wanting real and substantial consolations for the misfortune. It has demonstrated that our prosperity rests on solid foundations, by furnishing an additional proof that my fellow-citizens understand the true principles of government and liberty; that they feel their inseparable union; that notwithstanding all the devices which have been used to sway them from their interest and duty, they are now as ready to maintain the authority of the laws against licentious invasions as they were to defend their rights against usurpation. It has been a spectacle displaying to the highest advantage the value of republican government to behold the most and the least wealthy of our citizens standing in the same ranks as private soldiers, preeminently distinguished by being the army of the Constitution-undeterred by a march of 300 miles over rugged mountains, by the approach of an inclement season, or by any other discouragement. Nor ought I to omit to acknowledge the efficacious and patriotic cooperation which I have experienced from the chief magistrates of the States to which my requisitions have been addressed.

In the arrangements to which the possibility of a similar contingency will naturally draw your attention it ought not to be forgotten that the militia laws have exhibited such striking defects as could not have been supplied but by the zeal of our citizens, Besides the extraordinary expense and waste, which are not the least of the defects, every appeal to those laws is attended with a doubt on its success.

The devising and establishing of a well-regulated militia would be a genuine source of legislative honor and a perfect title to public gratitude. I therefore entertain a hope that the present session will not pass without carrying to its full energy the power of organizing, arming, and disciplining the militia, and thus providing, in the language of the Constitution, for calling them forth to execute the laws of the Union, suppress insurrections, and repel invasions.

As already stated, the subject was frequently debated in both Houses during the second session of the Third Congress. It was, among other projects, proposed to enroll a "select corps of militia," to be at the special control of the President in cases of invasion or insurrection (H. R. Journal, Third Congress, p. 101); to authorize the President to call on the executives of the States "to organize, arm and equip, and hold in readiness to march at a moment's warning" 80,000 effective militia (ibid., 108); to enable the President to march the militia to suppress insurrections in the States (ibid., 114). This discussion culminated in the act of February 28, 1795 (1 Stat. L., 424), repealing the prior act of May 2, 1792, and laying down the principle that the President alone is to be the judge of the exigency. In the case of an insurrection in any State against the government of that State it shall be lawful for the President to call forth the militia of that or any other State to suppress it, but not imperative that he shall do so. And in the event of an opposition to the execution of any Federal law it shall be lawful for the President, without further advice of Congress or of any supreme justice, as in the prior statute, to call forth the militia of that or of any other State for the purpose of causing the law to be duly executed. This is, perhaps, to repeat what has already been stated in the first pages of this chapter, but it is necessary in connection with events that followed closely after.

Another insurrection broke out in Pennsylvania in the spring of 1799. The Congress had passed an act providing for the raising of a

Fries's insurrection, 1799.

revenue by direct taxation, and as a means of arriving at the valuation of lands, dwelling houses, and stores commissioners were authorized to value and enumerate the same and to make written lists, which, so far as regarded dwelling houses, were to specify "their situation, their dimensions and area, their number of stories, the number and dimensions of their windows, the materials whereof they are built (whether wood, brick, or stone), the number, description, and dimensions of the outhouses appurtenant to them, etc." (Approved July 9, 1798; 1 Stat. L., 580.) Many people in all sections of the country resented this intrusion upon their personal and domestic rights, made necessary by an examination of their dwelling houses, while the provision which contemplated the measuring of every window was especially offensive. In southeastern Pennsylvania, through a section embracing the counties of Lehigh, Berks, Northampton, and a part of Bucks and Montgomery, settled largely by Germans, this process of domiciliary intrusion for the purpose of measurement met the most violent opposition. In some instances the "measurers" were deluged with scalding water by the women from upper windows; in others, were violently ejected by the men. The officials invoked the law, and warrants were issued for the arrest of some of those who had been uncommonly active in resistance. In the village of Bethlehem, in Northampton County', a marshal's posse having some thirty prisoners was attacked on the 7th day of March, 1799, by a body of mounted men numbering one hundred or more, under the command of one John Fries, and the prisoners rescued.

This was so plainly a case of opposition to the execution of the Federal laws that the President lost no time in calling upon the governor of the State for sufficient militia to put down the insurrection. To this Governor Mifflin responded by calling out 1,000 men from Philadelphia, Bucks, Chester, Montgomery, and Lancaster, under the command of Gen. William McPherson, and moving them at once to the scene of disturbance. The President's proclamation is dated March 12, 1799, and is as follows:

BY THE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA.

