to: call out the militia, and his intention to do so if unconditional submission did not follow at once. As he wrote to a friend three days later: "Actual rebellion exists against the laws of the United States." On the crucial point, however, he felt safe. He was confident that all the public opinion worth having was now on his side, and that the people were ready to stand by the government. The quick and unconditional submission did not come, and on September 25 he issued a third proclamation, reciting the facts and calling out the militia of New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Maryland, and Virginia.

Washington had judged rightly. The States responded, and the troops came to the number of fifteen thousand, for he was in the habit of doing things thoroughly, and meant to have an overwhelming force. To Governor Lee of Virginia the command of the combined forces was intrusted. "I am perfectly in sentiment with you, that the business we are drawn out upon should be effect

ually executed, and that the daring and factious spirit which threatens to overturn the laws and to subvert the Constitution ought to be subdued." Thus he wrote to Morgan, while the commissioners from the insurgents were politely received, and told that the march of the troops could not be countermanded. Washington would fain have gone himself, in command of the army, but he felt that he could not leave the seat of government for so long a time with propriety. He went as far as Bedford with the troops, and then parted from them. When he took leave, he wrote a letter to Lee, to be read to the army, in which he said: "No citizen of the United States can ever be engaged in a service more important to their country. It is nothing less than to consolidate and to preserve the blessings of that revolution which at much expense of blood and treasure constituted us a free and independent nation." Thus admonished, the army marched, Hamilton going with them in characteristic fashion to the end. They did their work thoroughly. The insurrection disappeared, and resistance dropped suddenly out of sight. The Scotch-Irish of the border, with all their love of fighting, found too late that they were dealing with a power very different from that of their own State. The ringleaders of the insurrection were arrested and tried by civil process, the disorders ceased, law reigned once more, and the "hateful tax" was duly paid and collected.

The "Whiskey Rebellion" has never received

due weight in the history of the United States. Its story has been told in the utmost detail, but its details are unimportant. As a fact, however, it is full of meaning, and this meaning has been too much overlooked. That this should be so, is not to be wondered at, for everything has conspired to make it seem, after a century has gone by, both mean and trivial. Its very name suggests ridicule and contempt, and it collapsed so utterly that people laughed at it and despised it. Its leaders, with the exception of Gallatin, were cheap and talkative persons of little worth, and the cause itself was neither noble, romantic, nor inspiriting. Nevertheless, it was a dangerous and formidable business, for it was the first direct challenge to the new government. It was the first clear utterance of the stern question asked of every people striving to live as a nation, Have you a right to live? Have you a government able to fight and to endure? Have you men ready to take up the challenge? These questions were put by rough frontier settlers, and put in the name and for the sake of distilling whiskey unvexed by law. But they were there, they had to be answered, and on the reply the existence of the government was at stake. If it failed, all was over. If the States did not respond to this first demand, that they should put down disorder and dissension within the borders of one of their number, the experiment had failed. It came, as it almost always does come, to one man to make the answer.

VOL. II.