A Sovereign People

by Carol Berkin

  Wells was determined and persistent, owing to his overwhelming desire to profit from his commissions and from the rewards he could collect by turning in unregistered stills. Taking his cue from the man who created a familial network known as the “Neville Connection,” Wells had placed his son Charles in a quartermaster’s office in a Maryland fort. He was grooming a second son, John, as a future collector of revenue. Wells let little deter him; when a still owner’s son knocked him out for snooping around the family’s mill, Wells picked himself up and continued the search. Throughout 1793, despite numerous physical attacks, he doggedly sought out tax evaders. Even when his excise office was stoned and its windows smashed, even after men threatened his wife with violence, Wells persisted. Not until November 1793, when his home was invaded and his life threatened, did he turn over his record books and his excise commission and agree to publish his resignation in the Pittsburgh Gazette. Wells was broken but not bowed. He persuaded Neville to give his son John the excise commission. The senior Wells then became a courier of sorts, traveling from the western counties to Philadelphia, carrying the names of tax-evading distillers to the Treasury Department and the names of his attackers to the Justice Department in hopes of provoking a military campaign against the whiskey rebels.

  However, a series of diplomatic crises distracted the federal government. Algerian pirates had ramped up their seizures of American merchant marine vessels; the French revolutionaries had guillotined their king; and Edmond Genet, the French ambassador to the United States, was trying to turn America into a subsidiary of his nation. Then, in late August 1793, yellow fever broke out in the nation’s capital city.

  There were few diseases more dreaded in eighteenth-century America. Yellow fever took its name from one of its symptoms, the yellowing of the victim’s eyes and skin. No one, neither doctors nor government officials, was certain how the disease was spread. Although the actual culprits were infected mosquitoes, some experts, including Dr. Benjamin Rush, blamed rotting vegetables and other garbage. Others blamed the flood of French refugees seeking asylum from political upheavals in the Caribbean for bringing the disease to their city. Everyone agreed, however, that this was a disease to be feared. The first deaths had come in July. Soon the number of people suffering the telltale yellowing grew, and more deaths quickly followed. By late August, as the death toll rose, Dr. Rush declared that the city was in the midst of an epidemic.

  No one had a cure. On August 27, the College of Physicians advised Philadelphians to avoid anyone displaying symptoms, and Rush urged anyone who could to flee the city. Some 20,000 people left Philadelphia, including the president and his family, Secretary of State Thomas Jefferson, and Secretary of War Henry Knox. Alexander Hamilton had already contracted the disease before he fled to the safety of Albany; he was among the fortunate few who recovered. The federal government had shut down. As the fatalities rose to more than a hundred a day in October, civility also fell victim to the disease. Friends avoided one another, and, at the first sign of the fever, family members were banished from their homes. Parents deserted their own children. There was such a rush to get infected people out of the city and into the cemetery that one resident, seeing a coffin loaded with a body, wondered how many people had actually been buried alive. Relief did not come until the end of October when the first fall frost stemmed the spread of the disease. On October 31, the city hospital hoisted a white flag, a sign that no yellow fever patients remained within its walls. The epidemic was over, but as many as 5,000 men, women, and children had died before the city returned to normal.54

  Government officials slowly filtered back into Philadelphia that fall, although Washington and Jefferson took up the government’s business from the safety of Germantown until late November. To the administration’s relief, the determined resistance of the distillers of Pennsylvania’s western counties seemed to have diminished; no reports of serious violence were waiting for Washington or Hamilton when they returned to the capital. Hamilton no doubt hoped that a new policy he had initiated that summer was having the desired effect. He had decided to relent and to allow the army to buy whiskey from both Virginia and Kentucky distillers. He was gambling that Pennsylvania whiskey makers would choose to comply with the law in order to benefit from sales to the military. At the very least, the lure of a military market for their whiskey might shatter the unity of these westerners in their opposition to the tax.55

  But, at the start of 1794, it became obvious that the apparent peace of the last months of 1793 would be only temporary. In January, a mysterious but charismatic leader called “Tom the Tinker” cut a swathe of destruction and intimidation throughout the Pittsburgh area. Tom, who many suspected was not a single individual but a group of men, published threats in the Pittsburgh Gazette aimed at anyone supporting the excise. He then made good on those threats with a rash of barn burnings, targeting men who had dared to register their stills.

