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Introductory Quote

1 Jacobin Agitation and Tammany

Introductory QuoteChaplain to the Grand Lodge of Freemasons of Con-

necticut, John Ogden, in A View of the New England Illumi-nati (1799) wrote:

If the New England Illuminati proceed unheeded and uncontrolled, this nation will constantly experience the pernicious effects of discord and popular discontent. Wars at home, tumults abroad, the degradation of legisla-tures, judges and jurors, will be our daily por-tion....To dissolve or abolish those societies or clubs would not be to infringe upon the rights of conscience; to counteract them is to estab-lish law and peace.1

The influence of the French Jacobins in America is revealed by the American Jacobins attempt to overthrow the young United States in 1793-1794. The true nature of the Whiskey Rebellion—which is how historians refer to it—has been obscured too long. The serious role of American Jacobins in the Whiskey Rebellion has long been white-washed. It is time to take a fresh look at that event with our eyes opened by all that has subsequently been revealed.

What is the reason that many historians are loathe to pin blame on the Democratic Societies (i.e., the American Jacobin societies) for these events? Those neo-Jacobin sym-pathizers see the incongruity that American Jacobins claimed to espouse “Republicanism” for France but were willing to overthrow the young American Republic. But that is no rea-

Jacobin Agitation and Tammany


son to treat these societies with rose-colored glasses. These societies had their reason to overthrow the United States, and mostly it was to aid France. They imagined they could force the citizens of the U.S.A., once their government was over-thrown, to join their dream of a world-wide confederacy of nations fighting for liberty. As Brissot, then the Jacobin leader who was then the de facto head of state in France, had said in 1792: “we must set fire to the four corners of Europe.”2

The other perceived reason necessitating revolution was Jefferson’s fear that Hamilton sought to make a powerful federal government that would lead eventually to despotism. Jefferson perceived despotism does not merely require one man rule, but could involve simply the extension of federal

1. John Cosens Ogden, A View of the New England Illuminati: who are indefatigably engaged in Destroying the Religion and Government of the United States; under a feigned regard for their safety — and under an impious abuse of true religion (James Carey, 1799) at 10-11, quoted in Stauffer, New England and the Bavarian Illuminati, supra, at 353-54. Ogden explains the clergy in Connecticut were favorable to the French Revolution when it first broke out in 1789-1792. It supposedly fulfilled a millenarian purpose of overthrowing the Anti-Christ (identi-fied as the pope). Indeed, Baptists concurred, basing their support for the French Revolution on its anti-Catholic tendencies and hence fulfill-ing millenarian hopes. (Jason K. Duncan, Citizens or Papists? (Fordham University Press, 2005) at 89.) Then, Ogden in the same work relied upon Barruel’s and Robison’s attribution of the French Revolution to the Illuminati. He then traced this pro-French Revolution clergy to the Illuminati of Europe. See Stauffer, New England and the Bavarian Illuminati, supra, at 348-49. Ogden decried a clergy who took “the colleges into their confederacy, and soon teachers and pupils were busy disseminating throughout the land principles and prejudices favorable to the Revolution in France,” as Stauffer summarizes. Id., citing Ogden at 5. On Ogden’s service as lodge chaplain, see “Freema-sons Columbian Lodge Nottingham N H: A sermon preached before the Columbian Lodge, [electronic resource]: at Nottingham, Sep. 7. 1790. in the state of New Hampshire; by the Rev. John Cosens Ogden, Rector of St. John’s-Church, in Portsmouth, and Chaplain to the Grand Lodge of Freemasons.” http://library.willamette.edu/ search~S4/a?Freemasons&search_code=a (accessed 3/15/09).


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government powers into the economic activities of everyday life, which is precisely what Jefferson feared was Hamilton’s goal.

These twin issues — fear of federalism and a desire to aid France — were the key source of momentum to those behind the Whiskey Rebellion. Had it succeeded, the U.S.A. would have been a far less centralized federal system, but at the same time would have joined the international revolution that France was embarked upon. This is the true explanation for the effort at revolution from above which sought to suc-ceed by pressured for revolution from below.

Founding of TammanyThis movement started with a secret society called the

Society of St. Tammany (later changed to the Tammany Soci-ety), destined to have fame when its secret empire fell in the 1920s. Tammany societies were formed in each of the origi-nal thirteen states. It was founded in 1786, prior to the Demo-cratic Societies of whom we have much to say later. Indisputably, Tammany was discovered to be in a political alliance with the Democratic Societies by 1793. It appears, for reasons that are explained below, that Tammany is the society that founded the Democratic Societies — Tammany serving as the inner circle and the Democratic Societies serv-ing as the outer circle.

The first lodge was founded in 1786 by John Pintard,3 and was known as the “Society of St. Tammany, or the Columbian Order.” The latter name Columbian was in honor

2. Jacques Mallet du Pan, Considerations on the Nature of the French Revolution and on the Causes that prolong its duration (1793)(Intro-duction to reprint by Paul H. Beik) (N.Y.: Howard Fertig, 1974) at 53.

3. “WAS PINTARD, NOT MOONEY, FOUNDER OF TAMMANY HALL?,” N.Y. Times (July 20, 1913) Section: Magazine Section, at SM13 (available through http://query.nytimes.com.)



of Columbus. The first name Tammany was in honor of an Indian chief named Tammany. Their annual festival in honor of “St. Tammany” was May 1st.4 The Tammany Society probably arose from a banquet Pintard arranged at the Mari-time Society in 1786 at which the toasts contain the first “recorded expression of approval for the movement of the Tammany societies in New York...which led to the formation of the Tammany society soon afterward.”5

The society was reorganized in 1789 so as to limit the office of Grand Sachem to only native born Americans. “Pin-tard indulged in hopes for the organization of a great national society....”6 At this juncture, Pintard fulfilled the subordinate role of Sagamore (Master of Ceremonies)

The Namesake Tammany And Freneau’s Poem

Who was the namesake of this society — Tammany? Tammany was an Indian Chief of Pennsylvania and New York known for his wisdom. Legend says he welcomed Will-iam Penn.7 After the Freemason8 Philip Freneau’s poem glo-

4. “WAS PINTARD, NOT MOONEY, FOUNDER OF TAMMANY HALL?,” N.Y. Times (July 20, 1913) Section: Magazine Section, at SM13 (available through http://query.nytimes.com.) May 1st was a date used since 1771 to celebrate Saint Tamina at Annapolis, Maryland among fishing and patriotic clubs known as Sons of Saint Tammany.

5. “WAS PINTARD, NOT MOONEY, FOUNDER OF TAMMANY HALL?,” N.Y. Times (July 20, 1913) Section: Magazine Section, at SM13 (available through http://query.nytimes.com.)

6. Id.7. “Tammany was an Indian chieftain of the Lenni Lennape Confederacy

of New York and Pennsylvania during the early colonial era. There is a tradition that he was the first Indian to welcome William Penn to America. Some traditions locate his lodge near the present site of Prin-ceton College and others make him end his long life near a spring in Bucks county, Pa. He figures in Cooper’s novel, ‘The Last of the Mohicans.’” (Philip Morin Freneau, The poems of Philip Freneau: Poet of the American Revolution (ed. Fred Lewis Pattee) (Princeton: The University Library, 1903) Vol. II at 187 fn. 3.)


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rifying Tammany appeared in the Freeman’s Journal of December 11, 1782, Tammany became synonymous with republicanism and revolution. Philip Freneau extolled the courage of the Indian King Tammany in a transparent attack on the perceived cowardice and “sunshine patriotism” of the Continental Congress in 1782. The poem was entitled The Prophecy of King Tammany.9

It is a very good poem, and actually is prophetic in a way. It tells the story of an anticipated triumphal revolution by the colonists over a foreign tyrant only to be replaced ulti-mately by a congress which lacks courage, true patriotism and virtue. Thus, a small section is worth a moment’s medita-tion before we continue with this history:

When struggling long, at last with pain

You break a cruel tyrant’s chain,

That never shall be joined again,

When half your foes are homeward fled,

And hosts on hosts in triumph led,

And hundreds maimed and thousands dead,

A sordid race will then succeed,

To slight the virtues of the firmer race,

8. Donald Dewey, The art of ill will (N.Y.: NYU Press, 2007) at 13 (“Masons such as Freneau....”)

9. “WAS PINTARD, NOT MOONEY, FOUNDER OF TAMMANY HALL?,” N.Y. Times (July 20, 1913) Section: Magazine Section, at SM13 (available through http://query.nytimes.com.) This poem can be found in: Philip Morin Freneau, The poems of Philip Freneau: Poet of the American Revolution (ed. Fred Lewis Pattee) (Princeton: The Uni-versity Library, 1903) Vol. II at 187. Terminology used by Tammany came right from this poem, e.g., “our far-famed Sachems” (id., at 188)



That brought your tyrant to disgrace,

Shall give your honours to an odious train,

Who shunned all conflicts on the main

And dared no battles on the bloody plain,

Whose little souls sunk in the gloomy day

When virtue only could support the fray

And sunshine friends kept off—or ran away.10

(Do not forget Philip Freneau’s name — he again will be important in this period of history.)

In 1786, the year Pintard founded Tammany, Pintard purchased by subscription two copies of the first edition of Freneau’s poems just published at Philadelphia entitled The Poems of Philip Freneau.11 Freneau was the likely source of the name Tammany and in fact a co-leader. Pintard and Fre-neau were friends for certain in 1789 when “[o]ne of Freneau’s co-laborers upon the [New York] Advertiser was John Pintard [i.e., one of the two principal founders of Tammany in 1786], a warm personal friend and the translating clerk in the Department of State.”12 Thus, there is every reason to suppose they were

10.Philip Morin Freneau, The poems of Philip Freneau: Poet of the Amer-ican Revolution (ed. Fred Lewis Pattee) (Princeton: The University Library, 1903) Vol. II at 189.

11. “Philip Freneau,” George and Evert Duyckinck, in Cyclopedia of American Literature (1856; 1875), available at http://198.82.142.160/spenser/BiographyRecord.php?action=GET&bioid=35706 (accessed 3/28/09)(“De Witt Clinton takes a copy in New York, and John Pintard subscribes for two.”)

12.Samuel Eagle Forman, “The Political Activities of Philip Freneau,” in John Hopkins University Studies in Historical and Political Science (Ed. J.M.Vincent) (Baltimore: John Hopkins Press, 1902) Vol. XX at 28-29 [492-93 of Volume XX].


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already friends in 1786 when Pintard obviously borrowed Freneau’s poetical hero Tammany from the subscription to Freneau’s poems received in 1786.

Later we shall see a very close association of Pintard (founder of Tammany) and Freneau (author of Prophecy of King Tammany) with Thomas Jefferson — the historical importance of which cannot be underestimated.

Original Political Feelings of Tammany

The founders of Tammany at first made much of Mirabeau’s book of 1784 seeking to alarm Americans about the Society of Cincinnati.13 The Society of Cincinnati was merely an honorary society among former veterans of the United States War for Independence. Membership was ini-tially hereditary, just like the later society of the Daughters of the Revolution.14 However, Mirabeau’s piece alleged the Society of Cincinnati was an effort to introduce a military-based aristocracy in America.15 Washington was a member of the Society of Cincinnati, and thus Mirabeau’s piece indi-rectly accused Washington of desiring to rule over an aristoc-racy of his military commanders.

Tammany spread this senseless hysteria for a time although by 1789 it died down.16

13. Kilroe explains, however, that any suspicion of the Cincinnati society toward aristocracy had all but expired at the Tammany Society by 1789, and rather Tammany by 1789 maintained cordial relations with the Society of Cincinnati. See Edwin P. Kilroe, Saint Tammany and the Origin of the Society of Tammany or Columbian Order in the City of New York (Ph.d. dissertation, Columbia University)(N.Y.: 1913) at 141.

14.See dar.org. The society describes itself as the “Non-profit, women’s organization for the descendants of individuals who aided in achieving American independence.”



The importance of this conspiracy hysteria fanned by Tammany should not be overlooked. Markus Hünemörder in 2006 wrote an entire book on this conspiracy hysteria enti-tled: The Society of the Cincinnati: Conspiracy and Distrust in Early America.17

Also, at the beginning, Tammany saw their struggle as against “the machinations of those agents and slaves of for-eign despots.”18 This subtly meant they opposed any for-eigner from a nation still run by a monarch rather than a republic, viz., Britain.

Further, an early Tammany spokesperson said it was a “political institution founded on a strong republican basis whose democratic principles will serve in some measure to

15.Considérations sur l’ordre de Cincinnatus. This was Mirabeau’s very first book, and the cause of his initial fame. Mirabeau wrote this work “at Franklin’s request....” (Francis S. Drake, Memorials of the Society of the Cincinnati of Massachusetts (Boston: 1873) at 22.) Franklin called Mirabeau to Franklin’s estate at Passy near Paris. Franklin essentially hired Mirabeau to take on the task. When the book could not be published at Paris, Franklin provided Mirabeau a letter dated September 1784 to use at London as the entreé with Mr. Vaughn so he would publish this work against “hereditary nobility.” (See The Private Correspondence of Benjamin Franklin (London: Henry Colburn, 1817) Vol. I at 175.) Mirabeau served as a cover for Franklin in more ways than one. Mirabeau “drew heavily from an earlier essay by Fran-klin that attacked the Society of Cincinnati.” (Bill Marshall & Cristina Johnston, France and the Americas (ABC-CLIO, 2005) at 484.) The thesis of the book was that Steuben was “Grand Master” of the Order, and they would perpetuate an aristocracy by the hereditary nature of membership. Mirabeau said this would “undermine the public weal” and strip the “middle and lower ranks of all influence,” reducing them to a “nullity.” (Francis S. Drake, Memorials of the Society of the Cin-cinnati of Massachusetts (Boston: 1873) at 23.) In the same piece, Mirabeau exhorts America to support freedom of trade. (Lewis Rosenthal, America and France (N.Y.: Henry Hold & Co., 1882) at 95.) The first edition was issued in September 1784 at London. See http://www.antipodean.com (search “Society of Cincinnati”). Mira-beau was “aided by Chamfort” in publishing this book. (Rosenthal, supra, at 95.) The English translation was done by Mirabeau’s friend at London, Sir Samuel Romilly, a later admiring biographer of Mirabeau.


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correct the aristocracy of our city.”19 Thus, Tammany in America was opposed to ‘aristocrats’ in the loose sense of the rich and powerful.

Tammany Structure

The leader of Tammany was called the Grand Sachem and he had 12 Sachems who led the organization. This was identical with the Illuminati’s unique structure. Its first Grand Sachem in New York was William Mooney.20 (Tammany’s first famous leader and Grand Sechem was Aaron Burr who took Tammany to its first great political heights in 1800.)21

Then the Wiskinskie, or doorkeeper, and Sagamore, the master of ceremonies, were other lodge officers. The Tammany lodge was called a Wigwam. Tammany had elabo-rate secret rites, titles, and handshakes. Just like the Bavarian Illuminati, Tammany did not use the Christian calendar. Instead, it divided the year into seasons, and these into moons. Its notices reckoned time both from when Columbus discovered America and the Declaration of Independence. Each member adopted a secret name from Indian lore. Each state was given a name, for example, New York was Eagle, Delaware was Tiger, Rhode Island was Beaver, and so on.

16.See Footnote 13 on page 7.17.Markus Hünemörder, The Society of the Cincinnati: Conspiracy and

Distrust in Early America (European Studies in American History, number 2)(New York: Berghahn Books. 2006). This work was reviewed in The American Historical Review (April 2008) Vol. 113:495–496.

18.Jason K. Duncan, Citizens or Papists? (Fordham University Press, 2005) at 84.

19.Duncan, id., at 84.20.Mooney was born in New York City in 1756 and was raised an Angli-

can. He fought in the American Revolution, became an upholsterer and married Abigail Blake in 1777 in Trinity Church. “Mooney and Pintard were early among the society’s first leaders” and Mooney was “Grand Sechem.” (Duncan, id., at 84.)



During initiations, members wore Indian feathers and dress. In public parades, they wore Indian headdress and clothing. Their activity was nationwide. For example, Eugene Link, an expert on the Democratic Societies in the Carolinas, noted that there were in 1793 and 1794 active Tammany societies in both south and north Carolina. The societies that lasted past 1818 were in Philadelphia, Providence, Rhode Island, Brook-lyn, N.Y., Lexington, Kentucky, as well as the head group in Manhattan, New York. This Tammany society controlled a Hall that it used to stir up political rallies, later infamous as Tammany Hall.22

Tammany was rabidly favorable to the Jacobins of France and anti-Christian like their counterparts. In Tam-many’s 1791 celebration of May 12th, Myers says, “The soci-

21.This was most visible during 1798-1800, which period is beyond the scope of our discussion here. However, it is a very important episode in American history. As discussed in Samuel Peter Orth, Five American Politicians (1906) at 39: “Now we must return to Tammany, the orga-nization which formed the nucleus of the first party discipline in Amer-ica. Through Tammany, Burr controlled the artisans, the poorer freeholders. His own home became the rendezvous of his most trusted lieutenants, whose hearts were kindled by the fire of his own zeal.” The second lieutenant at the time was George Clinton: “In the city he chose George Clinton to head the ticket” to run for office in the New York legislature. Id., at 40. This was key because in those days the leg-islatures of the states chose the President, and the legislators could each vote their conscience. Id., at 43. Thus what happened in N.Y. in 1798-1800 is what turned the national election which led to a tie between Jefferson and Burr for president. Yet, whoever won was a vic-tory for the Republicans. Consequently, this is known as a Revolution itself, where Tammany effectively took the Republicans from political obscurity and defeat in 1796 to the Presidency in 1800. Thus, this 1798-1800 Tammany effort “was a political revolution,” explains Orth. “It placed the Republican party in power.” Id., at 43. “At this day we have no conception of what that meant to the Federalists. To them Jef-fersonianism was Jacobinism, was atheism, was anarchism, was anni-hilation.... Hamilton was stupefied. He wrote to Bayard of Delaware that Burr’s Tammany Society was the cause of the Federalist defeat in the city, and Burr’s activity the source of the Republican strength in the counties. He even recommended that the Federalists organize a like machine....” Id., at 43.


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ety assembled at the great Wigwam, in Broad Street... Before them was borne the cap of liberty.” George Clinton, the Gov-ernor of New York (whose daughter would marry the French Brissotin ambassador Genêt who was a founder of the Demo-cratic Societies) then gave a speech to the lodge. Clinton’s toast was:

The head men and chiefs of the Grand Council of the Thirteen United Fires—may they con-vince our foes not only of their courage to lift, prudence to direct, and clemency to withhold the hatchet, but of their power to inflict it in their country’s cause.23

Thus, Clinton specifically endorsed the Tammany members in the thirteen states to be courageous enough to “inflict” the “hatchet” upon “their foes.”

Tammany, Myers relates, “announced its instant sym-pathy with the French Revolution in all of its stages.” In May 1793, Tammany toasted the success of the “armies of France.” The society roared in jubilation. The red Jacobin cap was worn by many.24 In 1792, Tammany proclaimed the recent events in France signified the “Defeat of Aristocracy and the triumph of Liberty.”25

The Tammany society threatened physical attacks on those who opposed the French Revolution in America. In the New York Journal and Patriot Register of June 8, 1793, in an

22.See Eugene Perry Link, “The Democratic Societies of the Carolinas,” The North Carolina Historical Review (July 1941) No. 3, at 262 n. 15. See also Link, Democratic-Republican Societies (1965); Gustavus Myers, The History of Tammany Hall (2d ed.) (N.Y.: Boni & Liveright, Inc., 1917) at vii, viii, 1-6. Gustavus Myers (1872-1942) was “an American reporter, historian and feature writer.” (http://en.wikipe-dia.org/wiki/Gustavus_Myers (accessed 3/21/09).

