m Annals of Congress, Fourth Congress, second session, 2796.]

BY THE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA.

A PROCLAMATION.

Whereas combinations to defeat the execution of the laws laying duties
upon spirits distilled within the United States and upon stills have
from the time of the commencement of those laws existed in some of the
western parts of Pennsylvania; and

Whereas the said combinations, proceeding in a manner subversive
equally of the just authority of government and of the rights of
individuals, have hitherto effected their dangerous and criminal
purpose by the influence of certain irregular meetings whose proceedings
have tended to encourage and uphold the spirit of opposition by
misrepresentations of the laws calculated to render them odious; by
endeavors to deter those who might be so disposed from accepting offices
under them through fear of public resentment and of injury to person and
property, and to compel those who had accepted such offices by actual
violence to surrender or forbear the execution of them; by circulating
vindictive menaces against all those who should otherwise, directly or
indirectly, aid in the execution of the said laws, or who, yielding
to the dictates of conscience and to a sense of obligation, should
themselves comply therewith; by actually injuring and destroying
the property of persons who were understood to have so complied; by
inflicting cruel and humiliating punishments upon private citizens for
no other cause than that of appearing to be the friends of the laws; by
intercepting the public officers on the highways, abusing, assaulting,
and otherwise ill treating them; by going to their houses in the night,
gaining admittance by force, taking away their papers, and committing
other outrages, employing for these unwarrantable purposes the agency of
armed banditti disguised in such manner as for the most part to escape
discovery; and

Whereas the endeavors of the Legislature to obviate objections to the
said laws by lowering the duties and by other alterations conducive
to the convenience of those whom they immediately affect (though they
have given satisfaction in other quarters), and the endeavors of
the executive officers to conciliate a compliance with the laws by
explanations, by forbearance, and even by particular accommodations
founded on the suggestion of local considerations, have been
disappointed of their effect by the machinations of persons whose
in