_The Slave Trade_
In no branch of history is the culpability of the liquor traffic more
thoroughly shown than in its relation to the slave trade. The making
of rum aided and almost supported the slave trade in this country. The
poor negroes were bought on the coast of Africa by New England sea
captains and paid for with barrels of New England rum. These slaves
were then carried on slave ships to the West Indies and sold at a large
profit to planters and slave dealers for a cargo of molasses. This was
brought to New England, distilled into rum, and sent off to Africa;
thus the circle of molasses, slaves, and rum was completed.
In 1708 the West Indies afforded the great demand for negroes; they
also furnished the raw material supplying the manufacture of the main
merchandise which the thirsty Gold Coast drank up in barter for its
poor, banished children. Governor Hopkins stated that for more than
thirty years prior to 1764 Rhode Island sent to the Coast annually
eighteen vessels carrying 1,800 hogsheads of rum. It displaced French
brandies in the trade of the Coast after 1723. The commerce in rum
and slaves afforded about £40,000 per annum for remittance from Rhode
Island to Great Britain. Molasses and poor sugar, distilled in Boston
and more especially in Newport into rum, made the staple export to
Africa. Some obtained gallon for gallon of molasses, but the average
was 96 to 100. Newport had twenty-two still houses. Boston had the best
example, owned by a Mr. Childs. The cost of distilling was five and
a half pence per gallon. Cisterns and vats cost fourteen to sixteen
shillings per one hundred gallons, in 1735, not including lumber. The
quantity of rum distilled was enormous, and in 1750 it was estimated
that Massachusetts alone consumed more than 15,000 hogsheads of
molasses for this purpose. The average price of molasses in the West
Indies was thirteen or fourteen pence per gallon. The consumption of
rum in the fisheries and lumbering and ship-building districts was
large.
There was no article of merchandise comparable to rum on the African
coast. Our forefathers' instincts were neither moral nor immoral; they
were simply economic. They had tried dry-goods, and Africa rejected
them in favor of the wet. Captain George Scott writes lamenting the
purchasing of dry-goods and says, "had we laid out two thousand pounds
in rum, bread and flour, it would purchase more in value than all our
dry-goods."
The cargo of the Caesar, out-bound, was: eighty-two barrels, six
hogsheads and six tierces of New England rum; thirty-three barrels
of best Jamaica spirits; thirty-three barrels of Barbadoes rum;
twenty-five pairs of pistols; two casks of musket-balls; one chest of
hand arms; twenty-five cutlasses. The return cargo was: in the hold on
board the scow Caesar, one hundred and fifty-three adult slaves, and
two children.
The ships were light of draught and built for speed. The captain and
the crew were men little troubled with scruples touching the work they
had to do. Once off the coast of Mozambique or Guinea, the cargo was
rapidly made up. If a band of blacks, moved by curiosity, came round
the vessel in a skiff, they were sure to be lured on board, ironed, and
hurried into the hold. If a boat's crew went on shore, they came back
dragging some wretched man between them. For rum the native princes
gladly sold prisoners that their subjects made in war. When every
available inch of space had been filled, the slaver turned westward and
made for some southern port. The coast line had scarcely disappeared
from view when the hatches were taken off and the terrors of the voyage
began. Every fine day at sunrise the slaves were driven on deck. Such
as were noisy had the thumb-screws put on. Such as were hard to manage
were chained in pairs by the arms, or the ankles, or the necks. At the
first sign of insurrection the leaders were shot down and cast into
the sea. Their food was salt pork and beans. Their sole exercise was
dancing and capering about the deck. This they were made to do. If any
refused the cat-o'-nine-tails or the rope's end was vigorously applied.
When the sun set the whole band went below. The transactions of one
of these slavers are preserved in the history of New Bedford and make
interesting reading for those who would hold up the Puritan as innocent
of the transgression which stains the character of the Cavalier.
Dr.
The natives of Annamboe.
1770
Apr. 22. To one hhds. of rum 110
May 1. " " " " " 130
" 2. " " " " " 105
" 7. " " " " " 108
Cr.
