FIRST LESSONS IN NATIONAL OBEDIENCE
Although the first years under an efficient form of national control
were remarkably successful, inspiring what was really the first
confidence in the free government of America, it was not to be expected
that all difficulties were to be avoided, especially if the new form
assumed a vigorous and capable management. Heretofore domestic violence
had threatened local government only, because the national administration
was too inefficient to come in contact with disorder. If the National
Government should now attempt to enforce its laws, the very action must
sooner or later bring it into conflict with recalcitrants in some section,
as well as with the naturally lawless. Even the understanding that local
policing was to be left to local government would not restrain an
efficient national administration from meeting such a crisis vigorously.
Indeed, the action of the nation in such an emergency would determine
whether it was at the mercy of State aid and protection or whether it
could care for itself.
If one were attempting to predict at what point of national
administration rebellion would arise, he would no doubt choose taxation.
The hostility of the people toward taxation, possibly engendered in
the Revolutionary days, and exaggerated by human nature, has been
described in previous pages. One of the objections to the Constitution
had been that the people could now be taxed by two agencies, State and
nation, thereby involving double taxes. The resistance to the excise
tax, which began to be manifest in a small way soon after its
institution in 1791, bore a striking resemblance to the rebellion
against the stamp-tax levied by Britain upon the colonists a generation
before. A tax levied on imported goods, collected at the ports, quietly
added to the original cost, and, therefore, a kind of external tax,
is never so objectionable as one paid directly out of hand, and hence
an internal tax. So little in evidence is an external tax that the
people are sometimes beguiled into questioning whether the producer
or the consumer pays the tax. An internal tax, levied on distilled
liquors, whiskey, rum, brandy, and gin, was no more a novelty in the
early days of the Constitution than was a stamp-tax in 1765. Being
accustomed to having it levied by the local government in each instance,
it became objectionable when laid by the superior power. Massachusetts,
Connecticut, and Pennsylvania had used an excise as a means of raising
revenue. The people in the western part of the latter State had several
times resisted its imposition by the State Legislature, but the
penalties imposed upon their lawlessness had generally been remitted
by the governor, and the law had been finally repealed. "The Legislature
has been obliged to wink at the violation of her excise laws in the
western parts of the state ever since the Revolution," confessed a
United States Senator from that State.
The Constitution clearly stated the power of Congress to lay and collect
both imposts and excises. From the beginning of his reports upon
available sources of revenue, Hamilton had suggested a special impost
upon imported liquors and an excise upon those manufactured in the
United States. He fully realised that the word "excise" was obnoxious
to citizens who had migrated from Scotland and Ireland, where the tax
was imposed by a superior force, and in England as well, where it had
been known since Cromwell's day. To these people it meant not only a
tax on liquors, but on candles, salt, vinegar, and other forms of
domestic manufacture. It meant a license to own a gun, and to peddle
small wares. Not many years had passed since Samuel Johnson in his
dictionary had defined it as "a hateful tax levied upon commodities
and adjudged not by the common judges of property but wretches hired
by those to whom it is paid." Added to these inherited prejudices of
the Irish and Scotch-Irish settlers in western Pennsylvania against
the excise was a local complaint that they lacked roads for transporting
their grain across the mountains to market and were prohibited from
floating it down to New Orleans both by the distance and by the
hostility of the Spanish. Their surplus produce must rot unless it
could be manufactured into spirits which could be consumed at home or
carried to a market. A horse, it was said, could carry only four bushels
of grain across the mountains; but he could take twenty-four bushels
when converted into liquor. In that day, before the later temperance
movements had created a different sentiment, whiskey was regarded as
a necessary article of food as much as beef or bread. The amount of
strong liquor used in the United States was estimated at two and
one-half gallons per year for every man, woman, and child.
Although the consumption of liquor in the uplands of North Carolina
was almost equal to that in western Pennsylvania, there were no such
geographical causes for resistance to the General Government's excise.
