Alexander Hamilton

by Ron Chernow

  Refusing to tolerate illegal behavior and not finding the violent protests as colorful as did some later commentators, Hamilton appealed to Washington for “vigorous and decisive measures,” or else “the spirit of disobedience will naturally extend and the authority of the government will be prostrate.”6 Hamilton was being typically decisive. He worried that federal authority was still suspect in the backcountry and needed to be firmly established—ideally by consent, if necessary by force. He wanted Washington to issue a proclamation warning tax evaders to desist and, if they refused, to send in troops. Washington reacted in a more temperate fashion. He issued a call for obedience to the law, but he regarded using soldiers as a last resort and hesitated to deploy troops against domestic opponents. If he dispatched troops, he told Hamilton, critics would only exclaim, “The cat is let out. We now see for what purpose an army was raised.”7 It was an accurate prediction.

  The mostly Scotch-Irish frontiersmen of western Pennsylvania, who regarded liquor as a beloved refreshment, had the highest per-capita concentration of homemade stills in America. In places, whiskey was so ubiquitous that it doubled as money. The rough-hewn backwoods farmers grew abundant wheat that they couldn’t transport over the Allegheny Mountains, which were crossed only by narrow horse paths. They solved the problem by distilling the grain into whiskey, pouring it into kegs, and toting them on horseback across the mountains to eastern markets. Some whiskey was also shipped down the Mississippi. Local farmers believed they unfairly bore the economic brunt of Hamilton’s excise tax and also resented any interference with their recreational consumption of homemade brew.

  Trouble flared anew in western Pennsylvania during the summer of 1794 just as Hamilton was bedeviled by family problems. His fifth child, John Church Hamilton, who was almost two, became gravely ill, upsetting the again pregnant Eliza. Although Hamilton scarcely ever took a vacation, he beseeched Washington for “permission to make an excursion into the country for a few days to try the effect of exercise and change of air upon the child.”8 When Eliza and “beloved Johnny” failed to improve after a week, Hamilton extended his leave and escorted them partway to the Schuyler mansion in Albany. The diligent Hamilton apologized to Washington, saying he hoped that “when the delicate state of Mrs Hamilton’s health is taken in connection with that of the child, I trust they will afford a justification of the procrastination.”9 After Maria Reynolds, the guilt-ridden Hamilton continued to be a doting paterfamilias.

  While Hamilton nursed his family, whiskey protesters blasted the stills of their neighbors who had honored the tax. They again terrorized Colonel John Neville, the long-suffering whiskey inspector. A Revolutionary War veteran who had served writs on those evading the tax, Neville issued an emergency summons for militia assistance after angry farmers surrounded his house. About a dozen soldiers tried to hold at bay five hundred rebels who fired at Neville’s house for an hour while torching his crops, barn, stables, and fences. They also kidnapped David Lenox, the U.S. marshal for the district, who was released after swearing that he would serve no more papers on tax evaders. Lenox and Neville finally fled the region “by a circuitous route to avoid personal injury, perhaps assassination,” Hamilton told Washington.10

  On August 1, six thousand rebels converged on Braddock’s field outside Pittsburgh as extemporaneous violence took on a more systematic character. An organizer named Bradford, having feasted on news of the French Revolution in the Pittsburgh Gazette, touted Robespierre as a splendid model for the crowd. He urged creation of a “committee of public safety” along Jacobin lines and several weeks later exhorted his comrades to erect guillotines. To obtain weapons, the rebels decided to attack the government garrison at Pittsburgh, with Bradford boasting, “We will defeat the first army that comes over the mountains and take their arms and baggage.”11

  Always haunted by the hobgoblins of disorder, Hamilton saw more than mass disobedience: he saw signs of treasonous plots against the government. The man who seldom wavered sent Washington a 7,500-word account, reviewing the thuggish punishments meted out to revenue officers since the excise tax was introduced. Hamilton wished to strip these violations of any veneer of acceptable “civil disobedience” and showed they had been massive, vicious, and premeditated. He was not alone in perceiving a more general threat. Attorney General William Bradford regarded the western upheaval as a “formed and regular plan for weakening and perhaps overthrowing the general government,” while Secretary of War Knox wanted to combat the unrest with “a superabundant force.”12 Regarding the uprising as a direct threat to constitutional order, Washington asked Supreme Court Justice James Wilson to declare a state of anarchy around Pittsburgh.

