Washington [499]
On October 28, after days of sliding along muddy roads, Washington rolled back into Philadelphia, right before Congress came into session. In his sixth annual address to Congress, on November 19, he defended his conduct in western Pennsylvania and singled out “certain self-created societies” as having egged on the protesters and assumed a permanently threatening character to government authority.18 For those who missed the glaring reference, the Federalist Fisher Ames claimed that the Democratic-Republican Societies, inspired by the French Jacobin clubs, “were born in sin, the impure offspring of Genet,” and produced “everywhere the echoes of factions in Congress.”19 Washington’s rare display of public temper generated a mood of high drama; one Federalist congressman vouched that he had “felt a strange mixture of passions which I cannot describe. Tears started into my eyes, and it was with difficulty that I could suppress an involuntary effort to swear that I would support him.”20
Washington’s allusion to the new societies, which sounded sinister, produced deep reverberations in American politics. The Senate applauded his warning, but in the House James Madison denounced what he saw as the censure of legitimate political clubs. “If we advert to the nature of republican government,” he said, “we shall find that the censorial power is in the people over the government, and not in the government over the people.”21 It was an astounding development: James Madison, the former confidant of Washington, was now openly condemning his mentor. So unwarranted did Madison consider Washington’s criticism of the “self-created societies” that he privately told Jefferson that it was “perhaps the greatest error” of Washington’s political life.22 Madison descried a strategy to denigrate the societies by associating them with the Whiskey Rebellion, and then to denigrate congressional Republicans by associating them with the societies—all as part of an effort to boost the Federalist party. For Jefferson, Washington’s speech was a patent attack on free speech, confirming a monarchical mentality that was “perfectly dazzled by the glittering of crowns and coronets.”23 For Madison and Jefferson, this was the pivotal moment when Washington surrendered any pretense of nonpartisanship and became the open leader of the Federalists.
As Washington anticipated, the display of military might in western Pennsylvania caused the uprising to wither. But it would stand as the biggest display of armed resistance to the federal government until the Civil War. Approximately 150 prisoners were taken into custody, and Washington showed commendable clemency in dealing with them. After two rebel leaders were tried and sentenced to death, Washington, drawing on this constitutional power for the first time, pardoned both men. Throughout the ordeal, he had shown consummate judgment, acting with firmness and moderation, trying diplomacy first but then, like a stern parent, preparing to dole out punishment. Given the giant scale of the protest and the governmental response, there had been remarkably few deaths. In a classic balancing act, he had conferred new luster on republican government, showing it could contain large-scale disorder without sacrificing constitutional niceties, and his popularity only grew in consequence.
The aftermath of the Whiskey Rebellion led to a dramatic shift in Washington’s cabinet. If the episode augmented Republican fears about Hamilton’s influence, the treasury secretary had a surprise in store for them. On December 1, the same day he