The Whiskey Rebellion

by William Hogeland

  • • •

  Yet even David Bradford wavered on the verge. The orders he was giving could only mean armed, outright secession. Moderates receiving the circular argued vehemently with him, and three days before the muster, he sent a new circular, weakly countermanding the order. Munitions the rebels had planned on seizing were meant for use in the Indian war, Bradford said; best to leave them there, no need to turn out after all.

  His supposed followers weren’t buying this. Armed militias converged on the town of Washington, filling the streets and jamming the courthouse for an impromptu meeting. Moderates too tried to seize on the unplanned moment, which might be the last chance to argue for calm. U.S. Senator James Ross of Washington, a friend of the president himself, spoke at the courthouse for two hours, trying to dissuade the people from mustering at Braddock’s Field; other moderates joined him. Even James Marshall, too far in with Bradford to turn back, suggested not mustering; and John Hamilton, commander of the Mingo Creek militia that was the movement’s core, tried to order his men not to march. But the crowd, furious now, threatened immediate violence, and when David Bradford himself arose to speak, he was very much back on task.

  He expressed outrage at being accused of countermanding orders. He’d done no such thing, he said. He was their leader; orders to rendezvous at Braddock’s Field would be obeyed by all. The crowd acclaimed the plan. Later that night, James Marshall found the door of his house covered with tar and feathers. The message was clear. Everyone was going to Braddock’s Field.

  Bradford’s committee had ordered troops to bring four days’ provisions to the muster. Country people started coming into Pittsburgh to buy those provisions; they muttered about high prices, predicted the town’s gouging would soon come to an end, and tried to trade produce for large stocks of flint and powder. Strangers were seen hanging around the streets. The militias were said to be considering alliances with Britain that would bring in substantial armaments from Canada. Country women were said to be looking forward to living in the rich people’s houses, country men to getting new hats and clothes free of charge. Pittsburgh was now called Sodom, and it was said that this time Sodom would be leveled by fire not from heaven but from earth.

  Mr. Brackenridge was ruing the day he’d been so witty about King Louis’s lost head. Word had it that David Bradford had taken to calling himself the Robespierre of the west. Troops at the Fort Fayette garrison—overwhelmingly outnumbered, should all militias turn out—were fortifying and laying in stores. Isaac Craig brought his family into the fort. Presley Neville fortified his own house. Townspeople were nearly hysterical with anxiety.

  The region’s moderates now consisted of a small, embattled group of well-known citizens who kept trying to reason with David Bradford as hours counted down to the muster. With Mr. Brackenridge in Pittsburgh were his friends John Wilkins and Wilkins’s father, John Wilkins, Sr., an associate judge. Moderates outside Pittsburgh included Albert Gallatin, the Swiss republican from Fayette County, now in the U.S. Congress and regretting signing the resolutions of the second Pittsburgh convention. George Washington’s friend Senator James Ross lived in Washington County, the heart of rebel territory: Ross had Neville ties, and his wife was sister to John Woods, the Neville family counselor and Mr. Brackenridge’s enemy. Yet unlike many in the Neville Connection, Senator Ross knew there was no choice, at this point, but to negotiate with the rebels. The state judge for the district, Alexander Addison, though no friend of federal overreaching in state law, was keenly aware of the foolhardiness of thinking the region could defeat the United States in any armed conflict—or that, if it could, the region would be better off. William Findley, Mr. Brackenridge’s old enemy and a U.S. congressman, had argued vociferously in Congress against everything Alexander Hamilton proposed, and he’d attended the first, nondelegated antiexcise meeting, but he’d managed to stay aloof from the Pittsburgh conventions while retaining credibility with his constituents. Mr. Brackenridge might lampoon Findley as Modern Chivalry’s plodding Traddle the Weaver. Yet as disaster developed, Findley was managing to thread the eye of a tiny needle.

  For all their differences, each of these men wanted peace and reason. Many considered the excise tax misguided; some were in favor of it. Some had attended the Pittsburgh antiexcise conventions; all believed such meetings were legal, that laws should be changed through peaceful petition and the electoral process. Their hope was that a regional statement of submission to the law and a plea for amnesty from the federal government for past outbreaks of violence would end the crisis without carnage or a rift in the Union.