  When it came to law enforcement, Hamilton believed that an overwhelming show of force often obviated the need to employ it: “Whenever the government appears in arms, it ought to appear like a Hercules and inspire respect by the display of strength. The consideration of expence is of no moment compared with the advantages of energy.”13 Meeting with state officials on a blazing day in early August, Hamilton advised them to send troops to the western part of the state. He recommended that Washington assemble a multistate militia of twelve thousand men to suppress an uprising estimated at seven thousand armed men. Secretary of State Edmund Randolph advised against sending troops, fearing it would only unify the protesters, and called instead for a “spirit of reconciliation”—a position echoed by Pennsylvania officials.14

  Washington contrived a statesmanlike compromise between Hamilton’s truculence and Randolph’s civility. He issued a proclamation telling the insurgents to desist by September 1, or the government would send in a militia. At the same time, he announced that a three-man commission would confer with citizens. William Bradford was picked as one of the three commissioners, and before the attorney general headed west Hamilton, later accused of lusting for a showdown with the rioters, told him that he was prepared to enact “any reasonable alterations” to make the excise tax more palatable. “For in truth,” he told Bradford, “every admissible accommodation in this way would accord with the wishes of this department.”15 This lenient approach, unfortunately, only emboldened the rebels. On August 17, the three commissioners met with concerned Pittsburgh residents, who contended that extremists both “numerous and violent” had resolved to resist the excise tax “at all hazards.” The commissioners reluctantly concluded that enforcing compliance with the law would require “the physical strength of the nation.”16

  As the use of force loomed, Knox told Washington that he had to go to Maine to deal with some pressing real-estate problems, though he said he could postpone the trip if necessary. Remarkably enough, Washington let Knox go at this critical moment, which meant that temporary responsibility for the War Department fell upon Hamilton’s slim shoulders. This once more provided emphatic proof of Washington’s faith in Hamilton’s varied abilities and of Hamilton’s perennial eagerness to exercise power.

  Hamilton found himself in an agonizing predicament. He was immersed in urgent business—“I have scarcely a moment to spare,” he had told Eliza—as he assigned contracts to military vendors for a possible operation in western Pennsylvania.17 He was ordering horses, tents, and other military stores and did not feel he could vacate his post. But the news he received from Eliza in Albany made him heartsick: little Johnny, despite treatment with laudanum and limewater, was losing ground, and Eliza’s pregnancy was precarious. As he tore open each letter, Hamilton trembled that it might announce his son’s death. “Alas my charmer, great are my fears, poignant my distress,” he told Eliza. “I feel every day more and more how dear this child is to me and I cease not to pray heaven for his recovery.”18 Hamilton’s letters show both love for his family and an encyclopedic medical knowledge. He gave Eliza minute instructions on what to do if the baby’s situation worsened:

  If he is worse, abandon the laudanum and try the cold bath—that is, abandon the laudanum by degrees, giving it overnight but not in the morning, and then leav
ing it off altogether. Let the water be put in the kitchen overnight and in the morning let the child be dipped in it head foremost, wrapping up his head well and taking him again immediately out, put in flannel and rubbed dry with towels. Immediately upon his being taken out, let him have two teaspoons full of brandy, mixed with just enough water to prevent its taking away his breath. Observe well his lips. If a glow succeeds, continue the bath. If a chill takes place, forbear it.19

  This sounds like more than book knowledge. Somewhere along the way, possibly as a boy or in the army, he had learned a considerable amount about nursing the sick and did so with a touching solicitude. By the end of the month, John Church Hamilton had started to recover, and Hamilton sent his wife and child to New York City, where they remained under the watchful care of Nicholas Fish and Elisha Boudinot. All the while, events in western Pennsylvania lurched toward an open confrontation with the government.