It was seen by the Administration that opposition would be most likely
in the four western counties of Pennsylvania. That State had the most
diverse elements of population. Its colonial history had been marked
by racial and factional contests. It was now to have the unfortunate
distinction of producing the first open resistance to the Federal
Union. The disorder at first took the form of mobbing and intimidating
collectors, destroying the property of distillers who complied with
the law, and holding public meetings at which resolutions denouncing
the laws of the Government were passed. During the two and a half years
that the insurrectionary spirit increased, Congress twice modified the
excise law in a vain attempt to conciliate its Pennsylvania opponents,
who demanded a total repeal of the tax. To check the General Government
the leaders of the insurrection threatened to secede, thus setting an
early pattern for this form of intimidation.
"I am induced to believe," wrote one of them, "the three Virginia
counties this side the mountain will fall in. The first measure then
will be the reorganization of a new government, comprehending the three
Virginia counties and those of Pennsylvania to the westward, to what
extent I know not... Being then on an equal footing with other parts of
the Union, if they submit to the law, this country might also submit."
With such a spirit of combination against the Federal Government as
these words indicated, the supporters of the national power cast about
to find what provisions had been made for enforcing the national laws.
The Constitution gave the command of the army and navy to the President;
but the peace establishment, on which the army had been put at the
close of the war, placed at his service an inadequate force. The
necessity for economising, as well as the fear of a standing army, had
kept the army down to five regiments of infantry and one battalion of
cavalry. This force was required constantly on the frontier and could
not be spared to suppress domestic insurrection. In such a defenceless
condition, the Union must turn to the militia of the various States.
The Constitution had provided for such an emergency in a general way
by making the President the head "of the militia of the several states
when called into the actual service of the United States." Here was
opportunity in working out the details for the individualists to protect
themselves against the unjust use of the militia by restricting the
circumstances under which it could be called into the actual service
of the Federal Government. Unfortunately for them, measures for the
proper defence of the frontier were necessary from the beginning of
the new Government. Since the frontier lay so largely in the United
States territories, its defence belonged to that authority and not to
any State. Under certain limits of time and distance, the President
had been authorised in various laws to employ State militia on the
frontier. The Secretary of War eventually drew up a plan for organising
uniformly the militia of the States into a national defence, believing,
as he said, that "an energetic militia is to be regarded as the capital
security of a free republic, and not a standing army, forming a distinct
class in the community."
In drafting the militia law of 1792, in accord with the recommendations
of Knox, the President was authorised to call out the militia of any
State "whenever the laws of the United States should be opposed by
combinations too powerful to be suppressed by the ordinary course of
judicial proceedings." This efficient clause was productive of a
prolonged debate in each branch and a conference between the two. Its
opponents made various efforts to substitute the Legislature of a State
as the agency for calling out the militia, to require a previous notice
to the President from a justice that the laws could not be enforced,
and to have a session of Congress intervene before the President could
march the militia of one State into another. The fear of giving the
central power an excuse for maintaining a standing army had led the
framers of the Constitution to incorporate a clause placing the militia
at national service only for the purpose of executing its laws,
suppressing insurrection, and repelling invasion. Of these emergencies,
Congress was to be the judge. Should the dangerous authority now be
given over to the Executive? The long intermissions between sessions
of Congress made such delegating imperative. The Shays rebellion had
left its lesson. Yet, according to one speaker, the measure seemed to
suppose that only the General Government possessed the power to suppress
insurrections, whereas the States individually certainly possessed
this power and would execute it. Another thought it an insult to the
majesty of the people to hold out the idea that it may be necessary
to execute the laws at the point of the bayonet. "If an old woman,"
cried a disgusted member of the minority, "was to strike an excise
officer with a broomstick, forsooth the military is to be called out
to suppress an insurrection."
Finally, by a close vote in each House, the United States was given
power through its Chief Executive to call forth the militia of the
several States. The action made a connecting ligament between the
national body politic and the arm of a widespread and always prepared
force. The militia proved most effective in preserving the sovereignty
of the National Government in domestic affairs until the regular troops
were relieved from the duty of guarding the frontier. Unquestionably,
the measures pending at the same time for the protection of the frontier
and the inquiry into the defeat of General St. Clair in the
North-Western Territory did much to hasten the passage of the militia
bill.
