CHAPTER X
FIRST LESSONS IN NATIONAL OBEDIENCE
Although the first years under an efficient form of national control were remarkably successful, inspiring what was really the first confidence in the free government of America, it was not to be expected that all difficulties were to be avoided, especially if the new form assumed a vigorous and capable management. Heretofore domestic violence had threatened local government only, because the national administration was too inefficient to come in contact with disorder. If the National Government should now attempt to enforce its laws, the very action must sooner or later bring it into conflict with recalcitrants in some section, as well as with the naturally lawless. Even the understanding that local policing was to be left to local government would not restrain an efficient national administration from meeting such a crisis vigorously. Indeed, the action of the nation in such an emergency would determine whether it was at the mercy of State aid and protection or whether it could care for itself.
If one were attempting to predict at what point of national administration rebellion would arise, he would no doubt choose taxation. The hostility of the people toward taxation, possibly engendered in the Revolutionary days, and exaggerated by human nature, has been described in previous pages. One of the objections to the Constitution had been that the people could now be taxed by two agencies, State and nation, thereby involving double taxes. The resistance to the excise tax, which began to be manifest in a small way soon after its institution in 1791, bore a striking resemblance to the rebellion against the stamp-tax levied by Britain upon the colonists a generation before. A tax levied on imported goods, collected at the ports, quietly added to the original cost, and, therefore, a kind of external tax, is never so objectionable as one paid directly out of hand, and hence an internal tax. So little in evidence is an external tax that the people are sometimes beguiled into questioning whether the producer or the consumer pays the tax. An internal tax, levied on distilled liquors, whiskey, rum, brandy, and gin, was no more a novelty in the early days of the Constitution than was a stamp-tax in 1765. Being accustomed to having it levied by the local government in each instance, it became objectionable when laid by the superior power. Massachusetts, Connecticut, and Pennsylvania had used an excise as a means of raising revenue. The people in the western part of the latter State had several times resisted its imposition by the State Legislature, but the penalties imposed upon their lawlessness had generally been remitted by the governor, and the law had been finally repealed. "The Legislature has been obliged to wink at the violation of her excise laws in the western parts of the state ever since the Revolution," confessed a United States Senator from that State.
The Constitution clearly stated the power of Congress to lay and collect both imposts and excises. From the beginning of his reports upon available sources of revenue, Hamilton had suggested a special impost upon imported liquors and an excise upon those manufactured in the United States. He fully realised that the word "excise" was obnoxious to citizens who had migrated from Scotland and Ireland, where the tax was imposed by a superior force, and in England as well, where it had been known since Cromwell's day. To these people it meant not only a tax on liquors, but on candles, salt, vinegar, and other forms of domestic manufacture. It meant a license to own a gun, and to peddle small wares. Not many years had passed since Samuel Johnson in his dictionary had defined it as "a hateful tax levied upon commodities and adjudged not by the common judges of property but wretches hired by those to whom it is paid." Added to these inherited prejudices of the Irish and Scotch-Irish settlers in western Pennsylvania against the excise was a local complaint that they lacked roads for transporting their grain across the mountains to market and were prohibited from floating it down to New Orleans both by the distance and by the hostility of the Spanish. Their surplus produce must rot unless it could be manufactured into spirits which could be consumed at home or carried to a market. A horse, it was said, could carry only four bushels of grain across the mountains; but he could take twenty-four bushels when converted into liquor. In that day, before the later temperance movements had created a different sentiment, whiskey was regarded as a necessary article of food as much as beef or bread. The amount of strong liquor used in the United States was estimated at two and one-half gallons per year for every man, woman, and child.
Although the consumption of liquor in the uplands of North Carolina was almost equal to that in western Pennsylvania, there were no such geographical causes for resistance to the General Government's excise. It was seen by the Administration that opposition would be most likely in the four western counties of Pennsylvania. That State had the most diverse elements of population. Its colonial history had been marked by racial and factional contests. It was now to have the unfortunate distinction of producing the first open resistance to the Federal Union. The disorder at first took the form of mobbing and intimidating collectors, destroying the property of distillers who complied with the law, and holding public meetings at which resolutions denouncing the laws of the Government were passed. During the two and a half years that the insurrectionary spirit increased, Congress twice modified the excise law in a vain attempt to conciliate its Pennsylvania opponents, who demanded a total repeal of the tax. To check the General Government the leaders of the insurrection threatened to secede, thus setting an early pattern for this form of intimidation.