  But now they found themselves negotiating desperately just to keep Pittsburgh from burning. In Washington, Senator James Ross finally prevailed upon David Bradford, who did make an offer. Pittsburgh must officially banish the following people: Presley Neville and Major Kirkpatrick; treasonous Neville Connection letter writers John Gibson, James Brison, and Edward Day; and Major Butler, commandant of Fort Fayette. With these demands, Bradford attempted to cut Pittsburgh’s strongest ties to the east and break up the military-industrial cartel. In the new west, a Neville Connection wouldn’t be tolerated. In return for the banishments, Bradford would try to keep the people from burning Pittsburgh.

  Another condition: men of Pittsburgh must march enthusiastically out, in militia order, to join with the people in the Braddock’s Field muster. The new west must be of one mind.

  Pittsburgh’s moderates could see no course other than compliance. In the long night before the scheduled muster at Braddock’s Field, a large, anxious town meeting appointed a committee that included Mr. Brackenridge and his friend Wilkins, Jr., to negotiate with messengers from David Bradford. The demand to evict Major Butler was withdrawn—nobody thought the town had the power to evict the fort’s commandant. To take over civic operations during the emergency, the meeting created a committee of twenty-one, which sent word to the other banishees that they must leave. Giddy with a mixture of terror and hope, the committee of twenty-one also drew up a resolution to find and expel anyone else who opposed what they now called—amid some sickly laughter in the room—the common cause. They resolved to appear in force the next day at Braddock’s Field, and even to bring along handbills expressing support for the rebels. The Gazette editor volunteered to stay up all night printing the bills in his log shop.

  The meeting broke up late. Candles burned through the summer night. People anticipating mayhem worked in fear and grief to hide valuables, bury cash, and burn official records. First light brought only confusion. Many had been up all night. Women were still hiding money and household possessions as men suited up to march. Some just stared into space. Jumpy already, people were startled by the arrival of a man who came shouting through the streets on horseback, waving a tomahawk. “It is not the excise law only,” he screeched at frightened citizens, “that must go down. Your district and associate judges must go down, your high offices and salaries. A great deal more is to be done. I am but beginning yet!”

  The ambassador from Herman Husband’s New Jerusalem rode off, and at nine o’ clock, the evictees Brison and Kirkpatrick complied with the town’s instructions: smarting, yet agreeing to leave for the good of the town, they rode to the river and were seen ceremonially across by Wilkins, Sr., who could hardly believe he was participating, as an officer of the town, in the banishment of citizens. Presley, Day, and Gibson were refusing to leave; worse, just as Wilkins was mounting up for the muster, an express rider brought an urgent letter from Governor Mifflin. The governor ordered Wilkins, as associate judge, to spare no effort in arresting the Bower Hill rioters.

  Wilkins hid the letter. Sickened, he prepared to join those very rioters in an operation that might end with an attack on Fort Fayette. There was nothing else to do. At ten the men of Pittsburgh marched in glum formation away from the convergence of rivers to join the rebels on Braddock’s Field.

  • • •

  Throughout the Forks, men were riding and marching in mil
itia units up and down hills, fording the river, arraying themselves about the vast plain on the bank. By midafternoon nearly seven thousand were on Braddock’s Field, a broad plain on the Pittsburgh bank of the Monongahela, about eight miles east of town, two long bends up the river.

  Some of the assembled men were full of fear and misgiving and had appeared only on pain of punishment. But many were parading with enthusiasm, even with hope. Only about a third of these men owned stills. Most owned no property at all. The strange rider of the morning had announced it: Distilling and tax payments were not the main thing on most people’s minds. The expulsion of the Neville Connection from Sodom portended a reversal of society. High-salaried officials and monopolizing army contractors were being driven back to the vicepots of the east where they belonged. Pittsburgh, many hoped, would soon be the people’s own, a Sodom redeemed. Women had come with the militias to aid in any household looting.