23.Myers, The History of Tammany Hall, supra, at 7-8.24.Myers, The History of Tammany Hall, supra, at 8.25.Duncan, supra, at 86.



article entitled “A Hint to the Whigs of New York,” it said: “To hear our brethren of France vilified in our streets, but more particularly in that den of ingrates called Belvidere Club House, where at this very moment those enemies of lib-erty are swalling portent draughts to the destruction and anni-hilation of Liberty, Equality, and the Rights of Man, is not to be borne by freemen and I am fully of the opinion that if some method is not adopted to suppress such daring and presumptuous insults, a band of determined Mohawks, Onei-das, and Senekas will take upon themselves that necessary duty.”26 Thus, Tammany copied the love of free speech that its Jacobin counterparts in France applied with ferocity on the hapless French. If anyone attacked France, they threatened to act like a band of Indians and suppress such speech.

Anti-Christian Beliefs Of Founder of Tammany

Tammany’s early anti-christian position came from John Pintard, one of the two primary Tammany founders in 1789. “Pintard dominated the Society in its formative period.”27 Pintard (1759-1844) “was a descendant of Antoine Pintard, a Huguenot from La Rochelle, France.”28 “Pintard was an active Freemason, serving as Master for his Lodge in New York.”29 His positive civic contributions to New York and the nation thereafter are enormous.30

By 1791, John Pintard was a friend of Thomas Paine (Cercle Social member, likely Illuminatus, and close associ-ate of self-professed Illuminatus Bonneville). He wrote Paine that the “your very arguments against Christianity” in Paine’s

26.Myers, The History of Tammany Hall, supra, at 9.27.Edwin P. Kilroe, Saint Tammany and the Origin of the Society of Tam-

many or Columbian Order in the City of New York (Ph.d. dissertation, Columbia University)(N.Y.: 1913) at 137.

28.http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Pintard (accessed 3/20/09).29.http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Pintard (accessed 3/20/09).


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book Age of Reason “have convinced me of its truth.” This book, however, created outrage in the Christian community for its sarcasm, as well as its attempt to debunk the authority of the Bible. Paine was being vilified almost everywhere in the United States of America by critics. However, at a Wig-wam meeting of 1792, Tammany toasted Columbus, Thomas Paine, and the Rights of Man.31 Tammany declared itself a supporter of the infamous Paine and his religious views.

Duncan explains at its earliest stages, the “society’s anti-clericalism was clear; its members in 1792 called for ‘extinction to all Kingcraft and priestcraft, the poisons of

30.“He attended the College at New Jersey (which later became Princeton University), but left school to join the patriot forces when the British arrived at New York. He went on various expeditions to harass the enemy....John served as an alderman to the City of New York. He was rated as one of New York’s most successful and prosperous merchants when in 1792 he lost his fortune by engaging with William Duer in Alexander Hamilton’s scheme to fund the national debt. He had per-sonally endorsed notes for over a million dollars and was imprisoned for the debt....In 1803, John Pintard went to New Orleans to seek his fortune but decided not to settle there. He filed a very favorable report of the French colony to Albert Gallatin, secretary of the treasury, and minister to France James Monroe, a relative by marriage to his wife’s aunt. Pintard’s report was instrumental in convincing Thomas Jeffer-son to purchase the Louisiana Territory. He served as first city inspec-tor for many years after 1804.... From 1819 to 1829 he served as secretary of the New York Chamber of Commerce....He also was a founder of the New York Historical Society and the Massachusetts Historical Society. John Pintard served as manager of the state lotteries and was first sagamore of the Tammany Society. On February 19, 1805 he began the efforts which became the present free school system in New York. He was also active in the movement that resulted in the building and completion of the Erie Canal. John Pintard surveyed the plans for the streets and avenues in upper New York City....[He] was one of the chief supporters of the General Theological Seminary and founded the American Bible Society, which he always called his ‘brat.’ He was vestryman for the Huguenot Church of New York City for thirty-four years and his translation of the ‘Book of Common Prayer’ from English to French is still used today.” (Wikipedia.)



public happiness.’”32 As a result, the society soon dropped the “St.” in the name, and Pintard explained the name change: “we have lately uncanonized him.”33

Pintard’s Political Connection With Jefferson

In 1789, Thomas Jefferson was the U.S. Foreign Min-ister in France, having succeeded Benjamin Franklin. Jeffer-son became an excited participant in the French Revolution rather than neutral diplomat. “In 1789, at the time of the fall of the Bastille, and shortly before going home, Jefferson assisted Lafayette on the draft of a French Declaration of the Rights of Man.”34

In 1790, Jefferson returned to the U.S. capital — then New York City — and became the U.S. Secretary of State, serving in George Washington’s administration.

In 1790, Thomas Jefferson appointed John Pintard as his translator of French documents at the Department of State. In those days, their desks would be in close proximity, and selections reflected a cordial friendship besides profes-sional respect. When the capital was being moved in 1791 to Philadelphia, Pintard did not want to move. Upon Madison’s urging,35 Jefferson chose in his place Philip Freneau (whom we previously saw wrote the 1782 poem Prophecy of King Tammany which obviously inspired his friend Pintard’s

31.Moncure D. Conway, The Life of Thomas Paine, supra, I, at 140, 331 (on Pintard).



34.Robert Roswell Palmer, The Age of the Democratic Revolution (Princ-eton University Press, 1959) at 251. In 1788, Jefferson in France also was trying to support writers (Demeunier, Mazzei) who would publi-cize American ideas of liberty. Jefferson also published his own work in France Notes on Virginia in French even before it appeared in English. Id., at 250-51.


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choice for the name of the Tammany society.) In the account of this important switch, we read of what energies were on Jefferson’s mind — to create a “democratic party” in America to reflect the energies that excited him in France. Forman explains:

In 1790, Thomas Jefferson came to New York to assume the duties of Secretary of State. He had just come from Paris where he had been an eye-witness of the storming of the Bastille....When he arrived in New York, his democracy was at a white heat and he eagerly set about building up a democratic party. He met Freneau and found in him a congenial spirit....When the government removed to Philadelphia early in 1791, John Pintard, the French translator in Jefferson’s office, resigned his place, declining to leave New York for the pitiable stipend of two hundred and fifty dollars per annum, the amount appropriated for the translating clerk. Madison and Henry Lee urged Jefferson to appoint Freneau to the position made vacant by Pintard [which offer was extended February 28, 1791].36

Freneau accepted Jefferson’s offer, and this becomes very important later. Yet, in this quote, one sees that upon Jef-ferson’s return to the U.S.A., Jefferson’s passions for the French revolution were in white heat, and Jefferson wanted to “eagerly set about building up a democratic party.” Low and behold, we find one of his first hires is John Pintard,

35.Ronald P. Formisano, For the People: American Populist Movements from the Revolution to the 1850s (University of North Carolina Press, 2008) at 51. Madison and Freneau were classmates at Princeton col-lege.

36.Samuel Eagle Forman, “The Political Activities of Philip Freneau,” in John Hopkins University Studies in Historical and Political Science (Ed. J.M.Vincent) (Baltimore: John Hopkins Press, 1902) Vol. XX at 29 [493 of Volume XX].



the founder of Tammany. This Society would soon emerge as the foundations of what became a Franco-phile demo-cratic party in the U.S.A. It was not a mere coincidence.

Long Obscured Origins of Tammany

One encyclopedia of 1929 says that Tammany “was based on an earlier secret society,” that is pre-1789.37 Profes-sor Kilroe was engaged by School of Political Science of Columbia University to investigate the origins of Tammany. What Professor Kilroe determined in 1913 was that “Tam-many was in existence in 1786 though the writers on the sub-ject always said heretofore that it was founded by Mooney in 1789.”38 From 1786 onward, Professor Kilroe determined that “the prime mover and dominating spirit in the society’s early years” was “John Pintard, merchant, philanthropist, and scholar, whose hobby was the organization of patriotic societ-ies....”39 Professor Kilroe also discovered Tammany had its “parent” society at Philadelphia in the early days. The “Tam-many movement originated in that city....”40 The Tammany “movement then spread through the Southern states and at last came to New York.”41 Hence, the Tammany movement was a “national, not local one....”42

37.“Secret Societies,” Encyclopedia Americana (1972) (reprint of 1929), XXIV, at 517.

38.“WAS PINTARD, NOT MOONEY, FOUNDER OF TAMMANY HALL?,” N.Y. Times (July 20, 1913) Section: Magazine Section, at SM13 (available through http://query.nytimes.com.)





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Professor Kilroe was stunned how little history was ever told about the importance of Tammany on the origin of early American politics. He writes in 1913:

The Tammany societies in the United States exercised a powerful influence in shaping the destinies and in crystallizing the principles of our Government, and have contributed much to the development of our present extra-consti-tutional system of party government. The importance of this influence has been inade-quately recognized by students of American history.

The societies bore the standards of equal rights and popular rule like the powerful Jacobin clubs of the French Revolution, and were the rallying points of Republican activity until the complete annihilation of the Federalist Party. Under the favoring leadership of Thomas Jef-ferson and James Madison the movement flourished and in its organized activities fore-shadowed the establishment of national politi-cal machines. With the passing of the Federalists, the issues which had stimulated the movement disappeared, and one by one the societies succumbed to lethargy resulting from the cessation of violent partisan controversy.

The New York Tammany Society alone remained, presenting the most curious phe-nomenon in the history of American politics and its development from a patriotic and frater-nal organization to an organized force or machine in party politics; in which position,




for three-quarters of a century, it dominated the public life of the American metropolis.43

By 1913, the Tammany political machine that was visible in Democratic party politics of New York and the Tammany Society were confused in the public mind. But Pro-fessor Kilroe explained the Tammany Society is an inner cir-cle, and not the same as the party. They are interlocking but not identical. The “society and the machine so far interlock that it is customary for leaders of the party to be officers of the society. Thus the society is to-day dominated by the polit-ical institution which it created and long controlled.”44

Enduring Importance of Tammany

As Professor Kilroe alluded to in the above quote, Tammany would later emerge by the mid-nineteenth century as the controlling force behind the Democratic Party.

One of the important issues that combined the two was both opposed emancipation of blacks and the end of sla-very. This had the effect of provoking a revolutionary spirit among slave states against non-slave states45 which Tam-many would exploit in the events leading up to the Civil War.

This Tammany control of the Democratic party con-tinued as late as 1929. The Encyclopedia Americana of 1929 said, “Tammany is now wholly a political party within the Democratic party.”46 Similarly, the New Encyclopedia Brit-



45. “Throughout the slave agitation up to the firing on Fort Sumter, the South had no firmer supporter than Tammany.” Myers, The History of Tammany Hall, supra, at 143.

46. “Secret Societies,” Encyclopedia Americana (1972) (reprint of 1929), XXIV, at 517.


Founding of Tammany

tanica (15th Edition) (1974) said Tammany became “the executive committee of the Democratic Party” and exercised political control “by means of identical leadership in both organizations.”47

Political Theories That Empowered The Tammany Machine

A party machine seeks to control the ballot box by promising and delivering to the electorate certain issues. Then by using the spoils system, it keeps control over all aspects of media and merchant activity so that they continue winning elections, and their power-lock cannot be broken.

Tammany was the first to invent the political machine. It developed these strategies by the early 1800’s which it used thereafter to control and/or influence national politics. In 1917, Myers summarized these tactics:• It “appealed to minorities” by “doling out gifts [from the public

treasury] to the poor.” • “[B]ribing of rival political faction leaders...” which included,

for example, in 1814 gaining several Federalist party leaders to become secret members of Tammany.48

• Staging of political conventions at Tammany Hall in New York that gave the appearance of real democracy of the participants, but Tammany “contrived... behind the scenes” to have their favored candidates selected as Democratic party candidates.

47. “Tammany Hall,” The New Encyclopedia Brittanica—Micropedia (15th Ed.) (1974), at 795.

48. Myers aptly commented, “This was about the beginning of that policy, never since abandoned, by which Tammany Hall has frequently broken up opposing parties or factions. The winning over of leaders of the other side and conferring upon them rewards in the form of profitable public office or contracts has been one of the most notable methods of Tammany’s diplomacy.” Myers, History of Tammany Hall, supra, at 36.



• “[S]ystematic discipline” that expelled any member and fired any Tammany-supported politician who criticized Tammany candidates or policy. This discipline relied upon a “committee of spies”—as many called it, to ferret out such disaffection.49

• Tammany's “vigilance committee” would walk the streets to get out the vote while the Federalist opposition were scarcely orga-nized by comparison (during the 1810-1820 period).

• Tammany members were given monopolies in New York on certain businesses (e.g., gas lighting, water supply, etc.).50

• Handing out public works jobs to the unemployed and selling food at cost (1857).51

This Tammany power was finally broken only in the 1920s when the cartoonist Nast exposed Tammany through courageous cartoons.52

49. Myers, The History of Tammany Hall, supra, at 21, 26, 27.50. Myers, The History of Tammany Hall, supra, at 78.51. Myers, The History of Tammany Hall, supra, at 186.52.One modern legacy of Tammany was that its leader, Aaron Burr, char-

tered the Manhattan Bank in 1799. It was New York’s only bank for a time. Myers says, “without this institution Tammany would be quite ineffective.” Using the bank’s tentacles and their members in the New York legislature, Tammany by 1800-09, “had the monopoly on elective offices” in New York. This bank “had been a Tammany institution from the beginning, and Tammany politicians had ruled its politics.” In the 1840s, it was exposed as having loaned large sums to Tammany leaders, its directors, and officials (usually never repaid), as well as it spent large sums for political purposes. (Myers, The History of Tam-many Hall, supra, at 13, 17, 126.) Manhattan Bank is now known as Chase Manhattan Bank. Its Chairman is David Rockefeller. As Myers said, “That the bank weathered the storm [surrounding Tammany’s demise] well-nigh reaches the dimension of a miracle.” (Myers, The History of Tammany Hall, supra, at 127.)


Tammany & The Democratic Societies

Tammany & The Democratic SocietiesIn the next section, we will explain the Democratic

Societies were the principal vehicle intended to cause an anti-federalist revolution in the United States during 1793-1794. The membership of Tammany which was organized by Pin-tard since 1789 over all 13 original states almost completely went over into these Democratic societies in that period. Their membership continued jointly in both, but the Demo-cratic Societies provided a different camouflage. The Demo-cratic Societies were openly political, but not based upon the same level of secrecy and ritual as practiced at Tammany. Thus, it appears the Tammany Society was more of an inner circle while the Democratic Societies were intended as an outer circle for more easy access to the public.

This pattern is most evident in the New York Tam-many Society.

The arrival of Citizen Genêt in America, in 1793, and his agitation for the creation of sym-pathy for the French further stimulated enthu-siasm for the radical republican principles of the French Revolution. Democratic societies, dedicated to the equal rights of men and to the freedom to criticize and correct those in control of the reins of government, sprang up all over the country. These principles found so much favor in the Tammany Society that, when the New York branch of the Democratic Society was established in the city in February, 1794, it was joined by so many members of the Tam-many Society that the two bodies became almost identical in personnel. Thus the Soci-ety was unconsciously drawn toward the Dem-ocratic-Republican Party, and began to take on a political complexion.53



Thus, Tammany in all thirteen states is the most likely origin of the Democratic societies that sprung up in the thir-teen states. Tammany apparently was the inner core and the Democratic societies served as the outer core.

Tammany and the Democratic Societies operated in open alliance in 1794. For example, in the anniversary cele-bration of American Independence in July 1794, “the mem-bers of the Tammany, Democratic, and Mechanics’54 societies proceeded together to Christ Church (Episcopal) and to the new Presbyterian Church.”55

In light of the agitation later by the Democratic Soci-eties, no wonder the perception was that President Washing-ton was attacking Tammany in his farewell address of September 17, 1796 when he condemned the “self-created societies.” Professor Kilroe says Hamilton intimated to his political friends in New York “that the President had in mind the Tammany Society when he denounced such organizations as a menace to republican institutions.”56

Founding of Democratic SocietiesThe founder of the first Democratic Society in July

179357 was Jefferson’s close friend and aide at the Depart-ment of State — Philip Freneau. It was Freneau who first published in the journal which Jefferson hoped Freneau

53.Edwin P. Kilroe, Saint Tammany and the Origin of the Society of Tam-many, supra, at 193.

54.On a Mechanics society that was supporting this movement, see text accompanying Footnote 87 on page 44.

55.Duncan, supra, at 85-86.56.“WAS PINTARD, NOT MOONEY, FOUNDER OF TAMMANY

HALL?,” N.Y. Times (July 20, 1913) Section: Magazine Section, at SM13 (available through http://query.nytimes.com.)

57.See Footnote 60 on page 24 and accompanying text.


Founding of Democratic Societies

would set up to express State Department views, the National Gazette, that America needed to form such political clubs in every state:

Philip Freneau first wrote about the need for these societies in the National Gazette, which he published from October 1791 to October 1793. He challenged the idea that the govern-ment was always right, insisting that informed public opinion was needed to keep the govern-ment from becoming tyrannical. Ignoring or sti-fling public opinion was the result of monarchical thought and a prelude to tyranny. Freneau advocated the formation of clubs to maintain popular interest in government and to let people know when the government encroached on their rights.58

Arrival of French Ambassador in April 1793

Freneau found the opportunity to start the Democratic Societies when Genet arrived in April 1793 as ambassador to the U.S.A.

At Paris, from late 1791 to early 1793, the Brissotin Jacobins — closely affiliated to the Cercle Social (Illuminati-by-another-name) — dominated all government posts in France. LeBrun was the Foreign Minister. In late 1792, Edmund Genêt was part of the Brissotin Jacobin group in France, and was chosen in a meeting with Brissot (Cercle Social), Paine (Cercle Social), Claude Fauchet (Cercle Social), etc., according to Genêt’s own account, to go to the U.S.A. to try to outfit ships to attack British shipping.59 This

58.“Democrat-Republican Societies,” American Eras (Gale Research Inc. 1997. Encyclopedia.com.)(accessed Mar. 31, 2009) available at http://www.encyclopedia.com.

59.Thomas Paine, The Writings of Thomas Paine (Ed. Moncure Daniel Conway) (N.Y.: G.P. Putnam’s, 1896) Vol. IV at xii.



appointment thus took place prior to the usurpation at the Jacobins by the Montagnard faction within the Jacobins led by Robespierre in the first half of 1793.

This means that Genêt is linked to the Illuminati-sponsored Brissotins prior to their fall. Genêt was sent to the U.S.A. virtually on the eve of the Brissotin collapse. This col-lapse took place from June 1793 to November 1793 at which point Robespierre seized complete power, arresting/executing the Cercle Social members as ‘ultra-radicals’ or smeared as ‘aristocrats.’

After appointment by LeBrun, Genêt arrived in the U.S.A. on April 9, 1793. He promptly was an early focus of the Democratic Societies in major cities in each of the thir-teen original states of America. Genêt openly helped organize the opening ceremonies of these clubs in which he was a fea-tured celebrant. Genêt’s close associates founded the Penn-sylvania Democratic Society on July 4, 1793. A startling fact is that present at this occasion was Jefferson’s French transla-tor at the Department of State — a man Jefferson hired because he was a “man of genius” — Philip Freneau:

On occasion of the great entertainment given to Genet, in Philadelphia, in 1793, after his muti-lated reception by the President, citizen Fre-neau was present....Freneau was a great advocate of France through this period, and annoyed Washington by his assaults on the administration. There was “that rascal Fre-neau,” said he [i.e., Washington], “sent him three of his papers every day, as if he would become the distributor of them, an act in which he could see nothing but an impudent design to insult him.”60

60.“Philip Freneau,” George and Evert Duyckinck, in Cyclopedia of American Literature (1856; 1875) available at http://198.82.142.160/spenser/BiographyRecord.php?action=GET&bioid=35706.