"I am induced to believe," wrote one of them, "the three Virginia counties this side the mountain will fall in. The first measure then will be the reorganization of a new government, comprehending the three Virginia counties and those of Pennsylvania to the westward, to what extent I know not… Being then on an equal footing with other parts of the Union, if they submit to the law, this country might also submit."
With such a spirit of combination against the Federal Government as these words indicated, the supporters of the national power cast about to find what provisions had been made for enforcing the national laws. The Constitution gave the command of the army and navy to the President; but the peace establishment, on which the army had been put at the close of the war, placed at his service an inadequate force. The necessity for economising, as well as the fear of a standing army, had kept the army down to five regiments of infantry and one battalion of cavalry. This force was required constantly on the frontier and could not be spared to suppress domestic insurrection. In such a defenceless condition, the Union must turn to the militia of the various States.
The Constitution had provided for such an emergency in a general way by making the President the head "of the militia of the several states when called into the actual service of the United States." Here was opportunity in working out the details for the individualists to protect themselves against the unjust use of the militia by restricting the circumstances under which it could be called into the actual service of the Federal Government. Unfortunately for them, measures for the proper defence of the frontier were necessary from the beginning of the new Government. Since the frontier lay so largely in the United States territories, its defence belonged to that authority and not to any State. Under certain limits of time and distance, the President had been authorised in various laws to employ State militia on the frontier. The Secretary of War eventually drew up a plan for organising uniformly the militia of the States into a national defence, believing, as he said, that "an energetic militia is to be regarded as the capital security of a free republic, and not a standing army, forming a distinct class in the community."
In drafting the militia law of 1792, in accord with the recommendations of Knox, the President was authorised to call out the militia of any State "whenever the laws of the United States should be opposed by combinations too powerful to be suppressed by the ordinary course of judicial proceedings." This efficient clause was productive of a prolonged debate in each branch and a conference between the two. Its opponents made various efforts to substitute the Legislature of a State as the agency for calling out the militia, to require a previous notice to the President from a justice that the laws could not be enforced, and to have a session of Congress intervene before the President could march the militia of one State into another. The fear of giving the central power an excuse for maintaining a standing army had led the framers of the Constitution to incorporate a clause placing the militia at national service only for the purpose of executing its laws, suppressing insurrection, and repelling invasion. Of these emergencies, Congress was to be the judge. Should the dangerous authority now be given over to the Executive? The long intermissions between sessions of Congress made such delegating imperative. The Shays rebellion had left its lesson. Yet, according to one speaker, the measure seemed to suppose that only the General Government possessed the power to suppress insurrections, whereas the States individually certainly possessed this power and would execute it. Another thought it an insult to the majesty of the people to hold out the idea that it may be necessary to execute the laws at the point of the bayonet. "If an old woman," cried a disgusted member of the minority, "was to strike an excise officer with a broomstick, forsooth the military is to be called out to suppress an insurrection."
Finally, by a close vote in each House, the United States was given power through its Chief Executive to call forth the militia of the several States. The action made a connecting ligament between the national body politic and the arm of a widespread and always prepared force. The militia proved most effective in preserving the sovereignty of the National Government in domestic affairs until the regular troops were relieved from the duty of guarding the frontier. Unquestionably, the measures pending at the same time for the protection of the frontier and the inquiry into the defeat of General St. Clair in the North-Western Territory did much to hasten the passage of the militia bill.