Being thus fortified against domestic insurrection and resistance to
its laws, the decision whether the new Government would be more
successful in these particulars than its predecessor depended entirely
upon the attitude of its administrators. It was fortunate for the
people of the United States and the growth of the Union that Hamilton
was at the head of the department in which the first resistance to the
laws occurred. A secretary less devoted to the aggrandisement of the
central authority, more careful of the reserved rights of the
individual, or more temporising by nature, might have attempted to
check the well-known predilection of his chief for vigorous enforcement
of the laws instead of constantly urging him thereto. If Hamilton and
Jefferson had exchanged secretaryships, the story of the United States
would have been vastly different. Hamilton had time to time notified
the President that his departmental collectors were interfered with
in the execution of their duties in the districts of western
Pennsylvania. He wanted to use the full force of the Government against
offenders. "Moderation enough has been shown," said he. "It is time
to assume a different tone." The spirit was spreading to other parts.
The Federal officials of both North and South Carolina warned him that
the disaffection was extending to those States.
From the standpoint of the Union it was also fortunate that a military
man was President. Those who criticised the choice for the Presidency
of a man with military experience but no civic training, and those who
deplore a custom so frequently repeated since, may find here some
benefits arising from having a man with such an education. "I have no
hesitation in declaring," replied Washington to Secretary Hamilton,
when notified of the resistance manifested in western Pennsylvania to
the revenue officers, "that I shall, however reluctantly exercising
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." Very carefully the soldier-President felt his way
through his civic powers of coercion before using his military authority
in this first of several cases of preserving the Union against
insurrection. There was absolutely no precedent for the coercion of
citizens by the National Government. The Federal courts had not yet
come into conflict with any considerable number of citizens of a State.
But they extended as a judicial network over the whole national domain.
They covered every inhabitant. To them Washington turned first. Although
Attorney-General Knox decided that the insurgent meetings were not
illegal, several rioters were fined by the United States Circuit Court,
special sessions of which were held in Pennsylvania.
The President showed his appreciation of the delicate adjustment between
State and national authority by consulting the Governor of Pennsylvania
at every step. If the State at this formative hour had possessed an
executive confident in himself and in his ability to suppress the
disorder, he might have done a lasting service to the preservation of
the supremacy of the States and forestalled the prestige which the
Central Government was bound to obtain from its leadership in this
crisis. But Governor Mifflin was content to support the national
authority, claiming that the militia of his State was inadequate to
the emergency.
In the summer of 1794, the disorder broke out afresh, extending to the
spoliation of the United States mail. The National Government dared
hesitate no longer. Hamilton, by private letters and public reports,
urged the President incessantly to action. His unusual foresight saw
the opportunity for strengthening the nation. Weakness in the written
Constitution might here be remedied by the precedent of strong action
under it. At last a Federal judge of Pennsylvania notified the President
that the laws could no longer be enforced in his district. Washington
immediately issued the required proclamation of warning, which had
been penned by Hamilton. Five weeks later, the Chief Executive called
upon the governors of Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Maryland, and Virginia
for militia and issued a second proclamation commanding peace. He based
this action on the constitutional provision requiring the Executive
to take care that the laws be faithfully executed.
The seat of the National Government being at Philadelphia, near the
rendezvous of the militia, enabled the President to place himself at
the head of the militia. No later President has interpreted so literally
his office as commander-in-chief of the army. As he reached Bedford,
Fort Cumberland, and other scenes of his campaigns against the French
a half-century before, he must have compared that errand with his
present one. Then he was saving helpless colonists from a foreign foe;
now he was preserving a government from its own constituents.
"No citizens of the United States," he wrote to Governor Lee, of
Virginia, when leaving him at the head of the militia in order to return
to Philadelphia for the opening of Congress, "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."
It was also fortunate that Washington had passed through some
instructive experience in Revolutionary days on the disadvantages of
an insufficient military force. To put down the small body of insurgents
in the western borders of Pennsylvania he called for almost thirteen
thousand militiamen. To a delegation of the insurgents who met him on
the way to complain of such an armed force coming to conquer them,
Washington replied that although we had made a republican form of
government and enacted laws under it, yet we had given no testimony
to the world of being able or willing to support our Government; that,
this being the first instance of the kind since the commencement of
the Government, he thought it his duty to bring out such a force as
would not only be sufficient to subdue the insurgents if they made
resistance, but to crush to atoms all opposition that might arise in
any quarter.