This Philadelphia club known as the Democratic Society of Philadelphia led all the other Democratic Societ-ies.61 It thereby copied the federal government which also had its seat at the time at Philadelphia. “Their avowed object,” Flexner notes, was “to sponsor across the nation an interconnected network of clubs that would rouse and bring to bear pro-French and anti-administration sentiment.”62 The Harper’s Encyclopedia frankly says “they were disloyal to the government of the United States and sought to control the politics of the Union.... Their members were pledged to secrecy.”63 The symbols of the Democratic Society were the Jacobin phrygian cap and the Jacobin fasces.

Simultaneously, the Democratic Societies and Tam-many Societies were all networked together, and corre-sponded regularly. They followed the model of the Jacobin societies of France and regularly denounced President Wash-ington’s government and motives.

John Quincy Adams (1767–1848), the sixth President of the U.S., first came onto the national scene by a famous letter-to-the-editor in 1793.64 In it, Adams described the Democratic Societies as “so perfectly affiliated with the Pari-sian Jacobins that their origin from a common parent cannot

61.At Philadelphia, in March 1793 was founded the German Republican Society of Philadelphia. (Ronald P. Formisano, For the People: Ameri-can Populist Movements from the Revolution to the 1850s (University of North Carolina Press, 2008) at 51.) However, while it was a “paral-lel” to the society at which Genet was presented, “it was not sparked by the American visit of French ‘Citizen’ Genet [in April 1793], but grew out of local Pennsylvania German community concerns.” (Steven M. Nolt, Foreigners in their own land (Penn State Press, 2002) at 160 n. 35.)

62.James Flexner, George Washington—Anguish and Farewell 1793-1799 (Boston: 1969) at 64. On this society as the head society, see id. at 170.

63. “Democratic Societies,” Harper’s Encyclopedia of U.S. History From 458 A.D. to 1902 (N.Y., Harper & Brothers, 1902) III at 79.



be mistaken.” The fuller context of his famous words, reprinted in the Columbian Centinel (November 30, 1793) were:

and we now witness the formation of a length-ening chain of democratic societies, assuming to themselves the exercise of privileges, which belong only to the whole people, and under the semblance of a warmer zeal for the cause of lib-erty, than the rest of the people, tacitly prepar-ing to control the operations of the government and dictate laws to the country. Heretofore, in the most exasperated times of our political dissentions, upon occasions when the public mind had been raised to the highest pitch of irritation, the sacred obligations of a jury, have always been preserved inviolate, and no American ever thought of giving a bias to their decisions, by the menace of external vio-lence; as little would an American villain have thought of the guillotine as an instrument of punishment. The proscription of our citizens under the designation of aristocrats was evi-dently effected by a combination of foreign habits with domestic malice. Even the expedi-ent of threatening assassination by anony-mous letters, was I believe unprecedented

64.John Q. Adams was son of the second president, John Adams. “[John Quincy Adams] was a member of the Federalist, Democratic-Republi-can, National Republican, and later Anti-Masonic and Whig parties.” (“John Quincy Adams,” Wikipedia (accessed 3/27/09). His first career was as an attorney: “He apprenticed as a lawyer with Theophilus Par-sons in Newburyport, Massachusetts, from 1787 to 1789. He was admitted to the bar in 1791 and began practicing law in Boston.” (Id.) Adams first political post after becoming an attorney post-dated this famous letter-to-the-editor in 1793: “George Washington appointed Adams minister to the Netherlands (at the age of 26) in 1794....” (Id.) Thus, this 1793 letter is likely the reason that Adams attracted Wash-ington’s notice and why he was invited in 1794 to serve in his Admin-istration.



among us: And as to the democratic societies, they are so perfectly affiliated to the Pari-sian Jacobins, that their origin from a com-mon parent cannot possibly be mistaken. These symptoms never originated in the healthy constitution of American freedom; they are all indications of an imported distemper, a distemper in comparison with which, if it should spread over the continent, the pesti-lence which has so lately depopulated a sister city, and called for the exertions of all our ten-derest sympathies, was a public blessing.65

Much later, Alexander Addison, the Presiding Judge of the Fifth Circuit of Western Pennsylvania, aptly described the Democratic Societies’ role in this 1793 period. He said, “Clubs or societies were under his [i.e., Genêt’s] suggestions, formed throughout the continent to hang on the skirts of gov-ernment, censure all its measures and weaken its authority, by rendering it suspected, and to rouse the passions of the people, and prepare them for a submission and even ardent devotion to the will of France.”66

On August 24, 1794, George Washington wrote Gen-eral Henry Lee about his appointment as commander-in-chief of the western expedition to suppress the insurrection then underway in what is generally called now the Whiskey Rebellion:

I consider this insurrection as the first formida-ble fruit of the Democratic Societies, brought forth, I believe, too prematurely for their own views, which may contribute to the annihila-tion of them.

65.John Quincy Adams, Writings of John Quincy Adams (ed.Worthington Chauncey Ford)(N.Y.: Macmillan, 1913) Vol. I at 155-56.

66.Alexander Addison, An Oration on the Rise and Progress of the United States of America to the Present Crisis; and On the Duties of The Citi-zens (1798), supra, at 7.



That these societies were instituted by the art-ful and designing members (many of their body I have no doubt mean well, but know little of the real plan,) primarily to sow the seeds of jealousy and distrust among the people of the government, by destroying all confidence in the administration of it, and that these doc-trines have been budding and blowing ever since, is not new to any one, who is acquainted with the character of their leaders, and has been attentive to their manoeuvres. I early gave it as my opinion to the confidential characters around me, that, if these societies were not counteracted, (not by prosecutions, the ready way to make them grow stronger,) or did not fall into disesteem from the knowledge of their origin, and the views with which they had been instituted by their father, Genet, for pur-poses well known to the government, that they would shake the government to its founda-tion. Time and circumstances have confirmed me in this opinion; and I deeply regret the probable consequences; not as they will affect me personally, for I have not long to act on this theatre, and sure I am that not a man amongst them can be more anxious to put me aside, than I am to sink into the profoundest retire-ment, but because I see, under a display of pop-ular and fascinating guises, the most diabolical attempts to destroy the best fabric of human government and happiness, that has ever been presented for the acceptance of mankind.67

More than taxes on whiskey were on the minds of those involved in the Whiskey Rebellion in Western Pennsyl-vania. From Genet’s viewpoint, Washington’s policy of neu-

67. Letters and Addresses of George Washington (Ed. Prof. Jonas Viles) (N.Y.: Unit Publishing, 1908) at 362.



trality, not so much the tax on whiskey, was a concern. The tax issue was virtually a pretext to overthrow the young republic so as to put men in power who would reverse Wash-ington’s policy, and instead help revolutionary France. Spe-cifically, the Democratic Societies wanted Washington to support attacks on British commerce, thereby aiding the French Republic. The punishment for Washington not doing so was an effort by the Democratic Societies to stir revolt in Western Pennsylvania. Their goal was to forcibly overthrow him in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania where the first president then resided. The Whiskey tax was therefore a mere pretext for revolution.

This issue first arose in 1793. In the summer of 1793, Genêt (the French ambassador) for his part was outfitting ships in U.S. ports, and hiring American citizens to attack British shipping. President Washington and his Cabinet decided that the U.S. should be neutral in the war between France and Britain, and issued a proclamation to that effect. It advised Genêt that his actions violated U.S. neutrality. Genêt protested and told Jefferson that he would do what he pleased.68

Later—after all these events were long over—Genêt revealed that he received instructions from the Committee of Public Safety at Paris to endeavor to engage the U.S. in a war against Britain.69

Thomas Jefferson, in what some historians and even friendly biographers admit was traitorous activity,70 began a series of discussions with Genêt which were aimed at helping Genêt circumvent federal neutrality laws. Jefferson had told Washington and the Cabinet beforehand that he did not sup-port the neutrality stance, but had agreed he would, as Secre-

68.Flexner, George Washington—Anguish and Farewell, supra, at 65.69. Alexander Addison, An Oration on the Rise and Progress of the

United States of America to the Present Crisis; and On the Duties of The Citizens (Philadelphia: Ormrod, 1798) at 7.



tary of State, fulfill his responsibilities and carry out the decision of the President and the other Cabinet members to support America staying out of war with Britain.71

However, Jefferson in the summer of 1793 lost per-spective on what were his loyalties to the U.S. government. What led him to assisting France contrary to official policy was his belief that rather than see the French Revolution of 1792 fail,

I would rather have seen half the earth deso-lated. Were there but an Adam & Eve left in every country, and left free, it would be better than it now is... The liberty of the whole earth was depending on the issue of the contest.72

Even in this statement, Jefferson revealed the horrible principle of the end justifies the means, i.e., it was better to break neutrality laws as an elected official than allow the new brand of “French liberty” to lose.

With such values, Jefferson’s conduct naturally fol-lowed. He held private discussions with Genêt that allowed Genêt to act quickly on Jefferson’s promise to use his cabinet position to delay implementation of official reprisals on French ships outfitted for war leaving port. In direct conse-quence, the French Foreign Minister was able to slip out of U.S. harbors with huge ships outfitted to attack British ship-

70. The kindest way of putting this is found here: “Thomas Jefferson was Washington’s first appointment as Secretary of State, and employed his time so vigorously towards fomenting opposition to the measures of the Administration that his position became untenable, and on Decem-ber 31, 1793, he resigned his position and was succeeded by Edmund Randolph.” (Joseph Beatty Doyle, In Memoriam, Edwin McMasters Stanton, His Life and Work (Steubenville, 1911) at 16.)

71.Perhaps forgotten, Thomas Jefferson's had participated in the Paris Jacobin society in 1789, having attended meetings with its leaders while he was U.S. minister in France.

72.Richard B. Bernstein, Thomas Jefferson (Oxford University Press, 2003) at 92.



ping. Jefferson’s conduct in direct violation of President Washington’s orders had terrible political consequences. Immediately, U.S.-British relations deteriorated into an atmo-sphere of distrust.

Despite Jefferson’s pleas to the President in 1793, President Washington persisted in objecting to Genêt’s con-duct. Genêt was sore about this and told Jefferson that he would appeal to the American people directly against their president. The American people were not the “serfs” that Washington made them out to be, Genêt bellowed. Despite this persistent bellicose attitude of Genêt, Jefferson continued to assist Genêt in what would emerge as Genêt’s project to “replace” President Washington.

In fact, as we read the circumstances, we may wonder whether Genêt had not promised Jefferson, in return for his support, to make Jefferson president if the Democratic Soci-eties engineered a Jacobin Revolution in the U.S. While such idea may seem far-fetched at first, the behavior of Jefferson (whom I deeply admire and would extol as a great thinker) was so reckless that one must assume he felt he would directly be protected if Genêt and the Jacobins of France were successful in America.

In fact, a letter of July 6, 1796 by Washington to Jef-ferson shows the degradation of their relationship over such issues that began in 1793. Washington expresses his shock and dismay at what others reported was the nature of Jeffer-son’s conduct behind Washington’s back. Washington shows concern that Jefferson was supporting those who were mak-ing the most insulting attributions upon Washington’s charac-ter and intentions toward France and Britain. In the last letter ever discovered between Jefferson and Washington — this letter of July 6, 179673 — we hear Washington’s total sense of betrayal behind his back by Jefferson:

As you have mentioned the subject yourself, it would not be frank, candid, or friendly (in me) to conceal, that your conduct has been repre-



sented as derogating from that opinion, which I conceived you entertained of me; that to your particular friends—you have described (me) and they have denounced me, as a person under a dangerous influence; and that if I would listen more to some other opin-ions, all would be well. My answer invariably has been, that I had never discovered any-thing in the conduct of Mr. Jefferson to raise suspicions in my mind of his insincerity; that, if he would retrace my public conduct while he was in the administration, abundant proofs would occur to him, that truth and right deci-sions were the sole object of my pursuit; that there were as many instances within his own knowledge of my having decided against as in favor of the opinions of the person evidently alluded to [i.e., Hamilton]: and, moreover, that I was no believer in the infallibility of the poli-

73. In the official records from this letter forward, there is no record of any correspondence between Jefferson and Washington (1732-1799). Jefferson later became president in 1801 which raises an interesting question about the fate of such correspondence. The editor of Washing-ton’s Writings explains there is a theory of deliberate suppression dur-ing Jefferson’s term, of which theory he could not refute by anything he saw in Washington’s papers: “No correspondence after this date between Washington and Jefferson appears in the letter books, except a brief note the month following, upon an unimportant matter. It has been reported and believed, that letters or papers, supposed to have passed between them, or to relate to their intercourse with each other at subsequent dates, were secretly withdrawn from the archives of Mount Vernon, after the death of the former [i.e., Washington in 1799]. Concerning this fact, no positive testimony remains, either for or against it, among Washington’s papers, as they came into my hands.” (Quoted in Theodore Dwight, The Character of Thomas Jef-ferson (Boston: Weeks Jordan, 1839) at 189.) Thus, because Jefferson became President in 1801, and Washington died two years earlier, this could explain the absence of any further correspondence found between these previously frequent correspondents. Arguably, Jefferson had these records purged. On the other hand, this final correspondence by Washington to Jefferson expresses a sense of betrayal, and it could mark the end of friendly association between the two men.



tics or measures of any man living. In short, that I was no party man myself, and the first wish of my heart was, if parties did exist, to reconcile them.

Until the last year or two, I had no conception, that parties would, or even could go the lengths I have been witness to. Nor did I believe, until lately, that it was within the bounds of probability, hardly within those of possibility, that, while I was using my utmost exertions to establish a national character of our own, independent, as far as our obligations and justice would permit, of every nation on earth, and wished by steering a steady course to preserve this country from the horrors of desolating war, I should be accused of being an enemy to one nation [i.e., France], and subject to the influence of another [i.e., Brit-ain]. And to prove it, that every act of my administration would be tortured; and the grossest and most insidious misrepresenta-tions of them would be made, by giving one side’ only of a subject, and that too in such exaggerated and indecent terms, as could scarcely be applied to a Nero, to a notorious defaulter—or even to a common pickpocket. But enough of this. I have—gone further in the expression of my feelings, than I intended.74

In other words, the insinuations brought against Washington in 1793-1794 and still through 1796 were divi-sive against the president’s leadership. It constantly attacked his motives; alleged Washington was serving the British; he was supposedly an enemy of our true friend — revolutionary France; and that Jefferson was being entirely two-faced about

74.Washington Irving, “Washington Irving, The Life of George Washing-ton (Philadelphia: Lippincott, 1870) Vol. V at 272 (from Washington’s Writings Vol. XI at 138).



his own positions with the President all along. While Jeffer-son was a man of special talents and character, his love for France put him in league from 1793 to 1794 with those who were bringing such insinuations against Washington as a means of stirring up people, especially in Western Pennsylva-nia, into open revolt during 1793-1794. It took until 1796 before Washington expressed to Jefferson himself his doubts about Jefferson’s loyalty to the nation in the face of such a revolutionary movement.75

American Jacobin Insurrection of 1793-1794

Regardless of what Jefferson may or may not have been doing, it was just a few weeks later when the Demo-cratic Societies under Genêt’s control began threatening the capital of the U.S. at Philadelphia. The capital in those days

75.Washington’s approach to these attacks was to solace himself that he has done right: “On the 12th of that month Washington, in a letter to Colonel Humphrey, then in Portugal, speaks of the recent political campaign: ‘The gazettes will give you a pretty good idea of the state of politics and parties in this country, and will show you, at the same time, if Bache’s Aurora is among them, in what manner I am attacked for persevering steadily in measures which, to me, appear necessary to preserve us, during the conflicts of belligerent powers, in a state of tranquillity. But these attacks, unjust and unpleasant as they are, will occasion no change in my conduct, nor will they produce any other effect in my mind than to increase the solicitude which long since has taken fast hold of my heart, to enjoy, in the shades of retirement, the consolation of believing that I have rendered to my country every ser-vice to which my abilities were competent— not from pecuniary or ambitious motives, nor from a desire to provide for any men, further than their intrinsic merit entitled them, and surely not with a view of bringing my own relations into office. Malignity, therefore, may dart its shafts, but no earthly power can deprive me of the satisfaction of knowing that I have not, in the whole course of my administration, committed an intentional error.’” Washington Irving, The Life of George Washington (Philadelphia: Lippincott, 1870) Vol. V at 270.


American Jacobin Insurrection of 1793-1794

was in the heart of Western Pennsylvania — Philadelphia. Genêt fomented an uprising in Western Pennsylvania using nation-wide tax laws on whisky as a pretext. It should be called the American Jacobin Insurrection of 1793-94, but generally it is called the Whiskey Rebellion

For example, President George Washington on August 24, 1794 described the ongoing subversive activities of the Democratic Societies. He said they,

sow seeds of jealousy and distrust amongst the people. I gave it as my opinion to the confiden-tial characters around me that if these societies were not counteracted (not by prosecutions, the ready way to make them grow stronger), or did not fall into disesteem... they would shake the government to its foundations.76

Regarding the openly unruly crowds which started surrounding Philadelphia, President George Washington wrote Burges Hall on September 25, 1794:

The insurrection in the Western counties of the State is a striking evidence of this (incendi-aries of public peace) spreading their nefarious doctrines with a view to poison and discontent the minds of the people against the govern-ment; particularly by endeavouring to have it believed that their liberties were assailed; and may be considered the first fruit of the Demo-cratic societies. I did not, I must confess, expect their labours would come to maturity so soon, though I never had a doubt, that such conduct would produce such an issue; if it did not meet the frow of those who were well-dis-posed to order and good government, for can anything be more absurd, more arrogant, or more perniscious to the peace of society, that

76.See Footnote 67 on page 28.



for self-created societies, forming themselves into permanent Censors, and under the Shade of Night in a conclave, resolving [against]... acts of Congress, which have under-gone the most deliberate, and solemn discus-sion by the Representatives of the People.... I hope, and trust, they will work their own cure; especially when it is known, more generally than it is, that the Democratic Society of this place (from which the others have emanated) was instituted by Mr. Genêt for the express purpose of dissension, and to draw a line between the people and the government....”77

President Washington on November 1, 1794 wrote John Jay:

[That] the self-created societies which have spread themselves over this country have been laboring incessantly to sow the seeds of dis-trust,... to effect some revolution in the Gov-ernment, is not unknown to you. That they have been the formenters of the western dis-turbance admits no doubt in the mind of any one who will examine their conduct... [If] this daring and factious spirit [is not crushed], adieu to all government in this country, except mob and club government.78

Noah Webster’s More Expansive AccountNoah Webster — a liberal Rousseau-thinker in the

Federalist camp79— echoed President Washington’s concerns about the Democratic Societies. This famous American edu-

77. Writings of George Washington, supra, Vol. 33, at 506-07 (emphasis added).


Noah Webster’s More Expansive Account

cator and journalist wrote that the Democratic Society “must be crushed in its infancy or it would certainly crush the gov-ernment.” Webster warned that the Jacobins of France, and hence those of the United States, were engaged in a “war against Christianity.”80

Later, Noah Webster took time to explain the origin of the different parties — the Federalists and the Democratic Party, and explain how the latter in its infancy had become aligned in 1793 with the French Revolutionary radicals. Noah Webster believed the American Jacobin Clubs were merely taking advantage of a division that originated earlier, and they were attempting to draw a deeper wedge during 1793:

And in this place I will take the liberty to cor-rect a common error in popular opinion, in regard to the parties at the time the constitu-tion was formed. It is well known that the friends and supporters of the ratification were denominated Federalists; and the opposers anti-federalists. It is a remarkable fact that the democratic party, with few or no exceptions, opposed the ratification of the con-stitution; and beyond a question, had that opposition succeeded, anarchy or civil war would have been the consequence. The feder-alists made the frame of government, and with immense efforts, procured it to be ratified, in

78.George Washington, The Writings of George Washington (Ed. Jared Sparks) (Boston: Ferdinand Andrews, 1839) Vol. X at 454. See also, George Washington, The Writings of George Washington (W.C. Ford, ed.) (14 vols) (N.Y.: 1889-1901) Vol. XII, 486. See also Henry Lee, Observations on the Writings of Thomas Jefferson with Particular Ref-erence to the Attack they Contain on the Memory of Late Gen. Henry Lee. (Philadelphia: J. Dobson, 1839) at 27 (“In this course of irregular-ity and outrage, as Mr. Jefferson well knew, he had been aided and abetted by the democratic societies— whose most active mem-bers...were...miscreant Frenchmen, whose evolutions were regulated by Genet, and whose dark spirit polluted and misled the generous enthusiasm of our own people.”)



opposition to nearly one half of the citizens of the United States, headed by some of the ablest men in the Union.

