FOOTNOTES:

FOOTNOTES:[1]The drafting of this letter was, notwithstanding his protest, intrusted to John Jay, one of the strongest of the Federal leaders, and a warm supporter of the Constitution as it stood.

[1]The drafting of this letter was, notwithstanding his protest, intrusted to John Jay, one of the strongest of the Federal leaders, and a warm supporter of the Constitution as it stood.

The death of the grandfather of Mr. Gallatin, and soon after of his aunt, strongly tempted him to make a journey to Geneva in the summer of 1793. The political condition of Europe at that time was of thrilling interest. On January 21 the head of Louis XVI. fell under the guillotine, to which Marie Antoinette soon followed him. The armies of the coalition were closing in upon France. Of the political necessity for these state executions there has always been and will always be different judgments. That of Mr. Gallatin is of peculiar value. It is found expressed in intimate frankness in a letter to his friend Badollet, written at Philadelphia, February 1, 1794.

“France at present offers a spectacle unheard of at any other period. Enthusiasm there produces an energy equally terrible and sublime. All those virtues which depend upon social or family affections, all those amiable weaknesses, which our natural feelings teach us to love or respect, have disappeared before the stronger, the only, at present, powerful passion, theAmor Patriæ. I must confess my soul is not enough steeled, not sometimes to shrink at the dreadful executions which haverestored at least apparent internal tranquillity to that republic. Yet upon the whole, as long as the combined despots press upon every frontier, and employ every engine to destroy and distress the interior parts, I think they, and they alone, are answerable for every act of severity or injustice, for every excess, nay for every crime, which either of the contending parties in France may have committed.”

Within a few years the publication of the correspondence of De Fersen, the agent of the king and queen, has supplied the proof of the charge that they were in secret correspondence with the allied sovereigns to introduce foreign troops upon the soil of France,—a crime which no people has ever condoned.

The French Revolution, which from its beginning in 1789 reacted upon the United States with fully the force that the American Revolution exerted upon France, had become an important factor in American politics. The intemperance of Genet, the minister of the French Convention to the United States on the one hand, and the breaches of neutrality by England on the other, were dividing the American people into English and French parties. The Federalists sympathized with the English, the late enemies, and the Republicans with the French, the late allies, of the United States.

Mr. Gallatin had about made up his mind to visit Europe, when an unexpected political honor changed his plans. The Pennsylvania legislatureelected him a senator of the United States on joint ballot, a distinction the more singular in that the legislature was Federalist and Mr. Gallatin was a representative of a Republican district, and strong in that faith. Moreover, he was not a candidate either of his own motion or by that of his friends, but, on the contrary, had doubts as to his eligibility because of insufficient residence. This objection, which he himself stated in caucus, was disregarded, and on February 28, 1793, by a vote of 45 to 37, he was chosen senator. Mr. Gallatin had just completed his thirty-second year, and now a happy marriage came opportunely to stimulate his ambition and smooth his path to other honors.

Among the friends made at Philadelphia was Alexander J. Dallas, a gentleman two years Gallatin's senior, whose career, in some respects, resembled his own. He was born in Jamaica, of Scotch parents; had been thoroughly educated at Edinburgh and Westminster, and, coming to the United States in 1783, had settled in Philadelphia. He now held the post of secretary of state for Pennsylvania. Mr. Gallatin's constant committee service brought him into close relations with the secretary, and the foundation was laid of a lasting political friendship and social intimacy. In the recess of the legislature, Mr. Gallatin joined Mr. Dallas and his wife in an excursion to the northward. Mr. Gallatin's health had suffered from close confinement and too strict attention tobusiness, and he needed recreation and diversion. In the course of the journey the party was joined by some ladies, friends of Mrs. Dallas, among whom was Miss Hannah Nicholson. The excursion lasted nearly four weeks. The result was that Mr. Gallatin returned to Philadelphia the accepted suitor of this young lady. He describes her in a letter to Badollet as “a girl about twenty-five years old, who is neither handsome nor rich, but sensible, well-informed, good-natured, and belonging to a respectable and very amiable family.” Nor was he mistaken in his choice,—a more charming nature, a more perfect, well-rounded character than hers is rarely found. They were married on November 11, 1793. She was his faithful companion throughout his long and honorable career, and death separated them but by a few months. This alliance greatly widened his political connection.

