of
controlling an excited and aggrieved population. But he did not
hesitate.

The people among whom he had made his home, and whose confidence had
never failed him, were his people. By them he would stand in their
extremity, and if hurt or ruin befell them, it should not be for want of
the interposition of his counsel. He knew his powers, and he determined
to bring them into full play. He knew the danger also, but it only
nerved him to confront and master it. He knew his duty, and did not
swerve one hair from the line it prompted. In no part of his long,
varied, and useful political life does he appear to better advantage
than in this exciting episode of the Whiskey Insurrection. His
self-possession, his cool judgment, swayed neither by timidity nor
rashness, never for a moment failed him. Here he displayed that
remarkable combination of persuasion and control,--the indispensable
equipment of a political chief,--which, in later days, gave him the
leadership of the Republican party. With intuitive perception of the
political situation he saw that the only path to safety, beset with
difficulty and danger though it were, was through the convention at
Parkinson's Ferry. He did not believe that any revolutionary proceedings
had yet been taken, or that the convention was an illegal body, but he
was determined to separate the wheat from the chaff, and disengage the
moderate and the law-abiding from the disorderly. By the light of his
own experience he had learned wisdom. He also had drawn a lesson from
the French Revolution, and knew the uncontrollable nature of large
popular assemblages. The news from Philadelphia, the seat of government,
was of a kind to increase his alarm. Washington was not the man to
overlook such an insult to authority as the resistance to the marshal
and inspector; nor was it probable that Hamilton would let pass such an
occasion for showing the strength and vigor of the government.

Before the meeting at Braddock's Field, the secretary's plans for a
suppression of the insurrection were matured. On August 2 he laid
before the President an estimate of the probable armed force of the
insurgents, and of that with which he proposed to reduce them to
submission. When the question of the use of force came before the
cabinet, Edmund Randolph, who was secretary of state, opposed it in a
written opinion, one phrase of which deserves repetition:--

"It is a fact well known that the parties in the United