Being thus fortified against domestic insurrection and resistance to its laws, the decision whether the new Government would be more successful in these particulars than its predecessor depended entirely upon the attitude of its administrators. It was fortunate for the people of the United States and the growth of the Union that Hamilton was at the head of the department in which the first resistance to the laws occurred. A secretary less devoted to the aggrandisement of the central authority, more careful of the reserved rights of the individual, or more temporising by nature, might have attempted to check the well-known predilection of his chief for vigorous enforcement of the laws instead of constantly urging him thereto. If Hamilton and Jefferson had exchanged secretaryships, the story of the United States would have been vastly different. Hamilton had time to time notified the President that his departmental collectors were interfered with in the execution of their duties in the districts of western Pennsylvania. He wanted to use the full force of the Government against offenders. "Moderation enough has been shown," said he. "It is time to assume a different tone." The spirit was spreading to other parts. The Federal officials of both North and South Carolina warned him that the disaffection was extending to those States.
From the standpoint of the Union it was also fortunate that a military man was President. Those who criticised the choice for the Presidency of a man with military experience but no civic training, and those who deplore a custom so frequently repeated since, may find here some benefits arising from having a man with such an education. "I have no hesitation in declaring," replied Washington to Secretary Hamilton, when notified of the resistance manifested in western Pennsylvania to the revenue officers, "that I shall, however reluctantly exercising them, exert all the legal powers with which the executive is invested to check so daring and unwarrantable a spirit. It is my duty to see the laws executed." Very carefully the soldier-President felt his way through his civic powers of coercion before using his military authority in this first of several cases of preserving the Union against insurrection. There was absolutely no precedent for the coercion of citizens by the National Government. The Federal courts had not yet come into conflict with any considerable number of citizens of a State. But they extended as a judicial network over the whole national domain. They covered every inhabitant. To them Washington turned first. Although Attorney-General Knox decided that the insurgent meetings were not illegal, several rioters were fined by the United States Circuit Court, special sessions of which were held in Pennsylvania.
The President showed his appreciation of the delicate adjustment between State and national authority by consulting the Governor of Pennsylvania at every step. If the State at this formative hour had possessed an executive confident in himself and in his ability to suppress the disorder, he might have done a lasting service to the preservation of the supremacy of the States and forestalled the prestige which the Central Government was bound to obtain from its leadership in this crisis. But Governor Mifflin was content to support the national authority, claiming that the militia of his State was inadequate to the emergency.
In the summer of 1794, the disorder broke out afresh, extending to the spoliation of the United States mail. The National Government dared hesitate no longer. Hamilton, by private letters and public reports, urged the President incessantly to action. His unusual foresight saw the opportunity for strengthening the nation. Weakness in the written Constitution might here be remedied by the precedent of strong action under it. At last a Federal judge of Pennsylvania notified the President that the laws could no longer be enforced in his district. Washington immediately issued the required proclamation of warning, which had been penned by Hamilton. Five weeks later, the Chief Executive called upon the governors of Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Maryland, and Virginia for militia and issued a second proclamation commanding peace. He based this action on the constitutional provision requiring the Executive to take care that the laws be faithfully executed.
The seat of the National Government being at Philadelphia, near the rendezvous of the militia, enabled the President to place himself at the head of the militia. No later President has interpreted so literally his office as commander-in-chief of the army. As he reached Bedford, Fort Cumberland, and other scenes of his campaigns against the French a half-century before, he must have compared that errand with his present one. Then he was saving helpless colonists from a foreign foe; now he was preserving a government from its own constituents.
"No citizens of the United States," he wrote to Governor Lee, of Virginia, when leaving him at the head of the militia in order to return to Philadelphia for the opening of Congress, "can ever be engaged in a service more important to their country. It is nothing less than to consolidate and to preserve the blessings of that revolution, which, at much expense of blood and treasure, constituted us a free and independent nation."
It was also fortunate that Washington had passed through some instructive experience in Revolutionary days on the disadvantages of an insufficient military force. To put down the small body of insurgents in the western borders of Pennsylvania he called for almost thirteen thousand militiamen. To a delegation of the insurgents who met him on the way to complain of such an armed force coming to conquer them, Washington replied that although we had made a republican form of government and enacted laws under it, yet we had given no testimony to the world of being able or willing to support our Government; that, this being the first instance of the kind since the commencement of the Government, he thought it his duty to bring out such a force as would not only be sufficient to subdue the insurgents if they made resistance, but to crush to atoms all opposition that might arise in any quarter.
