XIV. sylvania against the rioters, and the marshal arrested CHAPTER some thirty persons; but in the village of Bethlehem he was set upon, and his prisoners were rescued by an armed 1799. party of fifty or more horsemen, headed by one Fries. March 7. The president immediately issued a proclamation requir- March 12. ing submission to the laws. He called upon the governor of Pennsylvania for a detachment of militia to sustain them; and some troops of light. horse detailed for this purpose, joined by several companies newly enlisted for the additional regiments, marched at once into the disturbed counties. The commanding officer put forth an address to the inhabitants, showing how little reason they had to complain, as the money was wanted for national defense, and the law was so arranged as to favor the poor, the ratio of the tax to the worth of the house increasing largely with the increase of value. No opposition was made to the troops, and Fries and some thirty others were secured and carried to Philadelphia. was indicted for treason, and in spite of the efforts of Dallas, aided by Lewis, a Federal lawyer, among the ablest in the state, who argued that his offense amounted only to riot, he was found guilty. The court held that to resist a law by force, with intent to defeat its execution altogether, was levying war. But as it appeared after verdict that one of the jury, previous to being empanneled, had expressed his opinion that Fries ought to be hung, a new trial was granted. Several of Fries's companions were found guilty of misdemeanor. While these trials were going on, the Aurora continued to be filled with the most infamous aspersions on the officers and soldiers who had been employed to arrest Fries. They were charged with living at free quarters on the inhabitants, and with chain ng their prisoners in a manner so negligent or vindictive, that some old men had their wrists worn Fries CHAPTER to the bone by the handcuffs. As the editor, when called XIV. upon for that purpose by a deputation of the officers, re1799. fused to fix the imputation on any particular corps, thus leaving it doubtful if there were any remedy at law, two or three of them were deputed to give him a sound beating, which was administered accordingly on his own premises, a chief actor in this affair being a son of Chiefjustice M'Kean, who had commanded one of the militia troops of horse. A similar castigation had been previously inflicted upon the editor of a German paper at Reading, which had been filled with still more scandalous libels on the conduct of the troops, accused of beating women and children, and other like outrages. This attempt of the officers to revenge themselves was at once seized upon by all the opposition papers as the first fruits of incipient military despotism. Not satisfied with the trifling fines inflicted for this breach of the peace, Duane commenced a civil suit against young M'Kean; and this affair, in the end, was not without an important influence on the politics of Pennsylvania. Already a very vigorous canvass was going on for the chief magistracy of that state. Mifflin's third term of office was now about to expire, and the Constitution would not allow of his re-election, for which, indeed, his habitual drunkenness and declining health but very ill qualified him. The administration of the government, for some time past, had been almost entirely controlled by Secretary Dallas and Chief-justice M'Kean, and with a view to continue power in the same hands, McKean was brought forward as the Republican candidate by a sort of caucus or meeting of some active politicians. The Federalists nominated Senator Ross, and the canvass begun to be carried on in a very bitter spirit. Two objections were principally urged against Ross, both rather XIV. curious as coming from a party of which Jefferson was CHAPTER the great leader, and Gallatin a principal champion. One was a suspicion that Ross's religious views were not or- 1799. thodox, he having voted in convention against that clause of the Constitution of Pennsylvania which required all office-holders to acknowledge "the being of a God, and a future state of rewards and punishments," whereas McKean was a very orthodox Presbyterian, and had voted for that clause, without which, as he had remarked, the state might have Atheists in office. The having contributed, by his avowed hostility to the Excise Law, to bring about the Whisky Insurrection, constituted a second objection to Ross. Yet in all this there was not wanting a sort of wily policy. The Republicans were sure to vote against Ross at any rate, because he was not of their party, and these objections were only intended for weak-minded Federalists. Somewhat later in the season a convention met in August. Kentucky to revise the Constitution of that growing state. George Nicholas, the draughtsman of the former Constitution, and the nominal author of the late nullifying resolutions, was recently dead. Of the present Assembly, John Breckenridge, a lawyer of eminence, who had been president of the Democratic Society of Lexing ton, was the leading spirit. The chief change in the Constitution related to the choice of senators and governor, which were given directly to the people, the counties to be arranged into as many districts as there were senators, one fourth of the number to vacate their seats annually, the senatorial term, as under the first Constitution, to be four years. Some attempt was made to introduce a provision for the gradual abolition of slavery, an attempt supported by Henry Clay, a recent immigrant from Virginia, a young lawyer, who commenced a long XIV. CHAPTER political career, not yet (1851) finished, by holding a seat in this Convention. The attempt met, however, 1799. with very feeble support, and, so far as related to the subject of slavery, the Constitution underwent no change. A similar proposition for the gradual abolition of slavery had been introduced a short time before into the Maryland Assembly, but it found so little encouragement there as to be withdrawn by the mover. Even in Pennsylvania, a proposition introduced into the Assembly for the immediate and total abolition of slavery, though supported by the earnest efforts of the Pennsylvania Abolition Society, failed of success.. Two judicial decisions, made in the course of the summer, furnished the opposition to the general government with new topics of bitter complaint. In the year 1797 a mutiny had occurred on board the British frigate Hermione, then in the West Indies; several of the officers. had been killed, and the vessel, having been carried into La Guayra, on the Spanish Main, had there been sold by the mutineers. In the course of the present summer, one Thomas Nash, former boatswain of the Hermione, and an active leader in the mutiny, had made his appearance at Charleston, in South Carolina, under the name of Nathan Robbins, and having betrayed himself by imprudent boastings, had been arrested at the instance of the British consul, under that clause of Jay's treaty which provided for the mutual surrender of forgers and murderers. Application having been made to the president on the subject, he wrote to Bee, the district judge, to give the prisoner up on proof of identity and the production of such further evidence as would justify his apprehension and commitment for trial had the offense been committed within the jurisdiction of the United States. The ground taken by the president was, that a national XIV. ship of war on the high seas formed a part of the juris- CHAPTER diction of the nation under whose flag she sailed. To avert his impending fate, the fugitive mutineer as 1799. sumed the name of Jonathan Robbins, produced a notarial certificate or "protection" granted in New York, in 1795, to a person of that name, and also made an affidavit that he was born in Danbury, in Connecticut, and that two years before he had been pressed into the British service. In spite, however, of these documents, his identification as the Thomas Nash of the Hermione being complete, he was delivered up, and, being carried to July. Halifax, was tried by court martial, found guilty, and hanged. He confessed at his execution that he was an Irishman, and it appeared by the Hermione's books that he had entered the service at the beginning of the war, purporting to be born at Waterford. But before the result of this investigation had become known, a great clamor had been raised against the president and Jay's treaty, in which Charles Pinckney, now a Federal senator from South Carolina, and who had acted as counsel for the prisoner, took a very active part. The president was charged with having given up an American citizen to be tried for a mutiny, which, if he really did join it, was justifiable enough on his part, since he had been pressed into the British service; and even after the result of the Halifax court martial was known, the same accusation was still continued, the proof adduced on the trial being represented as manufactured for the occasion. The other case was that of Isaac Williams, one of those American renegadoes who, under color of being naturalized as French citizens, had enriched themselves by privateering, under the French flag, against American as well as British commerce. After making himself rich and notorious by this discreditable means, Williams had |