George Washington, Volume II

by Henry Cabot Lodge

In his first speech to Congress he recommended measures for the advancement of manufactures, having already affixed his signature to the bill which declared their encouragement to be one of its objects. At the same time he wrote, in reply to an address: "The promotion of domestic manufactures will, in my conception, be among the first consequences which may naturally be expected to flow from an energetic government." In 1791 he consulted Hamilton as to the advisability of urging Congress to offer bounties for the culture of cotton and hemp, his only doubts being as to the power of the general government in this respect, and as to the temper of the time in regard to such an expenditure of public money. The following year Hamilton's Report on Manufactures was given to the country, finally establishing the position of the administration as to our economic policy.

The general drift of legislation, although it was not systematized, followed the direction pointed out by the administration. But this did not satisfy Washington. In his speech to Congress, December 7, 1796, he said: "Congress has repeatedly, and not without success, directed their attention to the encouragement of manufactures. The object is of too much consequence not to insure a continuance of their efforts in every way which shall appear eligible."[¹] He then goes on to argue at some length that, although manufacturing on the public account is usually inexpedient, it should be established and carried on to supply all that was needed for the public force in time of war. This was his last address to Congress, and his last word on this matter was to approve the course of Congress in following the recommendation of his first speech. All his utterances and all his opinions on the subject were uniform. Washington had never been a student of public finance or political economy like Hamilton, and he lived before the days of the Manchester school and its new gospel of procuring heaven on earth by special methods of transacting the country's business. But Washington was a great man, a state-builder who fought wars and founded governments. He knew that nations were raised up and made great and efficient, and that civilization was advanced, not by laissez aller and laissez faire, but by much patient human striving. He had fought and conquered, and again he had fought and been defeated, and through all he had come to victory, and to certain conclusive results both in peace and war. He had not done this by sitting still and letting each man go his way, but by strong brain and strong will, and by much organization and compulsion. He had set his hand to the building of a nation. He had studied his country and understood it, and with calm, far-seeing eyes he had looked forward into the future of his people. Neither the study nor the outlook were vain, and both told him that political independence was only part of the work, and that national sentiment, independent thinking, and industrial independence also must be reached. The first two, time alone could bring. The last, wise laws could help to produce; and so he favored protection by legislation to American industry and manufactures, threw all his potent influence into the scale, and gave his support to the protective policy set forth by his Secretary.

[Footnote 1: [(return)] The italics are mine.]

Two matters connected with the treasury, I have said, deserved fuller consideration than a general review could give. The one just described, the policy of the Report on Manufactures, came, as has been seen, to no clear and immediate result. The other reached a very sharp and definite conclusion, not without great effect on the new government of the United States, both at the moment and in the future. When Hamilton "struck the rock of the national resources," the stream of revenue which he sought at the outset was that flowing from duties on imports, for this, in his theory, was not only the first source, but the best. He would fain have had it the only one; but the situation drove him forward. The assumption of the state debts, a part of the legacy of the Revolution, and the continuing and at first increasing expenses of unavoidable Indian wars, made additional revenue absolutely essential. He turned therefore to the excise on domestic spirits to furnish what was needed.

Washington approved assumption. It was a measure of honesty, it would raise the public credit, and above all, it was thoroughly national in its operation and results. The appropriations for Indian wars he of course approved, for their energetic prosecution was part of the vigorous policy toward our wild neighbors upon which he was so determined. It followed, of course, that he did not shrink from imposing the taxes thus made necessary; and to raise the money from domestic spirits seemed to him, under the existing exigency, to be what it was,—thoroughly proper and reasonable both in form and subject.

