When collectors increased their efforts to enforce the liquor tax, the reaction was swift in Pennsylvania’s four western counties, home to more than one-fourth of the nation’s stills. The pace of attacks on collectors increased; by mid-1794, Washington and his government could no longer ignore the violence.9
As later detailed by Hamilton, tar-and-feathering of collectors had begun nearly three years before. Washington tried issuing a proclamation urging that no one obstruct enforcement of the laws, but the intimidation—including attacks on homes and effigy burnings—expanded to target distillers who were paying the excise.10 The most sensational episode came in a July 1794 attack on General John Neville, a Revolutionary War veteran and prominent tax collector. Neville and a U.S. Marshal had been serving court papers on delinquent still owners. Interrupted by gunfire, they took refuge in Neville’s home, which soon was surrounded by fifty armed men who set fire to his outbuildings. After Neville slipped away, the insurgents began shooting into the house, which held a small contingent of U.S. soldiers. Before surrendering, the army men wounded some of the attackers and killed one. The insurgents put most of Neville’s property to the torch, and released the U.S. Marshal only when he promised not to enforce the tax. To learn what steps the government was planning against them, and who was siding with the government, the insurgents seized the local mails.11
In the days after the Neville attack, more collectors were tarred and feathered, an agony for victims subjected to hot tar on their bodies. Then insurgents made their greatest show of force. More than 5,000 armed men paraded at Braddock’s Field outside Pittsburgh. Despite reports that the men would march on Fort Pitt, they contented themselves with burning the barn and crops of the same unfortunate U.S. Marshal.12
Washington would not ignore thousands of armed men marching in opposition to the government. The Shays Rebellion in 1786 had revealed the weakness of the Articles of Confederation. If Washington could not control this insurgency, he feared that his government, too, might fail. “If the laws are to be so trampled upon—with impunity,” he wrote, “there is an end put at one stroke to republican government; and nothing but anarchy and confusion is to be expected thereafter.” Hamilton recommended calling out 12,000 militia, half from Pennsylvania and the rest from neighboring New Jersey, Maryland, and Virginia. Secretary of State Randolph and Governor Mifflin of Pennsylvania counseled negotiating with the insurgents. Washington tried both approaches.13
Under the Militia Act, he requested an opinion from Supreme Court Justice James Wilson that the disorders warranted summoning the militia. After Wilson made the finding, Washington denounced the insurgents as “armed banditti.” He wrote that he regretted calling out the militia, but that “the essential interests of the union demand it.” An overwhelming force, he hoped, would persuade the insurgents that resistance was futile. But his call required that 12,000 militiamen leave their homes to enforce a tax that many loathed. To open talks with the insurgents, Washington sent a commission of three Pennsylvanians: Attorney General Bradford, Senator James Ross, and Pennsylvania Supreme Court Justice Jasper Yeates. Governor Mifflin sent state representatives with them.14
Some feared the British were behind the western turmoil, which would complicate any military effort, since British soldiers still occupied forts around the Great Lakes. Also confounding was Secretary of War Knox’s departure for Maine to attend to personal matters, denying Washington his top military adviser. Every frontier issue seemed to be in play. General Wayne’s force was marching against the northwestern tribes. Kentuckians were agitating again over access to the Mississippi. With Spain showing a new openness on that issue, successful talks required that the government snuff out Genêt-inspired efforts to attack Spanish colonies from American soil. Also, a group of Georgians was settling on Creek tribal lands and proposed to proclaim a new state there, or even a new nation. The moment, in Randolph’s words, was “big with a crisis which would convulse the oldest government.”15
* * *
Reporting the grievances presented by insurgent leaders, the president’s commissioners concluded that although many would abandon the resistance movement, a violent minority would not. A military force was needed to impose order. Washington issued a new proclamation, announcing that talks would not “reclaim the wicked from their fury.” He vowed to end “a treasonable opposition [which] has been employed in propagating principles of anarchy.” He coupled those fierce words with a pledge to treat generously those who gave up the resistance.16
Organizing 12,000 militiamen from four different states presented logistical and political obstacles. Hamilton eagerly leapt into the breach created by Knox’s absence. As the author of the tax that the insurgents hated, the treasury secretary brought political baggage with him, but Washington relied on him to get the expedition moving before winter.
