These points did not escape the opposition. It was not to be ascribed to dissatisfaction with the excise imposition that a majority of the southern and western members of congress announced, even before the passage of the bill, an organized agitation to procure its repeal. It was understood in both sections of the country that the contest really centered in the great constitutional question which, up to the time of the civil war, constituted the legal basis of every important internal struggle. In the debates bearing immediately on the question of excise, little was said of state rights and state sovereignty, for the reason that it was impossible to escape the express provision of the constitution. The struggle centered, however, with full consciousness on the part of the contestants, on the actual possession of a position, the great importance of which, for the conflict which followed between the sovereignty of the Union and the independence of the several states, was fully recognized. This was so obvious that it did not escape the observation even of foreigners.

It was the profound significance of the struggle, as much as the ever-increasing boldness of the insurgents, which determined Hamilton, in the summer of 1794, to cause the administration to proceed at last with all the energy it could command. He considered that the time

matured, when so much aid was to be derived from the popularity and firmness of the actual chief magistrate." Hamilton, Works, IV., p. 231. 'Wharton's State Trials, p. 102. Contributions to American History, 1858, p. 127.

The French ambassador, Fauchet, said in his celebrated dispatch No. 10, dated Oct. 31, 1794, which cost secretary Randolph his place and good name, that the whiskey rebellion was “indubitably connected with a general explosion for some time prepared in the public mind; but which this local and precipitate eruption would cause to miscarry, or at least check for a long time." The elements of the explosion he described as "the primitive divisions of opinion as to the political form of the state, and the limits of the sovereignty of the whole over each state individually sovereign." (I am acquainted with the dispatch only in the English translation.) Randolph's Vindication, p. 41.

ENFORCING THE EXCISE BY BAYONETS.

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had come to try whether the new constitution had really created a government. Only a few counties openly defied the officers of the general government. If force were used against them they would either be left to themselves, and then it would be easy to overcome them; or the rest of the malcontents would make common cause with them, in which case the alternative of accepting anarchy or of giving immediate support to the government, would be placed before the people in such a manner that they could not fail to recognize it. If left to themselves much would be accomplished with little effort, and both the insurgents and their secret abettors would be struck at the same time. In any case the slow but deadly drifting towards anarchy would be brought to an end.

Hamilton was certain that the opposition might be quickly broken if the government should take a decided attitude towards the insurgents. He advised, therefore, that so large a force should be put on foot as would compel the insurgent counties to give up all thought of a contest, unless they received support from without. In this way, the authority of the government might be re-established without burthening it with the odium which always attends the shedding of citizen blood.2. Washington followed Hamilton's advice, which proved to be right. Thirteen thousand militia were called for on the 7th of August, and their appearance sufficed to restore the insurgent districts to obedience.

The vials of gall which were now poured out on Hamilton's head demonstrated how heavily the blow was felt by those who in secret had fanned the fire. In their wrath,

In his letter of Aug. 2, 1794, he says: "The very existence of gov ernment demands this course [calling out the militia to suppress the insurrection]."

In the letter referred to above we read: "The force ought, if attainable, to be imposing, to deter from opposition, save the effusion of the blood of citizens, and secure the object to be accomplished."

they lodged against him the most contradictory charges. At first, they prophesied that the militia would refuse to obey orders. Then they foretold a civil war, the end of which would be the annihilation of the usurpers who had grasped at power. Now they said that the secretary of the treasury had magnified a mouse into an elephant in order to subserve his despotic aims. Next they ridiculed the foolish stupidity which imagined that obedience could be forced. And in the same breath they declared that the brutal compulsion of the insurgent counties had made their secession from the Union a certainty.1

Neither these prophecies nor charges would have been of any consequence, had they not contained a certain amount of truth. Washington did not ignore this any more than he allowed himself to be deceived as to the motives of their originators, or to be hoodwinked by their unbounded exaggeration. This, as well as the position of the parties who endeavored to persuade him to choose a policy of inactive delay and even of concession, explains why he hesitated so long to adopt a course which the government of any wellregulated state would have recognized three years earlier as the only right one. And this it is, too, which gave this tempest in a tea-pot so great a significance. There was this much truth in the charges against Ham

