whiskey. The day ended in a bloodless, but probably uproarious,
jollification.

On this same day (the Governor of Pennsylvania having declined to
interfere) Washington issued a proclamation against the rioters, and
called for 15,000 militia to quell the insurrection. Meantime he had
appointed commissioners to go into the disaffected region and try to
persuade the people to submit peacefully before the troops should
arrive. Peace was offered on condition that the leaders of the
disturbance should submit to arrest.

While negotiations were proceeding, the army advanced. Eighteen
ringleaders of the mob were arrested, and the "insurrection" faded away
like smoke. When the troops arrived, there was nothing for them to do.
The insurgent leaders were tried for treason, and two of them were
convicted, but Washington pardoned both of them. The cost of this
expedition was more than one-third of the total expenditures of the
Government, for that year, for all other purposes. The moral effect upon
the nation at large was wholesome, for the Federal Government had
demonstrated, on this its first test, that it could enforce its own laws
and maintain domestic tranquility. The result upon the mountain people
themselves was dubious. Thomas Jefferson wrote to Madison in December:
"The information of our [Virginia's] militia, returned from the
westward, is uniform, that though the people there let them pass
quietly, they were objects of their laughter, not of their fear; that
one thousand men could have cut off their whole force in a thousand
places of the Alleghany; that their detestation of the excise law was
universal, and has now associated with it a detestation of the
Government; and that a separation which was perhaps a very distant and
problematical event, is now near and certain, and determined in the mind
of every man."

But Jefferson himself came to the presidency within six years, and the
excise tax was promptly repealed, never again to be instituted, save as
a war measure, until within a time so recent that it is now remembered
by men whom we would not call very old.

The moonshiners of our own day know nothing of the story that has here
been written. Only once, within my knowledge, has it been told in the
mountains, and then the result was so unexpected, that I append the
incident as a color contrast to this rather sombre narrative.--

I was calling on a white-bearded patriarch who was a trifle vain of his
historical le