A PROCLAMATION.

Whereas, combinations to defeat the execution of the laws for the valuation of lands and dwelling houses within the United States have existed in the counties of Northampton, Montgomery, and Bucks, in the State of Pennsylvania, and have proceeded in a manner subversive of the just authority of the Government, by misrepresentations, to render the laws odious; by deterring the public officers of the United States, to forbear the execution of their functions; and by openly threatening their lives; and

Whereas, the endeavors of the well-affected citizens, as well as of the executive officers, to conciliate a compliance with those laws have failed of success, and certain persons in the county of Northampton aforesaid have been hardy enough to perpetrate certain acts which, I am advised, amount to treason, being overt acts of levying

war against the United States, the said persons, exceeding one hundred in number and armed and arrayed in a warlike manner, having, on the 7th day of this present month of March, proceeded to the house of Abraham Lovering, in the town of Bethlehem, and there compelled William Nichols, marshal of the United States in and for the district of Pennsylvania, to desist from the execution of certain legal process in his hands to be executed, and having compelled him to discharge and set at liberty certain persons whom he had arrested by virtue of criminal process duly issued for offenses against the United States, and having impeded and prevented the commissioner and the assessors, appointed in conformity with the laws aforesaid, in the county of Northampton aforesaid, by threats and personal injury, from executing the said laws, avowing as the motives of these illegal and treasonable proceedings an intention to prevent by force of arms the execution of the said laws and to withstand by open violence the lawful authority of the Government of the United States; and Whereas, by the Constitution and laws of the United States I am authorized, whenever the laws of the United States shall be opposed or the execution thereof obstructed in any State by combinations too powerful to be suppressed by the ordinary course of judicial proceedings or by the powers vested in the marshals, to call forth military force to suppress such combinations and to cause the laws to be duly executed; and

Whereas, it is in my judgment necessary to call forth military force in order to suppress the combinations aforesaid and to cause the laws aforesaid to be duly executed, and I have accordingly determined so to do, under the solemn conviction that the essential interests of the United States demand it:

Wherefore, I, John Adams, President of the United States, do hereby command all persons being insurgents as aforesaid, and all others whom it may concern, on or before Monday next, being the 18th day of this present month, to disperse and retire peaceably to their respective abodes; and I do moreover warn all persons whomsoever against aiding, abetting, or comforting the perpetrators of the aforesaid treasonable acts. And I do require all officers and others, good and faithful citizens, according to their respective duties and the laws of the land, to exert their utmost endeavors to prevent and suppress such dangerous and unlawful proceedings.

In testimony whereof, I have caused the seal of the United States of America to be affixed to these presents, and signed the same with my hand.

Done at the city of Philadelphia, the 12th day of March, in the year of our Lord seventeen hundred and ninety-nine, and of the Independence of the said United States of America the twenty-third.

[SEAL.]

JOHN ADAMS.

By the President:

TIMOTHY PICKERING,

Secretary of State.

The appearance of the troops was the signal for the cessation of all disturbance. Not the slightest opposition was manifested to them; Fries and about thirty others most prominent in the affair were arrested and taken to Philadelphia, where they were tried for resisting the laws, and most of them convicted. Fries was indicted for treason, tried, found guilty, and sentenced to punishment. The President subsequently pardoned the entire party through a proclamation.

PROCLAMATION BY JOHN ADAMS, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. Whereas, the late wicked and treasonable insurrection against the just authority of the United States of sundry persons in the counties of Northampton, Montgomery, and Bucks, in the State of Pennsylvania, in the year 1799, having been speedily suppressed without any of the calamities usually attending rebellion; whereupon peace,

order, and submission to the laws of the United States were restored in the aforesaid counties, and the ignorant, misguided, and misinformed in the counties have returned to a proper sense of their duty, whereby it is become unnecessary for the public good that any future prosecutions should be commenced or carried on against any person or persons by reason of their being concerned in the said insurrection:

Wherefore, be it known that I, John Adams, President of the United States of America, have granted, and by these presents do grant, a full, free, and absolute pardon to all and every person or persons concerned in the said insurrection, excepting as hereinafter excepted, of all treasons, misprisions of treason, felonies, misdemeanors, and other crimes by them respectively, done or committed against the United States in either of the said counties before the 12th day of March, in the year 1799, excepting and excluding therefrom every person who now standeth indicted or convicted of any treason, misprision of treason, or other offense against the United States, whereby remedying and releasing unto all persons, except as before excepted, all pains and penalties incurred, or supposed to be incurred, for or on account of the premises.

