d
been adopted was avowed; and in others, expressions were used which
indicated unfriendly dispositions towards them. Upon acquiring this
intelligence, delegates were deputed from the town of Washington to
Pittsburg, where the writers of the offensive letters resided, to
demand the banishment of the offenders. A prompt obedience to this
demand was unavoidable; and the inhabitants of Pittsburg, who were
convened on the occasion, engaged to attend a general meeting of the
people, who were to assemble the next day in Braddock's field, in
order to carry into effect such further measures as might be deemed
adviseable with respect to the excise and its friends. They also
determined to elect delegates to a convention which was to meet, on
the 14th of August, at Parkinson's ferry. The avowed motives to these
outrages were to compel the resignation of all officers engaged in the
collection of the duties on distilled spirits; to withstand by force
of arms the authority of the United States; and thereby to extort a
repeal of the law imposing those duties, and an alteration in the
conduct of government.

Affidavits attesting this serious state of things were laid before the
President.

The opposition had now reached to a point which seemed to forbid the
continuance of a temporizing system. The efforts at conciliation,
which, for more than three years, the government had persisted to
make, and the alterations repeatedly introduced into the act for the
purpose of rendering it less exceptionable, instead of diminishing the
arrogance of those who opposed their will to the sense of the nation,
had drawn forth sentiments indicative of designs much deeper than the
evasion of a single act. The execution of the laws had at length been
resisted by open force, and a determination to persevere in these
measures was unequivocally avowed. The alternative of subduing this
resistance, or of submitting to it was presented to the government.

The act of congress which provided for calling forth the militia "to
execute the laws of the union, suppress insurrections, and repel
invasions," required as a pre-requisite to the exercise of this power,
"that an associate justice, or the judge of the district, should
certify that the laws of the United States were opposed, or their
execution obstructed, by combinations too powerful to be suppressed by
the ordinary course of judicial proceedings, or by the powers vested
in the marshals." In the same act it