In sallying forth to command the troops, Washington, sixty-two, became the first and only American president ever to supervise troops in a combat situation. It irked him that Knox had not returned as promised, then compounded his misdemeanor by not bothering to write to him. “Under the circumstances which exist to exceed your proposed time of absence so long is to be regretted,” Washington wrote Knox in unusually pointed language. “But hearing nothing from you for a considerable time has given alarm, lest some untoward accident may have been the cause of it.”⁴⁸ Knox’s absence magnified the power of Hamilton, who believed in an overwhelming demonstration of military strength. “Whenever the government appears in arms,” Hamilton proclaimed, “it ought to appear like a Hercules and inspire respect by the display of strength.”⁴⁹ For Hamilton, an armed force of thirteen thousand soldiers was a suitable number to confront an estimated six thousand to seven thousand insurgents, but Republicans thought he was conjuring up a phantom revolt to establish an oppressive army. The Whiskey Rebellion, Madison insisted, was being exploited to “establish the principle that a standing army was necessary for enforcing the laws,” while a skeptical Jefferson scoffed that an “insurrection was announced and proclaimed and armed against, but could never be found.”⁵⁰

CHAPTER FIFTY-NINE

Crowns and Coronets

AS HE ROLLED WESTWARD toward the army assembled at Carlisle, Washington’s writing reverted to the factual almanac style of his travel diaries, as if he were a touring naturalist and not president of the United States: “The Susquehanna at this place abounds in the rockfish of 12 or 15 inches in length and a fish which they call salmon.”¹ The president still had sufficient spunk and energy that, when his carriage forded the river, he drove it across himself. When he arrived at Carlisle, troops lined the roadway, eager to catch a glimpse of him, and Washington knew that, for this command performance, they wanted the charismatic military man on horseback, not the aging president ensconced in a carriage. A Captain Ford of the New Jersey militia thrilled to the sight of Washington: “As he passed our troop, he pulled off his hat, and in the most respectful manner, bowed to the officers and men and in this manner passed the line.”² From Washington’s dignified deportment, everyone recognized the solemnity of the occasion. A large, euphoric crowd had assembled in the town, and they were hushed into silence by his sudden appearance. When he reviewed the soldiers standing at attention in front of their tents, these men were also awed into “the greatest silence,” according to Captain Ford.³

Experiencing “the bustle of a camp” for the first time in a decade, Washington kept a relatively low profile and was eager to accentuate the role of the state governors and their militias.⁴ Eyewitnesses observed Hamilton briskly taking charge while Washington seemed a bit detached. One young messenger who deposited dispatches at headquarters said that Hamilton was clearly “the master spirit. The president remained aloof, conversing with the writer in relation to roads, distances, etc. Washington was grave, distant, and austere. Hamilton was kind, courteous, and frank.”⁵

While Washington was at Carlisle, Henry Knox belatedly returned to Philadelphia. It must have dawned on him just how annoyed Washington was by his protracted absence, for he sent him a letter awash with “inexpressible regret that an extraordinary course of contrary winds” had delayed his return.⁶ Knox volunteered to join Washington at Carlisle and must have been shocked by his curt reply: “It would have given me pleasure to have had you with me on my present tour and advantages might have resulted from it, if your return in time would have allowed it. It is now too late.”⁷ This was a remarkable message: the president was banishing the secretary of war from the largest military operation to unfold since the Revolutionary War. In addition to giving Knox a stinging rap on the knuckles, Washington must also have seen that Hamilton had assumed a commanding posture and would have yielded to Knox only with reluctance.

With general prosperity reigning in the country, Washington found something perverse in the discontent of the whiskey rebels, telling Carlisle residents that “instead of murmurs and tumults,” America’s condition called “for our warmest gratitude to heaven.”⁸ He faulted the insurgents for failing to recognize that the excise law was not a fiat, issued by an autocratic government, but a tax voted by their lawful representatives. To avert bloody confrontations, two representatives of the rebel farmers traveled to Carlisle to hold talks with Washington. Born in northern Ireland, Congressman William Findley was a solid foe of administration policies, and David Redick, also born in Ireland, was a former member of Pennsylvania’s Supreme Executive Council. On their way to Carlisle, the two had received disturbing reports of an unruly federal army that could not wait to wreak havoc on the western rebels. Rough, shrewd men from the Pennsylvania backwoods, Findley and Redick were realists and let Washington know that frontier settlers were now prepared to pay the whiskey tax.

At two meetings Washington received them courteously enough and pledged to curb vengeful feelings in his army. “The president was very sensible of the inflammatory and ungovernable disposition that had discovered itself in the army before he arrived at Carlisle,” Findley recollected, “and he had not only labored incessantly to remove that spirit and prevent its effects, but he was solicitous also to remove our fears.”⁹ Washington, who sensed that the two emissaries were frightened, believed that the insurgents were defiant only when the army remained distant. He warned that “unequivocal proofs of absolute submission” would be required to stop the army from marching deeper into the western country.¹⁰ He also stated categorically that if the rebels fired at the troops, “there could be no answering for consequences in this case.”¹¹ Viewing the Whiskey Rebellion as the handiwork of the Democratic-Republican Societies, bent on subverting government, he did not intend to relent too easily. Such was his outrage over the menacing and irresponsible behavior of these groups that it threatened his longtime friendship with James Madison. In a private letter to Secretary of State Randolph, Washington wrote, “I should be extremely sorry therefore if Mr. M——n from any cause whatsoever should get entangled with [the societies], or their politics.”¹²

As he proceeded west toward Bedford, the president cast a discerning eye on the surrounding scenery, not as a future battlefield but as a site for future real estate transactions. “I shall summarily notice the kind of land and state of improvements along the road I have come,” he vowed in his diary.¹³ However conciliatory he was with Findley and Redick, he clung to the conviction that the incorrigible rebels would submit only under duress. When he heard reports of insurgents cowering as the army approached, he wrote cynically that “though submission is professed, their principles remain the same and . . . nothing but coercion and example will reclaim and bring them to a due and unequivocal submission to the laws.”¹⁴

Reaching Bedford, Washington rode in imposing style along the line of soldiers—his back troubles had miraculously eased—and the army reacted with palpable esteem for its commander in chief. As Washington passed, a Dr. Wellington noted in his diary, the men “were affected by the sight of their chief, for whom each individual seemed to show the affectionate regard that would have been [shown] to an honored parent . . . Gen[era]l Washington . . . passed along the line bowing in the most respectful and affectionate manner to the officers. He appeared pleased.”¹⁵ Washington must have been buoyed by his reception and the return to the rugged life of a field command, away from the sedentary urban duties of the presidency. Because the whole point of the expedition was to establish the sovereign principle of law and order in the new federal system, he warned his men that it would be “peculiarly unbecoming” to inflict wanton harm on the whiskey rebels and that civil magistrates, not military tribunals, should mete out punishment to them.¹⁶ He huddled with Hamilton and Henry Lee to work out plans for two columns to push west toward Pittsburgh. On October 21, once the military arrangements were completed, he disappeared into his carriage and doubled back to Philadelphia through heavy rain, leaving Hamilton in charge and sending the Jeffersonian press into a frenzy. Benjamin Franklin Bache’s Aurora flayed Hamilton as a military despot in the making, construing his current position as but “a first step towards a deep laid scheme, not for the promotion of the country’s prosperity, but the advancement of his private interests.”¹⁷