Jefferson and Hamilton

by Claude G. Bowers

A mingling of comedy and pathos is the story of the insurrection. The masses were victims of a few demagogues,[935] but alas, these demagogues were working with a real grievance. Public meetings had not served to moderate the passions. Wise advisers, like Gallatin, were unable to control, and the extremists followed the more flamboyant and less scrupulous. The law was resisted, officials intimidated, prisoners released from custody by mobs, and farmers who informed revenue men of the location of stills read their mistake by the light of their burning barns. When Washington sought to suppress the insurrection through negotiations, it was too late, and the troops he summoned marched.

It was inevitable that politics should play a part. The Excise Law was Hamilton’s child, born to meet the obligations of the Assumption.

The Jeffersonians had opposed its passage, and Jefferson thought it ‘an infernal law.’[936] Then, too, it was felt that Hamilton welcomed the opportunity to test the Federal power. There had been too much skepticism on that point, and he longed for a decisive contest with the ‘mob.’ Bache had complained that Hamilton’s report to Washington on conditions in the trouble zone read ‘like a lawyer’s summing up to a jury.’[937] The Federalist papers traced the trouble to the Jeffersonians because they had opposed the enactment of the Excise Law, denounced the Democratic Societies for inciting the people to insurrection, and satisfied the moron-minded that a demand for a law’s repeal is the same as urging its violation. These were the days when the high-flying Federalists, under the shadow of Washington on horseback, were meditating the Sedition Law. Yes, and the Alien Law as well, for they were pointing to the ‘foreigners’ as the ringleaders in the ‘plot to overthrow the Government.’ The Irish, now numerous in Pennsylvania, were mostly Jeffersonians. That was enough. Fenno warned of ‘the refuse of Europe that will swarm to our shores’ if laws were not rigidly enforced.[938] Wolcott wrote his father that the insurrection was ‘a specimen of what we are to expect from European immigrants’ and that ‘Pennsylvania need not be envied her Irishmen.’[939] ‘Down with the Democrats!’ ‘Down with the critics of public men and measures!’ ‘Down with the foreign devils!’ On these themes the Federalists harped through the summer and autumn. Their persistence was so persuasive that Muhlenberg, the Speaker, narrowly escaped defeat for renomination because he had voted against the Excise Law.[940] The Hamiltonians made the most of the situation.

Before this fusillade the Jeffersonians and Democratic Societies handled themselves well. Never had these societies done more than denounce the excise and demand its repeal, and under the fierce fire they made their position plain. One after another they gave public expression to their views. The Excise Law was reprehensible, but as long as it remained a law it should be obeyed.[941]

The Democratic press took a similar stand. ‘The question is not whether the excise is a proper or improper mode of collecting revenue,’ wrote Bache. ‘It is constitutional ... and it becomes the duty of every citizen to give his aid, if called upon, to enforce its execution. If the opposers should triumph ... the axe is laid to the root of all national government.’[942] Greenleaf in the ‘New York Journal’ was quite as direct: ‘The excise, however obnoxious, is the law of the Union; constitutional measures only therefore ought to be adopted.’[943] Jeers of derision from the Federalists greeted these resolutions and editorials. The insurrection, they contended, ‘is the natural result of these Democratic clubs.’ Honest men among their members had been deceived and the rioting in the West would open their eyes. ‘Down with the Democratic Clubs!’ ‘Down with the critics of governmental measures!’[944] This aroused the wrath of the Jeffersonians, who now took the offensive. Bache summoned the Jeffersonians to join in the suppression of the insurrection to ‘give the lie to the bawlers against the Democratic Societies.’[945] The response was instantaneous. Members of these societies and enemies of the excise rushed to the colors. The Irish Democrats of Philadelphia in an advertisement urged the Irish to ‘stand to their arms,’ and they formed a volunteer company.[946] The Federalists found themselves in a brisk competition for places in the army. With the Philadelphia aristocrats eager to follow Hamilton, and with the Democrats demanding places, the city’s quota was soon doubled. ‘Let those who derive the most benefit from the revenue laws be the foremost to march,’ wrote Bache gleefully. ‘Let the stockholders, bank directors, speculators and revenue officers arrange themselves immediately under the banner of the Treasury, and try their prowess in arms as they have in calculation.’[947] But the jubilant Bache was soon to sing another tune.