  News of Tom the Tinker’s violence did not immediately reach the president, but Washington had received reports of the November attack on Benjamin Wells. The news moved the president to change his approach; he would abandon leniency in favor of firm threats of punishment. This decision led him to issue a second proclamation on February 24, 1794, entitled Proclamation on Violent Opposition to the Excise Tax. It detailed the attack on Wells, and, to demonstrate the administration’s determination to bring the perpetrators of violence to justice, it offered a reward of $200 to anyone “who shall first discover and give information” on the unknown assailants to a judge, justice of the peace, or other magistrate.56

  Within Washington’s inner circle, the new fear was that a general disregard for the authority of the federal government had reached the highest levels of some state governments. Not only was the Pennsylvania governor showing his contempt for Washington, the governor of the recently created state of Kentucky was mocking the administration. On March 10, Washington had found it necessary to convene his cabinet to discuss Governor Isaac Shelby’s refusal to suppress the French recruitment of American citizens to invade Spanish Louisiana. In 1793, Shelby had stubbornly denied Thomas Jefferson’s report that Revolutionary War veteran George Rogers Clark had joined forces with French minister Edmond Genet in a plot to seize Louisiana. He continued to stonewall the new secretary of state, Edmund Randolph, in 1794. His message was clear—and disturbing: as governor, he could ignore the federal government’s diplomatic alliances if and when he chose to do so. Shelby’s defiance forced the president to issue yet another proclamation on March 24, 1794, warning citizens “to refrain from enlisting, enrolling, or assembling themselves for such unlawful purposes.” Offenders would face severe punishment. But it was only Minister Genet’s shortage of funds that finally put an end to this crisis.57

  By April 1794, even if they were no longer signing up for an invasion of Louisiana, Kentuckians showed little evidence that they were any more loyal to the federal government. In fact, that May Kentucky’s original response to the excise tax—ignoring it—gave way to active protest. Hundreds of distillers and their supporters held a mass meeting in Lexington, where the agenda quickly moved beyond the call for repeal of the whiskey tax. The thirteen resolutions they passed were a litany of western disappointments and frustrated demands. The protesters condemned the federal government for failing, “through design or mistaken policy,” to provide them free navigation of the Mississippi River. They criticized the government’s failure to force British forts out of the Ohio Valley. And they expressed outrage at the government’s failure to protect its citizens from Indian attack.58

  Washington would not have denied the serious challenges to the prosperity and safety of western residents. But these were not the only challenges his administration was struggling to address. With limited military and financial resources, the president was doing his best to deal with a host of domestic and foreign questions facing America daily. He could not meet unrealistic demands for a quick resolution to western grievances. But patience did
not prevail among those westerners who felt thwarted by “design” or incompetence. The Lexington resolutions reflected the depth of resentment among men unable to appreciate the often delicate nature of treaty negotiations with foreign countries and uninterested in the number and complexity of problems facing the federal government.

  Not only that, but the number of angry westerners seemed to be growing. In July 1794, news would reach the cabinet that a second down-and-out Revolutionary War hero, General Elijah Clarke, had led a movement of Georgians determined to secede and create a new republic on Creek Indian lands. Unlike Westylvania, the Georgia plot went beyond mere talk. Clarke’s followers constructed forts in Indian territory and established a settlement. Although the Georgia militia stepped in to thwart the secessionists, Clarke’s actions endangered the peace negotiations the federal government was conducting with the Creeks at the time.59

  The violent resistance to the whiskey tax in Kentucky and Pennsylvania, the Genet and Clark plan to recruit Americans for an invasion of Louisiana, the Lexington resolutions that accused the federal government of intentionally ignoring western safety and incompetence in securing western economic needs, and the Georgia secession movement—each reinforced the administration’s conviction that anarchy and instability were spreading. It would not take much more to persuade the president that drastic measures were necessary.

