flow of objecting petitions to Hamilton. The debate became countrywide when the
In fact, Hamilton did want to create a standing army, but he knew not even he could push that law through the fractured Congress. His blunt instrument of power would have to remain the barely-in-control state militias. He hated the idea that some faraway field hands were threatening his entire financing scheme and sensed that a face-off loomed. To prepare for this inevitable showdown, Hamilton broke out his sharpest quill and crafted the Militia Act of 1792, which allowed the president to use the state militias to crush an insurrection while Congress was not in session. The only limit on the power of the Militia Act was that a justice of the Supreme Court had to certify that rebellion was in fact happening. A trifling point to a power broker like Hamilton. Out west, the mob slowly grew bolder. General John Neville was doing double duty making a small fortune providing stores to the nearby army outposts while also distilling whiskey. In a place where most people were too poor to own slaves, hatred and envy of slave-owning grandees like General Neville, not to mention tax collectors, was intense. Neville, showing a flair for creating an incredibly bad public profile, had voted against a previous state tax on whiskey when he was part of the Pennsylvania legislature, but then flip-flopped when offered the post of inspector of revenue, which featured a nice annual salary and a commission on his collections. A convenient bonus was the opportunity to closely monitor his competing distillers.
Hamilton’s agile intellect, perfectly suited for designing systems of government and finance, betrayed him in this lowly matter, where the reality on the ground was a messy mass of conflicting aims that defied logic. His genius at expostulating far-ranging solutions from the germ of a problem led him to spring, in one giant leap, past any modest solutions, such as beefing up protection for the tax agents, and arrive almost instantaneously at the conclusion that this unrest in the woods required the dispatch of an entire army. It was all or nothing with him.
Central to his argument was that the western Pennsylvania unrest, so close to the capital, embarrassed and weakened the infant government. But Washington held back his young protégé and insisted on a more cautious and diplomatic approach. The president had ridden, scouted, and fought in the wilds of western Pennsylvania, first with the Virginia militia and later with British General Braddock, and knew the land well. He owned a big chunk of it (nearly 5,000 acres) for speculation and understood backwoodsmen in a way Hamilton didn’t. Washington was understandably tired of war, but the ever-restless Hamilton seemingly had not had his fill. Too valuable as a key staff officer to lose, Washington had kept the superefficient Hamilton off the battlefield throughout the Revolution. But Hamilton was desperate to earn more battle stripes and quit Washington’s staff to be on the field of battle at Yorktown in 1781. This small role in the big battle was still not enough for him.
As the mob grew in power out west, Neville tried to get additional military help from Philadelphia, but to no avail. During 1793, Benjamin Wells, one of his county deputy inspectors, kept plugging away at his job while getting repeatedly punched and abused, his office sacked, and his wife threatened when he was away from home. Wells traveled three times in 1793 to Philadelphia to report on the situation, but still Washington held his fire. They had bigger problems.
In 1792 France had launched into its own revolution and demonstrated its commitment to democracy by beheading King Louis XVI in January 1793. Hamilton and many in the government saw the increasingly bloody French revolution, led by Robespierre and his fascistic “Committee of Public Safety,” which was soon guillotining enemies of the revolution, as a nightmare that could easily be duplicated by the whiskey-swilling radicals roaming western Pennsylvania. Washington’s government was also riven with internal strife as Hamilton and Secretary of State Thomas Jefferson continued their gentlemanly brawl over their competing visions for the country’s future. Jefferson and Hamilton had been butting heads for a long time. Jefferson, the aristocratic, hereditary landowner who nurtured a fantasy of agrarian simpleness with states’ rights paramount for the country’s future, was a deeply indebted Virginia planter who opposed the strong Federalist system that Hamilton was feverishly building. Jefferson, like many other Virginia planters of his class, hated banks in the way that only deeply indebted landholders could. Jefferson (who shied away from open confrontation) finally quit his post as secretary of state in 1793 when he failed to convince Washington that Hamilton was secretly plotting to install a monarchy in the United States. Indeed, Hamilton stoutly denied any monarchical intentions, professing a preference for an all-powerful executive, a president-for-life, surely, but not a monarchy.
Washington himself was also stressed out. His Virginia plantation was chronically cash poor. His land in western Pennsylvania was proving to be a bad investment, as it was difficult to collect rents from the rebel-minded tenant farmers. His grand scheme — the Potomac Company — aimed at opening up a route from the Potomac River to the Ohio River, was looking like a loser. To top it off Washington himself was now facing open criticism for the first time, in particular from Jefferson’s secret paper, the
Meanwhile, mob rule continued throughout western Pennsylvania. Rebels burned down barns of anyone who dared to even register his still. The militia mob of the Mingo Creek Association had shed its disguises and morphed into the fictional character of mayhem, “Tom the Tinker.” The rebellion was growing bolder.
And still no help came from the east for General Neville and his dogged deputy tax inspector Benjamin Wells.
WHAT HAPPENED: OPERATION “SELF INVASION”
The rebellion simmered along until the summer of 1794. Washington’s moderation was still the order of the day, although there were more than enough other problems to distract him. Coupled with Hamilton’s impetuous precocity, Washington’s restraint was a key to the powerful partnership. But Washington had his phlegmatic limits. He was finally pushed over the edge when General Neville and a federal marshal were attacked in an attempt to serve writs to recalcitrant distillers, the latest brilliant salvo by Hamilton in his low-grade war.
The obstinate deputy tax inspector Benjamin Wells drew up a list of still owners in early summer. Hamilton took the list and drafted writs to be served, which required the defendants to trek three hundred miles to Philadelphia and appear in court in August, when courts were actually closed. Any small farmer who tried to appear in court would have to spend many weeks away from home and work, risking financial disaster. The writs were a spark, deliberately lit by Hamilton. The always-prepared Hamilton also knew that Congress was out of session and that the Militia Act would give Washington the power to call up federal militia by himself during this time.
Out west, an angry mob quickly confronted Neville and the marshal when they started serving the writs on July 17, 1794. They retreated to Neville’s estate, already armed and stocked for defense, with Neville’s family still inside. The mob pursued them and attacked the plantation. Neville, who had fought in a real war, drove them off with determined musket fire. The seething rabble retreated to an abandoned French fort nearby to wait for backup from the local militias.
The militia, now a small army of 500 men, marched back up to Neville’s plantation and demanded his resignation and surrender of the writs. Neville refused. The rebels attacked the plantation, now defended by a dozen or so soldiers from the nearby government fort. They traded fire for an hour until they set the house aflame, forcing the soldiers to surrender. Neville, who had evacuated his family and was watching the battle from the woods, fled to Pittsburgh. The battle was over, for now. Tom the Tinker had evolved into a gangland army.
The mob now threatened to turn its wrath on Pittsburgh, where the marshal and Neville had holed up, unless Neville resigned and handed over the writs. Fearful that the army was looming just outside the town and with his home in ruins, Neville finally relented. But the stubborn marshal refused to surrender the writs.
Enter a Pittsburgh lawyer named Hugh Brackenridge. He stepped forward, perilously placing himself between the two forces in an attempt to defuse the situation. He stalled the rebels long enough for Neville and the marshal
