Stupid Wars : A Citizen's Guide to Botched Putsches, Failed Coups, Inane Invasions, and Ridiculous R

Unfortunately, the army he led was barely an army, deri­sively called the “watermelon army” by its detractors. Once on the march Hamilton was forced to upbraid sentries for their lax behavior and found the general state of the militia­men to be bad enough to cement his opinion that the govern­ment needed a standing army. Even the frenetic Hamilton hadn’t been able to work fast enough to entirely provision the bloated force gathered to crush the rebellion. As the long columns strung out over the Alleghenies in the depths of a cold fall season, the supply situation became a problem, and the hungry soldiers were forced to rob local farms, despite a flogging order for anyone caught stealing laid down by Washington.

Hamilton, not about to let the bad supply situation slow his march, countermanded Washington’s flogging order and authorized the quartermaster corps to impress whatever supplies the army needed from the local populace, without restitution. The government’s army was legally stealing from the citizens they were supposedly protecting. The New Jersey horse troop was particularly effective, fitted out in glorious uniforms atop big chargers and intimidating the locals.

The law-abiding citizens of Pennsylvania couldn’t hide from Hamilton’s army, but the rebels could. When Hamilton arrived on the western side of the Alleghenies during the first week of November, there were no rebels to fight. They had simply melted away. There was no rebel army spoiling for a showdown in a field, no revolutionary terror à la France, no peasant uprisings. Nothing. Many leaders who hadn’t signed the amnesty apparently floated away down the Ohio to escape. Of course, the phantom war didn’t stop young offi­cers of Hamilton’s army from comparing their exploits to Hannibal’s crossing the Alps.

With no fighting, the army milled aimlessly while Hamil­ton flung himself into action, determined to crush something, anything. Until Hamilton was convinced a citizen had signed the amnesty resolution, he was fair game for arrest. A mid­night sweep of suspects at bayonet point resulted in a raft of indiscriminate arrests where everyone was tossed into make­shift jails to await interrogation. A federal judge had been dragged along to aid the judicial process, but since they were in a war zone, (although there was actually no war) grand juries were conveniently ignored. There were charges of rough treatment and nights spent in freezing barns as sus­pects waited to be interrogated, many of whom Hamilton questioned personally. The master multitasker easily donned the extra role of inquisitor in chief.

The peacemaker Hugh Brackenridge was put under ex­treme scrutiny due to his position at the head of the rebel march into Pittsburgh. But Brackenridge managed to con­vince Hamilton after two days of desperate pleading that he wasn’t actually a rebel and was released, cleared of all charges. Eventually just about everyone arrested was cleared and released.

The same governmental momentum that had decreed the useless invasion demanded a show trial back in Philadelphia. On Christmas morning 1794, Hamilton paraded the rebels through the streets of Philadelphia and into jail cells after a long, brutal trudge over the mountains. He prepared cases against twenty prisoners. Twelve cases were finally brought, and two were found guilty. The ever-reticent President Wash­ington then pardoned the pair. It all wrapped up over a year later.

Federal armed suppression of the rebellion had worked. The rule of law would no longer be widely flouted, at least in Pittsburgh. Taxes and rents would be paid. Land values rose. Absentee landlords had nothing to fear. The whip had been cracked. The federal government was here to stay.

WHAT HAPPENED AFTER

When Washington left office in 1797, Hamilton returned to New York to practice law and assume the role of political big shot. In 1801 Thomas Jefferson became ascendant and was elected president, placed there by Hamilton, who chose him over his even-more bitter enemy Aaron Burr, who was relegated to the vice presidency, even in those early days firmly established as a stupid and useless office. Hamilton and Burr worked themselves into a gentlemanly lather and met in 1804 in Weehawken, New Jersey, to settle their differ­ences. Burr shot Hamilton during the duel and the would-be king died a few days later. As a consolation for his early death he got his face on the $10 bill. Jefferson ranked only the ever-elusive $2 bill.

As the first former president, George Washington retired to make money. Long after his death he got a monument, a university, a city, and a state named after him. Despite that, he could get his face only on the $1 bill, plus the quarter thrown in.

David Bradford fled into the wilderness to avoid Hamil­ton’s soldiers, floated down the Ohio to the Mississippi, and eventually surfaced in Spanish-controlled Louisiana. In 1799 President John Adams pardoned him for his role in the rebel­lion. In 1959 his house in Pennsylvania was converted into a museum.

For the most part, the rebels fled Pennsylvania and moved farther out into the frontier to continue making their whis­key, free from government interference. One of the most popular places they landed was Kentucky, turning that state into the whiskey-making center of the United States.

In one of the most ambitious quick-stepping surges of power in American history, Hamilton relocated the U.S. capital, rejiggered the debt for the federal and state govern­ments, created the country’s first internal tax, raised its first army to quash opposition to his scheme, and invaded Penn­sylvania. All before his fortieth birthday. He achieved a stag­gering number of accomplishments in a short amount of time, but the whiskey tax was not destined to be one of his lasting legacies.

One of Jefferson’s first acts as president in 1801 was to repeal the whiskey tax.

FOUR. THE WAR OF THE TRIPLE ALLIANCE: 1865

Some dictators work alone. Others need the love of a good woman to fully ripen their true evil.

In the nineteenth century, Francisco Solano López, Para­guay’s megalomaniacal, misshapen ruler, provoked a war with the country’s three larger, richer, and more powerful neighbors for no reason other than to gain fame and respect for himself and his mistress. Eliza Lynch, a former Parisian prostitute, was his full partner in a tango of craziness that resulted in Paraguay suffering such a beat-down that 150 years later the country still reels from the pounding it en­dured.

This loving couple tortured, killed, and robbed the entire population of Paraguay. It’s one of the most twisted love sto­ries of all time.

THE PLAYERS

Francisco Solano López — The dictator of Paraguay, he started the war to gain respect and somehow convinced his people to fight until more than half of them were dead.

Skinny — Compared himself to Napoleon and Alexander the Great. It would have been true if Napoleon and Alexander had been fat, igno­rant failures from obscure countries.

Props — Started the first telegraph line in South America.

Pros — On a Grand Tour to Paris he had a private audience with French Emperor Louis Napoleon and Empress Eugénie.

Cons — When López tried to kiss the empress, she was so dis­gusted she turned away and threw up.

Eliza Lynch — dedicated mistress to her man and mother of his seven children, she