Jefferson and Hamilton (52 page)

When Congress considered the excise on spirits, Jefferson had warned the president that it was “odious” to take from the lowly and give to the stockjobbers. He added that the tax would produce “clamour [and] evasion” and that its collection would require “arbitrary and vexatious means,” including possibly making “war on our own citizens.” Five state legislatures condemned the proposed tax, with some asserting—as Washington acknowledged—that the legislation “could never be executed in the Southern states.” Some in Congress predicted that “war and bloodshed” would result if the tax was enacted. Nor was Washington unaware that many believed Hamilton supported the excise on whiskey as the means of provoking western resistance, affording the administration with a golden opportunity to demonstrate the power and authority of the new government. Both Washington and Hamilton knew that numerous alternative sources of revenue existed, among them a land tax, a stamp tax, or an increase in the impost. Hamilton did not favor them, as they would have fallen heaviest on speculators, eastern merchants, and the most affluent in general. Moreover, the president, who was trying to sell the thousands of acres he owned in the West, was not interested in taxing land. In the end, Washington listened to Hamilton rather than Jefferson and nearly a third of the states. The whiskey tax passed a deeply divided Congress, in large measure because of the president’s backing.
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Trouble was not long in coming. The first tax collectors sent to western Pennsylvania in 1791 were beaten or tarred and feathered, or both. Federal officials were assaulted throughout the South and in Kentucky, a new federal territory, but Pennsylvania witnessed the greatest violence and the most intemperate public protest. Democratic-Republican Societies everywhere denounced the excise, but the Mingo County chapter near Pittsburgh took steps to foster an organized resistance to the tax. Eighteen months after the law went into effect, not one cent in revenue had been collected in western Pennsylvania.

The dissidents knew there was danger in protest, but they saw their struggle as a battle on behalf of democracy, and some of their leaders believed that
democracy involved more than just voting. Democracy included the more general right to take a stand against oppressive government. It was not long before the Federalist press took aim on the anti-tax insurgents. Indeed, Federalists seized on the disorders in western Pennsylvania as a pretext for savaging the Democratic-Republican Societies as traitors. As early as 1792 rumors buzzed through the mountains and hollows in western Pennsylvania that Hamilton “wishe[d] to make us examples.” This rumor was well grounded, for in private Hamilton was urging the president to use force. He counseled that “vigorous & decisive measures” were necessary, lest the “spirit of disobedience … extend” and render the government “prostrate.” He added: “Moderation enough has been shewn.” Hamilton never understood farmers and their problems, or if he did, he remained indifferent toward those whom he knew would never support the Federalist agenda. Washington had a different perspective. Although he shortsightedly attributed the western resistance to those who had always opposed a strong national government, he feared that a harsh response might destroy their loyalty to the United States. Before he resorted to force, the president wished to try “lenient & temporizing means” to dampen the “daring and unwarrantable” defiance. Otherwise, the public would say: “The cat is let out.” That is, the citizenry would be confirmed in their suspicion that the law had originated from a wish to crush the anticipated rebellion with armed might.
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Spurning Hamilton’s heavy-handed approach, Washington got the duty on spirits lowered, tried other taxes, and dispatched emissaries to the frontier to offer both reason and cajolery. The West cooled down for a year, but by 1794 it had combusted again, ignited by Britain having gone to war against France, its seizure of American ships and seamen, and Washington’s selection of Jay as his envoy to London. Not only had no revenue been collected in western Pennsylvania during the twelve months prior to mid-1794, but also the Democratic-Republican Societies were savaging the administration, accusing Washington of having surrounded himself with aristocrats and Anglophiles.
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In August 1794, Washington convened his cabinet, together with Pennsylvania’s governor and assorted state officials, for one final discussion. The governor pleaded with the president not to use force, arguing that the western farmers trusted the state and could be brought to terms peacefully. Knox and Hamilton, on the other hand, demanded “an immediate resort to Military force.” The following day, at Washington’s behest, Hamilton submitted a written opinion. Labeling the frontiersmen’s defiance as nothing less than “Treason,” he advised that “the very existence of Government demands” that
the rebellion be crushed. Hamilton urged the president to raise a military force of 12,000 men. Washington listened to his treasury secretary. After issuing a proclamation couched in language that resembled George III’s declaration in 1775 that the colonists were rebels, the president summoned 12,950 militiamen to active service, appointed Virginia’s governor and former Continental army cavalry officer Henry Lee to command the force, and turned loose Hamilton to rip the whiskey rebels in the press. Hamilton’s hyperbole reached new heights in the four “Tully” essays that followed. He alleged that westerners were engaged in a “dark conspiracy” to force the United States into war with Great Britain. Their rebellion must be crushed, he said, in order to preserve “every thing … dear to a free … people.”
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Leaving behind his pregnant wife—who suffered a miscarriage in his absence—Hamilton on October 4 donned full military regalia and rode west with the president.
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At Carlisle, Washington took charge of a larger army than he had commanded much of the time during the Revolutionary War. Being back in military surroundings was an intoxicant for Hamilton. He was swept up by cadence of marching soldiers, the stirring sounds of drums and fifes, and the sight of Washington in his familiar old uniform astride his white charger. Hamilton, on his mount, was ready for glory.

