Page 203 - American Stories, A History of the United States

To avoid this imagined disaster, officials in Madrid offered Pinckney extraordinary
7.1 concessions: the opening of the Mississippi, the right to deposit goods in New Orleans
without paying duties, a secure southern boundary on the 31st parallel (a line roughly
Quick Check parallel to the northern boundary of Florida and running west to the Mississippi),
7.2 Why did “The opening of the and a promise to stay out of Indian affairs. An amazed Pinckney signed the Treaty
Mississippi” figure so prominently of San Lorenzo (Pinckney’s Treaty) on October 27, 1795. In March 1796, the Senate
in American Politics during ratified it without a single dissenting vote. Pinckney, who came from a prominent
the 1790s? South Carolina family, became the hero of the Federalist Party. (see Map 7.1).
7.3

7.4 Popular Political culture

7.5 7.4 Why was it hard for Americans to accept political dissent as a part of political activity?
M ore than any other event during Washington’s administration, ratifica-

tion of Jay’s Treaty generated intense political strife. Even as members of
Congress voted as Republicans or Federalists, they condemned the rising
partisan spirit as a threat to the stability of the United States. Popular
writers equated “party” with “faction” and “faction” with “conspiracy to overthrow
legitimate authority.” Party conflict also suggested that Americans had lost the com-
mon purpose that had united them during the Revolution. Contemporaries did not
appreciate the beneficial role that parties could play in presenting alternative solu-
tions to foreign and domestic problems. Organized opposition smacked of disloyalty
and therefore had to be eliminated by any means—fair or foul.

Whiskey Rebellion: charges of Republican conspiracy

Political tensions became explosive in 1794. The Federalists convinced themselves that
the Republicans were actually prepared to employ violence against the U.S. government.
Although the charge was baseless, it took on plausibility in the context of growing party strife.
The crisis developed when farmers in western Pennsylvania protested a federal excise
tax on distilled whiskey that Congress had passed in 1791. They did not relish paying any
taxes, but this tax struck them as particularly unfair. They made a good deal of money
distilling their grain into whiskey, and the excise threatened to put them out of business.
Largely because the Republican governor of Pennsylvania refused to suppress the
angry farmers, Washington and other leading Federalists assumed that the insurrec-
tion represented a direct political challenge. The president called out 15,000 militiamen
and, accompanied by Hamilton, he marched against the rebels. The expedition was a
fiasco. The distillers disappeared. Predictably, no one in the Pittsburgh region seemed
to know where the troublemakers had gone. Two supposed rebels were convicted of
high crimes against the United States; one was reportedly a “simpleton” and the other
Whiskey rebellion Protests in insane. Washington pardoned both men. As peace returned to the frontier, Republi-
1794 by western Pennsylvania cans gained electoral support from voters the Federalists had alienated.
farmers against a federal tax In the national political forum, however, the Whiskey Rebellion had just begun.
on whiskey. The uprising was Spokesmen for both parties offered sinister explanations for the seemingly innocu-
suppressed when President ous affair. Washington blamed the Republican clubs for promoting civil unrest. He
George Washington called an army
of 15,000 troops to the area. apparently believed that the opposition party had dispatched French agents to western
Pennsylvania to undermine the federal government. In November 1794, Washington
informed Congress that these “self-created societies”—the Republican political clubs—
Quick Check had inspired “a spirit inimical to all order.” Indeed, the Whiskey Rebellion had been
Why did Washington and his “fomented by combinations of men who … have disseminated, from an ignorance or
supporters see the Whiskey perversion of facts, suspicions, jealousies, and accusations of the whole Government.”
Rebellion as something more sinister The president’s interpretation of this rural tax revolt was no more charitable than
than just an “embarrassing fiasco”?
the conspiratorial explanation the Republicans offered. Jefferson labeled the entire epi-
170 sode a Hamiltonian device to create an army to intimidate Republicans.