Albert Gallatin

by John Austin Stevens

The seeds of political discontent, sown at Pittsburgh in 1792, had ripened to an abundant harvest. An act passed by Congress June 5, 1794, giving to the state courts concurrent jurisdiction in excise cases, removed the grievance of which Gallatin complained, the dragging of accused persons to Philadelphia for trial, but was not construed to be retroactive in its operation. The marshal, accordingly, found it to be his duty to serve the writs of May 31 against those who had fallen under their penalties. These writs were returnable in Philadelphia. They were served without trouble in Fayette County. Not so in Allegheny. Here on July 15, 1794, the marshal had completed his service, when, while still in the execution of his office, and in company with the inspector, he was followed and fired upon. The next day a body of men went to the house of the marshal and demanded that he should deliver up his commission. They were fired upon and dispersed, six were wounded, and the leader killed. A general rising followed. The marshal's house, though defended by Major Kirkpatrick, with a squad from the Pittsburgh garrison, was set on fire, with the adjacent buildings, and burned. On July 18 the insurgents sent a deputation of two or three to Pittsburgh, to require of the marshal a surrender of the processes in his possession, and of the inspector the resignation of his office. These demands were, of course, rejected; but the officers, alarmed for their personal safety, left the town, and, descending the Ohio by boat to Marietta, proceeded by a circuitous route to Philadelphia, and made their report to the United States authorities.

This was the outbreak of the Western or Whiskey Insurrection. The excitement spread rapidly through the western counties. Fayette County was not exempt from it. The collector's house was broken into, and his commission taken from him by armed men; the sheriff refused to serve the writs against the rioters of the spring. Since these disturbances there had been no trouble in this county. But the malcontents elsewhere rose in arms, riots ensued, and the safety of the whole community was compromised. The news reaching Fayette, the distillers held a meeting at Uniontown, the county seat, on July 20. Both Gallatin and Smilie were present, and by their advice it was agreed to submit to the laws. The neighboring counties were less fortunate. On July 21 the Washington County committee was summoned to meet at Mingo Creek Meeting-house. On the 23d there was a large assemblage of people, including a number of those who had been concerned in burning the house of the Pittsburgh inspector. James Marshall, the same who opposed the ratification of the federal Constitution, David Bradford, the “empty drum,” and Judge Brackenridge of Pittsburgh, attended this meeting. Bradford, the most unscrupulous of the leaders, sought to shirk his responsibility, but was intimidated by threats, and thereafter did not dare to turn back. Brackenridge was present to counsel the insurgents to moderation. In spite of his efforts the meeting ended in an invitation, which the officers had not the boldness to sign, to the townships of the four western counties of Pennsylvania and the adjoining counties of Virginia to send representatives to a general meeting on August 14, at Parkinson's Ferry on the Monongahela, in Washington County. Bradford, determined to aggravate the disturbance, stopped the mail at Greensburg, on the road between Pittsburgh and Philadelphia, and robbed it of the Washington and Pittsburgh letters, some of which he published, to the alarm of their authors.

On July 28 a circular signed by Bradford, Marshall, and others was sent out from Cannonsburg to the militia of the county, whom it summoned for personal service, and likewise called for volunteers to rendezvous the following Wednesday, July 30, at their respective places of meeting, thence to march to Braddock's Field, on the Monongahela, the usual rendezvous of the militia, about eight miles south of Pittsburgh, by two o'clock of Friday, August 1. It closed in these words, “Here is an expedition proposed in which you will have an opportunity for displaying your military talents and of rendering service to your country.” Nothing less was contemplated by the more extreme of these men than an attack upon Fort Pitt and the sack of Pittsburgh. Thoroughly aroused at last, the moderate men of Washington determined to breast the storm. A meeting was held; James Ross of the United States Senate made an earnest appeal, and was supported by Scott of the House of Representatives and Stokely of the Senate of Pennsylvania. Marshall and Bradford yielded, and consented to countermand the order of rendezvous. But the excited population poured into the town from all quarters, and Bradford, who found that he had gone too far to retreat, again took the lead of the movement, already beyond restraint.

There are accounts of this formidable insurrection by H. H. Brackenridge and William Findley, eye-witnesses. These supply abundant details. Findley says that he knew that the movement would not stop at the limit apparently set for it. “The opposing one law would lead to oppose another; they would finally oppose all, and demand a new modeling of the Constitution, and there would be a revolution.” There was great alarm in Pittsburgh. A meeting was held there Thursday evening, July 31, at which a message from the Washington County insurgents was read, violent resolutions adopted, and the 9th of August appointed as the day for a town meeting for election of delegates to a general convention of the counties at Parkinson's Ferry; Judge Brackenridge of Pittsburgh, a man of education, influence, and infinite jest and humor, was present at this meeting. Of Scotch-Irish birth himself, his sympathies of race were with his countrymen, but in political sentiments he was not in harmony with their leaders. They were nearly all Republicans, while he had sided with the Federalists in the convention which adopted the new Constitution of the United States. He was a man of peace, and of too much sagacity not to foresee the inevitable ruin upon which they were rushing. At Mingo Creek he had thwarted the plans of immediate revolution. The evident policy of moderate men was to prevent any violence before the convention at Parkinson's Ferry should meet, and to bend all their energies to control the deliberations of that body. The people of Pittsburgh were intensely excited by the armed gathering almost at their doors.

