"The spirit which blazed out on this occasion, as soon as the object was fully understood, and the lenient measures of the government were made known to the people, deserves to be communicated. There are instances of general officers going at the head of a single troop and of light companies; of field officers, when they came to the place of rendezvous and found no command for them in that grade, turning into the ranks and proceeding as private soldiers, under their own captains; and of numbers, possessing the first fortunes in the country, standing in the ranks as private men, and marching day by day with their knapsacks and haversacks at their backs, sleeping on straw, with a single blanket, in a soldier's tent, during the frosty nights which we have had, by way of example to others. Nay, more; many young Quakers of the first families, character, and property, not discouraged by the elders, have turned into the ranks and are marching with the troops.
"These things have terrified the insurgents, who had no conception that such a spirit prevailed, but, while the thunder only rumbled at a distance, were boasting of their strength and wishing for and threatening the militia by turns, intimating that the arms they should take from them would soon become a magazine in their hands. Their language is much changed, indeed, but their principles want correction.
"I shall be more prolix in my speech to Congress on the commencement and progress of this insurrection than is usual in such an instrument, or than I should have been on any other occasion, but as numbers at home and abroad will hear of the insurrection, and will read the speech, that may know nothing of the documents to which it might refer, I conceived it would be better to encounter the charge of prolixity by giving a cursory detail of facts, that would show the prominent features of the thing, than to let it go naked into the world, to be dressed up according to the fancy or inclination of the readers or the policy of our enemies."
Sentiments similar to these were expressed in a letter to Washington's old and intimate friend, Edmund Pendleton. "The successes of our army to the westward," he writes, "have already been productive of good consequences. They have dispelled a cloud which lowered very heavily in the northern hemisphere (the Six Nations), and, though we have received no direct advices from General Wayne since November, there is reason to believe that the Indians with whom we are or were at war in that quarter, together with their abettors, {2} begin to see things in a different point of view."
One of the most important effects of the suppression of the western rebellion was the fatal blow it gave to the democratic societies founded by Genet.
Washington's opinion of these societies is thus expressed in a letter to one of his friends: "The real people, occasionally assembled in order to express their sentiments on political subjects, ought never to be confounded with permanent self-appointed societies, usurping the right to control the constituted authorities and to dictate to public opinion. While the former is entitled to respect, the latter is incompatible with all government and must either sink into general disesteem or finally overturn the established order of things."
1. Footnote: General Knox, the Secretary of War, accompanied the army to the expected scene of action. The command in chief was confided to Gen. Henry Lee, Washington's old friend and companion in the Revolutionary War. He was at this time Governor of Virginia.
2. Footnote: The British on the border.