It is a remarkable fact that the democratic party, with few or no exceptions, opposed the ratification of the constitution; and beyond a question, had that opposition succeeded, anar-chy or civil war would have been the conse-quence. The federalists made the frame of government, and with immense efforts, pro-cured it to be ratified, in opposition to nearly one half of the citizens of the United States, headed by some of the ablest men in the Union.

****

Other causes contributed to the same effect. After the death of the King of France, and the commencement of the republican form of gov-ernment, the French rulers began to entertain the project of revolutionizing Europe by over-throwing monarchies. This project they sup-posed to be so congenial to the opinions of the Americans, that they expected our government

79. “In 1793, Alexander Hamilton loaned him $1500 to move to New York City and edit a newspaper for the new Federalist Party. In Decem-ber Webster founded New York’s first daily newspaper, American Minerva (later known as The Commercial Advertiser)....Webster fol-lowed French radical thought and was one of the few Americans who admired Jean-Jacques Rousseau. He urged a neutral foreign pol-icy when France and Britain went to war in 1793. But when French minister Edmund Genêt set up a network of pro-Jacobin ‘Democratic Republican societies’ that entered American politics and attacked Washington, Webster condemned them. He called on fellow Federalist editors to ‘all agree to let the clubs alone—publish nothing for or against them. They are a plant of exotic and forced birth: the sunshine of peace will destroy them.’” http://www.conservapedia.com/Noah_Webster (accessed 3/14/09).

80.Duncan, supra, at 88.


Noah Webster’s More Expansive Account

would readily unite with France, in resisting the combination of kings to defeat the purpose. With a view to bring the United States into alliance with France, Mr. Genet was dis-patched, as minister to this country, autho-rized to induce our government to join France in defending herself against the combined powers, and in extending republican principles and forms of government.

Mr. Genet landed at Charleston, in South Caro-lina, and without presenting his credentials to the President, he proceeded to constitute French consuls to be judges of admiralty, with authority to condemn British vessels taken as prizes, and sent into port by French privateers fitted out in American harbors. He also com-missioned men to be military officers for rais-ing troops to invade the Spanish possessions on our southern border. On his way to the north, he promoted the formation of demo-cratic societies to support him in attempts to draw this country into an alliance with France. These societies held meetings, and passed violent resolutions in favor of French princi-ples. The democratic society in Kentucky assumed a high tone in demanding the free right to enter and navigate the Mississippi, the mouth of which was within the Spanish terri-tories. They charged our government with neglect of their interests in not procuring a free navigation of that river. Their claim to such freedom was reasonable, but the right to it was to be obtained by negotiation, and their charges against the executive of the United States of neglecting to obtain it were not to be justified.

The conduct of the French minister gave great offense to our citizens and to the executive. He evidently supposed that his influence, favored



by a predilection of our citizens for a republi-can form of government, and supported by the democratic societies, was sufficient to control the measures of our government. Hence when President Washington issued a proclamation recommending neutrality, and manifested a firm determination to oppose the designs of France, Mr. Genêt appealed to the people. This bold and rash declaration ruined his cause. The President was not a man to surrender his authority to a foreign minister, and he demanded his recall.

In the midst of the most perplexing difficulties, with a popular French minister [i.e., Genêt] intriguing to draw this country into an alli-ance with France, in her war with the com-bined powers, and boldly usurping rights of sovereignty in the United States; compelled to struggle with the opposition of some of his cabinet, and with many popular leaders of the democratic party, acting in concert with the French minister, President Washington stood as firm as a rock; and to his popularity chiefly was this country indebted for its escape from a connection with France,-which would have involved the fate of this country with hers, in the most obstinate contest ever witnessed in Europe.

But the democratic party in this country had now become identified with the French parti-sans in the United States.81

81.Noah Webster, L.L.D., A Collection of Papers on Political, Literary, and Moral Subjects (N.Y.: Webster & Clark, 1843) at 324,325,326 (Chapter XIX, A BRIEF HISTORY OF POLITICAL PARTIES IN THE UNITED STATES).


Eye-Witness Observations

Eye-Witness ObservationsJohn Adams was Vice-President from 1789 to 1797

under Washington, serving in the nation’s capital of the time of the Whiskey Rebellion — Philadelphia. (Adams became the second president from 1797 to 1801.) Adams later scolded Thomas Jefferson for his support of Genêt during 1793. Adams’ letter to Jefferson dated June 30, 1813 reads:

You certainly never felt the terrorism excited by Genêt, in 1793... when ten thousand people in the streets of Philadelphia, day after day threatened to drag [President] Washington out of his house and effect a revolution... [N]othing but [a miracle]...could have saved the United States from a fatal revolution of gov-ernment.82

In 1813, Adams was complaining to Jefferson that during this so-called Whiskey Rebellion of 1793-1794, Adams felt it necessary to have chests of arms brought him from the War Office “through by-lanes and back doors” so that he could “defend my house.”

Democratic Society Agitation One of the members of the Democratic Society, Dr.

Absalom Baird (1756-1805) and Justice of the Peace in 1789 in the County of Washington (Pennsylvania),83 apparently

82.John Adams, The Works of John Adams, Second President of the United States (Ed. Charles Francis Adams) (Boston: Little, Brown and company, 1856) Vol. X at 47. This passage is also quoted in DeConde, Entangling Alliance: Politics & Diplomacy under George Washington (Durham, N.C.: 1958) at 306; Flexner, George Washington—Anguish and Farewell, supra, at 63.



was involved in heating up these disturbances in Philadel-phia.84 Years later a newspaper gave the following account of Baird, remembering he had been

uniformly among the strenuous opponents and censurers of our government, and has been and yet is of what is called the French party. He was of a party who at midnight and for some hours after in a noisy manner raised a May pole [a Jacobin symbol] in the town of [President] Washington [that is, Philadelphia] and to the American colors he added red, blue and white ribbons....”85

The mob also attacked the homes of certain of the tax collectors as well as physically attacked them in the streets. A writer sympathetic with Jefferson,86 Claude Bowers, described the scene of 1793 in Philadelphia — the nation’s capital at that time. Bowers said:

The summer of 1793 was one of utter madness. Mechanics were reading the speeches of Mira-beau; clerks were poring over the reports of revolutionary chiefs... women were reading... Barlow’s Conspiracy of Kings.87 Others too illit-erate to read were stalking the streets like con-querors, jostling the important men of the community with intent, and sneering at the great. Men were equal. The people’s day had

83.Minutes of the Supreme Executive Council of Pennsylvania From Its Organization to the Termination of the Revolution (Harrisburg: Theo. Fenn, 1853) Vol. XVI [1789-1790] at 16.

84.Another known member of the Democratic Society in Washington County was David Redick. (The Pennsylvania magazine of history and biography (Historical Society of Pennsylvania, 1938) Vol. 62 at 34.

85.William Miller, “The Democratic Societies and the Whiskey Insurrec-tion,” The Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography (July 1938) Vol. LXII, No. 3 at 347.


Democratic Society Agitation

dawned. Down the streets the mob looking for lingering relics of royalty to tear or order down. A medallion enclosing a bas-relief of George III with his crown, on the eastern front of Christ’s Church, caught its eye. Down with it! The church officials did not hesitate, but tore it down. On swept the mob in search of other worlds to conquer. Occasionally the lower ele-ment, drinking itself drunk, staggered out of beer houses to shout imprecations on a gov-ernment that would not war with England.88

Clearly, the excise tax had no role to play among those wipping up these crowds near Washington's home.

While one student of this period says the Democratic Society only in Western Pennsylvania spear-headed the Whiskey Rebellion,89 other historians agree the Democratic Society supported a nationwide movement of insurrection, with the key strike being engineered at the heart of the nation’s capital, then in Western Pennsylvania.90

While the threat lasted, it was very real. The Ameri-can Jacobins openly proclaimed goals to overthrow the young Republic. In August 1793, a political satire The Funeral

86.Jefferson’s sympathies were partly from a fear of monarchical regres-sion. He wrote Thomas Paine on June 19, 1792 in praise of Paine’s Rights of Man: “Would you believe it possible that in this country there should be high & important characters who need your lessons in repub-licanism, & who do not heed them? It is but too true that we have a sect preaching up & pouting after an English constitution of king, lords, & commons, & whose heads are itching for crowns, coronets & mitres. But our people, my good friend, are firm and unanimous in their principles of republicanism & there is no better proof of it than that they love what you write and read it with delight. The printers sea-son every newspaper with extracts from your last, as they did before from your first part of the Rights of Man. They have both served here to separate the wheat from the chaff, and to prove that tho’ the latter appears on the surface, it is on the surface only. The bulk below is sound & pure. Go on then in doing with your pen what in other times.” (Thomas Jefferson, The Writings of Thomas Jefferson (ed. Paul Leices-ter Ford) (N.Y.: G.P.Putnam, 1895) Vol. VI at 87-88.)



Dirge of George Washington and James Wilson, King and Judge which everyone knew was written by Philip Freneau called for the guillotining of President Washington and the Associate Supreme Court Justice James Wilson.91

Incidentally, in 1789, “[o]ne of Freneau’s co-laborers upon the [New York] Advertiser was John Pintard [i.e., one of the two principal founders of Tammany in 1789], a warm per-sonal friend and the translating clerk in the Department of State.”92 In 1789, Freneau also was friends of Aaron Burr which may explain how Burr joined Tammany to become its head in 1800.

One of the leading American Jacobins was Joel Bar-low. He ran around the U.S. writing poems, one of which expressed hope that one golden day America would share France’s glorious benefits from the Guillotine. It was entitled “God Save the Guillotine.”93 Barlow also wrote that while the United States may not need a full-scale revolution, it did need to adopt France’s “encouragement of such a degree of

87.Thomas Jefferson wrote Barlow on June 20, 1792 about this book: “Tho' I am in hopes you are now on the Ocean home-bound, yet I can-not omit the chance of my thanks reaching you for your Conspiracy of kings and advice to the privileged orders, the second part of which I am in hopes is out by this time. Be assured that your endeavors to bring the Transatlantic world into the road of reason, are not without their effect here. Some here are disposed to move retrograde and to take their stand in the rear of Europe now advancing to the high ground of natural right. But of all this your friend Mr. Baldwin gives you information, and doubtless paints to you the indignation with which the heresies of some people here fill us.” (Thomas Jefferson, The Writings of Thomas Jefferson (ed. Paul Leicester Ford) (N.Y.: G.P.Putnam, 1895) Vol. VI at 88.)

88.James Flexner, George Washington—Anguish and Farewell, supra, at 62-63.

89.William Miller, supra. However, he does concede that the Ming Creek “Democratic” society did organize the insurrection, he claims that no others elsewhere acted in unison with them.

90. See Baldwin, supra. Magill points out Baldwin “thinks the Demo-cratic Societies were used to coordinate the resistance.” Magill, supra, at 381.


Causes of the Whiskey Rebellion

equality in the condition of men [i.e., incomes] as tends to their dignity and happiness....”94 Later, he proposed a “gen-eral system of public improvements and public instructions to be sustained by the government” as the first means of redis-tributing wealth.95

Causes of the Whiskey RebellionWhat were the alleged causes of the Whiskey Rebel-

lion? From 1684 until 1791, there was an excise tax in Penn-sylvania on liquor. However, in 1791, Alexander Hamilton had passed through Congress without much difficulty a fed-eral tax levy on distilled liquors to replace all other state taxes on liquor.96

It was one of the few taxes which the U.S. govern-ment had its disposal. In those days, there was no direct income tax that the U.S. could impose. Federal taxation first

91.Flexner, George Washington—Anguish and Farewell, supra, at 67. The book of Freneau “described...the death on the guillotine and the funeral of the President [i.e., Washington] and Associate Justice of the Supreme Court James Wilson.” (Alexander Hamilton, The Papers of Alexander Hamilton (editors Harold C. Syrett, Jacob Cooke) (Colum-bia University Press, 1969) Vol. XVI at 158.)


93. One perverse line reads, “When all the sceptered crew Have paid their homage to the Guillotine; Let freedom's flag advance, Till all the world, like France O’er tyrants graves shall dance, And peace begin.”

94. Evert A.Duyckinck & George L. Duyckinck, Cyclopedia of American Literature, supra, at 410.

95.Evert A.Duyckinck & George L. Duyckinck, Cyclopedia of American Literature, supra, at 414.

96.“The Whiskey Rebellion,” Frank Magill’s Great Events From History, supra, at 378, 380-81.



began during the Wilson era when a constitutional amend-ment allowed the U.S. government to raise taxes by an income tax.

Although this sales tax reduced the income of those selling whisky, it was small. And Pennsylvania farmers had always had such a tax—at least for over 100 years. Even so, one could avoid the tax by simply selling one’s bulk grain from which whisky was made as grain; as such, there was no liquor tax. There was some vocal opposition to the tax in 1791 and 1792 (including in North and South Carolina). Pres-ident Washington in 1791 even went to Western Pennsylvania to meet people first hand in shabby taverns to ask them their feelings. He reported that there was “a very general approba-tion [approval] in those very parts where it was foretold that it would never be submitted to by anyone.” He noted there may be a few angry petitions, but these were stirred up by “dema-gogues.”97 President Washington advocated modifying the bill to reduce the tax, which Congress did in October 1791 by greatly reducing the percentage basis of the sales tax.98

However, by 1793 any furor had totally died down. When the outbreaks came in mid-1793 at Philadelphia of mob violence, they were aimed against the U.S. for its neu-trality stance, with the whiskey tax just being a pretext. The agitators were advocating war with England so as to ally with revolutionary France. The protest, if any, was thus not princi-pally based on the excise tax.

Then suddenly in the summer of 1794, the same vio-lence burst forth again. It arose, however, only in western Pennsylvania.99 While many historians who examine events superficially have attributed the “Whiskey Rebellion” to the whiskey excise taxes, Professor Baldwin shows that there

97.Flexner, George Washington—Anguish and Farewell, supra, at 161.98.Flexner, George Washington—Anguish and Farewell, supra, at 161.99. “Whiskey Rebellion,” Magill, supra, at 378; see also Flexner, George

Washington--Anguish and Farewell, supra, at 63.


Causes of the Whiskey Rebellion

was no change in excise tax practice law in western Penn-sylvania from what it had been for over 100 years. The only possible difference was that trials for violation could be tried in Philadelphia—up to 300 miles away.100

Incidentally, this source of irritation was exploited for a time by Edmund Randolph, the Attorney General, who was the one enforcing these inconvenient trials. Due to Fauchet’s correspondence falling into Washington’s hands, we now know Randolph was secretly ‘behind the scenes’ hoping for an insurrection, and thus he evidently enforced these laws at inconvenient locations so as to antagonize the very people he was ‘behind the scenes’ promoting to go into insurrection. (Hence, the effort was at a revolution from below with coop-eration of a revolution from above.)

Yet, in June 1794, Congress even relieved that prob-lem caused by Randolph’s prosecutions, by giving jurisdic-tion to state courts to try violators if there was no federal court within fifty miles.101

However, this alone could not explain an insurrection over a tax that the people had lived with for so long anyway. Both Baldwin, the leading historian of this insurrection and Links, the principal historian of the Democratic Societies, agree that the dying embers of opposition to the excise tax were fanned and mobs created by these clubs.102

Needless to say, there were numerous such farmers in many other locations, but the Democratic Societies were not interested in arousing men to violence who were not close to Philadelphia, the capital. There was honest opposition to the tax on distilled liquors.

100.Baldwin, supra, 109.101. Magill, supra, at 381; Flexner, GW--Anguish and Farewell, supra, at

162; Baldwin, supra, 109.102. Flexner, GW--Anguish and Farewell, supra, at 162.



In 1793, the Democratic Societies saw the unhappi-ness in the Western United States over the tax as a perfect opportunity to inflame opposition to the Whiskey tax in the only region that gave American Jacobins hope for Revolu-tion: Western Pennsylvania, the seat of the capital of the U.S.A.

Cabinet Meetings of 1793 To Address The Issue

To address how to quell the rioting, President Wash-ington convened the Cabinet on July 23, 1793. Jefferson was told to obtain all of Genêt’s correspondence to himself as Secretary of State, and they would reconvene on August 1, 1793.

Jefferson’s Resignation & Its Causes

Jefferson saw what was coming. He would have to denounce Genet while he secretly supported him. Rather than play the hypocrite any longer, on July 31st, Jefferson ten-dered his resignation, to take effect in September.103 The rea-son was obvious: “Jefferson, then Secretary of State, [was] greatly incensed against President Washington because he was unwilling to break the existing treaty of neutrality.”104

103.“The Secretary of State [Jefferson] had indicated by a formal note of resignation on July 31st that he intended to quit office at the end of September.”(Richard Barksdale Harwell, Douglas Southall Freeman, Washington: an abridgment in one volume (N.Y.: Touchstone, 1995) at 636.)

104.Wayne Whipple, The Story-life of Washington (Philadelphia: John C. Winston Co., 1911) Vol. II at 277.


Cabinet Meetings of 1793 To Address The Issue

Previously, Hamilton had been chiding Jefferson in newspaper letters by a pseudonymn that Jefferson could not hold office in Washington’s Cabinet any longer when he was supporting subversives against the President. As Lloyd Simp-son explains from a Hamiltonian perspective:

Mr. Jefferson’s remaining in the Cabinet, while he opposed many of the prominent measures of Washington’s administration, and even seemed anxious to embarrass it, involves a question not only of consistency, but of self- respect. Alex-ander Hamilton admirably discusses the duty of a Cabinet officer in this regard, with special reference to Jefferson’s conduct, in an open let-ter signed Metellus, from which we take the following paragraph: " If he can not coalesce with those with whom he is associated, as far as the rules of official decorum, propriety, and obligation may require, without abandoning what he conceives to be the interests of the community, let him not cling to the honor or the emolument of an office, whichever it be, that attracts him. Let him renounce a situa-tion which is a clog upon his patriotism, and tell the people he could no longer continue in it without forfeiting his duty to them; that he has quitted it to serve them. Such is the course that would be pursued by a man attentive to unite the sense of delicacy with the sense of duty—in earnest about the pernicious tendency of pub-lic measures, and more solicitous to act the dis-interested friend of the people, than the interested, ambitious, and intriguing head of a party."105

105.Lloyd D. Simpson, Notes on Thomas Jefferson, supra, at 53-54.



