History of Pittsburgh Volume 2

George Thornton Fleming, Juergen Beck, Juergen Beck

• Publisher: Jazzybee Verlag
• Year: 2018
• ISBN:
  9783849652081
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: North American History
• Index: History

The selection of Mr. Fleming to prepare this history of Pittsburgh, and the region round about, was most fortunate for the city. He was not only a sturdy grubber after facts but had the ability to dress them up in pleasing style and set them in graceful order. This book is valuable not only as a narrative of historic events, but as a compendium of facts relating to men and matters, events and happenings pertaining to the triumphant growth of Pittsburgh, its institutions, and its fame. It is as encyclopedic as entertaining and facilitates the finding of whatsoever data that may be desired. It will be very hard to find another book on the history of Pittsburgh that is as detailed as Mr. Fleming's. This is volume two out of two.

CHAPTER I. THE WHISKEY INSURRECTION.

The Whiskey Insurrection of 1794 was a dramatic development of the first five years of the young American Republic as well as a drastic test of its inherent strength. This revolution, although throttled by the stern, quick action of President Washington in its incipiency, was saturated with the elements of a popular dissatisfaction that, would its area have been extended ere governmental action supervened, have assailed the very essence of the republic, possibly successfully. The sentience of Hamilton and his great statesmanship instantly interpreted the meaning and included the object of this uprising in its every intention which he was quick to make the President grasp and almost as suddenly to act. Washington's comprehension of the situation brought him as far as Bedford, Pennsylvania, with the troops drafted to suppress the insurrection, his early idea being that it would require the full exercise of presidential power to quell the disorder, but, after consultation with Hamilton, who did accompany the expedition, he returned to Philadelphia.

The Whiskey Insurrection was, as a matter of fact, a most impressive affair, and an imposing demonstration based, as it was, upon a principle that had much to do with the voluntary and involuntary exile of very many of the very best of the Irish, Scottish, and Scotch-Irish residents and citizens of the new United States. It is also an historic fact that hundreds were still annually arriving from these disaffected sections of Great Britain similarly motivated. Rather more than a decade of residence of many of these excellent people in the "Western Counties"

under circumstances of deprivation akin to destitution, had given to them indurated ideas concerning the theories of taxation very much at variance with the Hamiltonian holdings. This hatred had been both hereditary and acquired. Not a few of them had been overfed upon the idea in both Scotland and Ireland in their youth and manhood and had the testimony of two or three generations of their forebears as to its effect upon those who tried to extort a living from the soil. These people, scattered along the years, both before and after the Revolution, as well as the goodly numbers which had come in recently, following the example of the pioneers, had been hewers of wood and drawers of water for those who possessed the very elementary necessaries, such as salt, plowshares, knives and forks, crockery, in fine, the simplest of farm and domestic requisites, most of these in the stores at Philadelphia and Baltimore, that these frontiersmen and their dependents needed. Depreciated currency of the Revolution and the new republic found no favor in the sight of the merchants of the day either on this or the other side of the Alleghenies. Wheat was literally a "drug on the market,'" all people raising it, nearly all of them much in excess of domestic necessity, while rye and other grains were practically negligible as assets.

Presently it was found that wheat and rye might be "mashed" and distilled. Whiskey was respectable in those days, and more plentiful than salt. It was, in consequence of the quality of the water of the great community, soon found to be of fine palatability, and in this item readily found a good market in the eastern sections of the State, particularly in Philadelphia, where it always brought a better price than at home. Wagons were not in service at this time and pack-horses were used in all kinds of over-the-mountain freighting. Sacks, improvised for this carriage, were filled with jugs of this home distillation and sent eastwardly, while the return trip carried salt, sugar, iron specialties and other simple necessaries. Desultory legislation had been repeatedly attempted by the State body, but only very perfunctory effort had been made to enforce it relative to spirituous liquors. The members of the Legislature from western sections, awake to the temper of their home people, were always antagonistic to the passage of these laws and gave them all of the opposition they could array against them.