Per contra.
Apr. 22. By one woman slave 110
May 1. " " prime woman slave 130
" 2. " " boy slave 4 ft. 1 in. 105
" 7. " " " " 4 ft. 3 in. 108
_The Southern Planter_
Liquor and slavery combined produced the Southern planter, whose life
has often been described by various writers. When Yeardley assumed
control of affairs in Virginia, the Company required that there should
be inserted in all formal grants of land a covenant that the patentees
should not apply themselves either wholly or principally to the
culture of tobacco, but should divide their attentions among a number
of commodities carefully specified in each deed. These consisted of
Indian corn, wheat, flax, silk-grass, and wine. Parton, in his _Life of
Jefferson_, says that the Virginia planter expended the proceeds of his
tobacco in vast ugly mansions, heavy furniture, costly apparel, Madeira
wines, fine horses, and slaves.
Another writer says:
"The gentleman of fortune rises about nine o'clock. He may perhaps make
an excursion to his stables to see his horses, which is seldom more
than fifty yards from his house; he returns to breakfast between nine
and ten, which is generally tea or coffee, bread and butter and very
thin slices of venison, ham, or hung beef. He then lies down on a
pallet on the floor in the coolest room in the house in his shirt and
trousers only, with a negro at his head and another at his feet to fan
him and keep off the flies; between twelve and one he takes a bombo
or toddy, a liquor compounded of water, sugar, rum, and nutmeg, which
is made weak and kept cool; he dines between two and three, and at
every meal, whatever else there may be, a ham and greens or cabbage is
always a standing dish. At dinner he drinks cider, toddy, punch, port,
claret, and Madeira, which is generally excellent here; having drank
some few glasses of wine after dinner he returns to his pallet, with
his two blacks to fan him, and continues to drink toddy or sangaree
all the afternoon. Between nine and ten in the evening he eats a light
supper of milk, fruit, etc., and almost invariably retires to bed for
the night. This is his general way of living in his family when he has
no company. No doubt many differ from it, some in one respect and some
in another, but more follow it than do not. Pewter cups and mugs were
everywhere to be seen and now and then a drinking horn. There were in
the house for the purposes of drinking a variety of receptacles, such
as the tumbler, the mug, the cup, the flagon, the tankard, and the
beaker. The cups were known by a number of names, such as the lignum
vitæ, the syllabub, the sack, and the dram. Many planters in moderate
circumstances were in possession of a quantity of silver plate."
MacMasters says of the Southern planter: "Numerous slaves and white
servants attended them in every capacity that use or ostentation could
suggest. On their tables were to be found the luxuries of the Old World
and the New, and chief among these stood Madeira and rum. That the men
of that generation drank more deeply than the men of this is not to be
doubted." Another writer says: "The Maryland gentry ordered champagne
from Europe by the cask and Madeira by the pipe and dressed in the
latest fashion."
Betting and gambling were with drunkenness and a passion for duelling
and running in debt the chief sins of the South Carolina gentleman.
_The Indian Tribes_
When Gladwyn wrote to Amherst, "If your Excellency still intends to
punish the Indians farther for their barbarities it may easily be done
without any expense to the crown by permitting a free sale of rum which
will destroy them more effectually than fire and sword," he indicated
the policy toward the Indian tribes which has been steadily pursued
by all civilized nations on the American continent except the French.
Irving, in his _Knickerbocker's History of New York_, has stated the
truth on this, as he often does on other matters: "Our benevolent
forefathers endeavored as much as possible to ameliorate their
situation by giving them gin, wine and glass beads in exchange for
their peltries, for it seemed the kind-hearted Dutchmen had conceived a
great friendship for their savage neighbors; on account of their being
pleasant men to trade with, and little skilled in the art of making a
bargain." There is extant a letter of Ebenezer Hazard to Silas Deane of
date February 25, 1775, in which Hazard says: "I am told the Committee
appointed by the House to state the grievances of this Colony, though
mostly Tories, have included all those complained of by Congress and
mentioned some new ones, particularly the destruction of the Indian
Trade by the Quebec Duty Act. You know that trade cannot be carried on
without rum. By the Quebec Duty Act no rum may be sold in the Province
but what is entered and the duty paid at Quebec or on Lake Champlain.