  The Pittsburgh militia, terribly jittery, approached from the west and halted to close ranks a few miles from the field. The committeemen planned their entrance. Mr. Brackenridge, more and more eager to demonstrate the utterness of Pittsburgh’s submission to rebellion, thought they should advance waving a white flag. Others thought this would show mistrust, not the enthusiasm the rebels demanded. They sent a man ahead to distribute their rousing handbills. When it was reported that the bills had been received well, Pittsburgh advanced to the field. The twenty-one committeemen rode at the front, unarmed, to show the town’s official submission to the rebels. They were followed by officers and men in arms, showing readiness to fight for the rebel cause. As the Pittsburghers crossed the field, they found it hard to see anything or hear any orders. Black smoke hovered above the ground and floated over the river. Thousands of men from the countryside were firing their weapons.

  The Pittsburgh group was ordered to halt, stand, and arrange itself. All around the plain, whiskey was passed as muskets and rifles fired again and again. The rebels used balls to hit marks and powder alone to shoot into the air. They were mostly dressed in buckskin hunting gear and wore handkerchiefs around their necks—the outfits they wore to battle Indians. Various parades started up. Men made harangues condemning traitors not to tar and feathers but to the guillotine. The Pittsburghers, rudely challenged again and again, by men they did not know, on their loyalty to the new west, loudly deprecated the citizens they’d banished, agreed to further banishments, cheered on the most extreme plans of violence, and wondered if they’d survive the day. They had the impossible task of showing total conversion to the cause while persuading rebels that there was really no need to burn Pittsburgh, since it was being cleansed of all offenders.

  Mr. Brackenridge applied all his talents as a writer and an actor to conjuring a mood of camaraderie and submission. He passed among the men, sharing whiskey and cracking nervous jokes that denigrated the Nevilles and Pittsburgh. But he kept seeing the bereaved Andrew McFarlane glowering at him; other rebels seemed unsure of the lawyer too. Groups debated, in his presence, whether to make him governor of their new state or burn his house in Pittsburgh. There was constant talk of taking Fort Fayette. The lawyer was asked repeatedly, “Are we to take the garrison?” He always enthusiastically answered that they were. “Can we do it?” men asked, and hoping to deflate interest, the lawyer kept saying they could do it with ease: only one thousand killed, maybe only five hundred wounded.

  As he smiled and entertained he snuck glances of horrified amazement at David Bradford—Major General Bradford now—astride a big horse, in a gaudy uniform, with a flashing sword and a hat with plumes. Bradford rode about the field with staff and supporters, cheering on his rowdy men, who had taken to worshiping him with extravagant compliments, praising him as a Washington of the west, bringing him cool water to drink and begging for commissions and offices in this freakish form of western army. Bradford seemed to bask not only in command but also in the delusion that he could control, with precision, just how far the rebels would go. Mr. Brackenridge thought that if Bradford had tried to restrain them at all, his supposed adorers would hang him to the nearest tree without a thought.

  The militias bivouacked that night on Braddock’s Field. The Pittsburghers, relieved that a tense and eerie day was over, started to return to town. They were ordered to return to the field; any departure would be construed as desertion. Around the bivouac fires the drinking and talking went on. After midnight Mr. Brackenridge rode through camp inquiring for the location of the Pittsburgh battalion; this was to assure all hearers that the Pittsburghers were actually present. A man challenged him, demanding to know why Kirkpatrick had been allowed to escape. The question was confusing, as Kirkpatrick had been banished on rebel instructions; others stepped in to offer the startled lawyer a drink and a hint to move on. When Mr. Brackenridge approached John Hamilton’s leaderless battalion, the rowdy Daniel Hamilton was voluble in shouting out his belief in the sincerity of the lawyer, of whom he was making a kind of pet. But Daniel complained to the lawyer that Senator James Ross had been trying to talk people out of going to Pittsburgh.

  “Damn the fellow!” was Mr. Brackenridge’s instant rejoinder. His pitch was getting perfect. He rallied Daniel and the rest to march on Pittsburgh, but near the damned fort, not to the damned fort, showing what could be done without actually doing it, exhibiting discipline and doing no damage to people or property! . . . The battalion seemed to respond well to his presentation of a mere parade as an event of valor. The lawyer was becoming convinced that direct attempts at persuasion like Senator Ross’s could never succeed. He thought his own tactics would.