Simpson goes on to explain that Hamilton scoured Jefferson in another anonymous letter for supporting Freneau and the National Gazette of his which at the same time was instigating dissent against the Administration.

Mr. Jefferson, while Secretary of State, indi-rectly encouraged, if he did not directly insti-gate, attacks upon Washington and upon his administration. Hamilton, in a letter signed "n American," having asked whether it was possi-ble that the head of the principal department of the government could be "the patron of a paper, the evident object of which was to decry the government and its measures," thus proceeds: "If he disapproves of the government itself, and thinks it deserving of his opposition, can he reconcile it to his own personal dignity and the principles of probity, to hold an office under it, and employ the means of official influence in that opposition? If he disapproves of the leading measures adopted in the course of his(?) administration, can he reconcile it with the principles of propriety and delicacy to hold a place in that administration, and at the same time, be instrumental in vilifying measures, which have been adopted by both branches of the Legislature, and sanctioned by the Chief Magistrate of the United States. These papers, signed respectively "An Ameri-can" and " Metel- lus," should be read by every one desirous of forming a correct estimate of Jefferson and Hamilton. No reply to either of them was made by Jefferson.106

Well the reply was made on August 1, 1793, by Jeffer-son’s tendering of his resignation after the President and the Cabinet insisted upon denouncing Genet.

106.Lloyd Simpson, supra, at 54-55.


Cabinet Meetings of August 1793 On The Western Insurrection & Genet


In the Cabinet meeting of August 1, 1793 about the western insurrection, the first decision of the Cabinet was to send documents to the French government proving Genêt’s misconduct as a diplomat for France.107 However, Knox wanted Genêt immediately suspended from diplomatic and consular powers at once. Jefferson (Secretary of State) “felt that delicacy of expression was essential,” and dissuaded the President from such course. Hamilton and Randolph agreed on the course of demanding Genêt’s recall instead.108 (This recall request was sent on August 16, 1793 to France by Jef-ferson.)109

On the next day — August 2nd, the Cabinet convened again. This led to open rancor between Hamilton and Jeffer-son over the issue whether to address the American people directly to expose Genêt’s effort at subversion of the U.S.A. Hamilton, the Secretary of the Treasury, opened the meeting with “a long recital of reasons for public appeal...against Genêt.”110 Hamilton advocated to let the American people know what were the stakes, and the cause of the crisis. He wanted a publication of the whole correspondence, and a statement of the proceedings to be given the American peo-ple. Otherwise, Hamilton advised, the federal government was in danger of being overthrown . It was not too late to publish the secret machinations of Genêt and the Democratic Societies with “proper explanations.” Knox also advised in

107.Richard Barksdale Harwell, Douglas Southall Freeman, Washington: an abridgment in one volume (N.Y.: Touchstone, 1995) at 635-36.

108.Harwell, supra, at 636.109.Henry Lee, Observations on the writings of Thomas Jefferson (ed.

Charles Carter Lee)(2d edition)(Philadelphia: J. Dobson, 1839) at 26.http://books.google.com/books?id=4ncEAAAAYAAJ&dq110.Harwell, supra, at 636.



the same meeting that sources reported the rebels were plan-ning on ending Washington’s “tyranny” and running him out of Philadelphia.

In response, Jefferson, who we now know was in secret cahoots with Genêt, as discussed earlier, counseled that Hamilton “calculated to make the President assume the sta-tion of the head of a party instead of the head of a nation.”111 Would not Genêt respond in kind in public? Jefferson also argued that such publication to the American people would “increase the vigour and importance of the Democratic Soci-ety....”112 Jefferson said the agitation was solely over the pending election over the governorshp of Pennyslvania, and the furor would go away after the election.113

In the same meeting, the idea of publishing the infor-mation was also opposed by Attorney-General Edmund Ran-dolph.114 He was the same man who later evidence revealed was secretly supporting in 1794 the overthrow of George Washington with the hoped-for financial assistance from France.115 Edmund Randolph was related by marriage to Jef-ferson. Thomas Mann Randolph II was Jefferson’s son-in-law— having married Jefferson’s daughter Martha.116 Tho-mas Mann Randolph II was the “son of Jefferson’s boyhood friend Colonel [Thomas Mann] Randolph of Tuckahoe.”117 Then Edmund Randolph (1753-1813) was the second cousin

111.Harwell, supra, at 636.112.Henry Lee, Observations on the Writings of Thomas Jefferson with

Particular Reference to the Attack they Contain on the Memory of Late Gen. Henry Lee. (Philadelphia: J. Dobson, 1839) at 28 (describing Jef-ferson’s argument).

113.Henry Lee, Observations on the Writings of Thomas Jefferson with Particular Reference to the Attack they Contain on the Memory of Late Gen. Henry Lee. (Philadelphia: J. Dobson, 1839) at 28.

114. Flexner, GW--Anguish and Farewell, supra, at 66.115.See “In 1794, Ambassador Fauchet Is Approached By Randolph, The

Secretary of State, To Help Overthrow The United States of America” on page 77.



of Thomas Mann Randolph II.118 Thomas Jefferson Ran-dolph was Jefferson’s executor upon his death.119 Hence, the Randolph-Jefferson families were tied by the closest friend-ships and marriage, and this included Edmund Randolph.

Washington had no idea what was motivating Jeffer-son or Randolph — two Virginians — and “Washington seemed inclined towards Hamilton’s proposal.”120 Jefferson’s account of the meeting was more affirming, saying “the Pres-ident manifestedly inclined to the appeal to the people.”121

However, things changed after Henry Knox (Secre-tary of War) in the same Cabinet meeting exhibited a broad-side entitled The Funeral Dirge of George Washington and James Wilson, King and Judge clearly written by Philip Fre-neau.122 This so upset the President that the meeting was adjourned for the President to compose himself.

Some background is in order.

116.Samuel Eagle Forman, “The Political Activities of Philip Freneau,” in John Hopkins University Studies in Historical and Political Science (Ed. J.M.Vincent) (Baltimore: John Hopkins Press, 1902) Vol. XX at 32 [496 of Volume XX]. Forman provides several letters where Jeffer-son appeals to Freneau or Freneau’s friend, James Madison, to come work with him at the point Freneau was hesitating moving from New York to Philadelphia to take the post.

117.Merrill D. Peterson, Thomas Jefferson and the new nation (Oxford University Press, 1970) at 392.

118.http://politicalgraveyard.com/bio/randolph.html (accessed 3/27/09).”The Randolphs amassed great wealth from tobacco, owned hun-dreds of slaves, built imposing mansions and produced generations of statesmen, generals and jurists. These include not only Edmund Ran-dolph and Peyton Randolph but Thomas Jefferson, John Marshall and Robert E. Lee, whose mothers were all Randolphs.” http://www.lively-roots.com/gerald/17207.htm (accessed 3/27/09).

119.Thomas Jefferson, Notes on the state of Virginia (Richmond: J.W. Randolph, 1853) at iii (“Mr. Jefferson’s executor, THOMAS JEFFER-SON RANDOLPH, has transferred to the publisher the materials....”)

120.Harwell, supra, at 636.



Freneau had since August 16, 1791 been Jefferson’s translator at the Department of State. Freneau was someone Jefferson worked hard personally to solicit to come work with him in 1791.123

The Freneau-Jefferson Bond versus Hamilton & Washington’s Concerns

Since 1792, Hamilton had been urging Washington to force Jefferson to fire Freneau. In a letter dated September 9, 1792 from Jefferson to Washington, Jefferson addresses the “internal dissension” which are afflicting the Cabinet over this issue. Jefferson believes it is because of Jefferson’s oppo-sition to Hamilton’s policies over federal intervention in pri-vate manufacturing. In counter-attack to Hamilton, Jefferson accused Hamilton of betraying the nation employing “cabals with members of the legislature.”124 Jefferson claims in this letter that Hamilton had “duped” himself (Jefferson) and “made [me] a tool for forwarding his schemes, not then suffi-ciently understood by me.....”125 Jefferson admits now he thinks differently, but denies “hav[ing] ever intrigued” against the plans of Hamilton in the legislature. Jefferson insisted that Hamilton’s policies of intrusion of the federal

121.Henry Lee, Observations on the Writings of Thomas Jefferson with Particular Reference to the Attack they Contain on the Memory of Late Gen. Henry Lee. (Philadelphia: J. Dobson, 1839) at 28.

122.“No copy of the Funeral Dirge is extant....” (Marcus Daniel, Scandal and Civility (Oxford University Press, 2009) at 320 fn. 106.)


124.Alexander Hamilton, The Works of Alexander Hamilton (ed. John Church Hamilton) (N.Y.: Charles Francis, 1851) Vol. IV at 297 (letter of Jefferson to Washington). The same letter can be found in Henry Stephens Randall, The life of Thomas Jefferson (Philadelphia: J.B. Lip-pincott, 1871) Vol. II at 78 et seq.

http://books.google.com/books?id=lxxCAAAAIAAJ&pg=PA79



government into private manufacturing based upon the gen-eral welfare clause are “adverse to liberty, and was calculated to undermine and demolish the republic, by creating an influ-ence of his department over the members of the legisla-ture.”126

In essence, Jefferson said the President was listening to a man (Hamilton) whose principles would betray the Republic.127 Yet, Jefferson denied he had ever gone beyond merely dissent: “Such views might have justified something more than mere expressions of dissent, beyond which, never-theless, I never went.” Jefferson explained that Hamilton went behind his back, and negotiated deals in a “conference with the ministers of these two nations” (France and England), which were adapted “to [Hamilton’s] views.”128 Jefferson then explains that despite resentment of Hamilton intruding into foreigner affairs, Jefferson carried out Hamil-ton’s policies over his own disgust:

These views, thus made to prevail, their execu-tion fell of course to me; and I can safely appeal to you, who have seen all my letters and pro-ceedings, whether I have not carried them into execution, as sincerely as if they had been my own; though I ever considered them as incon-sistent with the honor and interest of our country. That they have been inconsistent with our interest, is but too fatally proved by the stab to our navigation given by the French; so that if the question be, By whose fault is it that Col. Hamilton and myself have not drawn

125.Alexander Hamilton, The Works of Alexander Hamilton (ed. John Church Hamilton) (N.Y.: Charles Francis, 1851) Vol. IV at 295 (letter of Jefferson to Washington). See http://books.google.com/books?id=XFvy8rSOHq8C&pg=PA295

126.Alexander Hamilton, The Works of Alexander Hamilton (ed. John Church Hamilton) (N.Y.: Charles Francis, 1851) Vol. IV at 295 (letter of Jefferson to Washington).



together? the answer will depend on that to two other questions—Whose principles of adminis-tration best justify, by their purity, conscien-tious adherence? and, Which of us has, notwithstanding, stepped farthest into the con-trol of the department of the other?129

Then in the same letter of September 1792, Jefferson gives President Washington all the details how he replaced Pintard with Freneau, and how Hamilton’s insinuations about any deliberate effort to undermine George Washington by hir-ing a publicist whom he expected would verbally attack the president was unfounded. Rather, Jefferson does not hide the fact he was hoping Freneau would set up a gazette that would

127.Jefferson’s argument, incidentally, is quite a contemporary issue. He says Hamilton’s justification for intrusion into private commerce was based upon the general welfare clause of the Constitution, which if allowed, would undermine the Republic. Jefferson wrote: “These were no longer the votes, then, of the representatives of the people, but of deserters from the rights and interests of the people; and it was impos-sible to consider their decisions, which had nothing in view but to enrich themselves, as the measures of the fair majority which ought always to be respected. If what was actually doing begat uneasiness in those who wished for virtuous government, what was further proposed was not less threatening to the friends of the Constitution; for in a report on the subject of manufactures (still to be acted on) it was expressly assumed that the general government has a right to exer-cise all powers which may be for the general welfare; that is to say, all the legitimate powers of government; since no government has a legit-imate right to do what is not for the welfare of the governed. There was indeed a sham limitation of the universality of this power, to cases where money is to lie employed;—but about what is it, that money cannot be employed? Thus the object of these plans taken together, is to draw all the powers of government into the hands of the general legislature; to establish means for corrupting a sufficient corps in that legislature to divide the honest votes, and preponderate by their own the scale which suits, and to have that corps under the com-mand of the Secretary of the Treasury, for the purpose of subverting, step by step, the principles of the Constitution, which he has so often declared to be a thing of nothing, which must be changed.” Alexander Hamilton, The Works of Alexander Hamilton (ed. John Church Hamil-ton) (N.Y.: Charles Francis, 1851) Vol. IV at 296 (letter of Jefferson to Washington).



support the government’s (Jefferson’s) views on certain mat-ters of foreign affairs, but Jefferson says that as to any other statements in Freneau’s journals, he never spoke a syllable of what Freneau should write:

[S]uch an one [i.e., Hamilton], I say, would have brought forward a charge against me for having appointed the poet Freneau translating clerk to my office, with a salary of $250 a year. That fact stands thus. While the government was at New-York, I was appealed to on behalf of Freneau, to know if there was any place within my department, to which he could be appointed. I answered there were but four clerkships, all of which I found full, and con-tinued without any change. When we removed to Philadelphia, Mr. Pintard, the translating clerk, did not choose to remove with us; his office then became vacant. I was again applied to there, for Freneau, and had no hesitation to promise the clerkship for him. I cannot recol-lect whether it was at the same time or after-wards that I was told he had a thought of setting up a newspaper there; but whether then or afterwards I considered it a circumstance of some value, as it might enable me to do, what I had long wished to have done; that is, to have the material parts of the Leyden Gazette brought under your eye and that of the pub-lic, in order to possess yourself and them of a juster view of the affairs of Europe, than could be obtained from any other public source. This I had ineffectually attempted through the press of Mr. Fenno while in New-

128.Alexander Hamilton, The Works of Alexander Hamilton (ed. John Church Hamilton) (N.Y.: Charles Francis, 1851) Vol. IV at 297 (letter of Jefferson to Washington).

129.Id., IV at 297.



York, selecting and translating passages, myself at first, then having it done by Mr. Pintard, the translating clerk. But they found their way too slowly into Mr. Fenno’s papers. Mr. Bache essayed it for me in Philadelphia; but his being a daily paper, did not circulate sufficiently in the other States. He even tried, at my request, the plan of a weekly paper of recapitulation, from his daily paper, in hopes that might go into the other States; but in this too, we failed. Freneau as translating clerk, and the printer of a periodical paper, likely to circulate through the States, (uniting in one person the parts of Pintard and Fenno,) revived my hopes that the thing could at length be effected. On the estab-lishment of his paper, therefore, I furnished him with the Leyden Gazettes, with an expres-sion of my wish that he would always translate and publish the material intelligence they con-tained; and I have continued to furnish them from time to time, as regularly as I received them. But as to any other direction or indica-tion of my wish, how his press should be con-ducted, what sort of intelligence he should give, what essays encourage, I can protest in the presence of heaven, that I never did, by myself or any other, directly or indirectly, say a syllable, nor attempt any kind of influence. I can further protest in the same awful pres-ence, that I never did, by myself or any other, directly or indirectly, write, dictate, or procure any one sentiment or sentence to be inserted in his, or any other gazette, to which my name was not affixed, or that of my office.130

Nevertheless, and despite this explanation, Washing-ton grew exasperated.

130.Id., Vol. IV at 299-300.



“In May [1793], Washington had asked Jefferson to fire Freneau from his State Department job after the editor [i.e., Freneau] wrote that Washington had signed the Neutral-ity Proclamation because the ‘Anglomen’ threatened to cut off his head.”131 Chernow blandly notes that “Jefferson refused to comply with Washington’s request.”132

Thus, Jefferson was defying the president at every turn, and evidently he felt defiance was necessary because President Washington was heeding Hamilton whom he openly expressed was akin to a traitor to the Republic by his policies.

Other observers concur that Jefferson at this juncture had developed a strong concern that Hamilton wanted to revive a monarchy, and affix “rags of royalty” on his alleged dupe — George Washington. For example, Lloyd D. Simpson writes:

The two persons, whom Jefferson thought most grievously afflicted with this monarchial mania, were John Adams, and Alexander Hamilton. These were the leading and most influential plotters against the liberties of the people. Washington was their dupe and instru-ment— the lay figure upon which the chief conspirators hung "the rags of royalty," with which Jefferson declared he was enveloped. But the arch-fiend, the Lucifer of the revolt against free government, was Hamilton. What were the reasons for all this solicitude and indignation ?... The only pretext for them was that Washington, Adams, Marshall, Jay, Hamil-ton and other men of wisdom believed that the Federal government should possess more power than Jefferson thought it ought to have.

131.Ron Chernow, Alexander Hamilton (N.Y.: Penguin Press, 2004) at 445.

132.Chernow, supra, at 445.



From this difference of opinion, Jefferson inferred their desire for the restoration of mon-archy. When he mentioned his fears of royalty to Washington, the General ridiculed the idea, and said that in his opinion there "were not ten men in the United States, who entertained such a thought."133

Thus, this tells us that there was a strong division in the Cabinet over policies. Jefferson believed Hamilton was a traitor and desired to make Washington king, stemming more from a paranoic fear than reality. Eventually, when the Presi-dent openly proclaimed the need to suppress the Whiskey Rebellion, Jefferson will be in dissent but have to sign the necessary papers about Genet to France (August 13, 1793) in support of that policy:

Just before signing, as Secretary of State, Wash-ington’s proclamation against the Western riot-ers, Jefferson complained to Madison of being "forced to appear to approve what I have con-demned uniformly."134

Back to the August 1793 Cabinet Meeting & Knox’ Discussion of the Freneau’s Funeral Dirge of George Washington

Thus, if we go back to the Cabinet meeting of August 1st, 1793, Knox therefore was bringing up a sore spot that should question Jefferson’s loyalty to Washington by men-tioning this book by Freneau calling for the overthrow of Washington by an employee of Jefferson. Then, in a sum-mary based upon Jefferson’s account of the Cabinet meeting, Washington responded as follows:

133.Lloyd D. Simpson, Notes on Thomas Jefferson by a Citizen of Mary-land (Philadelphia: Sherman & Co., 1885) at 56-57.

134.Lloyd D. Simpson, Notes on Thomas Jefferson by a Citizen of Mary-land (Philadelphia: Sherman & Co., 1885) at 55.



The President went suddenly into towering anger, spoke bitterly of journalistic abuse to which he had been subjected in past months, and defied any critic to indicate one selfish act promulgated by him in office. He would rather be in his grave, he cried, than in the present posture! He would rather be a farmer than emperor of the world, and yet the “rascal Fre-neau” insinuated that his pretensions were kingly.135

The way Jefferson told this story was not complimen-tary of Washington. Jefferson, however, had his own agenda. In the same account of this meeting, Jefferson wrote that the “rags of royalty” must be torn off of Washington, even at the expense of “laceration”—that is, cutting him.136 It meant he sided with those attacking Washington as having monarchical ambitions. It probably also means that he was working inside the Cabinet with the traitor, Edmund Randolph, as well as those outside (i.e., the Democratic Societies) who were plan-ning Washington’s overthrow and execution. No matter how preposterous it sounds to say such a thing about a founding father like Jefferson (and, I repeat, someone I deeply admire and wish these facts were not true), the facts point in this unassailable direction, which will become clearer as we pro-ceed.

