to jump on a boat and escape down the Ohio River like Huckleberry Finn and Big Jim. Neville and the marshal eventually made it to Philadelphia three weeks later to report to Washington and Hamilton.
Tom the Tinker’s army went back to angry debating. Brackenridge the peacemaker went to a meeting of the Mingo Creek Association around July 22 and urged them to appeal for amnesty to avoid the inevitable violent suppression of the rebellion. He warned them that the Militia Act gave the president the power to crush them, and he possessed the foresight to see that Hamilton would do it.
But a rich lawyer named David Bradford, whose courage under fire was left untested when he declined to join the attack on Neville’s plantation, now stepped forward and bravely called for continued resistance. Bradford was under the delusion that he could turn the ragged rebellion into a real revolution in the manner of Robespierre and his trusty guillotine. Bradford called for a congress of delegates from the region to take place in two weeks and urged an attack on the government fort near Pittsburgh to steal arms. At the last second, he backed off when he realized that the soldiers were actually there not to suppress the settlers but defend them from those murderous Native Americans. The overzealous Bradford realized that even in the midst of a rebellion, keeping the woods clear of those pesky Native Americans was mission critical.
Bradford then had the mail to Philadelphia robbed to find out who was plotting against his revolution. When they realized Neville’s son was still in Pittsburgh trying to organize resistance, Bradford and other rebel leaders called for a grand muster of all militia leaders and their troops outside Pittsburgh. It would be a show of force to denounce the muddy little village of Pittsburgh as the hated center of government intransigence, whiskey taxation, and perfidy.
When the mob finally assembled outside Pittsburgh at Braddock’s field on August 1, 1794 — the scene of the French and Indian defeat of British General Braddock in 1755 — it was seven thousand strong. Bradford, all doubts about the revolution he was leading and former cowardice safely banished from his mind, now sported a self- crowned general’s rank and a flashy uniform. His demands on the citizens of Pittsburgh had increased, on pain of the torch: Neville’s son, the army major who had led the defense of Neville’s estate, and a list of others must be banished from the town. And the militiamen of Pittsburgh defending the city had to march out to join the rebels and prove their loyalty to the revolution. Frightened Pittsburghers began to board up their little houses to repel the invasion.
But once again the brave Brackenridge stepped into the breach. He was performing a delicate and perilous dance. When Bradford finally got around to ordering the march on Pittsburgh after a day of drunken speeches and a whole lot of riding around firing random shots into the air, Brackenridge recklessly inserted himself at the head of the rebel column. He knew he would be vulnerable to accusations of being a rebel himself but hoped he could defuse the impending bloodshed.
The Pittsburgh militia played their role perfectly. They marched out and pretended to be on the rebels’ side, then quickly turned around and marched back into Pittsburgh with the rebel army led by Brackenridge. As they passed through, the townspeople served them free, untaxed, whiskey (fully warned that the thirsty rebels were on the way) and gently guided them toward ferries to send them back across the river. They had hit the backwoods army right in their weak spot: free liquor.
Back in Philadelphia, Hamilton was eager to march. The rebels had proved to be beyond control of the power of his prodigious pen, and now they must finally submit to the sword. The governor of Pennsylvania caused trouble by refusing to call out the militia against his own citizens, but this was a trifling inconvenience to Hamilton. He pulled out the Militia Act, found a willing Supreme Court Justice to verify that a rebellion was taking place, without actually conducting an independent investigation, and since Congress was not in session, Hamilton finally had his war.
Secretary of War Henry Knox dutifully called up the militias on August 7 but suddenly found himself with some land problems in Maine, where he had been speculating. Knox faced an important decision: he could leave office and tend to his personal financial situation, or he could lead a large army in attacking fellow Americans in Pennsylvania. At Hamilton’s urging, Knox begged off and Washington let him go. Casting about for a substitute Hamilton found the perfect candidate, himself. Surprise! Hamilton took the job as acting secretary of war and drew up postdated orders for his very own, brand-new army while Washington attempted one last peace gambit — a presidential commission.