By late September, the government’s prospects were brightening. Old colleagues from Continental Army days arrived in camp in Carlisle, Pennsylvania, including Governor Henry Lee of Virginia and Daniel Morgan. Then came heartening news that Wayne’s troops had defeated the northwestern tribes at the Battle of Fallen Timbers. British soldiers in a nearby fort had witnessed that fighting but did nothing to assist the Indians, which reduced the fear that the British would support the whiskey rebels. Wayne’s victory removed a major complaint of white settlers, since the government now had protected them against the tribes. Shortly after Washington left for the Carlisle camp, he learned that diplomat Thomas Pinckney was hurrying to Madrid for high-level meetings about Mississippi River access.17
Buoyed by the unfamiliar rush of good news, Washington decided he should explain to Americans how good things were. He set out to use glad tidings to summon patriotic feelings and change the nation’s mood. In public remarks in early October, he linked the positive developments to ending the insurgency. “Look round,” he exhorted, “and behold the universally acknowledged prosperity which blesses every part of the United States.” He called on “the wise and the virtuous [to] unite their efforts to reclaim the misguided, and to detect & defeat [the] arts of the factious.”18
While the state militias sorted themselves out in Carlisle, Washington himself met with insurgent leaders. He was unmoved. “Nothing short of the most unequivocal proofs of absolute submission,” he insisted, would prevent his troops from advancing. He reported to Randolph that the insurgents were “alarmed, but not yet brought to their proper senses.” Though Randolph had advised moderation before, now he urged that the democratic societies “be crushed.” Washington agreed; otherwise, he wrote, “they will destroy the government of this country.”19
At that moment, Jefferson’s absence from the cabinet made a difference. Jefferson might have restrained the president’s hostility to the societies, rather than goading him as Randolph was doing. More than a month later, the president again denounced the democratic societies in a letter to John Jay in Europe, blaming them for the rebellion and predicting their annihilation.20
The expedition proved to be a cakewalk. In Jefferson’s droll account, “An insurrection was announced and proclaimed and armed against, but could never be found.” In truth, the insurrection had been real enough, but the advance of 12,000 militia cooled the hottest tempers. Washington boasted later that the insurgency was suppressed “without shedding a drop of blood.”21
Expecting a successful advance, Washington left the army before the westward march began, appointing Governor Lee of Virginia to command. The soldiers fired no shot in anger; they took care to respect citizens’ rights. Some insurgent leaders were arrested and delivered to civil authorities, not to military tribunals. In late November, Lee issued a blanket pardon for the four insurgent counties in Pennsylvania, exempting thirty-three named individuals. Few of those thirty-three stood trial; fewer still were convicted; Washington pardoned those who were.22
Although the expedition lacked a climactic ending, Washington believed it was a crucial
success. Its effect, he wrote to Governor Lee, was “nothing less than to consolidate and preserve the blessings of that revolution which, at much expense of blood and treasure, constituted us a free and independent nation.”23
* * *
The militia force was still overawing western Pennsylvania on November 19, when Washington entered Congress Hall in Philadelphia to deliver his sixth annual message. His carriage was still that of an athlete and soldier, though the years and his dental agonies had left deep marks on his face. His text was upbeat, a happy leader praising the people’s achievements.
The union’s prosperity, he proclaimed, rested on solid foundations. Better yet, events in western Pennsylvania showed that Americans “feel their inseparable union [and] the value of republican government.” In the militia expedition, he continued,
the most and the least wealthy of our citizens [stood] in the same ranks, as private soldiers . . . undeterred by a march of three hundred miles over rugged mountains, by the approach of an inclement season, or by any other discouragement.
Washington proposed no retribution against the insurgents. His message was one of unity, shared purpose, and success. Wayne’s victory at Fallen Timbers, he predicted, would bring lasting peace with the northwestern tribes.
Yet his buoyant paean to the American spirit was little noted. Instead, a brief passage in his address, which drove a wedge into the nation’s partisan divide, set off howls of rage and has been condemned for centuries since. In that passage, Washington obliquely referred to “certain self-created societies” that had “assumed the tone of condemnation” toward the government. Everyone knew that he was showing his dislike for the democratic societies.24
His words were tame by modern standards and far milder than his true feelings about the democratic societies. Spoken by the great unifier, however, even mild words took on heft. Washington, the man who meant to stand above politics, was condemning one part of the community, implicitly declaring it dangerous and unworthy. That rankled with those who found Federalist attitudes too aristocratic, and marked a departure from Washington’s consistent message celebrating American union. By setting himself against one portion of the population—no matter how indirectly he said so—Washington incited his critics to deploy ever sharper invective against him.
The cheerleader president returned in a January 1795 proclamation proposing a national day of thanksgiving. Again he recited the nation’s blessings: peace, internal tranquility, and prosperity.25 Washington had every reason to feel that he had met the major challenges of his second term as president—a foreign nation attempting to subvert his government, then an internal rebellion. But there was more trouble to come.
Moreover, the bleeding of talent from his administration was continuing. Treasury Secretary Hamilton finally left, intent on becoming a prosperous New York lawyer. His successor, Oliver Wolcott of Connecticut, was an unremarkable figure. Knox had resigned as secretary of war, succeeded by the prickly Timothy Pickering of Massachusetts. Never close to Washington through years of service in the Continental Army, Pickering had been tangentially connected to the Conway Cabal and was on the wrong side of the Newburgh mutiny in 1783. But he was intelligent and hardworking and had experience negotiating with Indian tribes, a principal duty of the War Department.26
The years had winnowed the list of Washington’s political allies, particularly fellow Virginians. First to be banished had been George Mason, when he opposed ratification of the Constitution. Then Jefferson resigned to lead the opposition to the government. Madison, formerly the president’s closest political adviser, now was the opposition leader in Congress, though he remained on polite terms with Washington. Randolph remained as secretary of state, but that connection, too, would soon fray.