Commodore James Nicholson, his wife's father, famous in the naval annals of the United States as the captain of the Trumbull, the first of American frigates, at the time resided in New York, and was one of the acknowledged leaders of the Republican party in the city. His two brothers—Samuel and John—were captains in the naval service. His two elder daughters were married to influential gentlemen;—Catharine to Colonel Few, senator from Georgia; Frances, to Joshua Seney, member of Congress from Maryland; Maria later (1809) married John Montgomery, who hadbeen member of Congress from Maryland, and was afterwards mayor of Baltimore. A son, James Witter Nicholson, then a youth of twenty-one, was, in 1795, associated with Mr. Gallatin in his Western Company, and, removing to Fayette, made his home in what was later and is now known as New Geneva. Here, in connection with Mr. Gallatin and the brothers Kramer, Germans, he established extensive glass works, which proved profitable.

Mr. Gallatin's election to the United States Senate did not disqualify him for his unfinished legislative term, and, on his return to Philadelphia, he was again plunged in his manifold duties. The few days which intervened between his marriage and the meeting of Congress—a short honeymoon—were spent under the roof of Commodore Nicholson in New York.

On February 28, 1793, the Vice-President laid before the Senate a certificate from the legislature of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania to the election of Albert Gallatin as senator of the United States. Mr. Gallatin took his seat December 2, 1793. The business of the session was opened by the presentation of a petition signed by nineteen individuals of Yorktown, Pennsylvania, stating that Mr. Gallatin had not been nine years a citizen of the United States. This petition had been handed to Robert Morris, Mr. Gallatin's colleague for Pennsylvania, by a member of the legislaturefor the county of York, but he had declined to present it, and declared to Mr. Gallatin his intention to be perfectly neutral on the occasion—at least so Mr. Gallatin wrote to his wife the next day; but Morris did not hold fast to this resolution, as the votes in the sequel show. The petition was ordered to lie upon the table. On December 11 Messrs. Rutherford, Cabot, Ellsworth, Livermore, and Mitchell were appointed a committee to consider the petition. These gentlemen, Gallatin wrote, were undoubtedly “the worst for him that could have been chosen, and did not seem to him to be favorably disposed.” He himself considered the legal point involved as a nice and difficult one, and likely to be decided by a party vote. The fourth article of the Constitution of the first Confederation of the United States reads as follows:—

“The better to secure and perpetuate mutual friendship and intercourse among the people of the different States in this Union, the free inhabitants of each of these States, paupers, vagabonds, and fugitives from justice excepted, shall be entitled to all privileges and immunities of free citizens in the several States.”

Article 1, section 3, of the new Constitution declares:—

“No person shall be a senator who shall not have attained to the age of thirty years, and been nine years a citizen of the United States, and who shall not, when elected, be an inhabitant of that State for which he shall be chosen.”

Mr. Gallatin landed in Massachusetts in July, 1780, while still a minor. His residence, therefore, which had been uninterrupted, extended over thirteen years. He took the oath of citizenship and allegiance to Virginia in October, 1785, since which, until his election in 1793, nine years, the period called for by the United States Constitution, had not elapsed. On the one hand, his actual residence exceeded the required period of citizenship; on the other, his legal and technical residence as a citizen was insufficient. In point of fact, his intention to become a citizen dated from the summer of 1783.

To take from the case the air of party proscription, which it was beginning to assume, the Senate discharged its special committee, and raised a general committee on elections to consider this and other cases. On February 10, 1794, the report of this committee was submitted, and a day was set for a hearing by the Senate, with open doors. On that day Mr. Gallatin exhibited a written statement of facts, agreed to between himself and the petitioners, and the case was left to the Senate on its merits. On the 28th a test vote was taken upon a motion to the effect that “Albert Gallatin, returned to this House as a member for the State of Pennsylvania, is duly qualified for and elected to a seat in the Senate of the United States,” and it was decided in the negative—yeas, 12; nays, 14.[2]

Motion being made that the election of Albert Gallatin to be a senator of the United States was void,—he not having been a citizen of the United States for the term of years required as a qualification to be a senator of the United States,—it was further moved to divide the question at the word “void;” and the question being then taken on the first paragraph, it passed in the affirmative—yeas, 14; nays, 12. The yeas and nays were required, and the Senate divided as before. The resolution was then put and adopted by the same vote. Thus Mr. Gallatin, thirteen years a resident of the country, a large land-holder in Virginia, and for several terms a member of the Pennsylvania legislature, was excluded from a seat in the Senate of the United States.

Mr. Gallatin conducted his case with great dignity. On being asked whether he had any testimony to produce, he replied, in writing, that there was not sufficient matter charged in the petition and proved by the testimony to vacate his seat, and declined to go to the expense of collecting evidence until that preliminary question was settled.

