by Ed Strosser
Cons — His far-reaching fiscal genius couldn’t comprehend why poor frontiersmen wanted to dodge paying a tax on home-brewed whiskey.
George Washington — Western Pennsylvania land speculator, slave owner, first president of the Republic, lousy businessman, father of the country.
Skinny — Started the great American tradition of American president’s retiring to make loads of money.
Props — His previous experience running a war against white people made him aware of the political difficulties in seeking a high enemy body count.
Pros — Graciously pardoned the two rebels eventually convicted of rebellion.
Cons — Unleashed “General” Hamilton on the world.
THE GENERAL SITUATION
Western Pennsylvanians in 1790 faced a daunting existence. The forks of the Ohio River, formed by the Allegheny and Monongahela Rivers, today the site of the city of Pittsburgh, lay at the ragged edge of the American frontier. The main problem for settlers was that marauding bands of Native Americans often emerged from the woods to kill them. The land was sparsely settled and defended by local militias, who occasionally blundered out into the wilderness to attack the shadowy Native Americans, without much success. Government attempts to push back the Native Americans by alternating military ethnic cleansing operations with unfaithful negotiations had not worked very well up to this point. Life was stressful. Whiskey helped.
From Pennsylvania down to Georgia these hardy backwoodsmen, the genesis of the “Daniel Boone” icon, faced attacks on all fronts. Not only did they have to worry about Native Americans and hostile actions from British, Spanish, and French forces, they also suffered from the near constant inattention and underinvestment by their own government as they toiled to clear and farm land for absentee landlords — such as their own president.
Naked of all other aspects of orderly government, hugging the muddy banks of great rivers as they hacked out the new American empire from the sea of forest, the settlers were isolated. Pittsburgh was a village with 376 citizens, according to the 1790 census. To make ends meet, many small farmers distilled whiskey from excess corn to drink or trade. Bartering was a way of life for these hardy settlers. Home-brewed whiskey was a great product in a frontier economy; it was wanted by nearly everyone and was easy to store and transport.
Washington’s government and his frenetic treasury secretary, Alexander Hamilton, had agreed that one of the best ways to bind together the young country was through federal taxation. To get things rolling, Hamilton came up with a blockbuster deal. In July 1790 the federal government agreed it would “assume” the debt that each state had piled up in order to win the Revolutionary War. It was called the “assumption” deal. To close the deal Hamilton had to bargain away to the powerful Virginians the permanent seat of the government, sacrificing his personal goal of making New York City the new country’s permanent capital. On the other hand he succeeded in making many of his banker friends very rich. When you help to start a brand-new country, sometimes money just happens.
The federal assumption of the states’ war debts resulted in huge profits to New York businessmen. They had bought the state debts from private citizens and former soldiers who had been given IOUs in lieu of actual cash during the underfunded Revolutionary War. When the assumption deal passed, the bonds suddenly became redeemable at face value, and the speculators reaped spectacular profits. Virginia got the capital. New York got the cash.
Hamilton, as the author of the assumption deal, was naturally suspected by many people of having engineered this scheme to enrich his natural constituency, the Tory-sympathizing New York City mercantilists. In late 1790, not long after the federal government had relocated to Philadelphia (the temporary capital chosen to placate the powerful Pennsylvanians who were betting that the swampy new capital would never be built), Hamilton submitted his funding plan to pay for the new government and the newly assumed debt.
In his usual thorough manner, Hamilton was eager to diversify the tax base beyond the import duties of British goods, and he came up with the idea of an excise tax on whiskey. This “internal” tax hit the hardy frontier-types right in their thirsty, mud-bespeckled kissers.
Washington was on board with his treasury secretary. They agreed it was a wonderful device to strengthen the federal government by taxing spirits before the state governments could grab some of that swag. In March 1791 Hamilton’s funding bill passed. His band of merry capitalists had won. Or so it appeared.
When frontier settlers heard about the new tax, they howled. “No taxation without representation” had rallied the new country through seven long years of war. The frontier citizens could imagine no reason to abandon that idea now that the war had been won, especially for a power-mad New York moneyman like Hamilton, Founding Father or no. The tax was widely flouted up and down the frontier to the point of invisibility. Resistance to the tax in western Pennsylvania surged like a spring flood.
In response to the law that threatened their way of life, a group of approximately 500 men in western Pennsylvania, with deep ties to the local militias, renamed itself the Mingo Creek Association, after a church where they held meetings. The association became the backbone of the organized resistance to the tax.
Not long after this first meeting, a tax collector happened to get himself tarred and feathered by some citizens who disagreed with his efforts to perform his job. The brave collector recognized two of his assailants and attempted to have them arrested for their assault. The federal marshal who showed up to serve the arrest warrants was too scared to proceed; he was directed by General John Neville, the inspector of revenue for the region, to hire an illiterate cattle driver to perform the job. The cattle driver also managed to get himself tarred and feathered by a mob, all of whom were dressed in one of their typical disguises (blackface, women’s dresses, and Indian costume were all standard mob issue). It was a hearty frontier welcome for the tax collectors to the ranks of the massively disenfranchised and actively persecuted.