Two years after the inauguration of General Washington as President, his Secretary of the Treasury, Alexander Hamilton, included a tax upon liquors and stills in his inventory of taxables. Primarily the people did not give much serious attention to the passage of this law, although their members of Congress had strenuously fought it, sensible of the feeling against it among their constituents and knowing its relation to the economics of their communities. It was not long, however, until all of the people were aware of the deep sincerity of Secretary Hamilton and of his determination to collect the tax in every locality in the United States. The appointment of collectors was placidly awaited because it was intended to give these officials anything but a placid reception.

This was the disposition in five counties in Pennsylvania and about as many in the then State of Virginia, which impinged upon these Pennsylvania counties. As has been said, it was an impressive insurrection.

In the first case, the blood and brain of the opponents to the tax, the Gaelic element that dominated the settlements, nearly all Protestants, were racially and hereditarily against the theory and practice of taxing food and drink. In the second place, these people had no money with which to pay the tax, were they otherwise disposed to pay it. Thirdly, they were confronted with the fact that they must appear in the United States Court at Philadelphia in defense of all charges that might be made against them. Fourthly, there was, as was developed, a deep political aversion to the scheme of taxation that went as far as all of the others together to make up the unity of opposition. Fifthly, the contagion of the virus of the French Revolution was spreading itself throughout the colonies as rapidly as it might conversationally (the papers of the day being as accessory to the spread as their limited circulation permitted). This region was not insensible to this propaganda and it mixed freely with that concerning the alleged iniquities of the whiskey tax.

Already too, the question of erecting a new State of some description with this section as a nucleus, extending along the north and west as well as south of the Ohio river, was in the currency of comment on conditions and in suggestions of possible remedies. There was no State west of Pennsylvania, and there was abundance of material for a government of larger dimensions than those of the new republic in the vast areas beyond the Ohio. As early as 1782 there had been much talk of a secession from the State of Pennsylvania, at least, and possibly from the United States at most. Some very illuminating correspondence between General Washington and General Irvine twelve years before had taken place relative to this very subject, but nothing tangible resulted. General Irvine was in command at Fort Pitt at the time.

Again, until 1771, the whole of Western and Southwestern Pennsylvania was included in Cumberland county, but the multiplication of inhabitants in all of this section made it very inconvenient to go to the county seat of Cumberland county, Carlisle, to attend to peremptory legal business and presently the counties of Bedford (1771), Westmoreland (1773), Washington (1781), Fayette (1783), and Allegheny (1788), were created with respective county seats. These five counties constituting all of Western Pennsylvania, with an aggregate population of 87,473, were in opposition to the tax in its every aspect and were in a temper to go to any extent to accentuate this opposition. It was also urged that the Hamilton law imposed a tax both upon the liquor and upon the still as well, the latter being graded as to the size of the still.

Whiskey, then, was really the medium of exchange not merely between the East and West, but largely also it was the local medium, this consequent upon the depreciated currency. Farmers, all growers of grain, were distillers from dire necessity, and all urged that the law would operate peculiarly severely upon the inhabitants of Western Pennsylvania from the fact that they had no direct communication with the East, except by transporting their productions in the form of distilled liquor upon pack-horses, and that the blow would, if carried out, prostrate their trade, their business, and their future prospects; and they boldly contended that the fact need not be disguised or concealed, that nowhere in the United States could a population of 87,000 people be found where there were as many stills and consequently as much domestic liquor distilled as in Western Pennsylvania. But the reason was self-evident.

There were neither large commission houses nor large distilleries to purchase the grain, and, had such been the case, there was no mode of transportation except upon pack-horses, each horse carrying but four bushels of grain. Hence in every neighborhood some farmer became a distiller from necessity, and he not only manufactured his own grain into whiskey, but also that of five or six of his immediate neighbors.

Upon a fair calculation, therefore, every sixth man became a distiller, but all equally bound to resist the excise law, which would fall heavily upon every farmer, as the money which they would procure in the East from the sale of their liquor would on their return be demanded by the excise officer to keep up the expenses of the government. The excise law provided for the erection of inspection districts, in each of which an inspector was appointed whose duty it was to examine all distilleries, capacity of stills, gauge their barrels, brand their casks, and note in his book the result, and, to crown the iniquity of the act, with its most odious feature, the duty imposed on each was required to be paid on the liquors before they were removed from the distilleries.

