Our western mountains (we call most of them southern mountains now) resembled somewhat those wild highlands of Connemara to which reference has been made—only they were far wilder, far less populous, and inhabited by a people still prouder, more independent, more used to being a law unto themselves than were their ancestors in old Hibernia. When the Federal exciseman came among this border people and sought to levy tribute, they blackened or otherwise disguised themselves and treated him to a coat of tar and feathers, at the same time threatening to burn his house. He resigned. Indignation meetings were held, resolutions were passed calling on all good citizens to disobey the law, and whenever anyone ventured to express a contrary opinion, or rented a house to a collector, he, too, was tarred and feathered. If a prudent or ultra-conscientious individual took out a license and sought to observe the law, he was visited by a gang of “Whiskey Boys” who smashed the still and inflicted corporal punishment upon its owner.
Finally, warrants were issued against the lawbreakers. The attempt to serve these writs produced an uprising. On July 16, 1794, a company of mountain militia marched to the house of the inspector, General Neville, to force him to give up his commission. Neville fired upon them, and, in the skirmish that ensued, five of the attacking force were wounded and one was killed. The next day, a regiment of 500 mountaineers, led by one “Tom the Tinker,” burned Neville’s house, and forced him to flee for his life. His guard of eleven U. S. soldiers surrendered, after losing one killed and several wounded.
A call was then issued for a meeting of the mountain militia at the historic Braddock’s Field. On Aug. 1, a large body assembled, of whom 2,000 were armed. They marched on Pittsburgh, then a village of 1,200 souls. The townsmen, eager to conciliate and to ward off pillage, appointed a committee to meet the mob half way. The committee, finding that it could not induce the mountain men to go home, made a virtue of necessity by escorting 5,400 of them into Pittsburgh town. As Fisher says, “The town was warned by messengers, and every preparation was made, not for defense, but to extinguish the fire of the Whiskey Boys’ thirst, which would prevent the necessity of having to extinguish the fire they might apply to houses.... Then the work began. Every citizen worked like a slave to carry provisions and buckets of whiskey to that camp.” Judge Brackenridge tells us that it was an expensive as well as laborious day, and cost him personally four barrels of prime old whiskey. The day ended in a bloodless, but probably uproarious, jollification.
On this same day (the Governor of Pennsylvania having declined to interfere) Washington issued a proclamation against the rioters, and called for 15,000 militia to quell the insurrection. Meantime he had appointed commissioners to go into the disaffected region and try to persuade the people to submit peacefully before the troops should arrive. Peace was offered on condition that the leaders of the disturbance should submit to arrest.
While negotiations were proceeding, the army advanced. Eighteen ringleaders of the mob were arrested, and the “insurrection” faded away like smoke. When the troops arrived, there was nothing for them to do. The insurgent leaders were tried for treason, and two of them were convicted, but Washington pardoned both of them. The cost of this expedition was more than one-third of the total expenditures of the Government, for that year, for all other purposes. The moral effect upon the nation at large was wholesome, for the Federal Government had demonstrated, on this its first test, that it could enforce its own laws and maintain domestic tranquility. The result upon the mountain people themselves was dubious. Thomas Jefferson wrote to Madison in December: “The information of our [Virginia’s] militia, returned from the westward, is uniform, that though the people there let them pass quietly, they were objects of their laughter, not of their fear; that one thousand men could have cut off their whole force in a thousand places of the Alleghany; that their detestation of the excise law was universal, and has now associated with it a detestation of the Government; and that a separation which was perhaps a very distant and problematical event, is now near and certain, and determined in the mind of every man.”
But Jefferson himself came to the presidency within six years, and the excise tax was promptly repealed, never again to be instituted, save as a war measure, until within a time so recent that it is now remembered by men whom we would not call very old.
The moonshiners of our own day know nothing of the story that has here been written. Only once, within my knowledge, has it been told in the mountains, and then the result was so unexpected, that I append the incident as a color contrast to this rather sombre narrative.—
I was calling on a white-bearded patriarch who was a trifle vain of his historical learning. He could not read, but one of his daughters read to him, and he had learned by heart nearly all that lay between the two lids of a “Universal History” such as book agents peddle about. Like one of John Fox’s characters, he was fond of the expression “hist’ry says” so-and-so, and he considered it a clincher in all matters of debate.
Our conversation drifted to the topic of moonshining.
“Down to the time of the Civil War,” declared the old settler, “nobody paid tax on the whiskey he made. Hit was thataway in my Pa’s time, and in Gran’sir’s, too. And so ’way back to the time of George Washington. Now, hist’ry says that Washington was the Father of his Country; and I reckon he was the greatest man that ever lived—don’t you?”