VI

On the last day of September, three spirited horses stood in front of the President’s house on Market Street. Three men emerged from the house and mounted, Washington in the center, Danbridge, a secretary, on one side, and on the other—Alexander Hamilton. They turned their horses toward the camp at Carlisle. So Hamilton was going to enforce his law with the sword. Well did the Democrats know the spirit in which he rode to his task. Under the signature of ‘Tully,’ he had not been able to conceal his identity in a series of articles in the summer designed to prepare the country for forceful measures. These had bristled with partisan invective. The Excise Law was defended and its opponents were charged with playing ‘with passions and prejudices.’ And it was not without passion and prejudice that he himself rode forth that September morning.[948] It was at this time that Bache began to sing another tune. In response to what constitutional duty was the head of the Treasury usurping the functions of the Secretary of War? he asked. ‘Pray, where is the Secretary of War? Is he superintending the operations of the Treasury department?’[949] He knew at the time that Knox was on a mission of private business in Maine, for more than two months before he had sternly taken him to task for his absence in a crisis.[950] But Washington was going—why Hamilton? It was whispered about that he had intruded without an invitation, and some felt ‘that his conduct is a first step in a deep laid scheme.’[951] Madison was convinced that Hamilton planned to use the insurrection as a pretext for the creation of a standing army,[952] long before the dynamic young leader rode forth with Washington to join the army. A cry of rage went up from the Democrats everywhere. ‘Malignant—malevolent—uncandid—spiteful—envious—pitiful—mean,’ responded Fenno—and so throughout the summer and autumn the epithets were hurled, the war in the East more venomous than that on the western front.

Meanwhile, Hamilton rode on, close to Washington’s ears, contemptuous of the attacks. Never had he had less respect for democracy. ‘It is long since I have learned to hold popular opinion of no value,’ he wrote Washington after the President had returned to Philadelphia, leaving him in actual command.[953] ‘Without rigor everywhere,’ he wrote King at the same time, ‘our tranquillity will be of very short duration.’[954] It was the tone of Federalist society in Philadelphia that led Bond, the British Consul, in a letter to Grenville, to comment that ‘the establishment of a national force to strengthen the hands of the executive party can alone secure the existing form of government.’[955] As the brilliant young leader rode along the wood-lined roads, aflame with the colors of the fall, his plans for the capitalization of the insurrection for his party were made. The Executive should have more power, with an army of some pretensions to enforce the laws. The Democratic Societies that had awakened the political arrogance of the masses should be crushed. Attacks on governmental measures should be associated with disloyalty to the State. Perhaps on this trip Albert Gallatin, the one financial genius among the Jeffersonians, could be ruined—even indicted.[956] But the insurrection faded at the army’s approach. Nowhere was opposition offered. Everywhere the soldiers met with cordial receptions, albeit the liberty poles literally lined their way. Only an occasional frontiersman in his cups made a weak show of hostility by hurrahing for the Whiskey Boys.[957] The ringleaders and many who should have been unmolested were arrested and sent to jail in Philadelphia under military guard. They who fell to General White were brutally treated, confined in damp cellars, tied back to back, kept in confinement from Thursday until Sunday morning with scarcely anything to eat or drink. Most of them were misguided youths who were redeeming an empire, and not a few had fought in the war for independence. Most of these were acquitted on trial. But when they reached the ferry at Schuylkill, they were forced to decorate their hats with a paper bearing the inscription, ‘Insurgent.’ Thus denounced, they were subjected to the humiliation of a march down Market Street, like slaves at the chariot of a Roman conqueror, for the amusement of fashionable ladies at the windows.[958]

A pitiful spectacle—that march—and more significant than many realized. The soldiers were of the first Philadelphia families in wealth, gorgeous in their blue uniforms made of the finest broadcloth, all mounted on magnificent bay horses so nearly uniform in size and color that ‘any two of them would make a fine span of coach horses.’ A proud show they made with their superb trappings, their silver-mounted stirrups and martingales, their drawn swords glistening in the sun. Patrician conquerors, these. And their captives, mounted on nondescript plough and pack horses—old men who had fought for American independence, young men, all bronzed by the weather, some pale and sick, some sad, others flushed with fury that they should be used to make a show for the rich Philadelphians who looked upon them with complacent smiles. It was the East and the frontier—it was Aristocracy with drawn sword and Democracy with the insulting paper in its hat. The insurrection was over—a tempest in a teapot. A small army of twenty-five hundred was left in the western country like an army of occupation. Two men were found guilty of treason and pardoned by Washington. The law was vindicated—now for the crushing of the Democratic Societies.