Washington did not linger with the army. Unwilling to tarnish his reputation by killing American citizens, the president soon departed for Mount Vernon, surrendering command to Governor Lee. Hamilton displayed no reluctance to spill blood. He vengefully called those who defied federal law “madmen” and “wicked insurgents.” Denying that he was “a quixot,” Hamilton loudly proclaimed that every whiskey rebel must be “skewered, shot, or hanged on the first tree.” He even pressed fellow Federalists in Congress to enact a “law regulating a process of outlawry” so that the insurgents’ property might be confiscated and those who fled could be hunted down and legally killed. The utmost “vigour” was essential, he said, in order to root out the “political putrefaction of Pennsylvania.”
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The pomp and ceremony of the first days at Carlisle soon gave way to reality. Once the army began its westward march, appalling supply shortages persisted. The “troops are every where a head of their supplies,” Hamilton complained. Not long passed before he called what was happening an embarrassment. Next, he began to suspect chicanery on the part of teamsters and businessmen. “I directed some Cloathing to be forwarded. Not an iota of them has arrived,” he fulminated a week into the march. For that matter, “Not a shoe, blanket or ounce of ammunition” had reached the men. Pennsylvania’s autumn nights were chilly, and men suffered from “nakedness,” just
as their predecessors had in the War of Independence. Frantically, Hamilton wrote to authorities in Philadelphia: “For God’s sake … Let some cloathing come forward.”
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The officers, of course, lived more comfortably, just as in the last war. It was a pattern that prompted the author of the most complete history of the Whiskey Rebellion to write: “The journals of officers often read like tourist guides to taverns and scenery along the route, while enlisted men’s diaries recounted weeks of hunger and cold.”
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The campaign provided Hamilton with little glory, as the insurgents did not put up a fight. The army rounded up some 150 suspected rebels, many of whom were treated harshly before being released. Only 20 were held for prosecution, and they were forced to make a pitiless winter’s march across Pennsylvania to Philadelphia to stand trial. Hoping they would be treated unsparingly, Hamilton confided to the president that he longed for the judiciary to make examples of them as “traitors.” Ultimately, just 2 of the whiskey rebels were convicted. One was an imbecile, the other a madman. Washington pardoned both.
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Jefferson neither defended nor assailed the whiskey rebels, but he was appalled by Washington’s decision to send “such an armament against people at their ploughs.” He saw hypocrisy in the administration’s patience in the face of “the kicks and scuffs of our [British] enemies” on the high seas, yet its haste at “arming one part of the society against another.” It was clear to him that Hamilton was behind the use of force. Raising the army, said Jefferson, answered the treasury secretary’s “favorite purposes of strengthening government and increasing the public debt; and therefore an insurrection was announced and proclaimed and armed against, and marched against, but could never be found.”
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Jefferson was not surprised that in his absence Hamilton had come close to becoming America’s equivalent of a prime minister, but he was shocked by what came next. In his annual State of the Union address, Washington defended his action, attributing the insurgency to the Democratic-Republican Societies, which through the “arts of delusion” had “fostered and embittered” the “passions” of the western farmers.
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It was a theme that would be repeated throughout American political history by those who cried that dissent was unfounded and due to the manipulation of the likes of “reds” and “outside agitators.”