135.Harwell, supra, at 636. Jefferson’s quote of Washington include him saying “by God, he had rather be in his grave than in the present situa-tion. That he had rather be on his farm than to be made emperor of the world, and yet that they were charging him with wanting to be a king.” (Flexner, GW--Anguish and Farewell, supra, at 67.) For a full excerpt of Jefferson’s account, see Alexander Hamilton, The Papers of Alex-ander Hamilton (editors Harold C. Syrett, Jacob Cooke) (Columbia University Press, 1969) Vol. XVI at 158, quoting Ford, Writings of Jef-ferson, I, 253-54.)

136. Flexner, GW--Anguish and Farewell, supra, at 68.



After this uncharacteristic outburst of anguish, Wash-ington sought to check his anger by deciding to follow Jeffer-son’s advice, and rejecting the counsel of Hamilton and Knox. The final decision was that “the record [of the subver-sion through the Democratic Societies] should not be pub-lished in the United States....”137

In the next Cabinet meeting, Hamilton tried to revive his concern. He warned that the Pennsylvania Democratic Society was planning a revolution. Jefferson replied that this society only had local intentions. After the governor’s race, Jefferson predicted it would die out.138

Washington, who frequently only made decisions if his Cabinet joined in a single consensus, was paralyzed on the issue of disclosing to Americans the role of secret political associations in their midst. Jefferson’s strong objection con-tinued to paralyze Washington from making a public disclo-sure. Jefferson’s speech on this occasion fully disclosed his thinking. He advised the President that publishing the corre-spondence of Genêt would show disagreements amongst Cabinet members.139 It was impolitic to show minor griev-ances with a foreign power in public. Jefferson insisted that Hamilton was wrong that France was trying to subvert the United States. Rather, France’s wars in Europe were in self-defense, Jefferson said. America would strengthen France’s enemies by being suspicious of a French plan at subversion. Jefferson implored Washington, saying the President surely did not “aim a fatal stroke at the cause of liberty!”140

137. Flexner, GW--Anguish and Farewell, supra, at 65.138. Flexner, GW--Anguish and Farewell, supra, at 66.139. Jefferson had been conjoled in this. Genêt’s correspondence flattered

Jefferson and told Washington that Jefferson was much wiser then Washington. If there was backlash against Genêt by disclosure of Genêt’s correspondence, then Jefferson would have fallen in disgrace. No one ever pointed out Jefferson’s obvious conflict-of-interest as he advised the president.

140. Flexner, GW--Anguish and Farewell, supra, at 66-67.


Democratic Societies’ Strategy In 1794

Jefferson’s opinion that the Jacobins of France were the apostles of liberty must make us pause. His remark came on the heals of the Jacobin uprising at Paris in May-June that led to the violent expulsion and arrest of 29 innocent deputies of the Assembly. Also it followed March 1793 when churches were closed nationwide if no juring priest was available and after the Terror was intensified. Jefferson was no longer sym-pathizing with the democrats of 1789; now if his allegiance to France continued, he was wilfully ignoring or supporting the atheist-terrorist campaign that was public knowledge by May 1793.

Democratic Societies’ Strategy In 1794The year 1794 saw the focus of the Democratic Soci-

eties turn to creating a Jacobin Republic in Spanish territo-ries. Since Spain was engaged in war with Jacobin France, their forces were weak on the North American continent. Engaging the Spanish forces in North America might tax the resources of Spain, thus helping Jacobin France.

Before his ouster in February 1794, Genêt was outfit-ting and commissioning troops to invade from Kentucky into Florida and the southern Mississippi. This was among the activities that Washington lobbied to put a halt. The U.S. Sen-ate was presented a bill to outlaw expeditions by private citi-zens against powers at peace with the United States. A divisive spirit infected the U.S. Congress at the time. Bitter debates took place on the bill, but it eventually passed the Senate only after Washington himself presented a docu-mented complaint from Spanish authorities against the aggression. However, the House refused to confirm the bill.

Washington felt the need to maintain peace and did the next best thing. He posted troops along the Ohio to pre-vent the expeditions from reaching Spanish settlements on the Mississippi.141 However, then the Kentucky Democratic Society attacked Washington publicly. It addressed “all



inhabitants of the Allegheny and Appalachian Mountains” and said that all Spanish territories should be attacked while Spain’s troops were engaged elsewhere, and the federal gov-ernment was desiring to keep the Mississippi blocked to destroy the western United States. This, plus the “odious and oppressive” excise tax on whisky placed by Congress as well as the prohibition of settling land not officially bought from Indians meant the east would bleed the west. Because appeals for justice might well fail, it went on. “Let the west prepare for self-defense by forming, in every area, Democratic Soci-eties which...would keep in contact with each other.”142

Clearly, the Kentucky Democratic Society—operating a few hundred miles south of Philadelphia—planned armed insurrection to assert their “rights” to settle Indian land and sell liquor with no excise. Those “rights” were pretexts to gain supporters—clearly thin reeds to base a revolution upon. President Washington wrote, however, at the time, that Gov-ernor Henry Lee expressed “precisely my ideas of the con-duct and views of those who are aiming at nothing short of subversion of the government of these states, even at the expense of plunging this country into the horrors of a disas-trous war.”143

Washington did not realize that the Jacobin strategy in France in 1792 was exactly to plunge the nation into war, then accuse the Chief Executive of trying to aim for peace, thus treason, and then eliminate him. This ruse worked once; it could work again.

President Washington expressed “great wonder” at the Kentucky Democratic Society’s doctrines. The Pennsylvania Democratic Society now was calling for aid and manpower to its Kentucky and Virginia affiliates to the south. Washington observed the coordinated resistance to any government.

141. Flexner, GW--Anguish and Farewell, supra, at 127.142. Flexner, GW--Anguish and Farewell, supra, at 127 (paraphrase of

Kentucky society bulletin).143. Flexner, GW--Anguish and Farewell, supra, at 127.


First Revolt of 1794

Regarding the Kentucky society, Washington noted that the U.S. was trying vigorously to open the Mississippi to full navigation of American vessels, but he saw through the cha-rade of the Kentucky Democratic Society. They must be pre-disposed “to be dissatisfied under any circumstance and under every exertion of government, short of war with Spain which must eventually involve one with Great Britain.”144

First Revolt of 1794The first revolt of 1794 caused by the Democratic

Societies broke out in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. Hamilton, who participated in putting down activities of the insurrec-tionists, wrote on November 27, 1794 on the true causes of the revolt:

Seeing the debates on the subject of the Demo-cratic Societies, I called at your home to state some facts. It is true that the opposition to the excise laws began from causes foreign to Demo-cratic Societies, but it is well ascertained by proof in the course of judicial investigations, that the insurrection immediately is to be essentially attributed to one of the societies sometimes called the Mingo Creek society, sometimes the Democratic Society. An early and active member of it commanded the first attack on Neville’s house; another active mem-ber of that society, McFarlane, the second attack. Benjamin Parkinson, the President [of the Democratic Society], and several other members of it seem to have directed the second attack as a committee. This may be asserted upon good proof and information recently received, though it would not be consistent

144. Flexner, GW--Anguish and Farewell, supra, at 164.



with decorum to name me. Make what use you please of this, and communicate it to other friends.145

The Insurrection To Overthrow The U.S.A Begins

In July 1794, the Mingo Creek Society, led by Parkin-son, stirred up an armed mob which attacked the house of Neville. Neville had been appointed by Washington as excise inspector of Allegheny County, Pennsylvania. When a U.S. Army contingent showed up, the mob spurred by Democratic Society leaders, did not back down, but kept up the attack on

145. William Miller, “The Democratic Societies and the Whiskey Insur-rection,” The Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography, Vol. LXII, No. 3 (July 1938) at 342. Miller dwells on the possibility that the Mingo Creek society, “the cradle of the insurrection,” was not a Demo-cratic Society. He argues that little is known about this society except: (1) its structure copied the Democratic Societies (e.g., it had a presi-dent and ruling council); (2) it fostered the violence in Pennsylvania; and (3) its co-conspirators in the violence included Marshall and Brad-ford, members of the Democratic Society of Washington County, Pennsylvania—Marshall was its President. Id. at 342-45. However, he says this does not prove that the Mingo Creek society was a Demo-cratic Society. Thus, Miller concludes that Hamilton “was at least mis-taken” or he “conveniently twisted” the truth that it was sometimes called a “Democratic Society.” Id. at 342. Thus, Miller concludes our Secretary of the Treasury must be disbelieved in what he learned about the Mingo Creek being a Democratic Society. A Cabinet officer must be deemed wrong, but Miller must be right. Miller’s method, however, is dubious. He assumes that Hamilton is wrong as his first premise. Then if nothing certainly confirms it, then Hamilton is malicious or mistaken. However, the test is whether circumstantial facts are consis-tent with Hamilton’s revelation. If so, one must suppose, in absence of contradictory proof, that Hamilton is correct. Miller’s own mistake stems from compounding two fallacies: first, he tries to prove a fact is true from the lack of evidence; and second, he tries to prove direct evi-dence is false from the absence of other direct evidence despite the existence of circumstantial evidence. Illogic sadly is what people use when they have no other means to defeat a point.



Neville’s home. Shooting broke out. Macfarlane died. How-ever, the army soldiers surrendered. The mob then burned Neville’s home to the ground.146

Anyone who had spoken up in support of the govern-ment promptly has their barns burned. Those who paid the excise tax had their stills destroyed. Government officials were stripped naked, then hot tar was poured on them, then they were dusted in feathers, and finally seared with hot irons. Bradford, a leader of the Democratic Society of Wash-ington County had the U.S. mail robbed on July 26th. The mail was captured and used to find suspects who supported the government.147

On August 1st, an armed meeting of the mob at Brad-dock’s Field led to a march on Pittsburgh. By this time, James Marshall, President of the Democratic Society of Washington County along with another Democratic Society member, David Bradford, were among the leaders of the rioters.148 In fact, Wharton points out that Bradford was secretly encourag-ing the rioters at the time of the attack on Neville; then after-ward, he came forward as a “great demagogue” and “endeavoured to carry out the most violent measures in order to save himself.”149

Bradford was the District Prosecuting Attorney of Western Pennsylvania. He now openly initiated an effort to declare western Pennsylvania seceded from and indepen-

146. Flexner, supra, at 163. Miller provides the standard apology that “some of the members of the Democratic Society of Washington, County, Pennsylvania did [take part in the insurrection], [b]ut appar-ently not in their capacity as members of the club.” Miller, “The Dem-ocratic Societies, etc.” supra, at 327 n. 13. This argument overlooks all the circumstantial and direct evidence from government officials to the contrary. It also ignores the speeches and proclamations that American officials were presumably monitoring from these societies which we may never know fully because Washington adopted Jefferson’s policy of keeping what the government knew secret at the time.

147. Flexner, George Washington—Anguish and Farewell, supra, at 163; Miller, “Democratic Societies, etc.”, supra, at 328.



dent from the United States.150 The secretary of the Mingo Creek Society, Mr. McDonald, later explained in an affidavit that the Mingo Creek Society planned, after burning Neville’s home, to march to Pittsburgh, and burn it to the ground.151

The little city of Pittsburgh was comprised of only 200 houses. Rumours spread so that it awaited anxiously the expected sacking and ruin of their town by these men.152 Meanwhile, according to a reputable source, “‘the plunder [also] of the city of Philadelphia was promised to the insur-gents in 1794, by their leaders.’”153

In all dangerous phases of the insurrection, the leaders came from the Democratic Societies, such as Hugh Henry Breckenridge.154 On August 7th, 1794, President Washington declared that he was going to call out the militia to suppress the insurrection. On August 14, 1794, the insurgents met at Parkinson Ferry and delegated a Committee of Twelve Com-

148. Miller, “Democratic Societies, etc.,” supra, at 345. Later apologists made up the myth of someone threatening Marshall and Bradford if they did not lead them. Admittedly, however, both men “adopted the most violent counsels” at this time. Id. at 345-46. In fact, Miller points out that after MacFarlane’s death at Neville’s house, both men attended a meeting at Mingo Creek and they “became excited and from that moment they took a warm and active part.” Id. This tries to suggest that the insurgents’ Democratic Society leaders were swept up in the popular indignation rather than as demagogues having stirred it up from inception. Until proven, however, that is simply a theory. What is equally plausible, which given all the facts seems more probable, is Marshall and Bradford made MacFarlane a martyr to their cause to whip people up for fresh insurrection.

149. Francis Wharton, State Trials of the United States (Philadelphia: 1849) at 114, quoted in William Miller, “The Democratic Societies and the Whiskey Insurrection,” The Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography (July 1938) Vol. LXII, No. 3 at 346.

150. Orville J. Victor, History of American Conspiracies: A Record of Treason, Insurrection, Rebellion, &c. in the United States of America, from 1760 to 1860 (N.Y.: James Torrey Publisher, 1863) (reprint N.Y.: Arno Press, 1969) at 216-17; William Miller, “The Democratic Societ-ies and the Whiskey Insurrection,” The Pennsylvania Magazine of His-tory and Biography (July 1938) Vol. LXII, No. 3 at 328.



missioners to meet the federal commissioners. They estab-lished another committee, following Jacobin practice, that was to deal with any emergency and take temporary measures as they “think necessary.”155

In September 1794, Addison convened the Court of Allegheny County where the disturbances centered and asked the people to submit to the excise tax as a means of appealing its legality. His prayer from the bench was, “Oh! may the God of wisdom, of peace inspire this people... and save this coun-try from becoming a field of blood.”156

In response, the Democratic Societies called their members to show the federal armies—which, as “all govern-ments” was “more or less a combination against the people” — “the display of a power equal to itself, the collected senti-ment of the people.”157

151.William Miller, “The Democratic Societies and the Whiskey Insur-rection,” The Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography (July 1938) Vol. LXII, No. 3 at 343-44.

152.“Whiskey Rebellion,” Magill, supra, at 378; Flexner, George Wash-ing—Anguish and Farewell, supra, at 163.

153.Seth Payson, supra, at 205-08.154.Hugh Henry Breckenridge admitted that he attended a meeting of the

Democratic Society, but he did so as a “spectator.” (William Miller, “The Democratic Societies and the Whiskey Insurrection,” The Penn-sylvania Magazine of History and Biography (July 1938) Vol. LXII, No. 3 at 347). His son late wrote a favorable history of the insurrection. See Henry Breckenridge, History of the Western Insurrection in West-ern Pennsylvania, Commonly Called the Whiskey Insurrection (1794) (reprinted N.Y.: Arno Press, 1969). Hugh H. Breckenridge relentlessly pursued revenge on Alexander Addison, the judge who vigorously assisted President Washington quash the insurrection. Although Addi-son was considered a man of dignity, judgment and erudition, Brecken-ridge used an accusation that Addison made an unwarranted criticism of another judge’s charge to a jury, as the basis to have Addison impeached. Breckenridge successfully had Addison removed from office. See Leland D. Baldwin, Whiskey Rebels—The Story of a Fron-tier Uprising (Pa.: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1939) at 51-52.



Washington called on the State of Pennsylvania where the disturbances had broken out to supply a militia. Governor Mifflin initially refused. He told Washington to forget mili-tary compulsion.158 (Later Fauchet’s papers implicitly revealed Mifflin was one of the four who needed money to help an insurrection to overthrow the U.S.A. which monies Edmund Randolph had solicited. Fauchet identifies Mifflin as one of the leading “doubters” of the President’s ability to sup-press the Whiskey Rebellion, and then two others are named as in sympathy with the rebellion, whereupon money is solic-ited by Randolph for “four men” to be able to step safely out from the shadows.)159

Washington was now desperate. The federal govern-ment was dissolving inside the state of Pennsylvania which refused to provide assistance.160

Washington then called upon the governors of several other states for militiamen to stop the planned sacking of Pittsburgh and Philadelphia. New Jersey, Maryland, and Vir-ginia offered militia. Prior to deploying the troops, Washing-ton made a last ditch effort and sent federal commissioners to the neighboring region and offered amnesty to anyone who would no longer obstruct the enforcement of the laws.161

155.William Miller, “The Democratic Societies and the Whiskey Insur-rection,” The Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography (July 1938) Vol. LXII, No. 3 at 329.

156.Leland D. Baldwin, Whiskey Rebels—The Story of a Frontier Upris-ing (Pa.: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1939) at 201-04.

157.Leland D. Baldwin, Whiskey Rebels—The Story of a Frontier Upris-ing (Pa.: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1939) at 260 (speech from Baltimore Democratic Society).

158. Flexner, GW--Anguish and Farewell, supra, at 166.159.See Footnote 185 on page 81.160. Flexner, GW--Anguish and Farewell, supra, at 166.161. Flexner, GW--Anguish and Farewell, supra, at 167.



Gallatin, who Jefferson would later make Secretary of the Treasury, turned up amongst the sixty commissioners that the insurrectionists sent to meet the federal commission-ers.162

Washington also proclaimed that a referendum should decide the issue. Washington by proclamation gave the rebels until September 1, 1794 to vote on a referendum agreeing or disagreeing with the law. However, the insurrectionists used the typical Jacobin tactic of “terror at the polls” to thwart the vote.163 The commissioners reported that no excise officer could still enter the area without being attacked.164

Around September 11, 1794, some leaders of the insurrection declared independence from the United States. They publicly recommended the guillotine be used on “stock-holders and their subordinates,” that is, businessmen. Vio-lence breathed forth from their mouths.165 The federal commissioners who attended the voting reported on Septem-ber 24, 1794. They said that the majority in the area sup-ported submitting to the law, but a violent minority intimidated them. The vote was unsatisfactory. Only armed force could allow enforcement of the law.

When President Washington’s determination was evi-dent, Pennsylvania joined the fold and finally provided some militia. Governor Henry Lee was appointed to lead the 12,950 deputized U.S. Marshals with Hamilton toward the forks of the Ohio. On September 9th, mobilization of the militias had begun in the four separate states that agreed to provide troops. When the commissioners’ news came on Sep-tember 24th, the President the next day ordered that the army move to suppress the rebellion. Before the army ever received orders to head out, reports came into the U.S. War Depart-

162. Miller, “Democratic Societies, etc.,” supra, at 344.163. Flexner, GW--Anguish and Farewell, supra, at 169.164. Miller, “Democratic Societies, etc.,” supra, at 330.165. Flexner, GW--Anguish and Farewell, supra, at 168.



ment. The rebels were mobilizing, they refused to receive any more government representatives to negotiate, and they had no fear of ‘eastern’ troops. They assumed the President was powerless and would not dare raise a federal army against them. They were planning marching on Philadelphia, and publicly proclaimed “their course and swelling over the banks of Susquehanna [near Philadelphia] like a torrent—irresistible and devouring.”166 The situation was getting more tense.

Meanwhile, Washington’s Secretary of State Edmund Randolph, who secretly and treasonably was leading the insurrectionist party — even having asked the French Foreign Minister, Jean Antoine Fauchet, for financial aid to overturn the U.S.A. in September 1794167 — was trying to talk the President out of use of military action. Randolph reported that the tax collectors who fled from western Pennsylvania did not think too much alarm should be raised.168

As President Washington considered his action, law and order totally had broken down in Western Pennsylvania. Governor Henry Lee of Virginia assured the President of their support, and Washington responded that his information shows “this insurrection is viewed with universal indignation and abhorrence.”169

By October 1794, the crisis had been reached. Jean Antoine Fauchet having turned down Randolph’s request for money to help the insurrection (i.e., the Jacobins of France fell from power in July 1794), the Democratic Society of Pennsylvania publicly signalled a backing down. It issued a directive that denounced the “excise system” as “oppressive

166. Flexner, GW--Anguish and Farewell, supra, at 168, 169.167. This was revealed in dispatches seized by the British from the French

Ambassador in 1794, discussed later.168. Flexner, GW--Anguish and Farewell, supra, at 168.169. Flexner, GW--Anguish and Farewell, supra, at 169.



and hostile to the liberties of this country, and a nurse of vice and sycophancy,” but then said it disapproved of opposition “not warranted by the frame of government.”170

However, the Pennsylvania Democratic Society was rocked by emotion when its leadership tried to make peaceful resolutions. On September 11, 1794, the leadership read a resolution that commended Washington and Governor Miff-lin for “pursuing a plan of pacification with the western peo-ple” if peaceful negotiations would not work. When the resolution was read which referred to the “intemperance of the Western citizens” in refusing the equitable revisions of the law, a storm broke out and the President of the Society led 28 members out of the meeting.171 The remaining 30 passed the resolution.

