States are
highly inflamed against each other, and that there is but one
character which keeps both in awe. As soon as the sword shall be
drawn, who shall be able to retain them."

Mifflin, the governor of Pennsylvania, deprecated immediate resort to
force; the venerable Chief Justice McKean suggested the sending of
commissioners on the part of the federal and state governments.
Washington, with perfect judgment, combined these plans, and happily
allied conciliation with force. A proclamation was issued on August 7
summoning all persons involved in the disturbance to lay down their arms
and repair to their homes by September 1. Requisitions were made upon
the governors of Pennsylvania, Maryland, Virginia, and New Jersey for
fifteen thousand men in all, and a joint commission of five was
raised,--three of whom on the part of the United States were appointed
by the President, and two on the part of the State of Pennsylvania. This
news was soon known at Pittsburgh, and rapidly spread through the
adjacent country; and it was clear that in the proceedings to be taken
at Parkinson's Ferry the question of resistance or submission must be
definitively settled. On August 14, 1794, the convention assembled; two
hundred and twenty-six delegates in all, of whom ninety-three were from
Washington, forty-nine from Westmoreland, forty-three from Allegheny,
thirty-three from Fayette, two from Bedford, five from Ohio County in
Virginia, with spectators to about the same number.

Parkinson's Ferry, later called Williamsport, and now Monongahela City,
is on the left bank of the Monongahela, about half way between
Pittsburgh and Red Stone Old Fort or Brownsville. Brackenridge pictures
the scene with his usual local color: "Our hall was a grove, and we
might well be called 'the Mountain' (an allusion to the radical left of
the French convention), for we were on a very lofty ground overlooking
the river. We had a gallery of lying timber and stumps, and there were
more people collected there than there was of the committee." In full
view of the meeting stood a liberty pole, raised in the morning by the
men who signed the Braddock's Field circular order, and it bore the
significant motto, "Liberty and no excise and no asylum for cowards."
Among the delegates, or the committee, to use their own term, were
Bradford, Marshall, Brackenridge, Findley, and Gallatin. Before the
meeting was organized, Marshall came to Gallatin and showe