The Virginians, etc., cannot afford to carry their rum to these places
to be entered, and consequently can have no trade. This I am very
credibly informed is one of the grievances they have enumerated."
There were but few storekeepers in Virginia in early days who were not
engaged in the Indian trade. Guns, ammunition, rum, blankets, knives,
and hatchets were the articles in greatest demand among the tribes.
When in the ordinary course of events a young American in Virginia
or elsewhere felt himself impelled to leave the paternal roof he put
aside his gun and fishing rod, and asked of his father some money, a
slave, and a canoe. His brow grew thoughtful, and he adopted a pipe.
With his money he purchased beads, trinkets, blankets, guns, powder,
not forgetting for various reasons a supply of rum. With these he
purposed laying the foundation of his fortunes as an Indian trader.
If the trader had several servants with him or was associated with
other traders he would fix his quarters in some large Indian town and
send his subordinates to the surrounding villages, with a suitable
supply of blankets, guns, hatchets, liquor, tobacco, etc. This wild
traffic was liable to every species of disorder, a fruitful source
of broils, robberies, and murders. The fur traders were a class of
men held in contempt among the Iroquois and known among them by the
significant title of Rum Carriers. The white trappers seem to have
been as dissipated as the Indians. One writer declares that most of
the Canadians drink so much brandy in the morning that they are unfit
for work all day. Another says that when a canoe man is tired he will
lift a keg of brandy to his lips and drink the raw liquor from the
bung-hole, after which, having spoiled his appetite, he goes to bed
supperless, so with drink and hardship he is an old man at forty.
The type of French trapper left in the old Northwest may still be
seen far north in the great fur land; he is idle, devoted to singing,
dancing, gossip, and drinking to intoxication; having vanity as his
besetting sin. The Jesuits denounced the traffic. Their case was a
strong one, but so was the case of their opponents. There was a real
and imminent danger that the thirsty savages, if refused brandy by
the French, would seek it from the Dutch and English of New York. It
was the most potent lure and the most killing bait. Wherever it was
found, there the Indians and their beaver skins were sure to go, and
the interests of the fur trade, vital to the colony, were bound to
go with it. Cadillac was especially incensed against the Jesuits on
account of their opposition to the sale of spirits. So strong was
their hostility that Louis XIV, in 1694, referred to the Sorbonne
for decision the question of allowing French brandy to be shipped to
Michilimackinac. The decision of the Council gave to the Northwest its
first prohibitory law; and the commandant was not more willing to
enforce the order than his successors have been to carry out similar
laws. "A drink of brandy after the repast," he maintained, "seems
necessary to cook the bilious meats and the crudities which they leave
in the stomach." Again, at Detroit, Cadillac quotes from a sermon by
Father Carhail, whose wing he was engaged in plucking. The Jesuit had
maintained that there was "no power, either human or divine, which
can permit the sale of this drink." Hence, you perceive, argues the
crafty commandant, "that this Father passes boldly on all matters of
state, and will not even submit to the decision of the pope." The
question was indeed a hard one for Cadillac. He understood clearly
that unless he had liquor to sell to the savages he might as well
abandon his post; for the Indians would go straight to the English
at Albany where goods were cheap and rum was unlimited. To give up
Detroit never entered Cadillac's plan. He therefore chose the middle
course. Instead of prohibition he would have high license. In the
restrictions which he threw about the traffic in liquors he was both
honest and earnest; and, as events proved, he was far in advance of
his times. In the report of M. d'Aigrement, who inspected Detroit in
1708, it is mentioned as one of the grievances of the savages against
Cadillac that "in order to prevent disturbances which would arise
from the excessive use of brandy, he caused it all to be put into the
store-house and sold it at the rate of twenty francs a quart. Those
who will have brandy, French as well as Indians, are obliged to go to