The Baltimore Republican Society (a member of the Democratic Society system) on September 6, 1794 also issued a disapproval of violence which would tend to “pros-trate all the just powers of government and produce anarchy and civil war.” The N.Y. Democratic Society at Canaan on September 4, 1794 joined the chorus and said it would be “improper and dangerous” to use violence to solve the griev-ance over the tax in this manner. On September 6, 1794, the Democratic Society of South Carolina said all should “dis-countenance” the “highly reprehensible conduct of the people of Pittsburgh.” On September 22, the Newark Republican Society also condemned the western disturbances.172 The purpose of these remonstrances became clear later when

170. Flexner, GW--Anguish and Farewell, supra, at 170. Flexner puts this declaration coming after September 9, 1794 and apparently in October, while Miller has it “resolved” on July 31, 1794. (See Miller, “Demo-cratic Societies, etc.” supra, at 328). These sources can be reconciled by assuming that the declaration was printed up after September 9th but it had the date of the Society’s resolution as having been made July 31st (to try to disassociate themselves from the coming debacle).

171. Miller, “Democratic Societies, etc.,” supra, at 331-32.172. Miller, “Democratic Societies, etc.,” supra, at 331, 332.



demagogues in Congress used them to prove the utter noth-ingness of the alleged role of these secret societies in this insurrection.173

Before we discuss the federal government’s victory in late 1794 over the Democratic Societies’ revolt in Western Pennsylvania, let’s go backwards in time to February 1794 to piece together with these facts the role of France in all of this.

J.A. Fauchet Arrives To Replace & Arrest Genêt

President Washington’s request to France in August 1793 to recall Genêt because of his role in earlier distur-bances and the breach of neutrality was finally granted in early 1794.174 Yet, Washington granted asylum to Genêt, realizing Genêt would be guillotined in the current atmo-sphere of France.

What had happened by February 1794 in France? The Montagnard Jacobins of France by this time had not only taken power away from the Illuminist Brissotins (like Genêt) but also had destroyed the independent ultra-radical Illumi-nists like Cloots, sending them likewise to the guillotine. Thus when a Brissotin like Edmund Genêt (1763-1834) had displeased President Washington in 1793, the Montagnard Jacobins would have no problem arresting and executing him. Genêt represented an ally of the Brissotins. During late 1793, Robespierre ferociously murdered them in his attempt to usurp the Illuminist ‘foreign power in the revolution. Robe-spierre’s view on Genêt, stated in February 1794, reflected

173. Miller, “Democratic Societies, etc.,” supra, at 338.174.Orville J. Victor, History of American Conspiracies: A Record of

Treason, Insurrection, Rebellion, &c. in the United States of America, from 1760 to 1860 (N.Y.: James Torrey Publisher, 1863) (reprint N.Y.: Arno Press, 1969) at 231-244; Flexner, GW--Anguish and Farewell, supra, at 128.


J.A. Fauchet Arrives To Replace & Arrest Genêt

his approach to stop revolutionary activities abroad, said of the Brissotins: “Genêt, their agent in Philadelphia, made him-self chief of a club there, and never ceased to make and excite motions equally injurious and perplexing to the govern-ment.”175

The fuller quote is important to read for two reasons. First, it proves how radically France had abandoned interna-tional revolution by February 1794. Second, it mentions that “Representatives of the Republic in America” are “agents” with the “traitors” of France (Brissot) — revealing even by February 1794 that Robespierre knew of information not yet revealed to Fauchet or to George Washington. Robespierre spoke the following report to the National Convention at Paris in February 1794:

By a very singular fatality, the Representatives of the Republic in America are the agents of the traitors, whom she has punished. The brother-in-law of Brissot is consul general with the United States from France; another man of the name of Genet, sent by Le Brun and Bris-sot, with the charge of Plenipotentiary Agent, resides at Philadelphia, and has faithfully ful-filled their designs and instructions. He has made use of the most unaccountable means to irritate the American government against us; he affected to speak without any pretence, in a menacing tone; and to make proposals to that government equally contrary to the interests of both nations; he endeavored to render our principles suspected or formidable, by exceeding them by the most ridiculous appli-cations. By a very remarkable contrast, while those who had sent him to America, persecuted at Paris, the popular societies, denounced as

175. George Washington, The writings of George Washington (ed. Wor-thington Chauncey Ford) (N.Y.: Putnam, 1891) Vol. XII at 403.



Anarchists, the Jacobins courageously strug-gling against tyranny, Genet at Philadelphia made himself chief of a club, and never ceased to make and excite motions equally injurious and perplexing to the government. Thus the same faction which wanted to subject the people in France to the aristocracy of the rich, endeavored in a moment to set free and arm all the negroes to destroy our colonies.176

As a result, Fauchet was sent to the U.S.A. in place of Genêt, and he arrived February 21, 1794. Consequently, when Robespierre spoke at Paris in February 1794, he already knew without any report from Fauchet that some “Represen-tatives” of the U.S.A. were conspiring as “agents” of Genêt in a conspiracy serving the “traitors” — the Brissotins — back at Paris. This means Robespierre must have become aware of something in Genêt’s records which proved the Brissotins were in a conspiracy with “Representatives” of the U.S.A. Fauchet would later learn the ringleader as of February 1794 was Edmund Randolph, the Secretary of State, as we shall see. The final important aspect about this speech is that it reveals why the conspiracy was strangled — Robespierre reversed course entirely on the Brissotin plan of world revo-lution, and retracted all such plans.

Thus, in February 1794, Jean Antoine Fauchet arrived in the U.S.A. as a replacement ambassador to arrest Genêt. The Wikipedia records:

The Jacobins, having taken power in France by January 1794, sent an arrest notice which asked Genêt to come back to France. Genêt, knowing that he would likely be sent to the guillotine, asked Washington for asylum. It was

176.George Washington, The writings of George Washington (ed. Wor-thington Chauncey Ford) (N.Y.: Putnam, 1891) Vol. XII at 403. Notice here how Robespierre was against freeing the slaves, contrary to Bris-sot’s notions.


In 1794, Ambassador Fauchet Is Approached By Randolph, The Secretary of

Hamilton — Genêt’s fiercest opponent in the cabinet — who convinced Washington to grant him safe haven in the United States.177

Conway described this situation in this manner:

Fauchet had been instructed to demand that Genet should be sent to France, a prisoner. This the government refused, it being certain that he would be executed for having incurred the dis-pleasure of Washington.... 178

Incidentally, having received asylum, Genêt remained in America and “married the daughter of Gov. George Clin-ton;” then his second wife was the daughter of the “Postmas-ter-General Osgood;” then Genêt died in 1834.179

In 1794, Ambassador Fauchet Is Approached By Randolph, The Secretary of State, To Help Overthrow The United States of America

By July 1794, the Montagnard Jacobins fell from power in France. Robespierre was executed, and a new period of moderate government began. France was now run by a moderate executive Directory of several men who repre-sented a mixture of political views. As a result, Jean Antoine

177.http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edmond_Charles_Genêt (accessed 3/15/09).

178.Edmund Randolph, Omitted Chapters of History Disclosed in the Papers of Edmund Randolph (Governor of Virginia, First Attorney General and Secretary of State) (ed. Moncure Daniel Conway) (2d ed.) (N.Y.P Putnam’s Sons 1889) at 238

179.Edmund Randolph, Omitted Chapters of History Disclosed in the Papers of Edmund Randolph (Governor of Virginia, First Attorney General and Secretary of State) (ed. Moncure Daniel Conway) (2d ed.) (N.Y.P Putnam’s Sons 1889) at 238 n. 2.



Fauchet was left an ambassador in America representing a France which had ceased any support for revolution. On March 28, 1795, Jean Antoine Fauchet’s dispatches (includ-ing from the period of late 1794) to the Directory were retrieved from a box thrown overboard from the Jean Bart, a French privateer and corvette, when a British frigate, the Cer-berus, overtook it. The British quickly retrieved the box from the sea.180

The box revealed many important facts about the 1794 insurrection plans in the U.S.A, including that a Cabi-net Minister of Washington’s (Edmund Randolph) was con-spiring with France to overthrow the American federal government.

Regarding the “western insurrection,” Jean Antoine Fauchet wrote the French Commissioner of Foreign Relations on October 31, 1794 (just as the march onto the rebels was about to begin) about what he learned were its true causes. Jean Antoine Fauchet also was amazed by the “precious con-fessions” of Mr. Edmund Randolph (1753-1813) about his treasonous designs against the President. Washington had removed Jefferson as Secretary of State at the end of Decem-ber 1793, and appointed in his place Randolph. Edmund Ran-dolph previously had been the U.S. Attorney-General. Fauchet notes in this dispatch — identified as number 10 on the 10th of Brumaire (October 31st, 1794)181 — that Ran-dolph’s revelations are so sensitive that he has not even told most of his colleagues about them. The dispatches will “give you a clue to all the measures, of which the common dis-patches give you an account... to discover the true causes of the explosion [in Western Pennsylvania], which it is obsti-

180.Moncure Daniel Conway, Omitted chapters of history disclosed in the life and papers of Edmund (2d ed.)(N.Y.: G.P. Putnam, 1889) at 270.

181.The translation of dates is found at http://www.napoleon-series.org/research/government/c_revcalendar.html (3/22/09). Old sources on the Fauchet letter render the date as October 24th rather than what this ref-erence source states — October 31st.



nately resolved to repress with great means, although the state of things has no longer any thing alarming.” Fauchet recognized that the excise tax was only a pretext for insurrec-tion. “To confine the present crisis to the simple question of the excise is to reduce it far below its true scale; it is indubita-bly connected with a general explosion for some time pre-pared in the public mind... In order to see the real cause in order to calculate the effect and consequence, we must ascend to the origin of the parties existing in the State, and retrace their progress.”182

Fauchet then gives the Commissioner a brief history lesson. He refers to the Federalists who supported Washing-ton, and Fauchet continues, adopting the propaganda line of the Democratic Societies, that the Federalists aimed at creat-ing a monarchy in America. Fauchet claims one federalist, Hamilton, created financial schemes to foster an aristocracy. “In the mean time, the popular societies are formed; political ideas concentrate themselves; the patriot party unite, and more closely connect themselves; they gain a formidable majority in the Legislature... the concert of declarations and censures against government arises, at which the latter is even astonished.” Then Fauchet reveals the ring-leader.

It appears, therefore, that these men, with oth-ers unknown to me, all having without doubt Randolph at their head, were balancing to decide on their party. Two or three days before the proclamation was published [September 1794], and of course before the Cabinet had resolved on its measures, Mr. Randolph came to see me with an air of great eagerness, and made to me the overtures, of which I have given you an account in my No. 6 [August

182.Orville J. Victor, History of American Conspiracies: A Record of Treason, Insurrection, Rebellion, &c. in the United States of America, from 1760 to 1860 (N.Y.: James Torrey Publisher, 1863) (reprint N.Y.: Arno Press, 1969) at 227-30 (emphasis added).



1794, reporting Randolph’s request that four allies in the U.S.A. receive funds]. Thus, with some thousands of dollars, the republic [of France] could have decided on civil war [in the U.S.] or peace! Thus the consciences of pretended patriots of America already have their price! It is very true that the certainty of these conclusions, painful to be drawn, will forever exist in our archives. What will be the old age of this Government, if it is thus early decrepid?183

In the earliest dispatch of Fauchet retrieved by the Jean Bart — dispatch number three, Fauchet relayed that Randolph merely wanted to control the divisions that threat-ened revolution, and he could prevent this by ascendancy over the mind of President Washington.184 Dispatch number eight relayed a request by Randolph that the French provide paid political support to four men engaged in France’s cause in America to export its revolution here. This is clear when dispatch eight is

183.Orville J. Victor, History of American Conspiracies: A Record of Treason, Insurrection, Rebellion, &c. in the United States of America, from 1760 to 1860 (N.Y.: James Torrey Publisher, 1863) (reprint N.Y.: Arno Press, 1969) at 227-30 (emphasis added). The French version of this portion of the letter, taken from the original among the Pinkering Papers, appears in Moncure Daniel Conway’s Omitted chapters of his-tory disclosed in the life and papers of Edmund (2d ed.)(N.Y.: G.P. Put-nam, 1889) at 278.

184.In Dispatch number 3, Fauchet wrote: “Thus the Secretary of State appeared to open himself without reserve. He imparted to me intestine divisions which were rumbling in the United States. The idea of an approaching commotion affected him deeply. He hoped to prevent it by the ascendancy which he daily acquired over the mind of the President, who consulted him in all affairs, and to whom he told the truth, which his colleagues disguised from him. The President of the United States, says he, is the mortal enemy of England and the friend of France.... He has—but it is impossible for me in conscience to make to you this con-fession. I should betray the duties of my office. Everything which I can say to you is, that it is important for our two nations that you continue to visit him frequently.... Let us unite, V. Fauchet, to draw our two nations closer together.” Fauchet’s Dispatch No. 8.



read in light of dispatch 10. McMasters, the famous historian, puts the two dispatches together to make them explain the payments were to finance revolution in what everyone had assumed was merely the so-called ‘Whiskey Rebellion’:

Be this as it might, the [Whiskey] insurrection broke out [in 1794], an army was raised, and some of the patriots began to hesitate and chose sides. The greatest of doubters was Miff-lin [i.e., the governor of Pennsylvania who denied Washington troops to suppress the Whiskey rioters]. Dallas, who stood high with the Republican Society, was another. Mr. Ran-dolph made a third. Two or three days before the proclamation was issued the Secretary of State [i.e. Randolph] had come in haste to M. Fauchet’s house. “All his countenance,” wrote the Frenchman, “was grief. He requested of me a private conversation. It is all over, he said to me; a civil war is about to ravage our unhappy country. Four men, by their talents, their influence, their energy, may save it.185 But, debtors of English merchants, they will be deprived of their liberty if they take the small-est step. Can you lend them instantly funds sufficient to shelter them from English persecu-tion” ([Dispatch 3] “Thus with some thousands of dollars the Republic could have decided on civil war or peace. Thus the consciences of the pretended patriots of America already have their prices.” [Dispatch 10.]186

Thus, it was dispatch number 10 where any innocent color from the plan was removed. Soon all these dispatches were made matters of public record.187

185.In context, this implied the three just mentioned — Mifflin, Dallas, and Randolph. The fourth is not identified.

186.McMasters, supra, at 233.



Fauchet said it well. Meanwhile, despite treason in the cabinet, nothing could change the final outcome once force was used against the rebels. As the U.S. Marshals headed out, the insurrectionists reconsidered their position. Without French aid and the collapse of Jacobinism in France, there seemed obviously no purpose to be served by the insurrec-tion.

How Washington Handled These Revelations A Year Later

These dispatches tell the story for 1794, but they were not provided to the U.S.A. until a year later after the so-called Whiskey Rebellion was already long over. In late July 1795, George Hammond, the British Minister to the U.S.A. gave Oliver Walcott, Jr. (Secretary of the Treasury) an intercepted dispatch of Fauchet. Wolcott immediately read them and, as he relayed later, these established his belief that “something highly improper had been proposed by Mr. Randolph....”188 Fauchet explained in the letter the “precious confessions of Mr. Randolph” along the lines that it would be a mistake to believe the “explosion” in Western Pennsylvania (i.e., the Whiskey Rebellion) had anything to do with excise taxes, but rather “was closely bound to up with a general explosion long prepared in the public mind,” as McMasters paraphrased its contents.189 Fauchet was led to understand that the Demo-cratic Societies sought in the Whiskey Rebellion not the sup-pression of a tax, but rather “revolution or civil war.”190

187.These famous letters were soon published at Philadelphia in a pam-phlet called: A Translation of Citizen Fauchet’s Intercepted Letter No. 10; to which are added Extracts of Nos. 8 and 6.

188.Moncure Daniel Conway, Omitted chapters of history disclosed in the life and papers of Edmund (2d ed.)(N.Y.: G.P. Putnam, 1889) at 271.

189.John McMasters, A history of the people of the United States, from the revolution to the Civil War (N.Y.: Appleton, 1921) Vol. II at 232.

190.McMasters, id., at 232 (his paraphrase).



This information was too important to not quickly share with President Washington, but he was out of town.