Washington foresaw the effects of using the military power in behalf of the Union. "The most delicate and momentous duty the chief magistrate of a free people can have to perform," he called it. Early in the excise resistance he had declared that the Government must not use the regular troops if order could possibly be effected without this aid. "Otherwise," said he, "there would be a cry at once, 'The cat is let out; we now see for what purpose an army was raised!'" But individualistic spirits who were alarmed at this new distortion of the Government toward centralisation feared the results of using even the militia. Jefferson, having resigned his secretaryship and seeing the unusually prominent part assumed by Hamilton in the expedition, protested from his retirement at Monticello against such "employment of military force for civil purposes." To his mind the disorder was simply a riot and not an insurrection. "Yet it answered the purpose," said he, "of strengthening the government and increasing public debt and therefore an insurrection was announced." To Madison he declared: "The excise law is an infernal one. The first error was to admit it to the Constitution; the second, to act on that admission; the third and last will be to make it the instrument of dismembering the Union." Madison, who had at first looked upon the suppression of the insurrection as an electioneering scheme, thought it fortunate for the lovers of liberty that the movement was so easily crushed, since otherwise the principle would have been established that a standing army was necessary to enforce the Federal laws. "I am extremely sorry to remark," he wrote to Monroe during the ensuing session of Congress, "a growing apathy to the evil and danger of standing armies." This remark was brought out by the failure of the minority, with which Madison had now fully allied himself, to restrict the use hereafter of any militia to its own State. A "Federal army," the bugaboo of the opposition, had been brought into existence by this unwarranted use of the militia. Seven acts placing the military power of the United States on a permanent basis and giving the Central Government efficient control were passed at this session of 1795, the first fruits of the Western rebellion to be reaped by the Union. Madison accounted for this legislation by the influence of the Chief Executive and the confidence of the people that he would not abuse the power. What later Presidents might do could not be foreseen.
Outside the disaffected districts and with the exception of a few alarmed leaders like Jefferson and Madison, the people undoubtedly sustained Washington in his firm action against rebellion. An ode written for the birthday of the President in 1796 contains an allusion to his influence in suppressing the insurrection:
"When o'er the western mountain's brow,
Sedition rear'd her impious head,
And Tumult wild his legions led,
Serenely great, the Patriot rose.—
Yet in his breast conflicting throes
Of mercy check'd the impending blows.
"He view'd them with a father's eye,
Dimmed by thy tear, Humanity!
Reluctant Justice half unsheathed the sword.
Scar'd at the awful Sight,
Sedition shrunk in realms of night,
And Order saw her peaceful reign restored."
Giving the Central Government sufficient military strength was not the only result of the first open attempt to oppose it. Individualism had received a telling blow. The State was no longer inviolate. Objection had been raised in the trivial matter of creating districts for collecting the revenue because they disregarded State boundaries. It was now seen that the National Government could and would march militia directly to a place of resistance regardless of State lines. The people of the States were no longer safe from invasion by the power which they had created. Not only a respect for the United States laws, taxes, courts, and officers was created by the incident, but the fidelity of the militia, residents of different States, to the central authority was assured. Jay was at this time on his celebrated mission to England to prevent war with that nation, if possible. To him Washington sent enthusiastic accounts of the people turning out to show their abhorrence of the insurrection. He said that some of the officers had disregarded rank and that others had gone as privates. He told of numbers of men, possessed of the first fortunes of the country, yet willing to stand in ranks, to carry knapsacks, and sleep on straw in soldiers' tents with a single blanket on frosty nights. Evidently the spirit of Valley Forge had not been lost. Five times the number could have been secured, he said, to preserve the peace of the country. He also hazarded a prediction that the failure of the insurrection would have a deterrent effect on the political clubs, which he blamed almost entirely for the inception of the insurgent spirit.