the store-house to drink, and each can obtain at one time only the
twenty-fourth part of a quart. It is certain that the savages cannot
become intoxicated on that quantity. The price is high, and as they
cannot get brandy only each in his turn, it sometimes happens that the
savages are obliged to return home without a taste of this beverage,
and they seem ready to kill themselves with disappointment. Though the
Jesuits refused absolution to all who sold brandy to the Indians, they
sold it themselves. LaSalle had detected them in it." Count Frontenac
declares that "The Jesuits greatly exaggerate the disorders caused by
brandy and they easily convince persons who do not know the interested
motives which have led them to harp continually on this string for
more than forty years.... They have long wished to have the fur trade
entirely to themselves." Appeal was made to the King, who with his
Jesuit confessor, guardian of his conscience, on the one side, and
Colbert, guardian of his worldly interests, on the other, stood in
some perplexity. The case was referred to the fathers of the Sorbonne
and they pronounced the selling of brandy to the Indians a mortal
sin. It was next referred to the chief merchants and inhabitants of
Canada. Each was directed to write his views. The great majority were
for unrestricted trade in brandy, a few for limited and guarded trade,
and two or three declared for prohibition. Decrees of prohibition were
passed from time to time, but they were unavailing. The King was never
at heart a prohibitionist. His Canadian revenue was drawn from the fur
trade, and the singular argument of the partisans of brandy, that its
attractions were needed to keep the Indians from contact with heresy,
served admirably to salve his conscience. The Dutch and English being
the heretics, he distrusted the Bishop of Quebec, the great champion of
the anti-liquor movement. He wrote to Saint Vallier, Laval's successor
in the bishopric, that the brandy trade was very useful to the kingdom
of France, that it should be regulated, not prevented, that consciences
must not be disturbed by denunciations of it as a sin, that the zeal of
the ecclesiastics might be affected by personal interests and passions.
From the time, in 1620, when Samoset and Tisquantum brought Massasoit
to Plymouth to drink strong waters with the Puritans, liquor played a
steady part in all negotiations between the white men and the red men.
When Hamor went to visit Powhattan he was received with royal courtesy,
"bread was brought in in two great wooden bowls, the quantity of a
bushel of sod bread, made up round, of the bygnesse of a tenise-ball,
whereof we ate some few." After this repast Hamor and his comrades
were regaled with "a great glasse of sacke" and then ushered into the
wigwam for the night. From this time on at all Indian negotiations a
large percentage of the Indians expected rum or whiskey to be produced.
No other cause has been as prolific of Indian wars as the liquor
traffic.
The war of the Indians with the Dutch in 1675 in New York was caused
by the sale of liquor and firearms to the Indians, as well as all
the trouble that the Dutch ever seem to have had with their Indian
neighbors.
Liquor entered largely as a consideration into the purchase of land
from the Indians, and the dispute over title and inadequate amounts
frequently caused trouble.
In 1675 Robert Livingston purchased a tract of land on the east side
of Hudson river, near Catskill, which was paid for in guilders,
blankets, shirts, cloth, tin kettles, powder, guns, twenty little
looking-glasses, fish hooks, awls, nails, tobacco, knives, strong beer,
four stroud coats, two duffel coats, four tin kettles, rum and pipes,
ten pairs large stockings, ten pairs small stockings, adzes, paint,
bottles, and scissors. The treaty with the Creek Indians was signed on
October 21, 1733, when the governor distributed the following presents
among the Indians: A laced coat and a laced hat and shirt to each of
the chiefs; to each of the warriors, a gun and a mantle of duffils (a
coarse woolen cloth with nap and fringe), and to all their attendants
coarse cloth for clothing; a barrel of gunpowder; four kegs of bullets;
a piece of broadcloth; a piece of Irish linen; a cask of tobacco pipes;
eight belts and cutlasses with gilt handles; tape, and of all colors;
eight kegs of rum to be carried home to their towns; one pound of
powder, one pound of bullets, and as much provision for each one as
they pleased to take for their journey home.