It would seem, however, that neither Washington nor Hamilton realized the unpopularity of this mode of getting revenue. The frontier settlers along the line of the Alleghanies in Pennsylvania, Virginia, and North Carolina, who distilled whiskey, were not very familiar, perhaps, with Johnson's dictionary, but they would have cordially accepted his definition of an excise. To them it was indeed a "hateful tax," and nothing else. In fact, the word was one disliked throughout the States, for it brought up evil memories, and excited much jealous hostility and prejudice. The first excise law, therefore, when it went into force, was the signal for a general outburst of opposition; and in the Alleghany region, as might have been expected, the resistance was immediate and most bitter. State legislatures passed resolutions, public meetings were held and more resolutions were passed, while in the wilder parts of the country threats of violence were freely uttered. All these murmurings and menaces came on the passage of the first bill in 1791. The administration, however, had no desire to precipitate an uncalled-for strife, and so the law was softened and amended in the following year, the tax being lowered and the most obnoxious features removed. The result was general acquiescence throughout most of the States, and renewed opposition in the western counties of Pennsylvania and North Carolina. In the former a meeting was held denouncing the law, pledging the people to "boycott" the officers, and hinting at forcible resistance. If the people engaged in this business had stopped to consider the men with whom they had to deal, they would have been saved a great deal of suffering and humiliation. The President and his Secretary of the Treasury were not men who could be frightened by opposition or violent speeches. But angry frontiersmen, stirred up by demagogues, are not given to much reflection, and they meant to have their own way.

Washington was quite clear in his policy from the beginning. He was ready to make every proper concession, but when this was done he meant on his side to have his own way, which was the way of law and order and good government. He wrote to Hamilton in August, 1792: "If, after these regulations are in operation, opposition to the due exercise of the collection is still experienced, and peaceable procedure is no longer effectual, the public interests and my duty will make it necessary to enforce the laws respecting this matter; and however disagreeable this would be to me, it must nevertheless take place."

Meantime the disorders went on, and the officers were insulted and thwarted in the execution of their duty. Washington's next letter (September 7) has a touch of anger. He hated disorder and riot anywhere, but he was disgusted when they came from the very people for whose defense the Indian war was pushed and the excise made necessary. He approved of Hamilton's sending out an officer to examine into the survey, and said: "If, notwithstanding, opposition is still given to the due execution of the law, I have no hesitation in declaring, if the evidence of it is clear and unequivocal, that I shall, however reluctantly I exercise 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. To permit them to be trampled upon with impunity would be repugnant to it; nor can the government longer remain a passive spectator of the contempt with which they are treated. Forbearance, under a hope that the inhabitants of that survey would recover from the delirium and folly into which they were plunged, seems to have had no other effect than to increase the disorder."

A few weeks later he issued a proclamation, declaring formally and publicly what he had already said in private. He warned the people engaged in resistance to the law that the law would be enforced, and exhorted them to desist. The proclamation was effective in the south, and the opposition died out in North Carolina. Not so in Pennsylvania. There the Scotch-Irish borderers who lived in the western counties were bent on having their way. A brave, self-willed, hotheaded, turbulent people, they were going to have their fight out. They had ridden rough-shod over the Quaker and German government in Pennsylvania before this, and they no doubt thought they could do the same with this new government of the United States. They merely made a mistake about the man at the head of the government; nothing more than that. Such mistakes have been made before. The Paris mob, for example, made a similar blunder on the 13th Vendémiaire, when Bonaparte settled matters by the famous whiff of grape-shot. There is some excuse for the error of our Scotch-Irish borderers in their past experience, more excuse still in the drift of other events that touched all men just then with the madness of France, and gave birth to certain democratic societies which applauded any resistance to law, even if the cause was no nobler than a whiskey still.

Perhaps, too, the Pennsylvanians were encouraged by the moderation and deliberate movement of the government. A lull came after the proclamation of 1792. Then every effort was made to settle the troubles by civil processes and by personal negotiation, but all proved vain. The disturbances went on increasing for two years, until law was at an end in the insurgent counties. The mails were stopped and robbed, there were violence, bloodshed, rioting, attacks on the officers of the United States, and meetings threatening still worse things.