  On the morning of August 23, 1794, subscribers to the American Daily Advertiser of Philadelphia read an impassioned warning from a writer called “Tully.” For this apprehensive author, the tumult in western Pennsylvania was a thinly veiled pretext for tearing down the constitutional order. The foes of the federal government were too cunning to attack it directly, he argued, so they feigned moderation and exploited issues such as the excise tax. Despite ailing health, Hamilton wrote three more “Tully” letters during the next nine days. As always, his easily alarmed mind dwelled on dire outcomes: “There is no road to despotism more sure or more to be dreaded than that which begins at anarchy.”20 In Hamilton’s opinion, the most sacred duty of government was an “inviolable respect for the Constitution and laws.”21 He believed the supreme test of the new government’s strength was at hand.

  Scarcely had “Tully” spoken than the three commissioners returned from western Pennsylvania and offered Washington’s cabinet a bleak assessment. During a marathon eight-hour session, Washington, Hamilton, and Randolph decided to call up Virginia’s militia under Governor Henry Lee and muster an additional force of up to fifteen thousand troops for possible action. After the meeting, Hamilton swung into action to line up additional supplies.

  Like Hamilton, Washington feared that a disruptive faction wanted to pull down the government, and he was prepared to defend the Constitution at all costs. Still, with his finely honed instincts, he delayed dispatching troops. The more assertive Hamilton gave Washington evidence of militia colonels who had abetted the rioters and of judges who had defended resistance to the tax. There had not been a single instance, he alleged, where a Pennsylvania official had punished someone for flouting the whiskey tax. Especially upsetting was the fear that the upheaval might be spreading to other states. When Maryland summoned its militia to enforce the tax, soldiers turned on their officers and set up a liberty pole in the courthouse square. Rumor claimed that the rebels were about to pillage the state armory for weapons.

  By September 9, Washington had had enough. “If the laws are to be trampled upon with impunity,” he said, “and a minority is to dictate to the majority, there is an end put at one stroke to republican government.”22 Worried about the advent of cold weather, he ordered troops to march to western Pennsylvania. Since Pennsylvania had been reluctant to quash the insurrection, militias from New Jersey, Maryland, and Virginia were recruited instead. Hamilton was in constant motion as he bore the burdens of both the Treasury and War Departments. With his inexhaustible capacity for work, he outfitted an entire army, ordering shoes, blankets, shirts, coats, medicine chests, kettles, rifles, and muskets. As was his wont, he specified everything in great detail, especially when it came to uniforms. “The jackets ought to be made of some of the stuffs of which sailors jackets are usually made,” he ordered, “and, like them, without skirts, but of sufficient length of body to protect well the bowels. The trousers, or rather overalls, ought also to be of some strong coarse cheap woolen stuff.”23

  Though the natural leader of the western expedition, Washington wanted to limit his participation. “The President will be governed by circumstances,” Hamilton told Rufus King. “If the thing puts on an appearance of magnitude, he goes. If not, he stays.” Hamilton himself had never outgrown his love of martial glory and yearned to participate: “If permitted, I shall at any rate go.”24 As author of the excise tax, Hamilton assured Washington, it would be good for him to accompany the army: “In a government like ours, it cannot but have a good effect for the person who is understood to be the adviser or proposer of a measure, which involves danger to his fellow citizens, to partake in that danger.”25 Washington acceded to Hamilton’s wishes. Secretary of State Randolph then felt obliged to remind Washington “how much Colonel Hamilton’s accompanying him was talked of out of doors and how much stress was laid upon the seeming necessity of the Commander-in-Chief having him always at his elbow.”26

  Hamilton remained in a state of trepidation about Eliza’s pregnancy. The day before departing for western Pennsylvania, he tried to reassure his children with breezy words: “For by the accounts we have received here, there will be no fighting and, of course, no danger. It will only be an agreeable ride, which I hope will do me good.”27 On the morning of September 30, Washington and Hamilton set off quaintly for war: they climbed into a carriage on Market Street and headed west to join the troops. Soon, they rolled through peaceful farmland. If this carriage ride seems less than epic in nature, we must recall that Washington, sixty-two, could no longer endure long days in the saddle. Hamilton made the travel arrangements for the president and scrupulously declared that if the president stayed in any private homes, he would insist upon paying; otherwise, he would take rooms at local taverns. With Hamilton tending to Washington’s needs, the general and his former aide-de-camp must have experienced a queer sense of déjà vu. Hamilton was back serving his general. On the other hand, Hamilton, thirty-nine, had become a mighty figure in his own right. It was far less remarkable that Washington had been elevated to the presidency than that his former aide had risen to become America’s second most powerful man.