The commission (including Washington’s soon-to-be land agent in western Pennsylvania) galloped west over the Alleghenies to negotiate with the congress of 226 rebel delegates and the hundreds of armed men on August 14 at Parkinson’s Ferry. One sight of the armed gathering convinced the commission that their situation was hopeless. They opened negotiations with the rebel leaders and took the hard line Hamilton had laid down, knowing full well that war plans were being drafted back in Philadelphia. They had the rebels up against the wall, although the rebels didn’t realize it. The rebels would escape Hamilton’s wrath only if everyone in the region signed an oath of submission to the law, starting with the standing negotiating committee of sixty rebels.
Brackenridge-the-peacemaker and the other moderate rebels on the committee were eager to cave in to the commission’s demands. They sensed the strength and unalterable determination of the institutional forces gathered by the invisible hand of Hamilton to crush them all should any serious resistance continue. The moderates tried to convince the radical rebel leaders to yield, but they were as divided and ornery as ever. The cockeyed rebels saw it for what it was, total surrender. Bradford was in no mood to surrender. He was out to conquer.
At first, the standing rebel committee of sixty voted to not vote, in a classic example of evasive leadership (all votes in the rebellion had usually been open-vote affairs, the better to intimidate any weak links, of course). But the moderates pressed on, determined to make their final stand, and they convinced the radicals to take a secret vote. The stark choice was between signing an oath of submission and facing treason charges pressed at the point of a bayonet.
The vote was 34 to 23 in favor of capitulation. But even one dissenter was too much for Hamilton, who had ordained that only total submission could forestall the invasion. Despite the charges of imperialism that were already flying from his political foes, who saw this as yet another power-grabbing attempt by the monarchically minded Hamilton, he eagerly pressed on. The army would march. Hamilton would lead.
On September 30 Washington and Hamilton rode out from Philadelphia in a carriage. Four days later they met up with the army at Carlisle, Pennsylvania, where Washington reviewed the troops, gravely nodded his approval, and left them in the all-too-eager hands of Hamilton. Militia from Virginia, Maryland, and New Jersey had been added to Pennsylvania militiamen, making a grand total of 13,000 troops. It was an army larger than the American forces at the battle of Yorktown. Hamilton led the northern wing of the army concentrated in eastern Pennsylvania. “Light-Horse” Harry Lee led the southern wing coming up from Maryland. Lee, the father of Robert E., was a stout Federalist and a revolutionary hero from Virginia. He had once lusted after the command of the western army tasked to crush the Native Americans but had been passed over due to his propensity to be an optimistic overreacher, especially in financial matters. He was happy to swing back into the saddle.
And so was Hamilton, finally in his glory at the head of an army, fighting a war completely of his own making. As secretary of war he had ordered the supplies, even down to the details of the uniforms for his troops. He had whipped the eastern populace into a patriotic frenzy, writing under the pseudonym “Tully” in public papers over the summer of 1794 in order to stir patriotism against what he felt was a rebellion — not against the tax but against the entire governmental structure he himself had created. Hamilton, the brilliant young man of the Revolution, only thirty-nine, and a long way from his lowborn roots in the Caribbean, was prepared to sacrifice everything to lead this hastily called-up army, including his own life and that of his pregnant wife and seriously ill child.
When Light-Horse Harry Lee returned from doing his duty leading the troops during the Whiskey Rebellion, he learned he had been relieved of the governorship of Virginia by citizens who viewed his partnership with the Federalist Hamilton in a very different light. Scion of a famous Virginia family, Lee’s revolutionary career never reached the heights of his own ambition, despite a distinguished war record as a leader of his own free-ranging cavalry legion. The Whiskey Rebellion was the beginning of the end for him as the ensuing years saw his encroaching bankruptcy (he was invested in Washington’s ill-fated Potomac Company, and bought some of Washington’s unpromising land as well). In an abortive attempt to defend Federalism on the eve of the war of 1812, he caught a beating by a mob in Baltimore and retired to the Caribbean to nurse his wounds.