  8

  “Finding the opposition to the revenue law more violent than I expected…”

  —Collector of revenue, Robert Johnson, July 1794

  THE FINAL IMPETUS for military action came from Pennsylvania. Despite Tom the Tinker’s barn burnings early in 1794, Governor Mifflin continued to insist that he had taken all the action required to stem the resistance to federal law. He had, after all, sent a circular letter in March that urged acquiescence. The response, he was pleased to report to the president, had been patriotic. As proof of his success, Mifflin enclosed extracts from letters attesting to the return of law and order. These came from none other than Judge Alexander Addison and David Redick, a lawyer who regularly attended insurgent meetings. Addison assured Mifflin that he had heard of no criminal behavior since the rioters of Allegheny County had been brought to justice. He laid any lingering problem—small though he insisted it was—squarely on Hamilton’s choice of revenue collectors, especially Benjamin Wells. The men Hamilton had appointed, Addison lamented, lacked both spirit and discretion. The people understandably had no confidence in them. Redick too placed the blame for the resistance on the men chosen to collect the tax. Because citizens he talked to feared “a vindictive spirit” in collector Robert Johnson, Redick believed a change in personnel “would have very happy effects.” On Hamilton’s advice, Washington did not reply to the governor’s letter, agreeing with his treasury secretary that nothing he said would force the governor to admit he had a dangerous rebellion on his hands.60

  Congress, like Hamilton, was no longer willing to placate the insurgents of western Pennsylvania. On June 5, after only a month of debate, the legislature passed An Act making further provisions for securing and collecting the Duties on foreign and domestic distilled Spirits, Stills, Wines and Teas. This law empowered the president to create new districts and surveys and to alter older ones in order to make enforcement of the excise tax easier. The president was also given the authority to appoint new supervisors and inspectors of stills and ports. Penalties for noncompliance were increased: any spirits not entered at an office of inspection were liable to seizure and forfeit. Congress’s intent was clearest in section 8 of the bill, which stipulated that an owner or worker of a licensed still must attest to distilling only during the period his license indicated, or else he could not ask for its renewal. Hamilton was delighted with Congress’s decisive action, telling John Jay that the legislative session had proven “much better than I expected.”61

  The new regulations and the expansion of the revenue bureaucracy were unlikely to have a calming effect on the distillers of Allegheny, Fayette, Washington, or Westmoreland Counties. In fact, while Congress was crafting the new law, the insurgents were tightening their grip on these western Pennsylvania communities, once again borrowing many of the techniques the colonial radicals had employed during the 1760s and 1770s and that the members of Shays’ Rebellion had turned to in the following decade. In May, the rebels erected liberty poles throughout the region, a frontier tribute to the Sons of Liberty two decades earlier. Where once committees of safety had demanded loyalty oaths from men hesitant to join the Revolution, now Tom the Tinker and his allies demanded that hesitant westerners publish statements of loyalty to the resistance in the local press.

  Revenue officers like General Neville began to prepare for the worst. They did not have long to wait. The first target that summer was John Wells, son of the beleaguered Benjamin Wells. When the younger Wells took over the position of collector for Westmoreland County, he opened his office in the home of Philip Reagan. In June, a force of almost 150 men surrounded Reagan’s house and took him hostage. They then moved on to Wells’s own house and burned it to the ground. Reagan managed to escape, but no excise office would be set up in his home again. Similar attacks soon followed on other excise offices. Any man foolish enough to rent space to revenue collectors was tarred and feathered, and efforts to serve summonses on noncomplying distillers were met with violence.62