In the spring of 1795 the directors of the Connecticut Land Company
sent out surveyors through the Mohawk, over the portage of Wood creek,
Oneida lake, and the Oswego river to Lake Ontario. At Buffalo the agent
bought of the Indians their remaining claim to the lands east of the
Cuyahoga river for five hundred pounds, New York currency, two beef
cattle, and one hundred gallons of whiskey.
The murder in 1774 without provocation of the family of Logan, a
friendly chief of the Cayuga nation and of great influence, Jefferson
shows was due to the drunkenness of two traders, Greathouse and
Tomlinson, and caused Logan to deliver the speech which is often given
in school readers. The Seminole War had the combined causes of slavery
and liquor. President Jackson gave slave traders permission to buy
slaves of the Seminole Indians. The trader, knowing that the Indians
were intoxicated, would induce them to give bills of sale for negroes
they did not own, and the complications thus caused led to the Seminole
War.
The Black Hawk War was directly caused by the liquor traffic, while the
career of Pontiac, the ablest Indian statesman his race ever produced,
illustrates that drunkenness was the bane of the Indian race. In the
same speech in which Pontiac said, "our people love liquor and if we
dwelt near your old village of Detroit, our warriors would be always
drunk," he concluded his harangue with the desire that the rum barrel
might be opened and his warriors allowed to quench their thirst. His
life was ended by an English trader named Williamson, who bribed a
strolling Indian of the Kaskia tribe by a barrel of rum to murder him,
and for that reward the savage stole softly behind Pontiac while he was
meditating in the forest and buried his hatchet in his brain.
Of the influence of the white man on the Indians the less said the
better. They eradicated none of his vices and they lent him many of
their own. They found him abstinent, and they made him a guzzler of
fire water. They found him hospitable, and they made him suspicious and
vindictive. They found him in freedom, the owner of a great country:
they robbed him of the one, and crowded him out of the other. The Dutch
were too much beer drinkers, became with speed rum consumers, and
opposed prohibiting the sale of rum to the Indians. William Penn wrote
in 1683: "Ye Dutch, Sweed and English have by brandy and specially
rum almost debauched ye Indians all." On arriving at a trading post
an Indian hunting party would trade perhaps a third of their peltries
for fine clothes, ammunition, paint, tobacco, and like articles. Then
a keg of brandy would be purchased and the council held to decide who
was to get drunk and who was to stay sober. All arms and clubs were
taken away and hidden and the orgie would begin, all the Indians in the
neighborhood being called in. It was the task of those who kept sober
to prevent the drunken ones from killing one another, a task always
hazardous and frequently unsuccessful, sometimes as many as five being
killed in one night. When the keg was empty brandy was brought by the
kettle full and ladled out with large wooden spoons, and this was kept
up until the last skin was disposed of. Then, dejected, wounded, lamed,
with their fine new shirts torn, their blankets burned, and nothing
but the ammunition and tobacco saved, they would start off down the
river to hunt, and begin again the same round of alternating toil and
drudgery. Nevertheless, with all their rage for brandy they sometimes
showed a self control quite admirable in its way. When at a fair, a
council, or a friendly visit their entertainers regaled them with
rations of the coveted liquor, so prudently measured out that they
could not be the worse for it, they would unite their several portions
in a common stock, which they would then divide among a few of their
number, thus enabling them to attain that complete intoxication which,
in their view, was the true end of all drinking. The objects of this
benevolence were expected to requite it on a similar future occasion.
In 1708, of the sixty-three settlers at Detroit, thirty-four were
traders, and the only profitable articles of trade were ammunition and
brandy, the English being able to undersell the French in all other
commodities. At the time of the sales of furs every house in Montreal
was a drinking shop. In a letter of Governor Halderman to Captain
Lernoult, dated July 23, 1729, Halderman says: "I observe with great
concern the astonishing consumption of rum at Detroit, amounting to
seventeen thousand five hundred and twenty gallons a year."
