The three ministers were the Secretary of State, the Secretary of War, and the Secretary of the Treasury. There was no Attorney-General, or Postmaster-General, or Secretary of the Interior, or of the Navy, or Seed Catalogue Secretary.
Hamilton, the Secretary of the Treasury, advised that Congress at the earliest moment provide itself with a national debt, which was done, the war debt being assumed by the Congressional representatives of the thirteen Colonies.
A tax was levied on spirits, and a mint started, combining the two, and making the mint encourage the consumption of spirits, and thus the increase of the tax, very likely.
A Whiskey Rebellion broke out in 1794. Pennsylvania especially rebelled at the tax on this grocery, but it was put down. (Those wishing to know which was put down will find out by consulting the [Appendix], which will be issued a year from this winter.)
A few Indian wars now kept the people interested, and a large number of the red brothers, under Little Turtle, soon found themselves in the soup, as Washington put it so tersely in his message the following year. Twenty-five thousand square miles north of the Ohio were obtained by treaty from the Indians.
England claimed that traffic with America was not desirable, as the Americans did not pay their debts. Possibly that was true, for muskrat pelts were low at that time, and England refused to take cord-wood and saw-logs piled on the New York landing as cash.
Chief-Justice Jay was sent to London to confer with the king, which he did. He was not invited, however, to come to the house during his stay, and the queen did not call on Mrs. Jay. The Jays have never recovered from this snub, and are still gently guyed by the comic papers.
But the treaty was negotiated, and now the Americans are said to pay their debts as well as the nobility who marry our American girls instead of going into bankruptcy, as some would do.
The Mississippi and the Mediterranean Sea were opened for navigation to American vessels now, and things looked better, for we could by this means exchange our cranberries for sugar and barter our Indian relics for camel's-hair shawls, of which the pioneers were very much in need during the rigorous winters in the North.
The French now had a difficulty with England, and Washington, who still remembered La Fayette and the generous aid of the French, wished that he was back at Mount Vernon, working out his poll-tax on the Virginia roads, for he was in a tight place.