Thus, Wolcott convinced Hammond (the British ambassador) to give himself “the original letter...upon condi-tion that I should give Mr. Hammond a copy with my attesta-tion of having received the original, and that it was my true and sincere belief, founded on acquaintance with Mr. Fauchet’s handwriting, that said letter was genuine.”191

Thereafter Wolcott passed the original letter of Fauchet to Pickering (Secretary of War) and from him to Washington. Then Washington, with Fauchet’s letter in hand, confronted Randolph in front of the cabinet. Randolph was speechless. He could not deny the authenticity or report of Fauchet, and Randolph immediately resigned. As Wikipedia relates:

A scandal involving an intercepted French message led to Randolph’s resignation in August 1795. The British Navy had intercepted correspondence from the French minister, Joseph Fauchet, to the U.S. and turned it over to Washington. Washington was dismayed that the letters reflected contempt for the United States and that Randolph was primarily responsible. The letters implied that Randolph had exposed the inner debates in the cabinet to the French and told them that the Administra-tion was hostile to France....Washington imme-diately overruled Randolph’s negative advice regarding the Jay Treaty. A few days later Washington, in the presence of the entire cabi-net, handed the minister's letter to Randolph

191.Moncure Daniel Conway, Omitted chapters of history disclosed in the life and papers of Edmund (2d ed.)(N.Y.: G.P. Putnam, 1889) at 271. Wolcott involved the Secretary of War and Attorney General in the matter. Washington was requested to return to Philadelphia, then capi-tal of the U.S.A. Washington arrived August 11th. Id.



and demanded he explain it. Randolph was speechless and immediately resigned.192

In Schouler’s historical account of this confrontation, we see Randolph was taken back and unable to say anything intelligible at first:

The President next summoned Randolph for a personal interview, and in presence of both Wolcott and Pickering, who were already in the room, handed him the intercepted dispatch of Fauchet to read it, and make such explanations as he chose. Whether only humiliated at being thus confronted before witnesses, or conscious of guilt, Randolph showed himself quite dis-concerted, and his rambling comments upon the dispatch impressed his hostile colleagues quite unfavorably. Washington asked him to step into an adjoining room to reflect by him-self upon his response; after doing which Ran-dolph concluded to submit his immediate resignation, while at the same time utterly denying in writing, that he had received money or made money overtures, such as the letter might be thought to imply. Professing indignation, moreover, at this sudden with-drawal of his chief’s personal confidence, he promised, nevertheless, to pursue the inquiry, and prepare his explanation at length, asking that the dispatch meanwhile be kept a secret. Washington’s response to this was fair and con-siderate.193

192.http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edmund_Randolph (accessed 3/19/09).193. James Schouler, History of the United States of America Under the

Constitution (Washington: W.H.O.H. Morrison, 1880) Vol. I at 298http://books.google.com/books?dq=works+of+wol-

cott+fauchet&pg=PA298



McMasters’ summary is put in a manner that does not reflect as poorly on Randolph by omitting certain details, but it is essentially similar:

When all were again seated and a few words had passed, Washington, taking a letter from his pocket, said: “Mr. Randolph, here is a letter which I wish you to read, and make such explanations as you choose.” The Secretary took the paper, found it to be the dispatch of M. Fauchet, read it, made a few running com-ments, and said he would “throw his ideas on paper.” Washington now turned to Wolcott and Pickering and bade them put questions to Ran-dolph. This, the Secretary declares, he would not have suffered. But, most happily, Pickering had none to ask. Wolcott asked but one. This Randolph had no objection to answer. Wash-ington was here called away to receive a copy of an address the merchants were going to present to him the following day. When he came back he asked Randolph to step into a neighboring room. Three quarters of an hour went by. The Secretary was then requested to put what he had to say in writing. That day Randolph resigned.194

Immediately, after his resignation, Randolph desper-ately tried to figure out how to explain his conduct. Randolph believed that if he could reach Fauchet, he could have him devise an explanation. Randolph met up with Fauchet; received a promise to put in writing explanations that might help Randolph; but the next morning, Fauchet slipped away by boat, leaving Randolph to fend for himself. Randolph sent a military ship to intercept it. The French diplomat Adet sent




back a note promising a letter to help Randolph. Much later such letters came from Fauchet in France, but they were not much help. McMasters explains:

Meanwhile Randolph was hastening toward Newport. He left Philadelphia on the twenty-first of July. But it was not till the thirty-first of August that he drew up at the Newport tavern. Thence he went at once to the lodgings of Fauchet, told him what had happened, asked for copies of dispatches No. 3 and No. 6, and for such explanations of the language of letter No. 10 as he could make. The Frenchman promised all these things by eight the next morning. But, when Randolph called at the time named, word was sent him that the papers would be ready at noon. As he waited impa-tiently for the hour, he heard that the Medusa had slipped her cables and put to sea. It was indeed true. A heavy fog had settled on the bay, the Africa had come inside, and the Medusa had taken the lucky moment to make her escape. Randolph in great alarm ran to the lodgings of Fauchet. The late Minister had gone. The swiftest sailing-vessel to be had at Newport was sent after the Medusa. But the war-ship, with all her canvas spread, was far from land. She was overtaken, however, and when the pilot returned he bore with him a let-ter to Randolph. M. Adet would send the papers. In time they came, and, with them, the late Secretary of State constructed his “Vindi-cation.”195




Fauchet’s letters did not help much because they are precisely what an ally would say on Randolph’s behalf — especially an ally like Randolph who asked for French over-throw of the U.S.A. to aid the French cause. Fauchet wrote to help exonerate Randolph by simply denying the obvious meaning of his letters:

My language has been grossly misunderstood and misinterpreted. Never did I meant to impute — never did I dream of imputing to Mr. Randolph any of the motives, sentiments or conduct, which your mistaken inferences from my letter attribute to him. On the contrary, his character and conduct...have ever been marked with...zealous fidelity to his country and its government.196

Only had Fauchet denied the letters were valid would this means of deflection been reliable. The letters are wholly incriminating. Even the exoneration attempt by Fauchet is nothing more than more fuel to the fire, for it proves how important it was to the French to resurrect Randolph’s reputa-tion after his disgrace.

Randolph’s own appeal in 1795 to Washington was equally pathetic. Randolph openly confessed his actions stemmed from a love of France, and thus implicitly not due to a hatred for Washington. In the same letter, Randolph tried to ‘shoot the messenger’ Hammond (in the proverbial sense). Randolph told President Washington:

Into [Hammond’s] breast has been transferred the largest portions of his nation’s hatred to all persons in the United States who were con-ceived to be attached to France....You were no stranger to his personal irritation against me for my friendship to France....Was this man to be

196.P.V. Daniel, Jr., Preface at iv in E. Randolph, Vindication (1795)(reprint 1855).



implicitly trusted for candour towards myself — to any friends of France?197

Thus, Randolph never denied the authenticity of Fauchet’s letters. He himself unwittingly requested Fauchet explain those letters rather than to deny their authenticity. Fauchet, in essence, confirmed the letters as authentic. This was Randolph’s doom because what was written could never be undone. In his informal appeal to Washington, Randolph also tried to say these letters of Fauchet were used hatefully by Hammond because of Randolph’s love for France. Whether hatefully or not, they clearly incriminated Randolph in subversion and treason — the first traitor in the Cabinet. There was nothing in Fauchet’s later letters that could salvage Randolph’s reputation.

Others tried to come to Randolph’s defense such as Political Truth; or, Animadversions on the Past and Present State of Public Affairs, with an Inquiry into the Truth of the Charges preferred against Mr. Randolph (1796). Much later, the battle still raged.

In the 1855 Editor’s Preface to the Vindication, Daniel recategorized Randolph’s request for monies to overthrow the U.S.A. in the Whiskey Rebellion as “some vague and obscure advances for loans of money.”198 And Daniel tries to explain away Fauchet’s statements about Randolph and the Whiskey Rebellion as due to the fact Fauchet was “out of humor at the failure of his mission” and anxious to create an “exaggerated estimate of his insight into the secret springs of American politics.”199 All such issues were far besides the point, as it is the quotes attributed to Randolph, rather than observations about him, that are so incriminating. Finally, Daniel shows his loss of objectivity when he reveals how easily he was

197.Beckles Willson, Friendly relations (1969) at 15.198.P.V. Daniel, Jr., Preface at iv in E. Randolph, Vindication

(1795)(reprint 1855).199.Daniel, id., Preface to Vindication.



impressed by the simple directness of Randolph’s denial. Daniel never asked whether to expect anything less than from a man proven guilty of treason by a foreign nation’s diplo-mat’s correspondence being intercepted. Thus Daniel says we should weigh against the ‘ambiguity’ in Fauchet’s letters that Randolph provides a “lofty, calm, dignified denial which even confounds his enemies....”200 O.J. Simpson too was strong in his denial, but what else should one expect?

Incidentally, but not without significance, later Ran-dolph went to the defense of the ringleader of Tammany — Aaron Burr. The Wikipedia article on Randolph adds:

After leaving the cabinet he returned to Vir-ginia to practice law; his most famous case was that of defense counsel during Aaron Burr’s trial for treason in 1807.

The Confrontation Fizzles Out in October 1794

On October 2, 1794, the leaders of the so-called Whiskey Rebellion resolved to “submit to the laws of the United States” including the excise law and to evidence con-trition so President Washington would reconsider the use of force.201 The news reached President Washington on October 10th, but he decided that since the forces were already on the march, he would not countermand the order. If there was no resistance, Washington promised no violence. Washington, not seeing any insurgents, left the marching army on October 11th and returned to Philadelphia. On October 24, 1794, Gov-ernor Lee communicated to the insurgent leaders that he would like as a further act of contrition that “the various clubs

200.Id.201.William Miller, “The Democratic Societies and the Whiskey Insur-

rection,” The Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography (July 1938) Vol. LXII, No. 3 at 333.



which have so successfully poisoned the minds of the inhabit-ants, [should] continue their usual meetings for the pious pur-pose of contradicting, with their customary formalities, their past-pernicious doctrines.”202 After three weeks of marching, the U.S. Marshals were not challenged by any physical attacks from the insurrectionists. Law and order was restored by November 10th. Two men were arrested and convicted of treason. President Washington pardoned them anyway.203 Three weeks after arriving in the area, the army retreated in November 1794, leaving a small detachment in Pittsburgh for the winter.204

Randolph, the Cabinet minister who was secretly in league with these societies, was a master of deceit. To keep on Washington’s good side, on October 11, 1794, he wrote Washington:

As I remarked to you in conversation, I never did see an opportunity of destroying these self-constituted bodies, until the fruits of their

202.William Miller, “The Democratic Societies and the Whiskey Insur-rection,” The Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography (July 1938) Vol. LXII, No. 3 at 335 n. 43.

203.. Magill, supra, at 378-79. Interestingly, neo-Jacobin historians sug-gest people at the time suspected Hamilton of intentionally fomenting the crisis so he could rise in power. See Flexner, GW--Anguish and Farewell, supra, at 170. First of all, none of these historians ever pro-vide a single shred of proof. Second, even if made at the time, it was simply demagoguery at work to hide its tracks by putting the blame on one's opponent. And lastly, in fact, Hamilton was picked to go on the military mission only on September 19th on his suggestion to Wash-ington. His motive was quite brave and noble. He pointed out that he had proposed the excise and if he was willing to defend this law with his own life, it would have a good effect. Id. at 170. It is repulsive to hear historians repeating or making up their own slanders simply to smear good and honest public servants who were fighting American Jacobinism.




operations was disclosed in the insurrection of Pittsburg. Indeed, I was and am still per-suaded that the language, which was under-stood to be held by the officers of government in opposition to them, contributed to foster them. They may now, I believe, be crushed. The prospect ought not to be lost.205

Notice how Randolph admits that his prior advice was: (1) the cause of the insurrection was the remonstrances of officials for demanding obedience to the law; and (2) these societies could not be destroyed. Earlier, he well-served his scheme of revolution. However, after the cause was lost, Ran-dolph feigned loyalty to his President, and advised him to act unconstitutionally by crushing these societies (presumably arresting all members). On October 16, 1794, Washington replied to Randolph that he was convinced the Democratic Societies, unless stopped, “will destroy the government,” but, rather than destroying these societies, he no longer saw harm from mentioning them openly to the American public — ask-ing “where would be the impropriety of glancing at them in my speech....”206

Then President Washington gave a speech in Con-gress on the self-created societies, giving the first public account of such societies’ role in the recent insurrection. The U.S. Senate then sitting at Philadelphia resolved in reply:

Our anxiety arising from... open resistance to the laws in the western counties of Pennsylva-nia, has been increased by the proceedings of certain self-created societies...; proceedings... founded in political error, calculated, if not

205.William Miller, “The Democratic Societies and the Whiskey Insur-rection,” The Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography (July 1938) Vol. LXII, No. 3 at 335 n. 42.

206.William Miller, “The Democratic Societies and the Whiskey Insur-rection,” The Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography (July 1938) Vol. LXII, No. 3 at 335 n.42.



intended, to disorganize our government, and which, by inspiring delusive hopes of support, have been influential in misleading our fellow-citizens in the scene of insurrection.207

Aaron Burr, the head of the Tammany secret society, tried to have this paragraph deleted to no avail.

It was the paramount concern of men like Burr and Jefferson that the role of secret societies in the insurrection should be hushed up. In the House, no mention was made in the original reply of the Democratic Societies. Then Thomas Fitzsimons insisted on amending this reply to mention, “we cannot withhold our reprobation of the self-created societies which have rise n in some parts of the Union, misrepresenting the conduct of government,... deceiving and inflaming the ignorant and the weak. . . ."208

A tense debate went on thereafter, where it was con-tended the President and Senate had already violated truth and decency in blaming the American Jacobin societies for the insurrection. The opponents of Fitzsimons’ proposal also claimed that if one condemned this society, “who can tell where [it] will stop?” And the people have a right “to think and a right to speak.”

Already at this early stage in America, those anxious to protect the secret societies were invoking civil rights as a cloak to resist exposing to the public mind what nefarious activities such societies were engaged in. It is a scene that would be repeated again in American history. In the end, the House only condemned a “combination of men” who stirred up the insurrection. Americans were not to be told officially what was going on. Jefferson’s strategy of telling the Presi-


208.William Miller, “The Democratic Societies and the Whiskey Insur-rection,” The Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography (July 1938) Vol. LXII, No. 3 at 336-37.



dent to hush it up worked to make his later revelation look strange, ultimately weakening the effort of Washington to expose these societies.

Ironically, the Democratic Societies reply to the attack of the Senate and the President provided a fresh ground for them to attack the government. They claimed their “freedom of speech” was being prescribed, that the Senate was a “self-created society” who was plunging us all “into all the horrors of anarchism [and] despotism”–a strange twist.209 “We admit that a few of [our members]... were too deeply involved,” but this was in “their individual capacity” and that is no reason to “stigmatize” the society as formenters of the rebellion.210

Cleverly, the whole pattern of events was being attrib-uted to renegade members of the Democratic Society. Would the big lie work or succeed? You can measure this by examin-ing how many civics history books illuminates the causes of early subversion in the United States of America.

Later, when President Washington was provided Robison’s book on Proofs of a Conspiracy, he wrote a friend on October 24, 1798 in reference to the Democratic Societies, “It was not my intention to doubt that, the Doctrines of the Illuminati, and principles of Jacobinism had not spread in the United States. On the contrary, no one is more truly satisfied of this fact than I am.”211 Washington added in the same let-ter that he was sure that the Democratic Societies “actually had a separation of the People from their Government in



211. Writings of Washington (John C. Fitzpatrick, Ed.) (Washington D.C.: US Government Printing Office, 1940) at 452-453; Writings of Wash-ington (Washington, D.C., GPO, 1941), Vol. 36, at 518, 519 (letter of October 24, 1798 to Rev. Snyder).



view.” When Washington died December 14, 1799, he went to his final resting place always knowing that his own admin-istration almost fell prey to a Jacobin Revolution.

Of course, like the history of the French Revolution, our history of this epoch has many insipid apologists. For example, William Miller claimed the Democratic Societies’ role was “indirect” but that Hamilton and the Federalists directly caused the rebellion by “imposing the hated excise.” Of course, Miller claims the court is also to blame for issuing seventy-five writs in May 1794. Moreover, Miller says Con-gress was further to blame for not ordering cases in progress in federal courts to be moved to more local courts convenient to defendants. Blame is taken off the man who engages in crime and is put on the government for the slightest faults—even the inconvenience that government imposes by having courts and offices. Then Miller says whether the disturbances “had really reached the stage of insurrection or not is a moot question that will never be answered.”212 Thus, demagoguery was not left to stop on the streets of Pittsburgh and Philadel-phia. Historians engage in it as much as anyone.

It is only neo-Jacobin historians who try to obscure these facts and hide from our own view today that the Jacobins of France and American hated the American Repub-lican Democracy. Their pursuit of a more radical revolution was always in their thoughts.

And ask yourself why your history books do not high-light any of the truth about this insurrection being an attempt at revolution? And why do historians typically not mention that the Democratic Societies were bound by an oath of secrecy? Or they were molded on the French Jacobin model? This is even more mysterious than the history of French Rev-olution.



The Early Understanding of Factions in the Republic of the U.S.A.

The Early Understanding of Factions in the Republic of the U.S.A.

Finally, it is interesting to see that contemporaries of early America never thought national political parties would emerge. They could not conceive the possibility that any combination of national legislators would seek a political agenda. William Playfair in 1796 commented on this period. He wrote:

On the same principle with those in France are the Democratic Societies in this country, and should they become numerous here, as they are there, they will infallibly have a similar effect. Their pretense is to watch government. But this, like each of the state governments, is chosen by the nation at large, and of course every man in his individual capacity, has an equal right and interest in watching the mea-sures. What presumption then is it, and what an usurpation of the rights of the brethren for private associations, unauthorized by laws, to arrogate this charge to themselves?

Playfair decried how the “self-elected societies” could combine “upon political reforms” so that “a small minority of persons, so connected” could have an “undue influence in the nation, and that a great majority, unaffiliated, may be domineered over.”213

James Madison, in Federalist Paper No. 10 published in 1788, cautioned citizens of the U.S.A. not to overreact to factions. He demonstrates logically how democracy tends to “break and control the violence of factions.” Madison pointed out that the sure cure to faction is to ban group activities; however, to do so would be “destroying liberty which is

213. William Playfair, The History of Jacobinism, supra, II, at 177n & 180n.



essential to its existence.” “The remedy [is] worse than the disease.” Liberty, of course, “nourishes faction,” but to destroy liberty “would be to wish the annihilation of air....” Fundamentally, the cure would be media attention. Its expo-sures of their sinister work would destroy faction. Because if a minority tries to tyrannize a majority, “it will be unable to execute and mask its violence under the forms of the Consti-tution.” Madison did not, however, warn that such a weapon to fight faction is broken if the faction is shrewd enough to gain control of the media. From such a position, the faction can snuff out exposures—leaving history sterile of any expo-sure of their operations.

Madison continued and said the main cause of faction has been the differences in wealth. This difference causes dif-ferent interests. So some have dreamed of wiping out this dif-ference, making everyone of the same mind and interest. Hence, there would be no more factions and thus no unpleas-ant conflict with others. Madison shows how in history when democracies have ruled directly and not through representa-tives (as in small city-states), the tendency has always been to pursue this path but in doing so they violated the rights of property of others. “Theoretic politicians... supposed by reducing mankind to a perfect equality in their political rights, they would at the same time be perfectly equalized and assimilated in their possessions, their opinions and pas-sions.” In other words, those wanting to wipe out faction dreamed up mob rule to enforce total equality.

Madison responds that is no proper means to prevent faction. The best means is a republic. “A republic... promises the cure” to such temptation to usurp the rights of others. Madison’s explanation of why that is so never anticipated that a faction could march forward on a nationwide basis. He con-tinues, “A religious sect may degenerate into a political fac-tion in a part of the Confederacy; but the variety of sects dispersed over the entire face of it must secure the national


Miscellany

councils from that source.” Faction would always remain local, and have no chance to spread to a nationwide move-ment.214

Hence, Madison did not foresee the dilemma of America in 1793. It soon confronted a nationwide secret movement that was manipulating many (but not all) newspa-pers to tout a single line. It was inflaming people that the Constitution was flawed and that the rule by a foreign gov-ernment (France) was preferable to that of an arbitrary tyr-anny at Philadelphia that taxed whiskey-manufacturers. How could a Republic long endure such revolutionaries and those running for election who offered what amounted to tax relief for some at the expense of others or distribution of others’ money for the benefit of those willing to put them in power? It is very much the problem that still exists today in contem-porary politics around the globe. The only legitimate avenue is to break the silence in the media about such unfair dema-goguery. Madison and the founders counted on the press and history books to expose improper use of government as a social laboratory. More should do their duty and speak up. As Playfair said, “those who deceive the people are the enemies of the people, to lead them into error unfavorable to lib-erty.”215

MiscellanyMiller says the political program of the Democratic

Societies was three-fold: (1) the repeal of the neutrality proc-lamation of 1793 and the open support of Jacobin France against Britain and Spain; (2) opening up the Mississippi to

214. Clinton Rossiter, Ed., The Federalist Papers (New York: New Amer-ican Library, 1961) at 77-84.

215.Playfair, id., at 196.



westward traffic (which fit into plans of revolutionizing Spanish territory); and (3) belly-aching over the excise tax against liquor.

Appendix: Free-Trade to Establish Cosmopolitan Unity Among Nations

There was a movement among the cosmopolitan thinkers of the French Revolutionary period that saw free-trade among nations as promoting cosmopolitanism.

The world society they envisioned could be realized only through a system of international, self-regulating and wealth-generating free trade, not the provincial self-serving protec-tionist policies of mercantalism. “Americans such as Benjamin Franklin,...Philip Freneau, and Joel Barlow saw world trade as eradicating national prejudices, and their colleague Tom Paine felt that ‘if commerce were permitted to act to the universal extent to which it is capa-ble it would extirpate the system of war and produce a revolution in the uncivilized state of governments.’ The merchant thus became the ideal cosmopolitan type, whose agency would help establish this happy state of affairs.216

216.Anouar Majid, Freedom and Orthodoxy (Stanford: Stanford Univer-sity Press, 2004) at 63.

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