  In July, as Marshal David Lenox and General Neville traveled through Allegheny County to serve summonses, they barely escaped a mob that ambushed them. A few days later, the much-awaited showdown between Neville and the rebels finally took place. On July 16, the Mingo Creek Association sent some thirty men, armed with rifles and clubs, to arrest the marshal, who was staying at Neville’s home. Gunfire was exchanged, and five attackers were killed. The next day, six hundred men gathered and issued two demands: all writs in Neville’s possession must be handed over, and Neville must resign. When this insurgent army marched to the Neville homestead, it found Major Abraham Kirkpatrick of the US military and ten of his soldiers there to defend the revenue collector. Kirkpatrick tried to negotiate with the rebels but failed. Neville’s outlying buildings were burned, and his home was once again attacked. The marshal was captured, though later released. General Neville, who managed to escape, wisely fled to the safety of Pittsburgh.63

  It was no longer possible for any reasonable person to insist on the general peacefulness of the four western counties. On July 18, Major General John Gibson summarized the situation around Pittsburgh for Governor Mifflin. “I am sorry to have to inform your Excellency that a civil War has taken place in this county.” Major Thomas Butler, commander at Fort Fayette, Pittsburgh, echoed Gibson’s judgment in his letter to Secretary of War Henry Knox. “Sir, I feel extreme pain in communicating to you the lawless and disorderly state of this western country at this period.” Like most supporters of the federal government, Butler laid the blame for the trouble on “designing men” who had persuaded “the deluded inhabitants” to oppose the excise law. “Deluded” would be the most common adjective assigned to those who followed leaders like Tom the Tinker and the lawyer David Bradford.64

  On July 19, the insurgents struck again, intercepting the US mail carrier and taking several letters addressed to government officials. Their goal was to discover who in their counties was asking for federal help. The robbery suggested that, for the first time, the insurgents were worried that support was waning among the more influential men of the region. The concern was justified; the recent escalation of violence had led a number of leading citizens to wonder whether the whiskey rebels had finally gone too far.

  Yet Tom the Tinker and Bradford believed the insurgency had not gone far enough. A few days after the battle at the Neville home, a meeting was called at the Mingo Creek Church. The mood was tense, given the recent violence and the deaths of a number of their fellow rebels. Bradford managed to rally them by reading a defiant and provocative—and stolen—letter written by Colonel Neville’s son. The young Nevi
lle boasted to his friend of his wealth, declaring that he did not care whether the rebels burned his home too, for he had plenty of other property. The meeting’s main purpose, however, was not to shore up support for the resistance among the farmers present. It was to test the loyalty of certain specific—and prominent—supporters of the rebellion by soliciting their opinions on the attack on Neville and the destruction of his property. Attention quickly turned to the man most suspected of apostasy: the frontier lawyer and novelist, Hugh Henry Brackenridge.

  From the beginning, Brackenridge’s support of the whiskey rebels had been a surprise. He had begun a career in politics with his election to the Pennsylvania assembly in 1786, but his staunch defense of the Constitution led to his defeat for reelection. Although he ran to be a delegate to the Pennsylvania ratifying convention in 1787, his neighbors in Allegheny County preferred to send the uneducated William Findley to represent them. Brackenridge promptly satirized the ignorance of these ungrateful backcountry constituents and abandoned politics for literary pursuits. It is unlikely that many western Pennsylvania residents would read his novel Modern Chivalry when it came out in 1792 and 1793, but if they had, they would not fail to perceive the author’s contempt for uneducated men aspiring to public office.

  When Tom the Tinker challenged Brackenridge’s continuing commitment to the cause, Brackenridge hedged. Hoping to appear the voice of caution and reason, he commented that it might have been morally right to burn down Neville’s house, but it was still illegal. In fact, he said, it was actually an act of treason that would carry dire consequences. In assaulting Neville and the marshal, the rebels had provided the president with the right to call out the army against them. Brackenridge hastened to assure the meeting that he doubted Washington wished to wage war against citizens of his own country. He was confident, he said, that the president would grant everyone amnesty if only the rebels promised to obey the law.