Short as the period was during which Mr. Gallatin held his seat, it was long enough for himseriously to annoy the Federal leaders. Indeed, it is questionable whether, if he had delayed his embarrassing motion, a majority of the Senate could have been secured against him. Certain it is that the Committee on Elections, appointed on December 11, did not send in its report until the day after Mr. Gallatin moved his resolution, calling upon the secretary of the treasury for an elaborate statement of the debt on January 1, 1794, under distinct heads, including the balances to creditor States, a statement of loans, domestic and foreign, contracted from the beginning of the government, statements of exports and imports; finally for a summary statement of the receipts and expenditures to the last day of December, 1790,distinguishing the moneys received under each branch of the revenue and the moneys expended under each of the appropriations, and stating the balances of each branch of the revenue remaining unexpended on that day, and also calling for similar and separate statements for the years 1791, 1792, 1793. This resolution, introduced on January 8, was laid over. On the 20th it was adopted. It was not until February 10 that a reply from the secretary of the treasury was received by the Senate, and on the 11th submitted to Gallatin, Ellsworth, and Taylor for consideration and report. In this letter (February 6, 1794) Hamilton stated the difficulty of supplying the precise information called for, with the clerical forces of the department, the interruption it would cause in thedaily routine of the service, and deprecated the practice of such unexpected demands.

With this response of the secretary the inquiry fell to the ground, but it was neither forgotten nor forgiven by his adherents, and Mr. Gallatin paid the penalty on at least one occasion. This was years later, when he himself was secretary of the treasury. On March 2, 1803, the day before the adjournment of Congress, Mr. Griswold, Federalist from Connecticut, attacked the correctness of the accounts of the sinking fund, and demanded an answer to a resolution of the House on the management of this bureau. Had such been his desire, Mr. Gallatin was foreclosed from Hamilton's excuse. On the night of the 3d he sent in an elaborate statement which set accusation at rest and criticism at defiance.

Mr. Gallatin's short stay in the Senate revealed to the Federalists the character of the man, who, disdaining the lesser flight, checked only at the highest game. He accepted his exclusion with perfect philosophy. Soon after the session opened he said, “My feelings cannot be much hurt by an unfavorable decision, since having been elected is an equal proof of the confidence the legislature of Pennsylvania reposed in me, and not being qualified, if it is so decided, cannot be imputed to me as a fault.” His exclusion was by no means a disadvantage to him. It made common cause of the honor of Pennsylvania and his own; it endeared him to the Republicans of his State as amartyr to their principles. It “secured him,” to use his own words, “many staunch” friends throughout the Union, and extended his reputation, hitherto local and confined, over the entire land; more than all, it led him to the true field of political contest—the House of Representatives of the people of the United States.

FOOTNOTES:[2]The yeas and nays being required by one fifth of the senators present, there were:Affirmative.—Bradley, Brown, Burr, Butler, Edwards, Gunn, Jackson, Langdon, Martin, Monroe, Robinson, Taylor; 12.Negative.—Bradford, Cabot, Ellsworth, Foster, Frelinghuysen, Hawkins, Izard, King, Livermore, Mitchell, Morris, Potts, Strong, Vining; 14.

[2]The yeas and nays being required by one fifth of the senators present, there were:Affirmative.—Bradley, Brown, Burr, Butler, Edwards, Gunn, Jackson, Langdon, Martin, Monroe, Robinson, Taylor; 12.Negative.—Bradford, Cabot, Ellsworth, Foster, Frelinghuysen, Hawkins, Izard, King, Livermore, Mitchell, Morris, Potts, Strong, Vining; 14.

Negative.—Bradford, Cabot, Ellsworth, Foster, Frelinghuysen, Hawkins, Izard, King, Livermore, Mitchell, Morris, Potts, Strong, Vining; 14.

Mr. Gallatin was now out of public life. For eighteen months since he came up to the legislature with his friends of the Pittsburgh convention, he had not returned to Fayette. His private concerns were suffering in his absence. Neither his barn, his meadow, nor his house was finished at the close of 1793. In May, 1794, he took his wife to his country home. Their hopes of a summer of recreation and domestic comfort in the wild beauties of the Monongahela were not to be realized. Before the end of June the peaceful country was in a state of mad agitation.