Republicans were furious. In its official response to the speech, the House of Representatives pointedly refused to censure the Democratic-Republican Societies. Jefferson was no less outraged, as he saw Washington’s remarks as a
direct assault on free speech. Believing he had long since divined Hamilton part and parcel, Jefferson now understood something else. As Madison put it to him, the president’s actions and speech amounted to the “final triumph” of the Federalists, for they had brought Washington into their camp. Jefferson concurred.
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Chapter 12
“A colossus to the antirepublican party”

The Election of 1796

Soon after returning from western Pennsylvania, Hamilton notified Washington of his intention to leave the cabinet at the end of January 1795. As the treasury secretary had already postponed his retirement for eighteen months, Washington made no attempt to dissuade Hamilton, though the president acknowledged that he had always wished to prevent his leaving. Thereafter, in a nearly identical letter to the one he had written when Jefferson departed, Washington thanked Hamilton for his steadfast service and loyalty.
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Skepticism greeted newspaper accounts that Hamilton was forced to return to private life by his “poverty,” but it was true.
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He was in debt. Unlike a host of today’s public figures, Hamilton had not grown rich from public service. But he estimated that within five or six years of reopening his law practice, he would be on his feet again.
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Friends understood his plight, though even they doubted Hamilton when he said that he never planned to return to public life.
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He was only forty, three years younger than Washington had been when he had taken command of the Continental army and the same age as Jefferson when the war ended. Moreover, Hamilton confided to acquaintances that he expected his legal work to be “much less” satisfying than his years as treasury secretary. Attentive friends saw him as restless and ambitious, not especially interested in personal wealth but obsessed with the power and authority of the national government. They had heard him admit that Jeffersonianism “haunts me every step I take” and remark that a part of him believed that Jefferson would not long remain in retirement. They had also heard him express concern that public opinion was swinging away from the Federalists. Some had heard him state that it was “Torture” to watch Madison and Aaron Burr, among other Republicans, as they “sported with” the destruction of the “
good footing
” he had fabricated for the nation through his funding and banking systems.
Friends knew that Hamilton was convinced that the Jeffersonians would harm the nation, even that they loved the United States less than he did. They heard him wonder: “Am I then more of an American than those who drew their first breath on American Ground?”
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Hamilton spent several leisurely weeks with his family in Albany, but as summer approached he rented a house and office in Manhattan and resumed his legal practice. He had been tending to the law only a month before Washington reached out to him.

Just days after Hamilton departed Philadelphia, the president received the treaty that John Jay had negotiated. Washington was disappointed. One look at the Jay Treaty must have convinced him that Jefferson had been correct all along in saying that Great Britain would not alter its stance toward America. While London agreed to pay compensation for the damages that had resulted from its seizure of American ships and cargoes, it refused to liberalize its trade policies with America. Nor would London shorten its outlandishly lengthy list of contraband items, indemnify slave owners for their chattel taken away by British armed forces during the late war, or recognize the right of neutrals to trade with whomever they wished in wartime. Furthermore, Jay’s negotiations produced nothing new with regard to America’s western problems. His accord replicated the terms of the Treaty of Paris of 1783: Britain was to evacuate the northwest posts and Americans were to pay the prewar debts owed British creditors. The president was most disappointed by Article XII. He had hoped that London would open its West Indian ports to American shipping. Instead, only small American ships—vessels about one-fifth the size of ordinary merchant ships—would be permitted to trade in those ports, and in addition, America’s merchants were forbidden to re-export goods from the West Indies to other parts of the world.