1 7 9 6 given the dubious honor of a farewell reception, but Pinckney was reminded that the law forbade any foreigner to stay more than thirty days in France without permission. As he refused to ask for such permission, he was ordered to leave the country. He went from Paris to Amsterdam and soon returned to America.

THE

I'

FIRST REBELLION

Nature

T can hardly be expected that a country will suddenly Human come out of chaos and pass under a strong government without some kind of a protest from some of its people. General acquiescence is particularly unlikely where the country is large, the population cosmopolitan, and the industries diversified. Laws that Laws that may be advantageous to most of the sections may seem oppressive to some other section. One must always reckon with an innate quality of human nature that dislikes to submit to authority-a tendency likely to be the more pronounced when for a long period the bonds of obedience have been loosened or non-existent. As we have already seen, the new federal government had not long been in operation before there was an opposition party criticising and opposing many of the measures and policies of the administration. Although this party indulged in denunciation that was often severe and sometimes inflammatory, it never went beyond peaceful methods; however much they might dislike the Federalist program, Jefferson and Madison were not men to put themselves at the head of an armed rebellion. But there were others who were less peacefully inclined and, only five years after his first inauguration, Washington found it necessary to uphold the authority of the government by military force. The excise tax upon the domestic manufacture of spirituous liquors, enacted by congress in accordance with the May 3, 1791 recommendations of Hamilton's second report on public

The western Pennsylvania of that day was divided into four counties, Fayette, Westmoreland, Allegheny, and Washington. It had a population of about seventy thousand scattered over a country nearly as great as Scotland or Ireland. Pittsburg was the seat of justice and the only place that could be called a town, and it had only about twelve hundred inhabitants. Outlet for the products of the region by way of the Ohio and the Mississippi was made impossible by Indians and Spaniards, while at the east towered high mountain ranges through which it was difficult to pass save on foot or on horseback. To carry their grain to market would cost the people more than the market value of the crop. Money was scarce and the farmer, having no market for his produce, reduced its bulk by converting much of his grain into whiskey and his surplus supply of apples and

Map to Illustrate the "Whiskey Rebellion"

peaches into brandy. His horse "could carry two kegs 1 7 9 1 of eight gallons each, worth about fifty cents per gallon 1 7 9 4 on this, and one dollar on the other side of the mountains, while he returned with a little iron and salt, worth at Pittsburg, the former fifteen to twenty cents per pound, the latter five dollars per bushel." The still was therefore the necessary appendage of almost every farm. A large part of the inhabitants of the region were Scotch-Irish, a religious and warlike race, with many admirable qualities but quick to anger and ready to resist oppression, rather rough and somewhat lawless, and with an inherited hatred of excise laws and excise officers.

While the federal excise bill was pending and after it Protests was passed, the Pennsylvania legislature adopted resolutions opposing it. Similar action was taken by the legislatures of Virginia, Maryland, the Carolinas, and Georgia. On the twenty-seventh of July, 1791, a mass-meeting to protest against the law was held at Red Stone Old Fort (Brownsville) on the Monongahela. A certain Colonel Cook was chairman of the meeting, and Albert Gallatin, a Genevan who had come to America in 1780 and was a member

of the state

legislature,

Albert Callata

was its secretary. An agreement was reached that each county should be recommended to hold meetings at its seat of justice and to select three delegates to meet at

1 7 9 1 Pittsburg with delegates from the other counties on the 1 7 9 2 first Tuesday of September and there to express the sense

Amendment

March 5, 1792

The Conflict
Deepens

of their constituents respecting the excise law. On the twenty-third of August, the Washington County meeting adopted violent resolutions, while those later adopted at the general meeting at Pittsburg have been described as reading "more like a declaration of grievances as a basis for revolution than a petition for special redress."

When the federal officials attempted to collect the whiskey tax, they were mobbed in three of the four counties. Unwilling to proceed to extremities and doubtless influenced by the action of the legislatures, congress referred the law to the secretary of the treasury with instructions to report concerning the difficulties experienced in enforcing it and whether any of the desired changes could be made. Although indignant at the action of the people in setting the federal laws at defiance, Hamilton complied with the congressional order and, two months later, the law was amended. This new act, which was to take effect at the end of the following June, lowered the rate and made other changes intended to benefit the distillers.

These modifications of the law failed to allay the discontent. Many of the western distillers were opposed to paying any tax, while all of them felt that it was unjust to force them to pay as high a rate as was imposed east of the mountains where the product was worth twice as much. The scarcity of money in the West and the lack of any provision in the law whereby the tax could be paid in kind increased the burden that the tax imposed. On the twenty-first of August, 1792, a meeting was held at Pittsburg. Gallatin, who was moderate in his views, was chosen secretary. Among the other leaders were James Marshall, John Smilie who was a representative in congress, and James Bradford, a loose demagogue whom Gallatin later characterized as a "tenth-rate lawyer and an empty drum." A committee, of which Gallatin was a member, was appointed to draw up a remonstrance to congress; a committee of correspondence was