trued by the ringleaders of the opposition as weakness, and they
became more bold. Distillers who were willing to comply with the law
were abused. Finally, the Congress passed an act, which became a law in
1794, calculated to strengthen the executive arm in enforcing obedience.
This law made the opposition still more earnest and bold; and few men in
the district of country where they exercised a sort of reign of terror
dared openly to dissent from their views. So general was the combined
influence of actual disaffection upon one portion of the community, and
dread of the violence of the turbulent, among the others, that out of
the family connection of General Neville, inspector of revenues, the
employees of the government, and two others, there were none in
Pittsburgh who dared to condemn these lawless proceedings, for fear of
personal harm. Mails were robbed; Neville's house was twice attacked and
finally burned by an armed party of lawless men; and preparations were
made to seize Fort Fayette, in that region. Among the leaders of the
insurgents was one Bradford, who, by common consent, appears to have
assumed the position of commander-in-chief. At this time the
insurrectionary spirit had spread into adjoining counties of Maryland
and Virginia, and Bradford and his associate leaders issued a call for
the assembling of the militia on Braddock's field, on the first of
August, with arms and accoutrements, and provisions for four days.
Within three days seven thousand men were assembled, some of them out of
curiosity, but a greater part with the determination to follow, in
resistance to the federal and state governments, wherever Bradford and
others might lead.

It was Bradford's design to seize Fort Pitt and its arms and ammunition;
but he found most of the militia officers unwilling to co-operate in
such an overt act of treason. But they readily consented to the
perpetration of outrages against excise officers, and the whole country
in that region was governed, for the moment, by the combined powers of
mobocracy and military despotism.

When intelligence of these proceedings reached the president, he called
his cabinet into council. All regarded the movement as a critical one
for the republic. The example of the insurgents in Pennsylvania might
become infectious; for the Democratic societies, spread all over the
land, while they professed to oppose and deprecate violence, openly
denounced the excise laws, and, no doubt,