by Carol Berkin
Although he had no real authority to speak for the president, Brackenridge was offering the rebels a way out of the dilemma their attack on Neville had created. But they decided to follow a different tack: further escalation. They resolved to rally the region and instruct militia commanders to arrest the men who had dared to request the federal government’s help. What had started as a revolt against the excise tax had now effectively become a war of secession.
Brackenridge was not the only leading citizen to decide things had gone too far. When armed militias converged on the town of Washington, a number of the local elites in the resistance called for moderation. Even John Hamilton, the commander of the Mingo Creek militia, tried to prevent his men from marching against the federal government. William Findley, a fierce opponent of Alexander Hamilton and his fiscal programs, began to soften his rhetoric and play the role of peacemaker. It was all to no avail.65
On July 28, Bradford and six other leaders of the resistance issued a circular letter to the militia officers in the western counties. “You are called upon as a citizen of the western country to render your personal service, with as many volunteers as you can raise to rendezvous at your usual place of meeting on Wednesday next, and thence you will march to the usual place of rendezvous at Braddock’s Field… on Friday the first day of August next.” To Bradford’s satisfaction, the militiamen answered his call. As August began, nearly 7,000 came together at the appointed spot.66
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“The crisis is now come, submission or opposition.”
—David Bradford, August 1794
PRESIDENT WASHINGTON, TOO, had been gathering his forces, but for the time being these remained legal and political rather than military. He still refused to call on General Anthony Wayne and the federal army to suppress the rebellion, but he was now ready to clear the path for an expedition composed of state militias. To this end, he had written to Supreme Court justice James Wilson, asking for certification that civil and judicial authorities were unable to restore law and order in the western counties. While he waited for Wilson’s reply, Washington began to accumulate evidence to support the argument that military intervention was necessary. Hamilton contributed to the effort on August 1, when he took a deposition from Frances Mentges, a colonel in the Pennsylvania militia. Mentges confirmed the earlier accounts of the attack on Neville’s home and warned that a convention of the four western counties, plus neighboring Virginia counties, had been called for August 14. The colonel’s deposition ended with an assertion that “it is intirely [sic] impracticable to execute the laws… by the means of civil process and Judiciary proceeding.”67
Events now moved rapidly. On August 2, 1794, the president called a meeting with Governor Mifflin. The federal government was represented by Secretary of State Edmund Randolph, Secretary of War Henry Knox, Secretary of the Treasury Alexander Hamilton, and Attorney General William Bradford; the Pennsylvania officials accompanying Mifflin were Secretary of the Commonwealth Alexander Dallas, Chief Justice Thomas McKean, and Attorney General Jared Ingersoll. Washington was unusually blunt: we all know the subject of this meeting, he said; we all know the circumstances that prompted it. Edmund Randolph read aloud the most damning evidence that the western insurgents had struck “at the root of all law and order.” When he finished presenting the letters from General Neville, his son Presley Neville, Marshal David Lenox, and the commandant of Fort Fayette, as well as the deposition from Mentges and one from the post rider whose mail had been raided, Washington addressed Mifflin directly. He asked the governor to demonstrate his cooperation by taking some preliminary steps while they waited for James Wilson’s letter of certification. Everyone present understood that Washington wanted the governor to call out the state militia.
Washington’s request was greeted with silence from the Pennsylvania delegation. Randolph stepped in and read the act of Congress under which the president was proceeding. When Mifflin and his associates said nothing, Randolph attempted to buttress the president’s request by citing a Pennsylvania act of 1783 that authorized mobilizing the militia for sudden emergencies. This prompted Alexander Dallas to speak. He waved the argument away, declaring that this law had been repealed. Randolph then tried another approach. He asked Dallas for his legal opinion: Did the governor have the authority to call out the militia? Dallas refused to answer officially, saying only that, as a private citizen, he would support the governor’s use of the militia if it were necessary. But Chief Justice McKean immediately declared that there was no necessity to act. Nothing, he insisted, had shaken his confidence that the judiciary was capable of handling the situation. The use of force, he added, would be as bad as anything the rioters had done; it would be equally unconstitutional and illegal. Hamilton was appalled by this comment. The government’s authority, he said, must be maintained. Opposition to that authority and to the Constitution itself could be seen in the rebels’ demands for navigation of the Mississippi; in threats to create a new, independent country in the West; and in violent resistance to the excise tax. An immediate resort to military force was indeed necessary. The moment had come when it must be determined whether the government could maintain itself. The rioters must be quelled; the officers of the union must be protected in the execution of their duties; obedience to the laws must be compelled. To this Alexander Dallas replied that Judge Addison had warned that even those westerners who were peaceable would join in opposition to any effort to force them into submission. Hamilton retorted that nothing Addison said could be trusted, for the judge was a promoter of the opposition in western Pennsylvania. What was said after this exchange is lost, for the record of this meeting abruptly ended.68
Mifflin’s intransigence posed a serious problem for the president. The immediate use of the Pennsylvania militia was impossible absent the governor’s support. Later that day, Hamilton offered advice to Washington. Regardless of what Mifflin might say, regardless of what he might do or not do, it was obvious that military force was necessary. If Pennsylvania would not provide that force, other states surely would. “The very existence of Government demands this course,” Hamilton wrote; the military suppression of the rebels was “a duty of the highest nature.”69