1 "A separation which was perhaps a very distant and problematical event is now near and certain, and determined in the mind of every man." Jeff's Works, IV., p. 112. Jefferson himself feared that a vio lent disruption of the Union might follow. In the same letter to Madison we read: "The third and last [error] will be, to make it [the excise law] the instrument of dismembering the Union, and setting us all afloat to choose what part of it we will adhere to." It is very sig nificant that simultaneously, among the adherents of the opposite party, it was said that the strife might end with the expulsion of the insurgent districts. Wolcott writes, July 26, 1794: "I trust, however, that they will be chastised or rejected from the Union. The latter will not, however, be allowed without a vigorous contest." Gibbs, Mem. of Wolcott, I., p. 156.

OUTCRY AGAINST HAMILTON.

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ilton, that judging from the number of the insurgents, a call for 4,000 or 5,000 militia-men, instead of for 15,000, would have sufficed.' But Hamilton was not so short-sighted as to base his calculation on these elements alone. It is all the more singular that this should have been supposed of him, because the suspicions entertained by his accusers, and shared in part by himself, as to the reliability of the militia, were not entirely groundless. A portion of tlte militia of Pennsylvania had from the beginning taken part in the movement. When governor Mifflin was requested to call them out to suppress the insurrection, he refused to do so, on the ground that it was too bold a step. He expected that such a course would only strengthen the revolt, and questioned whether the militia would yield passive obedience to the orders of the government. And when the militia were in fact called out by the president, they obeyed the order in Pennsylvania with reluctance and hesitation. Mifflin himself was obliged to travel through the state and use his eloquence to secure its quota.

Moreover, Hamilton's accusers had lost all right to complain of the number of militia called for, since from the very beginning of the disturbances they had preached the impossibility of suppressing them. Their charges against the secretary of the treasury recoiled, therefore, upon themselves. Yet Hamilton's army was, according to them, the butt of the insurgents as well as the instrument of an insupportable despotism.3

1 The number of 13,000 men called for was afterwards increased to 15,000. The number of men able to bear arms in the insurgent counties. was estimated at 16,000.

* Hamilton writes to Sedgwick, February 2, 1799: "In the expedi tion against the western insurgents, I trembled every moment lest a great part of the militia should take it into their heads to return home rather than go forward." J. C. Hamilton, History of the Republic of the United States of America, VII., p. 278.

"The information of our militia returned from the westward is uni form, that though the people there let them pass quietly, they were ob

This mode of argumentation against the distasteful measures of a government is very usual among excited masses. What was most remarkable in the instance before us is that it was not used by the masses or by common demagogues and pot-house politicians, but by members of the government. Jefferson did not first avail himself of contradicting arguments after he had retired to private life. And Randolph, his successor in office, followed his example in this respect. Both were in part actuated by impure motives, and Jefferson at least was conscious that he had painted in colors altogether too dark, a mistake into which the advocates of a bad cause almost always fall, But on the other hand, both were in great part really convinced that their fears were well-founded. And this is as characteristic of these two personages, as of the circumstances of the time. How far the bond which knit together the different parts of the Union was from being an organic, that is, a really national bond is evident from the fact that two secretaries of state could doubt the ability of the general government to enforce a constitutional tax, although it was opposed by force only in a part of a single state.1

These doubts were honest ones; but Jefferson and his associates were again guilty of self-contradiction in the manner in which they turned them to account. They had systematically labored to educate the people in the faith

jects 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." Jeff., Works, IV., p. 112.

'In Randolph's opinion on Hamilton's resolution to call out the militia we read: "The moment is big with a crisis which would convulse the eldest government, and if it should burst on ours, its extent and dominion can be but faintly conjectured." He comes to the conclusion that the situation of the United States "banishes every idea of calling the militia into immediate action." He even went so far as to express a fear that the insurgents might call the English to their aid, and that a war with England and the disruption of the Union might be the result of an attempt at coercion.