As opposition flared into violent discontent, the first target was Colonel John Neville, a revenue inspector who had seen service in the Continental Army. In mid-July 1794 Neville and U.S. Marshal David Lenox tried serving processes on farmers who had not registered their stills, as required by law. In retaliation, protesters attacked Neville’s house, putting it to the torch, and also fired at Lenox. On August 1 the protests assumed a more ominous character when six thousand dissidents appeared in Braddock’s Field outside Pittsburgh—the same place where Washington had shown such heroism four decades earlier. The mood of bravado and secession was symbolized by a flag with six stripes, representing the four counties in Pennsylvania and two in western Virginia that were in armed revolt over the whiskey tax. “Sodom had been burnt by fire from heaven,” thundered one speaker. “This second Sodom [Pittsburgh] should be burned with fire from earth.”³⁷ The protesters talked of seizing the federal garrison in Pittsburgh and pledged to force the resignation of anyone enforcing the whiskey tax. Fulfilling the worst Federalist fears, one dissident, taking inspiration from Robespierre, urged the creation of a committee of public safety and weeks later called for guillotines.

On August 2 Washington assembled his cabinet to ponder measures to counter the uprising. Reluctantly convinced that he had to crack down on those defying the whiskey tax, he urged Pennsylvania officials to take the lead, but they balked at military action. When Washington canvassed his cabinet, Hamilton and Knox wanted to call out the militia posthaste, while Randolph demurred, fearing force would embolden the protesters. Washington solicited an opinion from Justice James Wilson, who certified the president’s authority to mobilize the militia. On August 7 Washington issued a proclamation calling up the militia and warned the western insurgents to “disperse and retire peaceably to their respective abodes” by September 1.³⁸ The same day, Knox alerted the governors of Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and Virginia to ready thirteen thousand militia to squash the rebellion. Washington exhausted all peaceful means before resorting to force and sent out a three-man commission, headed by Attorney General Bradford, to parley with the insurgents in western Pennsylvania.

The day after the proclamation, Knox received the president’s reluctant permission to take a six-week leave of absence in Maine, where he had encountered business setbacks. All year Washington had brooded about whether Knox’s financial plight would force him to resign. In 1790 Knox had bought two million acres in Maine with the notorious speculator William Duer, whose machinations had touched off financial panic in New York. Eager to become a country squire, Knox borrowed lavishly and constructed a baronial mansion. With its nineteen rooms and twenty-four fireplaces, the house ranked among New England’s majestic private residences. Since Knox had been the soul of loyalty to Washington, it seems puzzling that he deserted him during the Whiskey Rebellion; the president must have wondered whether his protégé had lost his way amid his social aspirations. In a major step, Washington had Alexander Hamilton assume the additional duties of secretary of war until Knox returned. It was a tough moment for Hamilton, too, since his wife was going through a difficult pregnancy and one of his sons lay desperately ill.

When the three commissioners met with local residents in western Pennsylvania in mid-August, they encountered defiant vows to resist the whiskey tax “at all hazards.”³⁹ Only the “physical strength of the nation,” they told Washington, could guarantee compliance with the law.⁴⁰ Governor Henry Lee of Virginia was deputized to lead the army formed to put down the insurgents. In confidence, Washington sent him a vehement letter about the revolt, which he thought had been fomented by Genet and other “artful and designing” men who wished to destroy confidence in government. “I consider this insurrection as the first formidable fruit of the Democratic Societies.”⁴¹ He saw himself as the target of a whispering campaign conducted by his political opponents: “A part of the plan for creating discord is, I perceive, to make me say things of others, and others of me, w[hich] have no foundation in truth.”⁴² Washington’s political views sometimes sounded as if they were plucked from a study of Plutarch’s Lives or Shakespeare’s Roman plays, in which shrewdly ambitious demagogues preyed upon credulous masses.

The evidence of unrest in western Pennsylvania mounted. A mob descended on Captain William Faulkner, who had allowed John Neville to establish an office in his home, threatening to tar and feather him and incinerate his house unless he stopped giving sanctuary to Neville. New reports suggested that the turmoil might be spreading to Maryland and other states. Eager to show governmental resolve in the face of disorder, Hamilton had long spoiled for a showdown with the instigators. “Moderation enough has been shown; ’tis time to assume a different tone,” he had advised Washington.⁴³ Having hoped for a diplomatic settlement, Washington reluctantly agreed that a show of force had become necessary in western Pennsylvania.

Amid the crisis, Washington bowed to the wishes of his Alexandria lodge and sat for a portrait by William Joseph Williams that featured him in a Masonic outfit. After suffering through many portraits early in his presidency, Washington had decided to scale back drastically. He admitted to Henry Lee in 1792 that he had grown “so heartily tired of the attendance which . . . I have bestowed on these kind of people [artists] that it is now more than two years since I have resolved to sit no more for any of them . . . except in instances where it has been requested by public bodies or for a particular purpose . . . and could not without offense be refused.”⁴⁴ He detested the crude engravings of him made from paintings, which were crassly peddled by vendors. The pastel portrait that Williams executed on September 18, 1794, shows a particularly dour, cranky Washington, with a tightly turned-down mouth. Posing in a black coat, he wears Masonic symbols on a blue sash that slants diagonally across his chest. His face is neither friendly nor heroic but looks like that of a bad-tempered relative, suggesting that the presidency was now a trial he endured only for the public good. Unsparing in its accuracy, the Williams portrait shows various blemishes on Washington’s face—a scar that curves under the pouch of his left eye; a mole below his right earlobe; smallpox scars on both his nose and cheeks—ordinarily edited out of highly sanitized portraits.

On September 25 Washington issued a final warning to the whiskey rebels, who had dismissed his “overtures of forgiveness” and now constituted, in his view, “a treasonable opposition.”⁴⁵ He viewed their actions as a grave test of the Constitution, raising the question of “whether a small proportion of the United States shall dictate to the whole Union.”⁴⁶ Prepared to don his uniform to lead the fight, Washington told his tailor to make up an outfit patterned after the one he had worn during the war. He planned to travel as far west as Carlisle, Pennsylvania, where the Pennsylvania and New Jersey militia were encamped, before deciding whether to proceed farther west with the troops. Still recovering from his June back injury, Washington, accompanied by Hamilton, rode out of Philadelphia in a genteel carriage, rather than on horseback, as if they were going off on a peaceful jaunt in the autumn countryside. No longer accustomed to the alarums of war, Martha was all aflutter with fear. “The president . . . is to go himself tomorrow to Carlyle to meet the troops,” she wrote Fanny. “God knows when he will return again. I shall be left quite alone with the children.”⁴⁷