To Hamilton, the central questions were no longer legal or political; they were tactical. How many troops were needed to put down the rebellion, and from which states should these militia units be drawn? Hamilton, who wanted a powerful show of force, recommended an army of 12,000 men, 9,000 of them on foot, 3,000 mounted on horseback. Because the governor of Pennsylvania had insisted his own state militia was inadequate to the task, Hamilton proposed that Pennsylvania be held responsible for only 6,000 men, with the remaining 6,000 drawn from the neighboring states of New Jersey, Maryland, and Virginia.70
The following day, Washington received the official certification from Justice Wilson he had desired. Wilson’s opinion was brief and to the point: Hamilton was right; Addison was wrong. Military force was necessary. The only obstacle now was whether the governor of Pennsylvania would agree to cooperate. On August 5, Washington got his answer: no. Governor Mifflin informed the president that the Pennsylvania militia would not be called out, as he remained convinced that the judicial process was working. It was doubtful, the governor added, that the men called out to the militia in one county of Pennsylvania would agree to suppress men of another. He was certain he was not authorized to make them do so.71
And anyway, Mifflin assured the president, he had already taken appropriate action. Even before their August 2 meeting, he had instructed Attorney General Dallas to send a letter to every judge, justice, sheriff, and brigade inspector in the western counties, requiring them to “exert all your influence and authority to suppress, within your jurisdiction, so pernicious and unwarrantable a spirit” as the men who attacked Neville had shown. In the meantime, Mifflin suggested that the president appoint a commission of three respectable men to negotiate with the rioters, an idea first suggested by General John Wilkins to Pennsylvan
ia marshal Clement Biddle. Wilkins, who had warned that “some of the most respectable people in the country” were engaged in the rebellion, thought that a commission would lead to “the happiest consequences.” Mifflin believed these commissioners could restore peace by promising the insurgents that the state of Pennsylvania would forgive all past transgressions if the rioters promised to obey the law in the future.72
Mifflin’s defiance of the president and his rejection of Wilson’s ruling were insulting but unsurprising. The governor’s loyalties lay elsewhere, with the anti-administration Republican Party of Jefferson and Madison. But his warning that the Pennsylvania militiamen would balk at suppressing their fellow citizens could not be ignored. Washington realized he would have to find ways to rally public opinion, especially in Pennsylvania, to avoid the dire outcome Mifflin predicted. Adding to the problem, there were some in Washington’s own cabinet who were inclined to agree with the governor’s view that a military intervention was unwise.
No cabinet member denied that the insurgents posed a challenge to the authority of the new, untested federal government. No one doubted that the stakes were high. If the government’s laws were not respected, if the officials charged with administering them were not safe, what would the future hold? But in the face of Hamilton’s call for immediate military action, Edmund Randolph urged patience and negotiation. On August 5, the president received letters from both men, each forcefully arguing his case. The letters demonstrate Hamilton’s eagerness to exert the power of the Executive Office and Randolph’s wariness at how such a demonstration of power would be interpreted by the opposition party. Hamilton’s first thought was how to defend the authority of the federal government; Randolph’s was whether the resort to military force would mean the end of the Federalist Party as well as the Whiskey Rebellion.
Hamilton’s letter repeated the arguments he had made in defense of military action. To drive home his point, he offered a long and thorough chronology of the events leading up to the current moment of crisis. It was a catalogue of acts of intimidation and bloodshed, treasonous plots, and public disrespect for federal law and authority. The president had no choice, he concluded: he must send in an army to end the rebellion. Randolph devoted his letter to a litany of problems a military solution would generate. Chief among them was the political advantage it might offer the Republican Party. “It is a fact,” he wrote, “that the parties in the U.S. are highly inflamed against each other.” There were some within Washington’s circle—and here Randolph clearly meant Hamilton and Knox—who “court the shining reputation, which is acquired by being always ready for strong measures,” but he believed that Jefferson and his supporters understood the working of the popular mind far better than these Federalists. The Republicans would be quick to capitalize on voters’ outrage and alienation if citizens did not believe conciliation had been genuinely sought. “Some gentlemen”—and here again, he meant Hamilton and Knox—“believed that reconciliation should be offered with one hand and terror held out with the other.” But overtures of peace by a commission while an army was forming would be mistrusted not only by the insurgents but also by the rest of the world. There would be suspicions that the commissioners were sent only to gloss over inevitable violence, or as a ruse to measure the strength of the insurgents, or as a tactic to discover the most culpable and mark them for punishment. Others might suspect that the commission was designed solely to stall until General Wayne’s western army could turn its attention to the slaughter of American citizens rather than “savages.” The president’s wisest course, Randolph insisted, remained diplomacy and negotiation. Should the peace commission fail, as Randolph feared it must, Washington lost nothing by waiting for its report. The option to send in troops would remain. His message, so different from Hamilton’s, was equally clear: delay would cost nothing and patience might gain much.73
In the face of this disagreement between his current secretary of state and his treasury secretary, the president chose a compromise between the urgency of one advisor and the caution of another. He would send a peace commission, but he would not delay the assembling of a military force. Washington’s decision reflected his political intelligence, for he understood that broad public support would depend on the appearance that all peaceful efforts to end the crisis had been made.