It was Hamilton, the orphan from the West Indies, who stood with Washington to the end. Beyond their obvious differences, the two men shared important qualities. Both were relentless strivers who avidly pursued advancement by marrying rich women and working much, much harder than others did. Washington’s youthful trip to Barbados may have helped him understand Hamilton’s Caribbean background. Though the young Hamilton had resigned from Washington’s military staff over perceived mistreatment by the commander in chief, both men overlooked that episode. The mature Hamilton remained loyal through every political turbulence. From his law office in Manhattan, he would continue to sally forth whenever the president called on him.
Looking at the uncertain world around him, supported by mostly second-tier talents, Washington had reason for concern, but likely did not foresee how difficult the next two years would be.
Chapter 49
The Fight for Peace
The last two years of Washington’s presidency brought the most bruising political conflict of his career, one he survived by strapping himself to the Constitution while employing the guile acquired in the nearly forty years since he left the Virginia Regiment.1
The conflict grew out of the war in Europe. The French and British each aimed to cut off the other’s trade with neutral nations, much of which came in American ships. The British seized ships bound for ports of France and the French West Indies; by spring 1794, they held hundreds of American ships and had impressed numerous American sailors into service for the Royal Navy. In turn, American captains sailing to British ports risked seizure by the French; by autumn 1794, the French had detained three hundred American ships.
Both nations were inflicting ruinous losses on American merchants, but Britain, with its powerful navy, posed the greater threat. An additional British threat loomed along the long border with Canada. In early 1794, a senior British commander told Indian leaders that King George III soon would be at war with the United States, after which Britain and the tribes would divide America’s Northwest Territory. Renewed frontier war was a grim prospect.2
Republicans in Congress sought to reduce American shipping losses by enacting two short-term embargoes on foreign trade. When the Senate refused to declare a third embargo, Madison again complained of Washington’s influence, which he called “an overmatch for all the efforts Republicanism can make.”3
In late March, news arrived of a softening in British policy. With French armies victorious in Europe, British merchants longed to restore trade with America. British Prime Minister William Pitt—whose father, Lord Chatham, had been a friend to America—needed to focus on defeating France. Provoking the United States no longer seemed wise, so Britain announced it would allow neutral ships to trade with French Caribbean islands unless they carried contraband. Washington decided that the time might be right for resolving additional issues with Britain, beginning with compensation for the recent shipping losses. The two nations also had unfinished business from their 1783 peace treaty. British troops still lingered in forts around the Great Lakes; their presence stirred Indian unrest and blocked western expansion. In turn, some American states still blocked British merchants from recovering debts incurred before the war.4
In any event, having no navy and few soldiers, Washington had no military options. That left diplomacy. The president resolved to negotiate, even at the risk of triggering a fresh round of accusations that he was pro-British and anti-French.5
For the mission to London, he selected John Jay, an aristocratic New Yorker who was chief justice of the Supreme Court. The able but colorless Jay had served as New York’s governor and chief judge, as well as president of the Confederation Congress and that body’s secretary of foreign affairs. The Gardoqui episode of 1786—when Jay considered conceding control of the Mississippi to Spain for twenty-five years—had left a residue of ill will toward him among westerners. Most relevant, he had helped negotiate the 1783 peace treaty with Britain.
To his cabinet, Washington explained that his goal was to avoid war and win fair compensation for American losses. Jay’s negotiation would extend the policy of the Neutrality Proclamation, demonstrating America’s “solicitude for
a friendly adjustment of our complaints and a reluctance to hostility.”6
Washington’s instructions to Jay stressed the removal of British soldiers from the west, facilitating payment of American debts to British creditors, winning reimbursement for seized cargoes, ending the impressment of American sailors, and opening trade with British Caribbean islands. A problematic instruction directed that an agreement with Britain should not denigrate the treaty between France and the United States; for many Americans, any agreement with Britain would do that.7
Washington knew the mission could fail. He summarized his policy as “to preserve the country in peace if I can, and to be prepared for war if I cannot.” In pursuit of the second goal, he won congressional approval to build new forts, strengthen harbor defenses, and organize munitions and arms stockpiles. Congress balked at his request to expand the army tenfold, to 25,000 soldiers. Americans still mistrusted a standing army.8
For many months, Washington could do little but wait for news from the London negotiation an ocean away. On November 19, 1794, the diplomats signed an agreement. Jay sent the treaty home, but chose to stay in London rather than endure a wintry Atlantic crossing. When Washington read the pact in early March 1795, his disappointment was sharp. Jay had won few concessions.9
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