But not all the rebels delivered their message in hot tar while dressed in drag. Some moderate rebels sent a flow of objecting petitions to Hamilton. The debate became countrywide when the National Gazette, a Philadelphia paper secretly owned by a friend of Thomas Jefferson, Hamilton’s archfoe in the cabinet, published an article in the spring of 1791 by a western Pennsylvania legislator suggesting changes to the law. The opponents also began a whisper campaign accusing Hamilton of hyping the rebellion in order to justify creating a standing army, which they imagined was another one of his tricks to establish a monarchy.
In fact, Hamilton did want to create a standing army, but he knew not even he could push that law through the fractured Congress. His blunt instrument of power would have to remain the barely-in-control state militias. He hated the idea that some faraway field hands were threatening his entire financing scheme and sensed that a face-off loomed. To prepare for this inevitable showdown, Hamilton broke out his sharpest quill and crafted the Militia Act of 1792, which allowed the president to use the state militias to crush an insurrection while Congress was not in session. The only limit on the power of the Militia Act was that a justice of the Supreme Court had to certify that rebellion was in fact happening. A trifling point to a power broker like Hamilton. Out west, the mob slowly grew bolder. General John Neville was doing double duty making a small fortune providing stores to the nearby army outposts while also distilling whiskey. In a place where most people were too poor to own slaves, hatred and envy of slave-owning grandees like General Neville, not to mention tax collectors, was intense. Neville, showing a flair for creating an incredibly bad public profile, had voted against a previous state tax on whiskey when he was part of the Pennsylvania legislature, but then flip-flopped when offered the post of inspector of revenue, which featured a nice annual salary and a commission on his collections. A convenient bonus was the opportunity to closely monitor his competing distillers.
Central to his argument was that the western Pennsylvania unrest, so close to the capital, embarrassed and weakened the infant government. But Washington held back his young protégé and insisted on a more cautious and diplomatic approach. The president had ridden, scouted, and fought in the wilds of western Pennsylvania, first with the Virginia militia and later with British General Braddock, and knew the land well. He owned a big chunk of it (nearly 5,000 acres) for speculation and understood backwoodsmen in a way Hamilton didn’t. Washington was understandably tired of war, but the ever-restless Hamilton seemingly had not had his fill. Too valuable as a key staff officer to lose, Washington had kept the superefficient Hamilton off the battlefield throughout the Revolution. But Hamilton was desperate to earn more battle stripes and quit Washington’s staff to be on the field of battle at Yorktown in 1781. This small role in the big battle was still not enough for him.
As the mob grew in power out west, Neville tried to get additional military help from Philadelphia, but to no avail. During 1793, Benjamin Wells, one of his county deputy inspectors, kept plugging away at his job while getting repeatedly punched and abused, his office sacked, and his wife threatened when he was away from home. Wells traveled three times in 1793 to Philadelphia to report on the situation, but still Washington held his fire. They had bigger problems.
In 1792 France had launched into its own revolution and demonstrated its commitment to democracy by beheading King Louis XVI in January 1793. Hamilton and many in the government saw the increasingly bloody French revolution, led by Robespierre and his fascistic “Committee of Public Safety,” which was soon guillotining enemies of the revolution, as a nightmare that could easily be duplicated by the whiskey-swilling radicals roaming western Pennsylvania. Washington’s government was also riven with internal strife as Hamilton and Secretary of State Thomas Jefferson continued their gentlemanly brawl over their competing visions for the country’s future. Jefferson and Hamilton had been butting heads for a long time. Jefferson, the aristocratic, hereditary landowner who nurtured a fantasy of agrarian simpleness with states’ rights paramount for the country’s future, was a deeply indebted Virginia planter who opposed the strong Federalist system that Hamilton was feverishly building. Jefferson, like many other Virginia planters of his class, hated banks in the way that only deeply indebted landholders could. Jefferson (who shied away from open confrontation) finally quit his post as secretary of state in 1793 when he failed to convince Washington that Hamilton was secretly plotting to install a monarchy in the United States. Indeed, Hamilton stoutly denied any monarchical intentions, professing a preference for an all-powerful executive, a president-for-life, surely, but not a monarchy.
Washington himself was also stressed out. His Virginia plantation was chronically cash poor. His land in western Pennsylvania was proving to be a bad investment, as it was difficult to collect rents from the rebel-minded tenant farmers. His grand scheme — the Potomac Company — aimed at opening up a route from the Potomac River to the Ohio River, was looking like a loser. To top it off Washington himself was now facing open criticism for the first time, in particular from Jefferson’s secret paper, the National Gazette, and from small political groups called democratic societies or clubs, a novelty springing up everywhere, inspired by the revolutionary fervor from France. All of this added to the din of criticism against Washington and his government. In this inflamed environment, the unrest in western Pennsylvania suddenly began to assume the specter of a prescient nightmare, with enough tinder to inflame the entire country. And then in the fall of 1793 an epidemic of yellow fever closed down Philadelphia for two months and nearly put Hamilton on his deathbed.