The seeds of political discontent, sown at Pittsburgh in 1792, had ripened to an abundant harvest. An act passed by Congress June 5, 1794, giving to the state courts concurrent jurisdiction in excise cases, removed the grievance of which Gallatin complained, the dragging of accused persons to Philadelphia for trial, but was not construed to be retroactive in its operation. The marshal, accordingly, found it to be his duty to serve the writs of May 31 against those who had fallen under their penalties. These writs were returnable in Philadelphia. They were served without trouble in Fayette County. Not so in Allegheny. Here on July 15, 1794, the marshal had completed his service, when, while still in the execution of his office, and in company with the inspector, he was followed and fired upon. The next day a body of men went to the house of the marshal and demanded that he should deliver up his commission. They were fired upon and dispersed, six were wounded, and the leader killed. A general rising followed. The marshal's house, though defended by Major Kirkpatrick, with a squad from the Pittsburgh garrison, was set on fire, with the adjacent buildings, and burned. On July 18 the insurgents sent a deputation of two or three to Pittsburgh, to require of the marshal a surrender of the processes in his possession, and of the inspector the resignation of his office. These demands were, of course, rejected; but the officers, alarmed for their personal safety, left the town, and, descending the Ohio by boat to Marietta, proceeded by a circuitous route to Philadelphia, and made their report to the United States authorities.

This was the outbreak of the Western or Whiskey Insurrection. The excitement spread rapidly through the western counties. Fayette County was not exempt from it. The collector's house was broken into, and his commission taken from him by armed men; the sheriff refused to serve the writs against the rioters of the spring. Sincethese disturbances there had been no trouble in this county. But the malcontents elsewhere rose in arms, riots ensued, and the safety of the whole community was compromised. The news reaching Fayette, the distillers held a meeting at Uniontown, the county seat, on July 20. Both Gallatin and Smilie were present, and by their advice it was agreed to submit to the laws. The neighboring counties were less fortunate. On July 21 the Washington County committee was summoned to meet at Mingo Creek Meeting-house. On the 23d there was a large assemblage of people, including a number of those who had been concerned in burning the house of the Pittsburgh inspector. James Marshall, the same who opposed the ratification of the federal Constitution, David Bradford, the “empty drum,” and Judge Brackenridge of Pittsburgh, attended this meeting. Bradford, the most unscrupulous of the leaders, sought to shirk his responsibility, but was intimidated by threats, and thereafter did not dare to turn back. Brackenridge was present to counsel the insurgents to moderation. In spite of his efforts the meeting ended in an invitation, which the officers had not the boldness to sign, to the townships of the four western counties of Pennsylvania and the adjoining counties of Virginia to send representatives to a general meeting on August 14, at Parkinson's Ferry on the Monongahela, in Washington County. Bradford, determined to aggravate the disturbance, stopped the mail at Greensburg, on the road between Pittsburgh and Philadelphia, and robbed it of the Washington and Pittsburgh letters, some of which he published, to the alarm of their authors.

On July 28 a circular signed by Bradford, Marshall, and others was sent out from Cannonsburg to the militia of the county, whom it summoned for personal service, and likewise called for volunteers to rendezvous the following Wednesday, July 30, at their respective places of meeting, thence to march to Braddock's Field, on the Monongahela, the usual rendezvous of the militia, about eight miles south of Pittsburgh, by two o'clock of Friday, August 1. It closed in these words, “Here is an expedition proposed in which you will have an opportunity for displaying your military talents and of rendering service to your country.” Nothing less was contemplated by the more extreme of these men than an attack upon Fort Pitt and the sack of Pittsburgh. Thoroughly aroused at last, the moderate men of Washington determined to breast the storm. A meeting was held; James Ross of the United States Senate made an earnest appeal, and was supported by Scott of the House of Representatives and Stokely of the Senate of Pennsylvania. Marshall and Bradford yielded, and consented to countermand the order of rendezvous. But the excited population poured into the town from all quarters, and Bradford, who found that he had gone too far to retreat, again took the lead of the movement, already beyond restraint.

