[Footnote 1:  Irving, V, 290.]

To President Adams Washington replied on July 4, 1799:  “As my whole life has been dedicated to my country in one shape or another, for the poor remains of it, it is not an object to contend for ease and quiet, when all that is valuable is at stake, further than to be satisfied that the sacrifice I should make of these, is acceptable and desired by my country."[1]

[Footnote 1:  Ibid., 291.]

Congress voted to restore for Washington the rank of Commander-in-Chief, and he agreed with the Secretary of War that the three Major-Generals should be Alexander Hamilton, Inspector-General; Charles C. Pinckney, who was still in Europe; and Henry Knox.  But a change came over the passions of France; Napoleon Bonaparte, the new despot who had taken control of that hysterical republic for himself, was now aspiring to something higher and larger than the humiliation of the United States and his menace in that direction ceased.

We need to note two or three events before Washington’s term ended because they were thoroughly characteristic.  First of these was the Whiskey Insurrection in western Pennsylvania.  The inhabitants first grew surly, then broke out in insurrection on account of the Excise Law.  They found it cheaper to convert their corn and grain into whiskey, which could be more easily transported, but the Government insisted that the Excise Law, being a law, should be obeyed.  The malcontents held a great mass meeting on Braddock’s Field, denounced the law and declared that they would not obey it.  Washington issued a proclamation calling upon the people to resume their peaceable life.  He called also on the Governors of Pennsylvania, Maryland, New Jersey, and Virginia for troops, which they furnished.  His right-hand lieutenant was Alexander Hamilton, who felt quite as keenly as he did himself the importance of putting down such an insurrection.  Washington knew that if any body of the people were allowed unpunished to rise and disobey any law which pinched or irritated them, all law and order would very soon go by the board.  His action was one of the great examples in government which he set the people of the United States.  He showed that we must never parley or haggle with sedition, treason, or lawlessness, but must strike a blow that cannot be parried, and at once.  The Whiskey Insurrectionists may have imagined that they were too remote to be reached in their western wilderness, but he taught them a most salutary lesson that, as they were in the Union, the power of the Union could and would reach them.