In his notes on Virginia, Jefferson states that the census of 1669
showed that the Indians of Virginia in sixty-two years decreased about
one-third, which decrease Jefferson attributes to spirituous liquors
and the smallpox. When president, Jefferson recommended that the sale
among the Indian tribes of intoxicating liquors be prohibited.
Of the traffic and its effect on the Indians a large amount of
practically unanimous evidence can be produced. LeClercq observes with
truth and candor that an Indian would be baptized ten times a day for
a pint of brandy or a pound of tobacco. Father Etienne Carheil says:
"Our missions are reduced to such an extremity that we can no longer
maintain them against the infinity of disorder, brutality, violence,
injustice, impiety, impurity, insolence, scorn, and insult which the
deplorable and infamous traffic in brandy has spread universally among
the Indians of these parts. In the despair in which we are plunged,
nothing remains for us but to abandon them to the brandy sellers as a
domain of drunkenness and debauchery."
On one occasion the French Denonville lectured Dongon, the English
governor, for allowing West India rum to be sent to the Long House.
"Think you that religion will make any progress while your traders
supply the savages in abundance with the liquor, which as you ought to
know converts them into demons, and their wigwams into counterparts of
hell." One seems to see the Irishman's tongue curl under his cheek as
he replies: "Methinks our rum does as little hurt as your brandy, and
in the opinion of Christians is much more wholesome."
_Politics and Elections_
The presidential campaign of 1840 surpassed in excitement and
intensity of feeling all which had preceded it. Delegations to the
whig conventions carried banners and often had a small log cabin
mounted on wheels in which was a barrel of hard cider, the beverage
of the campaign. Early in Harrison's campaign comments were made on
the elegant style of living in the White House during Van Buren's
administration. Van Buren was charged with being an aristocrat and
a monarchist while the masses toiled and suffered to pay for his
luxurious living. A Richmond newspaper observed derisively of
Harrison, "Give him a barrel of hard cider and a pension of two
thousand dollars and our word for it he will sit for the remainder of
his days contented in a log cabin." Log cabins and hard cider thus
became the symbols of a popular crusade. The log cabins were decked
in frontier style with coonskins, bunches of corn, strings of peppers
and dried apples and the like, and were set up in cities and villages.
Inside these cabins copious supplies of cider were on tap to be drunk
with gourds. The appropriateness of the symbol came from the fact that
Harrison had formerly resided in a western log cabin, and the cider was
meant to typify western hospitality. The result was that young and old
drank the cider freely and the whig meetings often degenerated into
mere drunken carousals, the example of which was especially injurious
to the rising generation.
There are men still alive who claim that a single glass of wine drunk
by Herschel V. Johnson was responsible for the wreck of the democratic
party in 1860 by unfitting him to reply to the speech of Howell Cobb
in favor of separate democratic nominations at the Georgia democratic
state convention. The Count de Paris says of the vigilance committees
that terrorized the South into secession: "The bar-room was generally
the place of their meetings. Around the counter on which gin and
whiskey circulated freely a few frantic individuals pronounced judgment
upon their fellow citizens, whether present or absent."
In one of the Lincoln-Douglas joint debates Douglas described his own
father as an excellent cooper. Lincoln said he did not doubt the truth
of the statement for he knew of one very good whisky cask he had made.
As Douglas was short and thick-set and a heavy drinker the joke was
enjoyed.
On another occasion, Douglas said that when he first knew Lincoln,
Lincoln was a good bar-tender. Lincoln in admitting that he had sold
whisky said Douglas was one of his best customers, adding that he had
left his side of the counter but Douglas had stuck to the other side.