Notwithstanding the appointment of collectors, the people held meetings and passed resolutions condemning every man who would accept the office in the following words: "That whereas, Some men may be found among us, so far lost to every sense of virtue and all feeling for the distresses of their country as to accept the office of collector, therefore, Resolved, That in future we shall consider such persons as unworthy of our friendship, have no intercourse or dealing with them, withdraw from them every assistance, withhold all the comforts of life which depend upon those duties that as men and fellow-citizens we owe to each other, and upon all occasions treat them with that contempt they deserve, and that it be and is hereby most earnestly recommended to the people at large to follow the same line of conduct towards them."

A meeting was held in Washington, Pennsylvania, in 1791, of which Albert Gallatin, who was present, said: "The persons assembled not only agreed to remonstrate, but they expressed a determination to hold no communication with and to treat with contempt such inhabitants of the western country as would accept offices under the law; and recommended the same line of conduct to the people at large."

Nehemiah Stokely and John Young, of Westmoreland county; Col James Marshal, Rev. David Phillips, and David Bradford, of Washing ton county; Col. Edward Cook, Nathaniel Bradley and John Oliphant, of Fayette county; and Thomas Morton, John Woods and William Plumer, of Allegheny county, representing the distillers and non-conformists of these counties, met in Pittsburgh, September 7, 1791, to consider affairs and to take action relative to them. Colonel Cook presided, and Mr. Young acted as secretary. This delegate assembly considered the "general inequities coming into legislative vogue in the United States with alarming frequency," such as the "unreasonable interest on the public debt;" "that in establishing a national bank, thereby constituting a capital of many millions in the hands of a very few persons who may influence those occasionally in power to evade the constitution" and in other censurable instances perverting the intent and object of the republic, and many other things, and before adjourning resolved, "That the act laying duties upon distilled spirits in the United States, passed the third of March, 1791, is deservedly obnoxious to the feelings and interests of the people in general as being attended with infringements on liberty, partial in its operations, attended with great expense in the collection, and liable to much abuse. It operates on a domestic manufacture, a manufacture not equal throughout the States. It is insulting to the feelings of the people to have their vessels marked, to have their houses painted and ransacked, to be subject to informers gaining by the occasional delinquency of others. It is a bad precedent tending to introduce the excise laws of Great Britain where the liberty, property and even the morals of the people are sported with to gratify particular men in their ambitious and interested measures." It was also resolved: That in the opinion of this committee the duties imposed by the said action, spirits distilled from the products of the soil of the United States, will eventually discourage agriculture and a manufacture highly beneficial to the present state of the country; that those duties will fall heavily especially upon western parts of the United States, which are for the most part newly settled and where the aggregate of the citizens is of the laborious and poorer class, who have not the means of procuring the wines, spirituous liquors, etc., imported from foreign countries.

Resolved, That there appears to be no substantial difference between a duty upon what is manufactured from the produce of a country and the produce in its natural shape, except, perhaps, that in the first instance the article is more deserving of the encouragement of wise legislation, as promotive of industry, the population, and strength of the country at large. The excise on home-made spirituous liquors affects particularly the raising of grain, especially rye, and there can be no solid reason for taxing it more than any other article of the growth of the United States. The committee adjourned after deciding to send their resolutions to Congress, to the Legislature of Pennsylvania, and to the "Pittsburgh Gazette" for publication.

After many similar meetings throughout the section affected by the operation of the excise laws, the people gradually began to take steps to concert movements looking to personal action in their own districts to protect themselves. Congress having refused to grant their petitions, they began objectively to assert themselves. Robert Johnson, collector for Washington and Allegheny counties, was captured the night of September 6, 1791, near Pigeon Creek, in Washington county, stripped, tarred and feathered, his hair cut, and he was then compelled to promise "not to show his face again west of the mountains." The perpetrators of this deed were not arrested or interfered with, because "while the people pitied the officer, they despised the law." They also felt assured that the governor of Pennsylvania would not insist upon the collection of the excise tax, as he considered it onerous and unjust. Early in May, 1792, the duty was somewhat modified and the payments were made monthly instead of at one time.