There are accounts of this formidable insurrection by H. H. Brackenridge and William Findley, eye-witnesses. These supply abundant details. Findley says that he knew that the movement would not stop at the limit apparently set for it. “The opposing one law would lead to oppose another; they would finally oppose all, and demand a new modeling of the Constitution, and there would be a revolution.” There was great alarm in Pittsburgh. A meeting was held there Thursday evening, July 31, at which a message from the Washington County insurgents was read, violent resolutions adopted, and the 9th of August appointed as the day for a town meeting for election of delegates to a general convention of the counties at Parkinson's Ferry; Judge Brackenridge of Pittsburgh, a man of education, influence, and infinite jest and humor, was present at this meeting. Of Scotch-Irish birth himself, his sympathies of race were with his countrymen, but in political sentiments he was not in harmony with their leaders. They were nearly all Republicans, while he had sided with the Federalists in the convention which adopted the new Constitution of the United States. He was a man of peace, and of too much sagacity not to foresee the inevitable ruin upon which they were rushing. At Mingo Creek he had thwarted the plans of immediate revolution. The evident policy of moderate men was to prevent any violence before the convention at Parkinson's Ferry should meet, and to bend alltheir energies to control the deliberations of that body. The people of Pittsburgh were intensely excited by the armed gathering almost at their doors.

Brackenridge felt that the only safe issue from the situation was to take part in and shape the action of that gathering. Under his lead a committee from the Pittsburgh meeting, followed by a large body of the citizens, went out to the rendezvous. Here they found a motley assemblage, arrayed in the picturesque campaign costume which the mountaineers wore when they equipped themselves to meet the Indians,—yellow hunting-shirts, handkerchiefs tied about their heads, and rifles on the shoulder; the militia were on foot, and the light horse of the counties were in military dress. Conspicuous about the field, “haughty and pompous,” as Gallatin described him in the legislature, was David Bradford, who had assumed the office of major-general. Brackenridge draws a lifelike picture of him as, mounted on a superb horse in splendid trappings, arrayed in full uniform, with plume floating in the air and sword drawn, he rode over the ground, gave orders to the military, and harangued the multitude. On the historic ground where Washington plucked his first military laurels were gathered about seven thousand men, of whom two thousand militia were armed and accoutred as for a campaign,—a formidable and remarkable assemblage, when it is considered that the entire male population of sixteen years of ageand upwards of the four counties did not exceed sixteen thousand, and was scattered over a wide and unsettled country. This is Brackenridge's estimate of the numbers. Later, Gallatin, on comparison of the best attainable information, estimated the whole body at from fifteen hundred to two thousand men. Whatever violence Bradford may have intended, none was accomplished. That he read aloud the Pittsburgh letters, taken from the mail, shows his purpose to inflame the people to vindictive violence. He was accused by contemporary authorities of imitation of the methods of the French Jacobins, which were fresh examples of revolutionary vigor. But the mass was not persuaded. After desultory conversation and discussion, the angry turn of which was at times threatening to the moderate leaders, the meeting broke up on August 2; about one third dispersed for their homes, and the remainder, marching to Pittsburgh, paraded through the streets, and finally crossing the river in their turn scattered. They did no damage to the town beyond the burning of a farm belonging to Major Kirkpatrick of the garrison. The taverns were all closed, but the citizens brought whiskey to their doors. Judge Brackenridge reports that his sacrifice to peace on this occasion cost him four barrels of his best old rye.

This moderation was no augury of permanent quiet. Brackenridge, who was a keen observer of men, says of the temper of the western population at this period: “I had seen the spirit which prevailed at the Stamp Act, and at the commencement of the revolution from the government of Great Britain, but it was by no means so general and so vigorous amongst the common people as the spirit which now existed in the country.” Nor did the armed bands all return peaceably to their homes. The house of the collector for Fayette and Washington counties was burned, and warnings were given to those who were disposed to submit to the law. The disaffected were called “Tom the tinker” men, from the signature affixed to the threatening notices. From a passage in one of Gallatin's letters it appears that there was a person of that name, a New England man, who had been concerned in Shays's insurrection. Liberty poles, with the device, “An equal tax and no excise law,” were raised, and the trees placarded with the old revolutionary motto, “United we stand, divided we fall,” with a divided snake as an emblem. Mr. Gallatin's neighborhood was not represented at Braddock's Field, and not more than a dozen were present from the entire county. But now the flame spread there also, and liberty poles were raised. Mr. Gallatin himself, inquiring as to their significance and expressing to the men engaged the hope that they would not behave like a mob, was asked, in return, if he was not aware of the Westmoreland resolution that any one calling the people a mob should be tarred and feathered,—an amusing example of that mob logicwhich proves the affirmative of the proposition it denies.