Meanwhile, mob rule continued throughout western Pennsylvania. Rebels burned down barns of anyone who dared to even register his still. The militia mob of the Mingo Creek Association had shed its disguises and morphed into the fictional character of mayhem, “Tom the Tinker.” The rebellion was growing bolder.
And still no help came from the east for General Neville and his dogged deputy tax inspector Benjamin Wells.
WHAT HAPPENED: OPERATION “SELF INVASION”
The rebellion simmered along until the summer of 1794. Washington’s moderation was still the order of the day, although there were more than enough other problems to distract him. Coupled with Hamilton’s impetuous precocity, Washington’s restraint was a key to the powerful partnership. But Washington had his phlegmatic limits. He was finally pushed over the edge when General Neville and a federal marshal were attacked in an attempt to serve writs to recalcitrant distillers, the latest brilliant salvo by Hamilton in his low-grade war.
The obstinate deputy tax inspector Benjamin Wells drew up a list of still owners in early summer. Hamilton took the list and drafted writs to be served, which required the defendants to trek three hundred miles to Philadelphia and appear in court in August, when courts were actually closed. Any small farmer who tried to appear in court would have to spend many weeks away from home and work, risking financial disaster. The writs were a spark, deliberately lit by Hamilton. The always-prepared Hamilton also knew that Congress was out of session and that the Militia Act would give Washington the power to call up federal militia by himself during this time.
Out west, an angry mob quickly confronted Neville and the marshal when they started serving the writs on July 17, 1794. They retreated to Neville’s estate, already armed and stocked for defense, with Neville’s family still inside. The mob pursued them and attacked the plantation. Neville, who had fought in a real war, drove them off with determined musket fire. The seething rabble retreated to an abandoned French fort nearby to wait for backup from the local militias.
The militia, now a small army of 500 men, marched back up to Neville’s plantation and demanded his resignation and surrender of the writs. Neville refused. The rebels attacked the plantation, now defended by a dozen or so soldiers from the nearby government fort. They traded fire for an hour until they set the house aflame, forcing the soldiers to surrender. Neville, who had evacuated his family and was watching the battle from the woods, fled to Pittsburgh. The battle was over, for now. Tom the Tinker had evolved into a gangland army.
The mob now threatened to turn its wrath on Pittsburgh, where the marshal and Neville had holed up, unless Neville resigned and handed over the writs. Fearful that the army was looming just outside the town and with his home in ruins, Neville finally relented. But the stubborn marshal refused to surrender the writs.
Enter a Pittsburgh lawyer named Hugh Brackenridge. He stepped forward, perilously placing himself between the two forces in an attempt to defuse the situation. He stalled the rebels long enough for Neville and the marshal to jump on a boat and escape down the Ohio River like Huckleberry Finn and Big Jim. Neville and the marshal eventually made it to Philadelphia three weeks later to report to Washington and Hamilton.
Tom the Tinker’s army went back to angry debating. Brackenridge the peacemaker went to a meeting of the Mingo Creek Association around July 22 and urged them to appeal for amnesty to avoid the inevitable violent suppression of the rebellion. He warned them that the Militia Act gave the president the power to crush them, and he possessed the foresight to see that Hamilton would do it.
But a rich lawyer named David Bradford, whose courage under fire was left untested when he declined to join the attack on Neville’s plantation, now stepped forward and bravely called for continued resis
tance. Bradford was under the delusion that he could turn the ragged rebellion into a real revolution in the manner of Robespierre and his trusty guillotine. Bradford called for a congress of delegates from the region to take place in two weeks and urged an attack on the government fort near Pittsburgh to steal arms. At the last second, he backed off when he realized that the soldiers were actually there not to suppress the settlers but defend them from those murderous Native Americans. The overzealous Bradford realized that even in the midst of a rebellion, keeping the woods clear of those pesky Native Americans was mission critical.
Bradford then had the mail to Philadelphia robbed to find out who was plotting against his revolution. When they realized Neville’s son was still in Pittsburgh trying to organize resistance, Bradford and other rebel leaders called for a grand muster of all militia leaders and their troops outside Pittsburgh. It would be a show of force to denounce the muddy little village of Pittsburgh as the hated center of government intransigence, whiskey taxation, and perfidy.
When the mob finally assembled outside Pittsburgh at Braddock’s field on August 1, 1794 — the scene of the French and Indian defeat of British General Braddock in 1755 — it was seven thousand strong. Bradford, all doubts about the revolution he was leading and former cowardice safely banished from his mind, now sported a self-crowned general’s rank and a flashy uniform. His demands on the citizens of Pittsburgh had increased, on pain of the torch: Neville’s son, the army major who had led the defense of Neville’s estate, and a list of others must be banished from the town. And the militiamen of Pittsburgh defending the city had to march out to join the rebels and prove their loyalty to the revolution. Frightened Pittsburghers began to board up their little houses to repel the invasion.
