His right-hand
lieutenant was Alexander Hamilton, who felt quite as keenly as he
did himself the importance of putting down such an insurrection.
Washington knew that if any body of the people were allowed unpunished
to rise and disobey any law which pinched or irritated them, all law
and order would very soon go by the board. His action was one of the
great examples in government which he set the people of the United
States. He showed that we must never parley or haggle with sedition,
treason, or lawlessness, but must strike a blow that cannot be
parried, and at once. The Whiskey Insurrectionists may have imagined
that they were too remote to be reached in their western wilderness,
but he taught them a most salutary lesson that, as they were in the
Union, the power of the Union could and would reach them.
One of the matters which Washington could not have foreseen was the
outrageous abuse of the press, which surpassed in virulence and
indecency anything hitherto known in the United States. At first the
journalistic thugs took care not to vilify Washington personally,
but, as they became more outrageous, they spared neither him nor his
family. Freneau, Bache, and Giles were among the most malignant of
these infamous men; and most suspicious is it that two of them at
least were proteges of Thomas Jefferson. Once, when the attack was
particularly atrocious, and the average citizen might well be excused
if he believed that Jefferson wrote it, Jefferson, unmindful of the
full bearing of the French proverb, _Qui s'excuse s'accuse_, wrote
to Washington exculpating himself and protesting that he was not the
author of that particular attack, and added that he had never written
any article of that kind for the press.
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