Brackenridge felt that the only safe issue from the situation was to take part in and shape the action of that gathering. Under his lead a committee from the Pittsburgh meeting, followed by a large body of the citizens, went out to the rendezvous. Here they found a motley assemblage, arrayed in the picturesque campaign costume which the mountaineers wore when they equipped themselves to meet the Indians,—yellow hunting-shirts, handkerchiefs tied about their heads, and rifles on the shoulder; the militia were on foot, and the light horse of the counties were in military dress. Conspicuous about the field, “haughty and pompous,” as Gallatin described him in the legislature, was David Bradford, who had assumed the office of major-general. Brackenridge draws a lifelike picture of him as, mounted on a superb horse in splendid trappings, arrayed in full uniform, with plume floating in the air and sword drawn, he rode over the ground, gave orders to the military, and harangued the multitude. On the historic ground where Washington plucked his first military laurels were gathered about seven thousand men, of whom two thousand militia were armed and accoutred as for a campaign,—a formidable and remarkable assemblage, when it is considered that the entire male population of sixteen years of age and upwards of the four counties did not exceed sixteen thousand, and was scattered over a wide and unsettled country. This is Brackenridge's estimate of the numbers. Later, Gallatin, on comparison of the best attainable information, estimated the whole body at from fifteen hundred to two thousand men. Whatever violence Bradford may have intended, none was accomplished. That he read aloud the Pittsburgh letters, taken from the mail, shows his purpose to inflame the people to vindictive violence. He was accused by contemporary authorities of imitation of the methods of the French Jacobins, which were fresh examples of revolutionary vigor. But the mass was not persuaded. After desultory conversation and discussion, the angry turn of which was at times threatening to the moderate leaders, the meeting broke up on August 2; about one third dispersed for their homes, and the remainder, marching to Pittsburgh, paraded through the streets, and finally crossing the river in their turn scattered. They did no damage to the town beyond the burning of a farm belonging to Major Kirkpatrick of the garrison. The taverns were all closed, but the citizens brought whiskey to their doors. Judge Brackenridge reports that his sacrifice to peace on this occasion cost him four barrels of his best old rye.

This moderation was no augury of permanent quiet. Brackenridge, who was a keen observer of men, says of the temper of the western population at this period: “I had seen the spirit which prevailed at the Stamp Act, and at the commencement of the revolution from the government of Great Britain, but it was by no means so general and so vigorous amongst the common people as the spirit which now existed in the country.” Nor did the armed bands all return peaceably to their homes. The house of the collector for Fayette and Washington counties was burned, and warnings were given to those who were disposed to submit to the law. The disaffected were called “Tom the tinker” men, from the signature affixed to the threatening notices. From a passage in one of Gallatin's letters it appears that there was a person of that name, a New England man, who had been concerned in Shays's insurrection. Liberty poles, with the device, “An equal tax and no excise law,” were raised, and the trees placarded with the old revolutionary motto, “United we stand, divided we fall,” with a divided snake as an emblem. Mr. Gallatin's neighborhood was not represented at Braddock's Field, and not more than a dozen were present from the entire county. But now the flame spread there also, and liberty poles were raised. Mr. Gallatin himself, inquiring as to their significance and expressing to the men engaged the hope that they would not behave like a mob, was asked, in return, if he was not aware of the Westmoreland resolution that any one calling the people a mob should be tarred and feathered,—an amusing example of that mob logic which proves the affirmative of the proposition it denies.

Mr. Gallatin did not attend the meeting at Braddock's Field. Somewhat isolated at his residence at the southerly border of the county, engaged in the care of his long neglected farm, and in the full enjoyment of release from the bustle and excitement of public life, he had paid little attention to passing events. He was preparing definitively to abandon political pursuits and to follow some kind of mercantile business, or take up some land speculation and study law in his intervals of leisure. It was not a year since he had given hostages to fortune. He was now in the full tide of domestic happiness, which was always to him the dearest and most coveted. He might well have hesitated before again engaging upon the dangerous and uncertain task of controlling an excited and aggrieved population. But he did not hesitate.

The people among whom he had made his home, and whose confidence had never failed him, were his people. By them he would stand in their extremity, and if hurt or ruin befell them, it should not be for want of the interposition of his counsel. He knew his powers, and he determined to bring them into full play. He knew the danger also, but it only nerved him to confront and master it. He knew his duty, and did not swerve one hair from the line it prompted. In no part of his long, varied, and useful political life does he appear to better advantage than in this exciting episode of the Whiskey Insurrection. His self-possession, his cool judgment, swayed neither by timidity nor rashness, never for a moment failed him. Here he displayed that remarkable combination of persuasion and control,—the indispensable equipment of a political chief,—which, in later days, gave him the leadership of the Republican party. With intuitive perception of the political situation he saw that the only path to safety, beset with difficulty and danger though it were, was through the convention at Parkinson's Ferry. He did not believe that any revolutionary proceedings had yet been taken, or that the convention was an illegal body, but he was determined to separate the wheat from the chaff, and disengage the moderate and the law-abiding from the disorderly. By the light of his own experience he had learned wisdom. He also had drawn a lesson from the French Revolution, and knew the uncontrollable nature of large popular assemblages. The news from Philadelphia, the seat of government, was of a kind to increase his alarm. Washington was not the man to overlook such an insult to authority as the resistance to the marshal and inspector; nor was it probable that Hamilton would let pass such an occasion for showing the strength and vigor of the government.

Before the meeting at Braddock's Field, the secretary's plans for a suppression of the insurrection were matured. On August 2 he laid before the President an estimate of the probable armed force of the insurgents, and of that with which he proposed to reduce them to submission. When the question of the use of force came before the cabinet, Edmund Randolph, who was secretary of state, opposed it in a written opinion, one phrase of which deserves repetition:—

“It is a fact well known that the parties in the United States are highly inflamed against each other, and that there is but one character which keeps both in awe. As soon as the sword shall be drawn, who shall be able to retain them.”