Given under my hand and the seal of the United States of America, at the city of Philadelphia, this 21st day of May, in the year of our Lord eighteen hundred, and of the Independence of the said States the twenty-fourth.

[SEAL.]

JOHN ADAMS.

For some years following the adoption of the Constitution and the inauguration of the new Republic there were constant apprehensions of trouble with the foreign powers that still maintained colonies to the south and west. On January 18, 1798, a sweeping decree against American commerce was promulgated by the French Directory, and was followed by the capture of many American vessels, whose crews were treated with indignity and cruelty. This created a strong antiFrench party. The French Republic having repeatedly violated the treaties made in 1778, Congress, by act of July 6, 1798, declared them void, and by a later act of February 9, 1799, all commercial intercourse between the United States and France and her dependencies was suspended. There was great excitement throughout the country; the militia was embodied and was in constant expectation of being called upon for active service; measures were projected for the increase of the Army, the better defense of the Atlantic coast, the creation of a navy. But a better feeling on the part of the French western frontier, Government prevailed about the close of the century, occasioned by the accession of Napoleon to supreme power, and this excellent disposition rapidly developed until it culminated in the transfer of the Louisiana Territory, whereby, for a sum approximating $27,000,000, we disposed of a troublesome neighbor and added nearly a thousand million acres to our public domain.

Our south

1800-1807.

The attitude of Spain was less friendly; and now that Louisiana had enlarged our frontier, her possessions extended for 3,000 miles along our southwest boundary. Repeated plans had been formed by the Americans who resided within Spanish territory and formed the entire population of hundreds of settlements, to shake off the Spanish yoke and annex themselves to their countrymen on the east of the

Mississippi, so that the Government was under constant embarrassment in its endeavor to maintain the laws of international neutrality. The Spanish residents along the boundary increased this difficulty by their studied insolence and repeated aggression. The boundary line was indefinite and unsurveyed, and it had been agreed, pending such a survey, that each government should retain its military posts, but establish no others, nor attempt to occupy any part of the territory in dispute. In June, 1806, after a series of petty encroachments along the frontier, the Spanish commander advanced a force of 1,200 men across the Sabine to within 20 miles of Nachitoches, the westernmost settlement in the Orleans Territory. Our nearest military posts were at New Orleans and St. Louis. These were hurriedly put in a state for defense; the militia of Orleans and Missouri were ordered under arms, and General Wilkinson, then governor of Louisiana Territory, assembled the regular troops, something less than 600 officers and men, and marched to the frontier. "On the 4th of July, 1806," says Parton, "there were not a thousand persons in the United States who did not think war with Spain inevitable, impending, begun. The country desired it. A blow from Wilkinson, a word from Jefferson, would have let loose the dogs of war, given us Texas, and changed the history of the two continents." a

1805-1807.

At this juncture appears one of the most remarkable figures in American history, as the head of a mysterious undertaking the secrets of which nearly a hundred years of research and conjecture have failed to unravel. Precisely what it was that Aaron Burr contemplated, when he first set on foot the enterprise that terminated in his arrest and trial for treason, has never been discovered. Close investigation of the man and his character before and after the event Burr's conspiracy, impel the conclusion that he himself could not have told. Without essaying to retrace the ground that has been followed by every American historian and holding closely to facts rather than conjecture, it will suffice to say that while confronting the Spanish camp in the Sabine country, about the 8th of October, 1806, General Wilkinson was waited upon by a gentleman bearing letters from Aaron Burr, who on the 4th of March, 1805, had finished a term as Vice-President of the United States, having failed by a single vote of reaching the Presidency, and who was, even in his retirement, one of the most conspicuous men of the country. In these letters was apparently concealed a plot which contemplated the seizure of Baton Rouge or New Orleans; the revolutionizing of the Western country; the fitting out from thence of an expedition for the capture of Mexico, and the ultimate erection of the whole into an empire of which Burr should be the head, Wilkinson second in command, with high positions. for prominent officers of the Army and Navy. The whole plan was

a Life and Times of Aaron Burr (N. Y., 1861), p. 407.