served as currency in a region where bank paper was scarce and specie almost unknown. To tax it for the support of the capitalist's currency on the seaboard seemed like a hard and unjust discrimination. The farmer distillers of western Pennsylvania broke out into a riot against the tax-collectors in the summer of 1794. It was the first sectional conflict and the first test of the authority of the central government under the new Constitution. President Washington called fifteen thousand militia from Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Maryland, and Virginia, and sent them against the insurgents, who dispersed before a force several times larger than they could hope to resist. A few of the ringleaders were seized and brought to trial. Two were found guilty of treason and condemned to death, but they were pardoned by the President.

The "Whiskey War" was denounced in unmeasured terms by the Republicans as a cruel parade of force to support an "infernal law." Jefferson saw no justification in "arming one part of society against another," and "declaring civil war the moment before the meeting of that body [Congress] which has the sole right to declare war"; in "being so patient of the kicks and scoffs of our enemies [England] and rising at a feather against our friends"; in "adding a million to the public debt" for the sake of crushing out a spirit of independence among our own citizens. The Federalists, on the other

hand, called the prompt action of the government the salvation of the country. They maintained that the rebellion was "the legitimate fruit of the doctrines of the French Revolution," which were spreading in our country and paving the way for anarchy and mob violence. Washington shared this view. On quitting the expedition at Bedford, he told the militia that they were engaged in a service which was "nothing less than to consolidate and preserve the blessings of that Revolution which at such expense of blood and treasure constituted us a free and independent nation." In his speech at the opening of Congress a few weeks later he attributed the disorder to "certain self-created societies," "combinations of men who, disregarding the truth that those who rouse cannot always appease a civil commotion, disseminate suspicions, jealousies, and accusations of the whole Government." "If these self-created societies cannot be discountenanced," he wrote Secretary of State Randolph, "they will destroy the Government of the country."

The Republicans, with Jefferson in the lead, took up the cudgels for the defense of freedom of discussion and criticism. "It is wonderful," wrote Jefferson, commenting on the President's speech to Congress, "that he should have permitted himself to be the organ of such an attack" on these fundamental liberties. The denunciation of the Demo

cratic societies, he said, was 'one of the extraordinary acts of boldness of which we have seen so many from the faction of Monocrats." As a matter of fact the Democrats aimed at "destroying the government" of the country only as the government was identical with the Federalist administration. They wanted to "overthrow the government" in the European sense of the phrase. To the Constitution and the Union they professed an utter devotion, but declared that it was "the duty of every freeman to regard with attention and discuss without fear the conduct of public servants in every department of government"-a doctrine of social as well as political offense to the "ruling classes" of the eighteenth century. The "liberal communication of Republican sentiments," which they advocated as the "best antidote to political poison," generally took the form of bitter attacks on the persons as well as the measures of the Federalist leaders, who were charged openly with "an amazing want of republicanism." Washington's Proclamation of Neutrality, for example, was condemned as an act of "Ottoman tyranny worthy of the grand Sultan of Constantinople." The militia marching under the eye of Hamilton to quell the whiskey riots were "Janissaries executing the orders of the Grand Vizier." All this was provoking and much of it puerile, but the Federalists made the mistake of meeting this Republican criticism with a persecution

which culminated in the arbitrary acts of repression and censorship under John Adams.

The refusal of Washington to serve a third term made the presidential election of 1796 the first national struggle between the two parties. No formal nominations were made. Jefferson, by common

consent, was the Republican candidate, with Aaron Burr as the favorite for the second place. The Federalists were not so united. John Adams had every claim to be recognized as the leader of the party after Washington's retirement, but Alexander Hamilton had acquired the habit of dictatorship over the cabinet and a large part of Congress, and he was loath to see a man of Adams's independence in the presidential chair. By the end of the summer, however, it was generally expected that the Federalist electors would cast their votes for John Adams and Thomas Pinckney. The campaign was a violent one, each party accusing the other of doctrines and practices destructive to the republic and of disgraceful vassalage to a foreign power. Washington's serious warning against the "spirit of faction," in his Farewell Address of September 17, 1796, fell on unheeding ears. When the electoral votes were counted in January, Adams had seventy-one, Jefferson sixty-eight, Pinckney fifty-nine, and Burr thirty, while the forty-eight remaining votes were scattered among nine other names. Adams and Jefferson, therefore, were chosen. Jefferson, by a

strange irony, owed his elevation to the vice-presidency to his arch-enemy, Alexander Hamilton.1

The vice-presidency furnished Jefferson an ideal vantage-ground for the consolidation of his party. Without any official responsibility beyond wielding the gavel in the Senate, he was at the seat of the government, where he could watch the men and study the measures of the administration at first hand, and through his indefatigable correspondence keep his lieutenants in the various States fully informed of the trend of national affairs. At first he seems to have had hopes of "converting” Adams to the Republican party, for he and Adams were much closer together than either was to Hamilton.

The two men called on each other in Philadelphia before the inauguration and discussed the foreign situation. Adams expressed the wish that Jefferson might undertake a special mission to France, "if the people would be willing to spare him for a short time." When Jefferson declined the honor, Adams asked him to sound his friend Madison on the proposition. A few days later Adams and Jefferson were dining with Washington, and left the house together. "As soon as we got into the street," says Jefferson,

1 Hamilton was suspected by the New England Federalists of a plot to bring in Pinckney just ahead of Adams by getting one or two Federalist electors from the Southern States to leave Adams's name off their ballots. To thwart this trick sixteen New England electors wrote the name of Ellsworth or Jay for the second place on the ticket, thus reducing Pinckney's vote not only far below Adams's but below Jefferson's, too.