Mr. Gallatin did not attend the meeting at Braddock's Field. Somewhat isolated at his residence at the southerly border of the county, engaged in the care of his long neglected farm, and in the full enjoyment of release from the bustle and excitement of public life, he had paid little attention to passing events. He was preparing definitively to abandon political pursuits and to follow some kind of mercantile business, or take up some land speculation and study law in his intervals of leisure. It was not a year since he had given hostages to fortune. He was now in the full tide of domestic happiness, which was always to him the dearest and most coveted. He might well have hesitated before again engaging upon the dangerous and uncertain task of controlling an excited and aggrieved population. But he did not hesitate.

The people among whom he had made his home, and whose confidence had never failed him, were his people. By them he would stand in their extremity, and if hurt or ruin befell them, it should not be for want of the interposition of his counsel. He knew his powers, and he determined to bring them into full play. He knew the danger also, but it only nerved him to confront and master it. He knew his duty, and did not swerve one hair from the line it prompted. In no part of his long, varied, and useful political life does he appear tobetter advantage than in this exciting episode of the Whiskey Insurrection. His self-possession, his cool judgment, swayed neither by timidity nor rashness, never for a moment failed him. Here he displayed that remarkable combination of persuasion and control,—the indispensable equipment of a political chief,—which, in later days, gave him the leadership of the Republican party. With intuitive perception of the political situation he saw that the only path to safety, beset with difficulty and danger though it were, was through the convention at Parkinson's Ferry. He did not believe that any revolutionary proceedings had yet been taken, or that the convention was an illegal body, but he was determined to separate the wheat from the chaff, and disengage the moderate and the law-abiding from the disorderly. By the light of his own experience he had learned wisdom. He also had drawn a lesson from the French Revolution, and knew the uncontrollable nature of large popular assemblages. The news from Philadelphia, the seat of government, was of a kind to increase his alarm. Washington was not the man to overlook such an insult to authority as the resistance to the marshal and inspector; nor was it probable that Hamilton would let pass such an occasion for showing the strength and vigor of the government.

Before the meeting at Braddock's Field, the secretary's plans for a suppression of the insurrection were matured. On August 2 he laid beforethe President an estimate of the probable armed force of the insurgents, and of that with which he proposed to reduce them to submission. When the question of the use of force came before the cabinet, Edmund Randolph, who was secretary of state, opposed it in a written opinion, one phrase of which deserves repetition:—

“It is a fact well known that the parties in the United States are highly inflamed against each other, and that there is but one character which keeps both in awe. As soon as the sword shall be drawn, who shall be able to retain them.”

Mifflin, the governor of Pennsylvania, deprecated immediate resort to force; the venerable Chief Justice McKean suggested the sending of commissioners on the part of the federal and state governments. Washington, with perfect judgment, combined these plans, and happily allied conciliation with force. A proclamation was issued on August 7 summoning all persons involved in the disturbance to lay down their arms and repair to their homes by September 1. Requisitions were made upon the governors of Pennsylvania, Maryland, Virginia, and New Jersey for fifteen thousand men in all, and a joint commission of five was raised,—three of whom on the part of the United States were appointed by the President, and two on the part of the State of Pennsylvania. This news was soon known at Pittsburgh, and rapidly spread through the adjacent country;and it was clear that in the proceedings to be taken at Parkinson's Ferry the question of resistance or submission must be definitively settled. On August 14, 1794, the convention assembled; two hundred and twenty-six delegates in all, of whom ninety-three were from Washington, forty-nine from Westmoreland, forty-three from Allegheny, thirty-three from Fayette, two from Bedford, five from Ohio County in Virginia, with spectators to about the same number.

Parkinson's Ferry, later called Williamsport, and now Monongahela City, is on the left bank of the Monongahela, about half way between Pittsburgh and Red Stone Old Fort or Brownsville. Brackenridge pictures the scene with his usual local color: “Our hall was a grove, and we might well be called 'the Mountain' (an allusion to the radical left of the French convention), for we were on a very lofty ground overlooking the river. We had a gallery of lying timber and stumps, and there were more people collected there than there was of the committee.” In full view of the meeting stood a liberty pole, raised in the morning by the men who signed the Braddock's Field circular order, and it bore the significant motto, “Liberty and no excise and no asylum for cowards.” Among the delegates, or the committee, to use their own term, were Bradford, Marshall, Brackenridge, Findley, and Gallatin. Before the meeting was organized, Marshall came to Gallatin and showed him the resolutions which he intended to move,intimating at the same time that he wished Mr. Gallatin to act as secretary. Mr. Gallatin told him that he highly disapproved the resolutions, and had come to oppose both him and Bradford, and therefore did not wish to serve. Marshall seemed to waver; but soon the people met, and Edward Cook of Fayette, who had presided at Braddock's Field, was chosen chairman, with Gallatin for secretary. Bradford opened the proceedings with a summary sketch of the action previously taken, declared the purpose of the committee to be to determine on a course of action, and his own views to be the appointment of committees to raise money, purchase arms, enlist volunteers, or draft the militia: in a word, though he did not use it, to levy war.