The president quickly assembled the peace commission. As his emissaries to the insurgents, he wisely chose three Pennsylvanians: Attorney General William Bradford, Senator James Ross, and Pennsylvania Supreme Court justice Jasper Yeates. He directed Randolph to immediately send instructions to these commissioners. They were given broad latitude to negotiate with “any bodies of men or individuals” they thought represented the rebels, and they were free to assess how best to proceed once contact was made. But they were to present the situation in these unambiguous terms: the president was extremely upset; the government considered the obstruction of its laws to be dangerous; the president has been given the power to call out the militia, but he preferred a negotiated peace. Finally, the commissioners were to hold out no false promises of repeal of the tax, for the Constitution did not give the president the authority to nullify a law passed by Congress. He did, however, have the power to grant amnesty if the obstruction of the law ceased and the men subject to prosecution were not sheltered. And if the duties were paid that year, all past failures to do so would be ignored. These instructions reflected the firm but conciliatory approach Randolph had so fervently desired, but the final instruction left no doubt that Hamilton had won a victory, too. The commissioners were told to issue this warning: the militias would be ready to act if negotiations failed.74
Probably to remind the president of the sovereignty of Pennsylvania, Governor Mifflin decided to send his own commissioners to treat with the insurgents. On August 6, he appointed the state’s chief justice Thomas McKean and General William Irvine to negotiate on behalf of the state. Like Washington, Mifflin left much to the discretion of his commissioners, but he did urge them to impress upon the insurgents the “folly of a riotous opposition to… laws, which were made by the spontaneous authority of the people.” They were to exhort the “deluded Rioters” to return to their duties as law-abiding citizens.75
On the same day that Mifflin gave his instructions to the Pennsylvania commissioners, David Bradford was urging the residents of Monongahela, Virginia, to join his whiskey rebels at their next general meeting at Parkinson’s Ferry. “The crisis is now come,” Bradford told them, and the choice before them was “submission or opposition.” Pennsylvania’s insurgents had made their choice: “We are determined in the opposition.”76
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“Such disorder can only be cured by copious bleedings.”
—Samuel Hodgdon, August 1794
ON AUGUST 7, Washington issued another presidential proclamation, this one drafted by both Hamilton and Knox. Although addressed to the insurgents, it was designed to persuade the American public more broadly that the challenge to the federal government in western Pennsylvania was a genuine crisis. The proclamation began with the multiple charges the government leveled against the whiskey rebels, including subverting the just authority of government and the rights of individuals, holding meetings that encouraged further opposition to the law, misrepresenting the laws to render them odious, and committing numerous acts of intimidation and violence against revenue officials. It followed with evidence that the government had responded to the rebels’ complaints not only by lowering the duties but also by “explanations, by forbearance and even by particular accommodations.” Yet acts of treason continued, and the war against the government of the United States had intensified. If Pennsylvania refused to call out its militia, the president could do so himself, having been granted that power by Congress. He could also call other state militias into the field. This the president said he had done, with “deepest regret” but “the most Solemn conviction, that the essential interests of the Union demand it, that the very existence of Government
and the fundamental principles of social order are materially involved in the issue.” The proclamation ended with the president’s command that the insurgents disperse by September 1 and return peaceably to their homes.77
Washington had committed to negotiating but begun preparing to use force. Thus, as the federal peace commissioners headed west to negotiate with the leaders of the insurgency, Secretary of War Henry Knox sent orders to the governors of Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Maryland, and Virginia to put their militias on standby. Knox then requested and received permission to travel to Maine to look after his land holdings there. Alexander Hamilton took over the coordination of military operations.78
Washington had not forgotten Governor Mifflin’s refusal to cooperate. He waited until the proclamation had been issued, the state governors had been called upon to organize their militias, and the instructions had been sent to the commissioners. Then he instructed Edmund Randolph to reply to Thomas Mifflin’s defiant August 5 letter. The result was a stinging rebuttal of the governor’s justifications for refusing to muster the Pennsylvania militia unless the president directly ordered it. Mifflin had pursued an independent course, which might have been acceptable, Randolph wrote, “if there were no federal government, federal laws, federal judiciary, or federal officers”—a notion Federalists feared might still be desirable to many Americans. But the federal government did exist, and although Mifflin was free to disagree with the president’s handling of the whiskey rebels, he was not free to withhold cooperation. “Not to do what must be done to execute the laws,” Randolph declared, now sounding much like Hamilton, would endanger “the Constitution, the Government, the principles of social order, and the bulwarks of private right and security.” If, as Mifflin maintained, he could not guarantee sufficient numbers from his state’s militias, the president was preparing to assemble men from neighboring states to join whatever men the governor could provide to create an army of 12,000–13,000. At the same time, Randolph informed Mifflin, the president had sent a commission to the western counties to make a last effort to appeal to the reason, virtue, and patriotism of their citizens.79