  The next morning, it all started again: drinking, manic parading, shooting; new units were arriving as well. At last Major General David Bradford called a meeting of battalion leaders in the woods beyond the field. Men crowded around to hear the plan. Mr. Brackenridge and James Ross joined the leadership committee, which began by reviewing the cases of the treasonous letter writers. David Bradford announced that he wanted to include Isaac Craig in the banishments. Mr. Brackenridge argued that, while the man was of course an idiot—again he drew laughs with the story of Craig’s cravenness in taking down the excise sign—Craig should be allowed to stay in town, since he was quartermaster of the fort. The refusal of Presley Neville and others to leave town was discussed. The Pittsburghers proposed to ensure their departure but asked for eight days to let them get ready. The rebel committee grudgingly agreed to a grace period. This was getting really boring. Some riflemen sitting on a log called out to Bradford that if the committee didn’t come up with a plan of action soon, they’d do something on their own. Bradford quickly announced a march on Pittsburgh.

  Mr. Brackenridge concurred. “By all means!” he exhorted them: let the men march through town, turn before reaching the fort, drink some whiskey, compliments of the people of Pittsburgh, cross the river, and leave. That would show the government what the Forks militias were made of. Senator James Ross looked at the lawyer. “The veil is getting too thin,” Ross warned him quietly. Yet the committee was breaking up, and a march, not an attack, did now seem to be the plan.

  As battalion leaders went to muster their men, Mr. Brackenridge found himself nose to nose with Benjamin Parkinson. Parkinson had indeed seen through the veil and was enraged by the insult. “Give us whiskey?” Parkinson asked. He was grinding his teeth in fury. The lawyer tried to explain, but Parkinson gave him a warning: “We don’t go there for your whiskey.”

  On the field, rebel militias were forming ranks, and their shouts about looting, plunder, and burning weren’t reassuring. A group of Pittsburghers was rushing ahead, some to the fort, to ask Major Butler not to engage the rebels, some to get barrels of whiskey, close the taverns, and gather boats for ferrying the rebels out of town after the party.

  Drums were beating. Mr. Brackenridge himself rode at the head of the march from Braddock’s Field. Troops stretched in tight companies behind him for two and a half miles. He took the Monongahela road, deliberately
away from the fort on the Allegheny, led the troops north into town and down Market Street toward the point, then executed a sudden left back toward the river, wheeling the whole army out onto another plain just east of town, where it was formally greeted by the Pittsburgh committee of twenty-one and assorted townspeople. Whiskey, water, and food were served to the troops by Pittsburgh’s women. David Bradford set up his headquarters in the shade of a tree and seemed to revel in what he called a glorious revolution without bloodshed. As the summer afternoon went on, some rebels wandered the streets, bullying people they met and banging on tavern doors demanding whiskey, but the idea of reducing the town to ashes seemed to be dissipating. The hosts politely offered the footsoldiers ferry rides across the river in boats. Mounted troops were shown to the best fording point. By nighttime, there were fewer than two hundred rebels left in town.

  Those remaining had a plan, however. Some who had already crossed the river would torch barns, owned by Major Kirkpatrick, on the high south ridge; at that signal, the rebels still in town would burn first Kirkpatrick’s townhouse and then the homes and offices of the letter writers Day, Gibson, Brison, and Presley Neville. Since any fire on that scale would spread to the entire village, this was too much for some in the Pittsburgh committee. Wilkins, Jr., hearing of the plan, called for defense of the town; Mr. Brackenridge, so close to having dispelled the threat of destruction, begged Wilkins and the others to stick to the plan and show nothing but passivity. The lawyer was sure that overt resistance would bring the rebels back to finish Pittsburgh. Only rebel leaders could stop the town from burning. He ran to the arsonists to beg them to tear down the Kirkpatrick house, not burn it. And indeed David Bradford’s partner James Marshall, arriving at Kirkpatrick’s house, opposed the burning. The bereaved Andrew McFarlane opposed it too. He had no desire to destroy property, he said: if he and Kirkpatrick ever met, one of them would die. Leaders turned the gang away from the house. David Hamilton, the gloomy rebel moderate, took a boat across the river to see if he could stop the burning of Kirkpatrick’s farm buildings there. Mr. Brackenridge crossed the river with David to order all ferryboats back to Pittsburgh, impeding any rebel return.