l
officers and other citizens, according to their respective duties and
the laws of the land, to exert their utmost endeavors to prevent and
suppress such dangerous proceedings.

In testimony whereof I have caused the seal of the United States of
America to be affixed to these presents, and signed the same with my
hand.

[SEAL.]

Done at the city of Philadelphia, the 7th day of August, 1794, and
of the Independence of the United States of America the nineteenth.

GEORGE WASHINGTON.

By the President:
EDM. RANDOLPH.

[From Annals of Congress, Third Congress, 1413.]

BY THE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA.

A PROCLAMATION.

Whereas from a hope that the combinations against the Constitution
and laws of the United States in certain of the western counties of
Pennsylvania would yield to time and reflection I thought it sufficient
in the first instance rather to take measures for calling forth the
militia than immediately to embody them, but the moment is now come when
the overtures of forgiveness, with no other condition than a submission
to law, have been only partially accepted; when every form of
conciliation not inconsistent with the being of Government has been
adopted without effect; when the well-disposed in those counties are
unable by their influence and example to reclaim the wicked from their
fury, and are compelled to associate in their own defense; when the
proffered lenity has been perversely misinterpreted into an apprehension
that the citizens will march with reluctance; when the opportunity of
examining the serious consequences of a treasonable opposition has been
employed in propagating principles of anarchy, endeavoring through
emissaries to alienate the friends of order from its support, and
inviting its enemies to perpetrate similar acts of insurrection; when
it is manifest that violence would continue to be exercised upon every
attempt to enforce the laws; when, therefore, Government is set at
defiance, the contest being whether a small portion of the United States
shall dictate to the whole Union, and, at the expense of those who
desire peace, indulge a desperate ambition:

Now, therefore, I, George Washington, President of the United States,
in obedience to that high and irresistible duty consigned to me by
the Constitution "to take care that the laws be faithfully executed,"
deploring that the American name should be sullied by the outrages of
citizens on their own Gove