_Early Defiance of Law_
In the last decade of the eighteenth century the Whiskey Rebellion
arose from the refusal of the Scotch-Irish whiskey distillers of
Pennsylvania to pay the excise on whiskey. If a collector came among
them he was attacked, his books and papers taken, his commission torn
up, and a solemn promise exacted that he would publish his resignation
in the Pittsburgh _Gazette_. If a farmer gave information as to where
the stills could be found, his barns were burned. If a distiller
entered his stills as the law required, he was sure to be visited by
a masked mob. Sometimes his grist-mill was made useless, sometimes
his stills destroyed, or a piece of his saw-mill carried away, and
a command laid upon him to publish what had been done to him in the
_Gazette_. One unhappy man, who had rented his house to a collector,
was visited at the dead of night by a mob of blackened and disguised
men. He was seized, carried to the woods, shorn of his hair, tarred,
feathered, and bound to a tree. They next formed associations of those
who, in the language of the district, were ready to "forbear" entering
their stills. They ended by working themselves into a fury and calling
a meeting of distillers for the 27th of July, at Restone, Old Fort, a
town on which the inhabitants have since bestowed the humbler name of
Brownsville. From this gathering went out a call for two conventions.
One was to meet on the 23d of August at Washington, in Pennsylvania.
The date chosen for the meeting of the second was September 7th, and
the place Pittsburgh. Both were held. That at Washington denounced the
law and called on all good people to treat every man taking office
under it with contempt, and withhold from him all comfort, aid, and
support. That at Pittsburgh complained bitterly of the salaries of the
federal officers, of the rate of interest on the national debt, of the
Funding System, of the Bank, and of the tax on whiskey. Meantime the
collector for the counties of Washington and Alleghany was set upon. On
the day before the Pittsburgh meeting a party of armed men waylaid him
at a lonely spot on Pigeon creek, stripped, tarred, and feathered him,
cut off his hair, and took away his horse. They were disguised, but he
recognized three of the band, and swore out warrants against them in
the district court at Philadelphia. These were sent to the marshal;
but the marshal was a prudent man, and gave them to his deputy, who,
early in October, went down into Alleghany to serve them. He hid his
errand, and as he rode along, beheld such signs of the angry mood of
the people, and heard such threats, that he came back with the writs
in his pocket unserved. And now he determined to send them under cover
of private letters, and selected for the bearer a poor, half-witted
cow-driver. The messenger knew not what he bore; but when the people
found out that he was delivering writs, he was seized, robbed of
his horse and money, whipped till he could scarcely stand, tarred,
feathered, blindfolded, and tied to a tree in the woods.
In 1794 a process went out from the district court at Philadelphia
against seventy-five distillers who had disobeyed the law. Fifty were
in the five counties of Fayette, Bedford, Alleghany, Washington,
and Westmoreland. Each writ was dated the 13th of May, and each was
entered in the docket as issued on the 31st. But the officials were so
tardy that it was July when the marshal rode west to serve them. He
arrived in the hurry of harvest, when liquor circulated most freely
and drunkenness was most prevalent. Yet he served his writs without
harm till but one was left. It was drawn against a distiller named
Miller, whose house was fourteen miles from Pittsburgh, on the road
to Washington. On the morning of July 15th the marshal set out from
Pittsburgh to serve it. He found Miller in a harvest field surrounded
by a body of reapers. All went well till he was about to return, when
one of them gave the alarm. While some threw down their scythes and
followed him, others ran back to the house of the brigade inspector
near by. There the Mingo creek regiment had gathered to make a select
corps of militia as its quota of the eighty thousand minute men
required by Congress. All had drunk deeply, and as the messengers came
up shouting "The federal sheriff is taking away men to Philadelphia,"
they flew to arms. Though it was then night many set off at once, and
gathering strength as they went, drew up the next morning, thirty-seven
strong, before the house of Revenue Inspector Neville, near Pittsburgh.
At the head of them was John Holcroft who whitened half the trees in
the four counties with the effusions of Tom the Tinker. The inspector
demanded what they wished. They answered evasively. He fired upon
them. They returned the shot, and were instantly opened on by a band
of negroes posted in a neighboring house. At this the mob scattered,
leaving six wounded and one dead. Tom the Tinker was a nom-de-guerre
which originated from the house of an obnoxious official being pulled
to pieces by a mob whose members gave out that they were "mending it."
Mending and tinkering being interchangeable terms, the members dubbed
themselves "tinkers," and "Tom the Tinker was shortly evolved as the
popular watchword of the first rebellion against the United States
government."