  By October 4, the two men reached their rendezvous with troops at Carlisle, Pennsylvania, in the state’s southern tier, about halfway to Pittsburgh. They reviewed a throng of three thousand soldiers, an army that finally swelled to twelve thousand men. The superefficient Hamilton bristled when he discovered that shipments of clothing and ammunition had not arrived and gave a tongue-lashing to the person responsible: “For heaven sake, send forward a man that can be depended upon on each route to hasten them. My expectations have been egregiously disappointed.”28 While Washington and Hamilton camped at Carlisle, emissaries from western Pennsylvania, led by Congressman William Findley, a former weaver, tried to persuade them to turn back. They reported that people in the west country would now submit to the excise tax without coercion. Washington replied that if no shots were fired at his troops, no force would be used, but that he would not desist. Hamilton was even more unyielding. When Findley mentioned one individual who was supposedly restoring order in the area, Hamilton “answered us that that very man, if he was met with, would be skewered, shot, or hanged on the first tree.”29 Seeing the expedition as a major test of government will, Hamilton was in no mood to back down.

  While the army was at Carlisle, a young man named David Chambers brought messages from Governor Henry Lee. He later left this telling vignette of Hamilton and Washington:

  As soon as it was known that dispatches had arrived from General Lee, they were taken possession of and earnestly perused by Col. Hamilton, who seemed to be the master spirit. The President remained aloof, conversing with the writer in relation to roads, distances etc. Washington was grave, distant, and austere. Hamilton was kind, courteous, and frank. Hamilton in person prepared answers to the dispatches and, with the most insinuating and easy familiarity, encouraged the writer to carry out the purpose of the mission with dispatch and fidelity. At the same time [he] bestowed a douceur from his purse.30

  Later, crossing the Alleghenies, C
hambers again encountered Hamilton, who gave him a tour of the troops “with all the familiarity and kindness of a father.”31 Hamilton always found bracing the manly atmosphere of a military camp. Setting up an elegant tent for himself, he strode about and swapped stories of the Revolution with soldiers. Never a martinet, Hamilton did insist on discipline and condoned no lapses. Often, he roamed the camp after dark, surprising sentries at their posts. Finding one wealthy young sentry seated lazily with his musket by his side, Hamilton reproached his laxity. After the youth complained of a soldier’s hard life, “Hamilton shouldered the musket, and pacing to and fro, remained on guard until relieved,” John Church Hamilton later wrote. “The incident was rumored throughout the camp, nor did the lesson require repetition.”32 Hamilton’s experience with this amateurish militia reinforced his long-held conviction that the central government needed a standing army. “In the expedition against the western insurgents,” he later said, “I trembled every moment lest a great part of the militia should take it into their heads to return home rather than go forward.”33 A larger federal army was exactly what Republicans feared, and Madison reported to Jefferson that “fashionable language” was now being heard in Philadelphia that a standing army might soon be “necessary for enforcing the laws.”34

  Washington decided that, if the army’s situation looked favorable, his own involvement would terminate at Carlisle. So at the end of October, he returned to Philadelphia and left Hamilton and Virginia governor Henry Lee in charge of an army larger than the one he had usually headed in the Revolution. The soldiers marched west along muddy roads in soaking rain. Despite these conditions, Hamilton’s health was restored by the campaign, and he even wrote playfully to Angelica Church about his exploits. In a letter marked “205 Miles Westward of Philadelphia,” he told his sister-in-law, “I am thus far, my dear Angelica, on my way to attack and subdue the wicked insurgents of the west. But you are not to promise that I shall have any trophies to lay at your feet. A large army has cooled the courage of those madmen and the only question seems now to be how to guard best against the return of the frenzy.”35