The Spirit of Disunion--Shays' Rebellion--A National Government Necessary
--Adoption of the Constitution--Tariff and Internal Revenue--The Whiskey
Insurrection--President Washington Calls Out the Military--Insurgents
Surrender--"The Dreadful Night"--Hamilton's Inquisition.
The spirit of disunion was brewing; the people were tax-ridden, the
States without credit and the prevailing discontent found expression in
riot and rebellion. The insurrection of Daniel Shays and his followers in
Massachusetts, the disturbances in western North Carolina and other
outbreaks in various parts of the country were but symptoms of radical
weakness in the body politic, and of the complete failure of the
loose-jointed confederation to command the confidence of the people and
maintain the credit of the nation. It became evident that union was as
vitally important in peace as in war; that national burdens could only be
sustained by a national government, and that the welfare of trade and
commerce required one system of interstate laws enforced by the united
power of all the States. The adoption of the Federal Constitution created
a nation; it created a free government worth all that it had cost; it
realized the dream of Franklin and the prediction of Adams; it made
possible the American Republic of to-day, and the great work was
fittingly crowned with the election of George Washington as first
President.
* * *
The first business of the new government was to establish the public
credit. Alexander Hamilton, Washington's Secretary of the Treasury,
proposed with this object a tariff on imports, and a tax on whiskey. To
the former the people submitted readily enough; the latter provoked an
insurrection which for some time threatened to be formidable. The farmers
of the western counties of Pennsylvania--Westmoreland, Fayette,
Washington and Allegheny--having no market for grain, in the decade
following the Revolution, on account of the absence of large settlements
in their vicinity, and the lack of facilities to transport to more
distant places, were from necessity compelled to reduce the bulk of their
grain by converting it into whiskey. A horse could carry two kegs of
eight gallons each, worth about fifty cents per gallon on the western,
and one dollar on the eastern side of the mountains, and return with a
little iron and salt, the former worth fifteen to twenty cents per pound,
the latter five dollars per bushel, at Pittsburg. The still was therefore
the necessary appendage of every farm, where the farmer was able to
procure it; if he was not he carried his grain to the more wealthy to be
distilled. To the large majority of these farmers excise laws were
peculiarly odious. The State of Pennsylvania made some attempt, during
and just after the Revolution, to enforce an excise law; but without
effect. A man named Graham, who had kept a public house in Philadelphia,
accepted the appointment of Collector for the western counties. He was
assailed, his head shaven and he was threatened with death. Other
collectors were equally unsuccessful.
The United States excise law was enacted in March, 1791. While the bill
was before Congress, the subject was taken up by the Pennsylvania
Legislature, then in session, and resolutions were passed in strong terms
against the law, and requesting the senators and representatives, by a
vote of thirty-six to eleven, to oppose its passage; the minority voting
on the principle that it was improper to interfere with the action of the
Federal Government, and not from approval of the measure. The law imposed
a tax of from nine to twenty-five cents per gallon, according to
strength, upon spirits distilled from grain. To secure the collection of
the duties, suitable regulations were made. Inspection districts were
established, one or more in each State, with an inspector for each.
Distillers were to furnish at the nearest inspection office full
descriptions of their buildings, which were always subject to examination
by a person appointed for that purpose, who was to gauge and brand the
casks; duties to be paid before removal. But to save trouble to small
distillers, not in any town or village, they were allowed to pay an
annual tax of sixty cents per gallon on the capacity of the still.
Such a measure could not fail to be intensely unpopular, especially among
the small farmers to whom the whiskey derived from their grain was the
principal source of income and support. To the large distillers the tax
was not altogether odious, as they comprehended that the new law would
add greatly to their trade by cutting off their lesser rivals, and
securing the manufacture of spirits to the well-to-do and
well-established few. On the same ground distillers to-day are very
generally opposed to the removal of the internal revenue tax on spirits.
But popular clamor carried all before it, and it would have been unsafe
for any one to openly avow himself in favor of the excise. At a meeting
held in Pittsburg, on the seventh of September, 1791, resolutions were
adopted denouncing the tax as "operating on a domestic manufacture--a
manufacture not equal through the States. It is insulting to the feelings
of the people to have their vessels marked, houses painted and ransacked,
to be subject to informers gaining by the occasional delinquency of
others. It is a bad precedent, tending to introduce the excise laws of
Great Britain and of countries where the liberty, property and even the
morals of the people are sported with to gratify particular men in their
ambitious and interested measures." The duties were likewise denounced as
injurious to agricultural interests.