Washington foresaw the effects of using the military power in behalf
of the Union. "The most delicate and momentous duty the chief magistrate
of a free people can have to perform," he called it. Early in the
excise resistance he had declared that the Government must not use the
regular troops if order could possibly be effected without this aid.
"Otherwise," said he, "there would be a cry at once, 'The cat is let
out; we now see for what purpose an army was raised!'" But
individualistic spirits who were alarmed at this new distortion of the
Government toward centralisation feared the results of using even the
militia. Jefferson, having resigned his secretaryship and seeing the
unusually prominent part assumed by Hamilton in the expedition,
protested from his retirement at Monticello against such "employment
of military force for civil purposes." To his mind the disorder was
simply a riot and not an insurrection. "Yet it answered the purpose,"
said he, "of strengthening the government and increasing public debt
and therefore an insurrection was announced." To Madison he declared:
"The excise law is an infernal one. The first error was to admit it
to the Constitution; the second, to act on that admission; the third
and last will be to make it the instrument of dismembering the Union."
Madison, who had at first looked upon the suppression of the
insurrection as an electioneering scheme, thought it fortunate for the
lovers of liberty that the movement was so easily crushed, since
otherwise the principle would have been established that a standing
army was necessary to enforce the Federal laws. "I am extremely sorry
to remark," he wrote to Monroe during the ensuing session of Congress,
"a growing apathy to the evil and danger of standing armies." This
remark was brought out by the failure of the minority, with which
Madison had now fully allied himself, to restrict the use hereafter
of any militia to its own State. A "Federal army," the bugaboo of the
opposition, had been brought into existence by this unwarranted use
of the militia. Seven acts placing the military power of the United
States on a permanent basis and giving the Central Government efficient
control were passed at this session of 1795, the first fruits of the
Western rebellion to be reaped by the Union. Madison accounted for
this legislation by the influence of the Chief Executive and the
confidence of the people that he would not abuse the power. What later
Presidents might do could not be foreseen.
Outside the disaffected districts and with the exception of a few
alarmed leaders like Jefferson and Madison, the people undoubtedly
sustained Washington in his firm action against rebellion. An ode
written for the birthday of the President in 1796 contains an allusion
to his influence in suppressing the insurrection:
"When o'er the western mountain's brow,
Sedition rear'd her impious head,
And Tumult wild his legions led,
Serenely great, the Patriot rose.--
Yet in his breast conflicting throes
Of mercy check'd the impending blows.
"He view'd them with a father's eye,
Dimmed by thy tear, Humanity!
Reluctant Justice half unsheathed the sword.
Scar'd at the awful Sight,
Sedition shrunk in realms of night,
And Order saw her peaceful reign restored."
Giving the Central Government sufficient military strength was not the
only result of the first open attempt to oppose it. Individualism had
received a telling blow. The State was no longer inviolate. Objection
had been raised in the trivial matter of creating districts for
collecting the revenue because they disregarded State boundaries. It
was now seen that the National Government could and would march militia
directly to a place of resistance regardless of State lines. The people
of the States were no longer safe from invasion by the power which
they had created. Not only a respect for the United States laws, taxes,
courts, and officers was created by the incident, but the fidelity of
the militia, residents of different States, to the central authority
was assured. Jay was at this time on his celebrated mission to England
to prevent war with that nation, if possible. To him Washington sent
enthusiastic accounts of the people turning out to show their abhorrence
of the insurrection. He said that some of the officers had disregarded
rank and that others had gone as privates. He told of numbers of men,
possessed of the first fortunes of the country, yet willing to stand
in ranks, to carry knapsacks, and sleep on straw in soldiers' tents
with a single blanket on frosty nights. Evidently the spirit of Valley
Forge had not been lost. Five times the number could have been secured,
he said, to preserve the peace of the country. He also hazarded a
prediction that the failure of the insurrection would have a deterrent
effect on the political clubs, which he blamed almost entirely for the
inception of the insurgent spirit.