President Washington in September, 1792, issued a proclamation warning all persons to submit to the law, as the government was determined to prosecute delinquents and to seize all unexcised spirits on their way to market, and that none but tax-paid spirits would be bought for use of the army. Meantime the malcontents were becoming hostilely active and very proscriptive. They made it most uncomfortable, indeed unendurable, for those citizens who attempted to pay taxes upon their distillates or to obey the law. Magistrates bluntly asserted that it was out of the question to afford protection to observers of the law "owing to the too general combination of the people in Western Pennsylvania to oppose the revenue laws." This "combination of the people" related to a "powerful, secret and indiscoverable organization which had unlimited control and universal influence over every man; secret, except the name of the leader; powerful to avenge and punish imaginary wrongs; and indiscoverable because an investigation as to the place of meeting only mystified, embarrassed, and bewildered, and the investigator suffered by the loss of his property." In July, 1794, Dr. James Carnahan, then a student in Jefferson Academy, witnessed the tarring and feathering of John Lynn, a deputy inspector, by a company of local citizens who left the victim tied to a tree. Dr. Carnahan was afterwards president of Princeton College.

In 1793 a crowd broke into the house of Benjamin Wells, of Connelsville, Fayette county, abused him and members of his family, compelling him later to surrender his commission. The sheriff of the county refused to serve warrants issued in this and other cases. In January of 1794 the barn of Robert Strawhan was burned, the stills of James Kiddoo ruined, the house of John Wells, collector of Westmoreland county, burned, and the barn of P. Regan, in whose house Wells had his office, was burned.

"Tom the Tinker" was the dramatic, the fearsome figure of the insurrection. He seemed to be the genius, the inspiration to the other members of the resisting organizations in the several counties. He was wont to give notice either by posters or in the columns of the "Pittsburgh Gazette" to intended victims of his purpose to "visit" them unless they would cease operating contrary to his orders. One of his characteristic notices is the following: ADVERTISEMENT—In taking a survey of the troops under my direction in the late expedition against that insolent excise man, John Neville, I find there were a great many delinquents even among those who carry on distilling; it will therefore be observed that I, Tom the Tinker, will not suffer any certain class or set of men to be excluded from the service of this my district when notified to attend on any expedition carried on in order to obstruct the execution of the excise law and obtain a repeal thereof.

And, I do declare on my solemn word, that if such delinquents do not come forth at the next alarm with equipments and to their assistance as much as in them lies, in opposing the execution and obtaining a repeal of the excise law, he or they shall be deemed as enemies and stand opposed to virtuous principles of republican liberty, and shall receive punishment according to the nature of the offense.

And, whereas, A certain John Reed, now resident in Washington, and being at his place near Pittsburgh, called Reedsburgh, and having a set of stills employed at said Reedsburgh, entered on the excise docket contrary to the will and good pleasure of his fellow-citizens, and came not forth to assist in the suppression of the execution of the said law by aiding and assisting in the expedition, has, by delinquency, manifested his approbation to the execution of the aforesaid law, is hereby charged with, to cause the contents of this notice to be published in the Pittsburgh Gazette the ensuing week, under the no less penalty than the consummation of his distillery. Given under my hand this 19th day of July, 1794. Tom the Tinker.

Accordingly, in the "Pittsburgh Gazette" of July 23, 1794,...

Table of contents

• INTRODUCTION
• CHAPTER I. THE WHISKEY INSURRECTION.
• CHAPTER II. Pittsburgh as a Borough.
• CHAPTER IV. A Political Era.
• CHAPTER V. The Mexican War.
• CHAPTER VI. Noted Visitors and Events.
• CHAPTER VII. Transportation.
• CHAPTER VIII. The Courts.
• CHAPTER IX. The Early Lawyers.
• CHAPTER X. The Bar of the Present Day.
• CHAPTER XI. Old Locations.
• CHAPTER XII. The War Between the States.
• CHAPTER XIII. On the Battlefields.
• CHAPTER XIV. The Medical Fraternity.
• CHAPTER XV. Hospitals.
• CHAPTER XVI. Banking, From Pioneer Days to the Close of Civil War.
• CHAPTER XVII. Financial Institutions Since the Civil War.
• CHAPTER XVIII. Insurance Companies.
• CHAPTER XIX. The Press.
• CHAPTER XX. Public Education.
• CHAPTER XXI. Institutions of Higher Education.
• CHAPTER XXII. The Ecclesiastical History.