of the disturbance, it would have been no more than they
deserved. But the guilty had signed the amnesty, or had left the
county before the army approached."

Dallas, the secretary of state, Gallatin's friend, was one of this
troop. Gallatin saw him soon after his return. In a letter to his wife
of December 3, Gallatin relates the experience of the trooper who had
little stomach for the work he had to do.

"I saw Dallas yesterday. Poor fellow had a most disagreeable
campaign of it. He says the spirits, I call it the madness, of the
Philadelphia Gentlemen's Corps was beyond conception before the
arrival of the President. He saw a list (handed about through the
army by officers, nay, by a general officer) of the names of those
persons who were to be destroyed at all events, and you may easily
guess my own was one of the most conspicuous. Being one day at
table with sundry officers, and having expressed his opinion that,
if the army were going only to support the civil authority, and not
to do any military execution, one of them (Dallas did not tell me
his name, but I am told it was one Ross of Lancaster, aide-de-camp
to Mifflin) half drew a dagger he wore instead of a sword, and
swore any man who uttered such sentiments ought to be dagged. The
President, however, on his arrival, and afterwards Hamilton, took
uncommon pains to change the sentiments, and at last it became
fashionable to adopt, or at least to express, sentiments similar to
those inculcated by them."

Randolph was, perhaps, not far out of the way in his fear of a civil war
should blood be drawn, and in his conviction that the influence of
Washington was the only sedative for the fevered political pulse. On
November 17 general orders were issued for the return of the army, a
detachment of twenty-five hundred men only remaining in the West, under
command of General Morgan. There were no further disturbances. The army
expenses gave a circulating medium, and the farmers, having now the
means to pay their taxes, made no further complaints of the excise law.
The total expense of the insurrection to the government was $800,000.

Mr. Gallatin returned with his wife from his western home early in
November. He had been again chosen at the October elections to represent
Fayette in the Pennsylvania Assembly. Moreover, at the same time, he was
elected to represent the congres