At this point in the proceedings the arrival of the commissioners from the President was announced, but the progress of the meeting was not interrupted. The commissioners were at a house near the meeting, but there were serious objections against holding a conference at this place.

Marshall then moved his resolutions. The first, declaratory of the grievance of carrying citizens great distances for trial, was unanimously agreed to. The second called for a committee of public safety “to call forth the resources of the western country to repel any hostile attempts that may be made against the rights of the citizens, or of the body of the people.” Had this resolution been adopted, the people were definitively committed toovert rebellion. This brought Mr. Gallatin at once to his feet. He denied that any hostile attempts against the rights of the people were threatened, and drew an adroit distinction between the regular army, which had not been called out, and the militia, who were a part of the people themselves; and to gain time he moved a reference of the resolutions to a committee who should be instructed to wait the action of the government. In the course of his speech Gallatin denied the assertion that resistance to the excise law was legal, or that coercion by the government was necessarily hostile. He was neither supported by his own friends nor opposed by those of Bradford. He stood alone.

But Marshall withdrew his resolution, and a committee of sixty was appointed, with power to summon the people. The only other objectionable resolution was that which pledged the people to the support of the laws, except the excise law and the taking of citizens out of their counties for trial,—an exception which Gallatin succeeded in having stricken out. He then urged the adoption of the resolution, without the exception, as necessary “to the establishment of the laws and the conservation of the peace,” and here he was supported by Brackenridge. The entire resolutions were finally referred to a committee of four,—Gallatin, Bradford, Husbands, and Brackenridge. The meeting then adjourned. The next morning a standing committee of sixty was chosen, onefrom each township. From these a committee of twelve was selected to confer with the government commissioners. Upon this committee were Cook, the chairman, Bradford, Marshall, Gallatin, Brackenridge, and Edgar. The meeting then adjourned.

Upon this representative body there seems to have been no outside pressure. The proclamation of the President, which arrived while it was in session, showed the determination, while the appointment of the commission showed the moderation, of the government. Gallatin availed of each circumstance with consummate adroitness, pointing out to the desperate the folly of resistance, and to the moderate an issue for honorable retreat.

Meanwhile, the commissioners reached Pittsburgh, where on August 20 the committee of conference was received by them, and an informal understanding arrived at, which was put in writing. The laws were to be enforced with as little inconvenience to the people as possible. All criminal suits for indictable offenses were to be dropped, but civil suits were to take their course. Notice was given that a definitive submission must be made by September 1 following. On the 22d the conference committee answered that they must consult with the committee of sixty. Thursday the 28th was appointed for a meeting at Red Stone Old Fort, the very spot where the original resolutions of opposition were passed in 1791. In the report drawn up every member of the twelve, except Bradford, favored submission.

The hour was critical, the deliberations were in the open air, and under the eyes of a threatening party of seventy riflemen accidentally present from Washington County across the stream. Bradford, who instinctively felt that he had placed himself beyond the pale of pardon, and to whom there was no alternative to revolution but flight, pressed an instant decision and rejection of the written terms of the commissioners. In the presence of personal danger, the conferrees only dared to move that part of their report which advised acceptance of the proffered terms. The question of submission they left untouched. An adjournment was obtained. The next day, to quote the words of Brackenridge, “the committee having convened, Gallatin addressed the chair in a speech of some hours. It was a piece of perfect eloquence, and was heard with attention and without disturbance.” Never was there a more striking instance of intellectual control over a popular assemblage. He saved the western counties of Pennsylvania from anarchy and civil war. He was followed by Brackenridge, who, warned by the example of his companion, or encouraged by the quiet of the assemblage, supported him with vigor. Bradford, on the other hand, faced the issue with directness and savage vehemence. He repelled the idea of submission, and insisted upon an independent government and a declaration of war. Edgar of Washington rejoined in support of the report. Gallatin now demanded a vote, but the twelve conferreesalone supported him. He then proposed an informal vote, but without result. Finally a secret ballot was proposed by a member. A hat was passed, and when the slips of paper were taken out, there were thirty-four yeas and twenty-three nays. The report was declared to be adopted, and amid the scowls of the armed witnesses the meeting adjourned; not, however, before a new committee of conference had been appointed. On this new committee not one of the old leaders was named. They evidently knew the folly of further delay, or of attempting to secure better terms. As his final act Colonel Cook, the chairman of the standing committee of sixty, indorsed the resolution adopted. It declared it to be “to the interest of the people of the country to accede to the proposals made by the commissioners on the part of the United States.” This was duly forwarded, with request for a further conference. The commissioners consented, but declined to postpone the time of taking the sense of the people beyond September 11.

