It is February 9th. Welcome to Episode 40 of History in a Year. Today, the hammer falls. Following the violence in Western Pennsylvania, George Washington makes a historic decision. He puts on his old Revolutionary War uniform, mounts his white horse, and leads an army of 13,000 men west to crush the Whiskey Rebellion. We witness the only time in American history that a sitting President has commanded troops in the field, Alexander Hamilton’s ruthless hunt for the rebels, and the anti-climactic end that proved the new government was not to be trifled with.
STEPHEN: Welcome to History in a Year: America’s First 250 Years.
LEAH: Join us every single day as we journey from the Revolution of 1776 to the 250th anniversary of the United States.
STEPHEN: You can find every episode, full transcripts, and join the discussion at PointedWords.com. I’m Stephen.
LEAH: And I’m Leah.
STEPHEN: It is February 9th. Welcome to Episode 40. Yesterday, we watched the frontier explode.
LEAH: The farmers of Western Pennsylvania—the “Whiskey Boys”—had had enough. They refused to pay Alexander Hamilton’s whiskey tax. They tarred and feathered tax collectors. And in July 1794, they burned down the home of General John Neville, the federal tax inspector.
STEPHEN: This was no longer a protest. It was an insurrection.
LEAH: In Philadelphia, the news hit like a thunderclap. President Washington was alarmed. He looked at the reports of 7,000 armed rebels gathering at Braddock’s Field and saw the ghost of Shays’ Rebellion.
STEPHEN: Remember Shays’ Rebellion from last month? That was the event that proved the old government (the Articles of Confederation) was too weak to survive.
LEAH: Washington knew that this was the test. If the new government—the Constitution—couldn’t enforce its own laws, it would fail too. The monarchs of Europe were watching, waiting for the American experiment to collapse into anarchy.
STEPHEN: Alexander Hamilton, of course, was furious. He urged Washington to act immediately. He said, “The authority of the government must be vindicated.” He wanted to march an army west and hang the ringleaders.
LEAH: But Washington—ever the cautious general—didn’t want a civil war. He wanted to give them one last chance.
STEPHEN: He issued a proclamation on August 7, 1794. He warned the “insurgents” to disperse and return to their homes by September 1st. He sent peace commissioners to negotiate.
LEAH: But the rebels ignored him. They thought he was bluffing. They thought, “He’ll never send an army over the mountains. It’s too far. It’s too expensive.”
STEPHEN: They were wrong.
LEAH: On September 25, 1794, George Washington issued the order. He called up the militia from Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Maryland, and Virginia.
STEPHEN: And the response was overwhelming. 12,950 men answered the call.
LEAH: Think about that number. That is a larger army than Washington commanded at the Battle of Yorktown! He was marching a force the size of a European army against a bunch of farmers with pitchforks and old muskets.
STEPHEN: And then, the moment that belongs in a movie.
LEAH: On September 30, George Washington left Philadelphia. He rode west to Carlisle, Pennsylvania, to review the troops.
STEPHEN: He was 62 years old. His back hurt. He hadn’t been on a campaign in 11 years. But he put on his blue and buff uniform. He mounted his horse. And he rode out to lead the army himself.
LEAH: This is the only time in American history that a sitting President has personally commanded troops in the field during a military operation.
STEPHEN: The soldiers went wild when they saw him. Many of them were veterans of the Revolution. They cheered “The Old Man!” It legitimized the whole operation. They weren’t fighting for “taxes”; they were fighting for Washington.
LEAH: Riding beside him was Alexander Hamilton.
STEPHEN: Hamilton was in heaven. He was acting as the Secretary of War (Henry Knox was away on business). He finally had his chance to prove the power of the federal government. He was dressed in a military uniform, eager for a fight.
LEAH: Washington led the army as far as Bedford, Pennsylvania. But then, he realized he was needed back in the capital. He turned command over to “Light Horse Harry” Lee (the Governor of Virginia and Robert E. Lee’s father) and Alexander Hamilton.
STEPHEN: Hamilton led the army over the mountains into the heart of rebel country. The mud was knee-deep. It rained constantly. The soldiers called it the “Watermelon Army” because so many of them got sick from eating green pumpkins and melons in the fields.
LEAH: But as the army got closer to Pittsburgh, something strange happened.
STEPHEN: The rebellion… vanished.
LEAH: The “Whiskey Boys” took one look at 13,000 bayonets coming down the road and realized they had made a terrible mistake.
STEPHEN: They dropped their guns. They ran into the woods. They floated down the Ohio River on rafts to Kentucky.
LEAH: When Hamilton arrived in Pittsburgh, there was no one to fight. It was, as Jefferson later mocked, “An insurrection was announced and proclaimed and armed against, but could never be found.”
STEPHEN: But Hamilton wasn’t going to go home empty-handed. He wanted to make an example.
LEAH: On the night of November 13, 1794—a night the locals called “The Dreadful Night”—Hamilton ordered the army to sweep through the towns.
STEPHEN: Soldiers dragged men out of their beds in the snow. They rounded up hundreds of suspects. They marched them barefoot through the freezing mud to holding pens.
LEAH: They interrogated them for days. Hamilton was looking for the leaders. He wanted a hanging.
STEPHEN: Eventually, they arrested about 20 men. They marched them all the way back to Philadelphia in chains. They paraded them through the streets on Christmas Day like captured Roman prisoners.
LEAH: But when the trials started, the case fell apart. Most of the men were acquitted for lack of evidence.
STEPHEN: Only two men were convicted of treason. One was a man named John Mitchell, who was described as a “simpleton.” The other was Philip Vigol, who was mostly just crazy.
LEAH: Hamilton wanted them hanged. He thought it was necessary to show strength.
STEPHEN: But Washington? Washington did something unexpected.
LEAH: He pardoned them both.
STEPHEN: He said, “The misled have abandoned their errors.” He believed that mercy was stronger than vengeance. He had proved his point. The army had marched. The laws had been enforced. The rebellion had been crushed without a single battle.
LEAH: The Whiskey Rebellion was over. But the lesson remained.
STEPHEN: It proved to the American people that the federal government was real. It wasn’t a “Rope of Sand” anymore. If you broke the law, the President would come to your house with 13,000 soldiers.
LEAH: But it also deepened the political divide. Thomas Jefferson was horrified by the use of force. He said it was like “using a sledgehammer to crush a gnat.”
STEPHEN: He saw Hamilton’s eagerness to use the army as proof that the Federalists wanted a military dictatorship. It drove thousands of western farmers to join Jefferson’s party.
LEAH: So, Washington won the battle, but he might have lost the war for the hearts of the West.
STEPHEN: While Washington was dealing with rebels in Pennsylvania, another general was dealing with a much deadlier threat in the Ohio Territory.
LEAH: For years, a confederacy of Native American tribes—led by the brilliant Shawnee chief Blue Jacket and the Miami chief Little Turtle—had been destroying American armies.
STEPHEN: Washington had sent two armies to defeat them. Both had been massacred. Now, he sent a third army, led by a man they called “Mad Anthony.”
LEAH: Join us tomorrow for Episode 41. Fallen Timbers. The final battle for the Northwest Territory. We see General Anthony Wayne train a new kind of American army and face the Native confederacy in a tornado-ravaged forest in Ohio.
STEPHEN: I’m Stephen.
LEAH: And I’m Leah.
STEPHEN: You can find every episode at PointedWords.com. And this… is our story.