So far as refusal to obey the excise law, and defiance of the Federal
officers empowered to enforce it, constituted rebellion, the western
counties of Pennsylvania were in a condition of rebellion for over three
years. President Washington was patient; the Congress was conciliatory;
the State authorities were more than tolerant. General John Neville, a
man of great wealth and well-deserved popularity, accepted the office of
Inspector of the Revenue. Had he been discovered guilty of a monstrous
crime, his popularity could not have more rapidly waned. Albert Gallatin,
Brackenridge and other men, respected not only in Pennsylvania, but
wherever known in the country at large, took counsel, and appeared to
take sides with the multitude in their opposition to the national law.
Their motives have been variously interpreted, according to prejudice or
favor, but Marshall, in his "Life of Washington," gave the fair and
reasonable view of their position when he said that "men of property and
intelligence who had contributed to kindle the flame, under the common
error of being able to regulate its heat, trembled at the extent of the
conflagration. But it had passed the limits assigned to it, and was no
longer subject to their control."
The crowning outrage was the burning of Inspector Neville's house, in
July, 1794. The inspector made his escape to Pittsburg. He and the United
States Marshal were compelled to flee from the town, and on the first of
August following, seven thousand armed men assembled at Braddock's Field
and marched from thence into Pittsburg. All these men were not hostile to
the laws and authority of the United States; many were compelled by
threats of violence to go with the majority; not a few were present to
restrain the reckless from breaking into open insurrection.
President Washington deemed that the time for action had come. He called
upon the States of New Jersey and Pennsylvania for a force of militia
sufficient to crush the insurrection, while at the same time he
proclaimed amnesty to all who should certify by their signatures their
readiness to sustain the government. The insurgents suddenly awakened to
the knowledge that they had now the whole power of the United States
against them, directed by that arm invulnerable alike to Indian,
Frenchman and Briton. Multitudes came to their senses, and signed the
pledge that saved them from punishment. Among these were many who had
committed the gravest disorders. The United States forces, however,
marched into the western counties, and the disturbed region was prostrate
under military law.
Old residents of Pittsburg have not yet forgotten the traditions of "The
Dreadful Night"--the thirteenth of November, 1794. Without a moment's
warning hundreds of citizens were arrested in Allegheny and the adjoining
counties, dragged from their beds, and hurried away, half naked, from
their frantic wives and weeping children. The arrests, in numerous
instances, were attended with every circumstance of barbarity short of
death. Prisoners were goaded, with shoeless and bleeding feet, on the
road to Pittsburg; numbers of them were tied back to back, and thrown
into a wet cellar as a place of detention. One man, whose child was
dying, came forward voluntarily when the arrests were being made, hoping
that humanity would prompt his release on a statement of his condition.
He, too, was tied, and thrown in with the rest. When he obtained his
liberty his child was dead. Among the prisoners was George Robinson,
chief burgess of Pittsburg, a peaceable law-abiding man, who had never
taken any share in the agitation against the excise. Brigadier-General
White appears to have been chiefly responsible for the brutal treatment
of the captives. When one of them, a veteran of the Revolution, lagged
behind, owing to physical infirmity, White ordered him fastened to a
horse's tail, and dragged along. The cruel command was not obeyed. On the
following day, of about three hundred prisoners, all but ten were
discharged, there being no evidence against the others. Of eighteen
alleged offenders who were sent to Philadelphia, and marched through the
streets, with the label "Insurgent" on their hats, but two were found
guilty of crime. One was convicted of arson, another of robbing the
United States mail, when the mail was intercepted with a view of
capturing letters from the Federal officers in the western counties to
the authorities at the capital. In both instances President Washington
granted first a reprieve, then a pardon.
Alexander Hamilton held an inquisitorial investigation to ascertain
whether a blow had been meditated at the republic, and its form of
government, under the guise of opposition to the revenue. He was
evidently satisfied that there was no deeper plot than appeared on the
surface, and that, apart from their whiskey-stills, the hearts of the
West Pennsylvanians beat true to the Union.
Independence Vindicated.