William Findley said of the famous and critical debate at Red Stone: “I had never heard speeches that I more ardently desired to see in print than those delivered on this occasion. They would not only be valuable on account of the oratory and information displayed in all the three, and especially in Gallatin's, who opened the way, but they would also have been the best history of the spirit and the mistakes which then actuated men's minds.”Findley, in his allotment of the honors of the day, considers that “the verbal alterations made by Gallatin saved the question.” Brackenridge thought that his own seeming to coincide with Bradford prevented the declaration of war; and he has been credited with having saved the western counties from the horrors of civil war, Pittsburgh from destruction, and the Federal Union from imminent danger.

Historians have agreed in according to Gallatin the honor of this field day. It was left to John C. Hamilton, half a century later, to charge a want of courage upon Gallatin,—a baseless charge.[3]Not Malesherbes, the noble advocate defending the accused monarch before the angry French convention, with the certainty of the guillotine as the reward of his generosity, is more worthy of admiration than Gallatin boldly pleading the cause of order within rifle range of an excited band of lawless frontiersmen. If, as he confessed later, in his part in the Pittsburgh resolutions he was guilty of “a political sin,” he nobly atoned for it under circumstances that would have tried the courage of men bred to danger and to arms. Sin it was, and its consequences were not yet summed up. For although the back of the insurrection was broken at Red Stone Old Fort, there was much yet to be done before submission could be completed.

Bradford attempted to sign, but found that hiscourse at Red Stone Old Fort had placed him outside the amnesty. Well might the moderate men say in their familiar manner of Scripture allusion, “Dagon is fallen.” He fled down the Ohio and Mississippi to Louisiana, then foreign soil. The commissioners waited at Pittsburgh for the signatures of adhesion on September 10, which was the last day allowed by the terms of amnesty. They required that meetings should be held on this day in the several townships; the presiding officers to report the result to commissioner Ross at Uniontown the 16th of the same month, on which day he would set out for Philadelphia. The time was inadequate, but there was no help. Gallatin hastened the submission of Fayette, and a meeting of committees from the several townships met at the county seat, Uniontown, on September 10, 1794, when a declaration drawn by Mr. Gallatin was unanimously adopted. A passage in this admirable paper shows the comparative order which prevailed in Fayette County during this period of trouble. It is an appeal to the people of the neighboring counties, who, under the influence of their passions and resentment, might blame those of Fayette for their moderation.

“The only reflection we mean to suggest to them is the disinterestedness of our conduct upon this occasion. The indictable offences to be buried in oblivion were committed amongst them, and almost every civil suit that has been instituted under the revenue law, in the federal court, was commenced against citizens of thiscounty. By the terms proposed, the criminal prosecutions are to be dropped, but no condition could be obtained for the civil suits. We have been instrumental in obtaining an amnesty, from which those alone who had a share in the riots derive a benefit, and the other inhabitants of the western country have gained nothing for themselves.”

This declaration was forwarded on September 17 to Governor Mifflin, with reasons for the delay, and advice that signatures were fast being obtained, not only in the neighboring counties, but even in Fayette, where this formality had not been thought necessary. It closes with a forcible appeal to delay the sending of troops until every conciliatory measure should have proved abortive.

But the commissioners, unfortunately, were not favorably impressed with the reception they met with or the scenes they witnessed on their western mission. They had heard of Bradford's threat to establish an independent government west of the mountains, and they had seen a liberty pole raised upon which the people with the greatest difficulty had been dissuaded from hoisting a flag with six stripes—emblematic of the six counties represented in the committee. The flag was made, but set aside for the fifteen stripes with reluctance. This is Findley's recollection, but Brackenridge says that it was a flag of seven stars for the four western counties, Bedford, and the two counties of Virginia. This, he adds, was the first and only manifestation among any class of a desire to separate from the Union. But here his memory failed him.

Hamilton had long been impatient. Again, as in old days, he presented his arguments directly to the people. Under the heading, “Tully to the people of the United States,” he printed a letter on August 26, of which the following is a passage:—

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