." Findley, in his allotment of the honors of the
day, considers that "the verbal alterations made by Gallatin saved the
question." Brackenridge thought that his own seeming to coincide with
Bradford prevented the declaration of war; and he has been credited with
having saved the western counties from the horrors of civil war,
Pittsburgh from destruction, and the Federal Union from imminent danger.
Historians have agreed in according to Gallatin the honor of this field
day. It was left to John C. Hamilton, half a century later, to charge a
want of courage upon Gallatin,--a baseless charge.[3] Not Malesherbes,
the noble advocate defending the accused monarch before the angry French
convention, with the certainty of the guillotine as the reward of his
generosity, is more worthy of admiration than Gallatin boldly pleading
the cause of order within rifle range of an excited band of lawless
frontiersmen. If, as he confessed later, in his part in the Pittsburgh
resolutions he was guilty of "a political sin," he nobly atoned for it
under circumstances that would have tried the courage of men bred to
danger and to arms. Sin it was, and its consequences were not yet summed
up. For although the back of the insurrection was broken at Red Stone
Old Fort, there was much yet to be done before submission could be
completed.
Bradford attempted to sign, but found that his course at Red Stone Old
Fort had placed him outside the amnesty. Well might the moderate men say
in their familiar manner of Scripture allusion, "Dagon is fallen." He
fled down the Ohio and Mississippi to Louisiana, then foreign soil. The
commissioners waited at Pittsburgh for the signatures of adhesion on
September 10, which was the last day allowed by the terms of amnesty.
They required that meetings should be held on this day in the several
townships; the presiding officers to report the result to commissioner
Ross at Uniontown the 16th of the same month, on which day he would set
out for Philadelphia. The time was inadequate, but there was no help.
Gallatin hastened the submission of Fayette, and a meeting of committees
from the several townships met at the county seat, Uniontown, on
September 10, 1794, when a declaration drawn by Mr. Gallatin was
unanimously adopted. A passage in this admirable paper shows the
comparative order which prevailed in Fayette County during this period
of trouble. It is an appeal to the people of the neighboring counties,
who, under
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