Hamilton added still another great
achievement to his record of illustrious service in establishing public
authority. The violent agitation against the excise act promoted by the
Jeffersonians naturally tended to forcible resistance. One of the counts
of Jefferson's indictment of Hamilton's policy which had been presented to
Washington was that the excise law was "of odious character ... committing
the authority of the Government in parts where resistance is most probable
and coercion least practicable." The parts thus referred to were the
mountains of western Pennsylvania. The popular discontent which arose
there from the imposition of taxes upon their principal staple--distilled
spirits--naturally coalesced with the agitation carried on against
Washington's neutrality policy. At a meeting of delegates from the
election districts of Allegheny county held at Pittsburgh, resolutions
were adopted attributing the policy of the Government "to the pernicious
influence of stockholders." This was an echo of Jefferson's views. But the
resolutions went on to declare: "Our minds feel this with so much
indignancy, that we are almost ready to wish for a state of revolution and
the guillotine of France, for a short space, in order to inflict
punishment on the miscreants that enervate and disgrace our Government."
This was an echo of the talk in the political clubs that had been formed
throughout the country. The original model was apparently the Jacobin club
of Paris. The Philadelphia club with which the movement started, soon
after Genet's arrival, adopted the Jacobin style of utterance. It declared
its object to be the preservation of a freedom whose existence was menaced
by a "European confederacy transcendent in power and unparalleled in
iniquity," and also by "the pride of wealth and arrogance of power"
displayed in the United States. Writing to Governor Lee of Virginia,
Washington said that he considered "this insurrection as the first
formidable fruit of the Democratic Societies."

Hamilton moved warily, doing whatever lay in his power to smooth the
practical working of the system in the hope of "attaining the object of
the laws by means short of force." But such was the inflamed state of
feeling in western Pennsylvania that no course was acceptable short of
abandonment by the Government of efforts to enforce the internal revenue
laws. During 1793, there were several outrageous attacks on agents of the
Government, and the exec