Hamilton’s trip to Pittsburgh
Alexander Hamilton was out for blood on his first visit to Pittsburgh, writes LEN BARCOUSKY
When Alexander Hamilton arrived in Pittsburgh in November 1794, he was looking to hang someone. Lawyer Henry Hugh Brackenridge was worried that Hamilton had his eye on him.
As George Washington’s secretary of the treasury, Hamilton had been a prime sponsor of the excise tax on whiskey distillation adopted three years earlier. Revenue from that tax was critical to paying off state debts for which the new federal government had agreed to take responsibility.
That action, however, infuriated frontier farmers in multiple states. They turned their field crops into whiskey for easier transport. Liquor also served as frontier currency and as an important social lubricant.
Nowhere was the anger greater than in the area around Pittsburgh. Many farmers in Allegheny and Washington counties already believed that the Pennsylvania state government in Philadelphia had ignored their needs for decades. Their anger boiled over when President Washington’s federal government appointed excise agents to count their whiskey stills and collect the tax due on each gallon of Pennsylvania hooch.
Hamilton’s adventures during the Whiskey Rebellion are not dramatized in the hip-hop musical version of his life that is on stage through Jan. 27 at the Benedum Center. That’s too bad, because Hamilton’s one-and-only visit to Pittsburgh offers a full bottle of political drama.
Philadelphia served as the national capital between 1790 and 1800, while the first buildings in what is now Washington, D.C., were under construction.
Word had reached Philadelphia in August 1794 that Whiskey Rebels had attacked Allegheny County’s revenue inspector John Neville and burned his country house in what is now Scott Township.
More bad news for federal authorities followed. Between 6,000 and 7,000 protesters massed at Braddock’s Field, part of modern-day Braddock, and made plans to march on Pittsburgh. The town at the forks of the Ohio was the county seat and the home of Neville and other government officials.
The rebels were succeeding in their attempts to intimidate opponents. John Scull, the editor and publisher of The Pittsburgh Gazette, was a Federalist and a strong supporter of the new U.S. Constitution and of Hamilton’s revenue policies. Nevertheless, when an anonymous leader of the Whiskey Rebels demanded that Scull publish an ultimatum threatening anyone who supported the excise tax, the editor was in no position to refuse. The unpaid “advertisement” appeared on July 26, 1794, in the newspaper. Writing under the name Tom the Tinker, the author warned that the rebels “will not suffer any certain class or set of men” to go AWOL from anti-tax rallies. “Delinquents” who did not show up with “equipments” — meaning guns and ammunition — to oppose the excise tax “will be deemed as enemies” who “stand opposed to virtuous principles or republican liberty, and shall receive punishment according to the nature of the offenses.”
The rebels’ hard line against the tax left people like Henry Hugh Brackenridge in a difficult position. Born in Scotland, Brackenridge was a former teacher and minister turned lawyer and a frequent contributor to the pages of The Pittsburgh Gazette. He had come to Pittsburgh in 1781 to set up his law practice. He later explained that he had indeed attended multiple meetings, including the one at Braddock’s Field, in an attempt to keep the actions of the rebels within legal bounds. As a result, he wrote that he was viewed with suspicion by the rebel leaders, including their “general,” David Bradford.
When the rebels marched on Pittsburgh, Brackenridge agreed to accompany them. A prolific writer, Brackenridge produced a book the year after the rebellion — “Incidents of the Insurrection in the Western Parts of Pennsylvania” — in which he defended his actions in detail.
In that book Brackenridge described his efforts to discourage the rebels from burning and looting the town. He arranged for the rebels to be given free drinks: “I thought it better to be employed in extinguishing the fire of their thirst, than of my house.” He also directed the effort to get the bulk of Bradford’s army across the Monongahela River and away from the city.
Back in Philadelphia, Washington had been reluctant to send troops against his fellow Americans. But Hamilton viewed the actions of the rebels as a direct attack on the new federal government. Washington ultimately agreed with the decision of Henry Knox, his secretary of war, to call up militia from several states. When it came time for the troops to head over the Allegheny Mountains, Hamilton asked to accompany Washington on the campaign. Washington traveled as far as Bedford. He then turned command of the army over to Hamilton and Virginia Gov. Henry Lee, the father of Robert E. Lee.
In his biography of Hamilton, historian Ron Chernow writes that the secretary of the treasury wanted the revolutionary tendencies of the western settlers “extirpated root and branch.” Of one reputed rebel leader, Hamilton said, “that very man, if he was met with, would be skewered, shot or hanged on the first tree.”
As the federal army of at least 12,000 marched across the state, the leaders of the Whiskey Rebels, including Bradford, rapidly melted away. When the troops arrived at Pittsburgh on Nov. 16, Hamilton wrote to Washington that he found no organized resistance left: “Subsequent intelligence shows that there is no regular assemblage of the fugitives … there are only small vagrant parties.” Brackenridge had stayed put in Pittsburgh and prepared to defend his actions. The frontier lawyer was served with a court order to appear before Hamilton on Nov. 18. Things didn’t look promising. “I was received by Hamilton, with that countenance, which a man will have, when he sees a person, with regard to whom his humanity and sense of justice struggles; he would have him saved, but is afraid he must be hanged.”
Brackenridge wrote in his “Incidents” that Hamilton questioned him closely. “He began, by asking me some general questions, with regard to any system or plan, within my knowledge, of overthrowing the government,” the lawyer recalled. “I had known of nothing of the kind.” The Treasury Secretary told Brackenridge that among his other offenses, he had missed the September deadline for requesting amnesty for old crimes. Brackenridge replied that he had done nothing treasonous or illegal.
Hamilton then halted his questioning for a dinner break which he took with members of the Neville family, who were Brackenridge’s political enemies.
Pittsburgh was a small town. While Hamilton was dining with the Nevilles, Gov. Lee, the co-commander of federal forces, was quartered in Brackenridge’s Pittsburgh home. Brackenridge was invited that afternoon to dine with Lee, but declined. “I could not bear to show myself with that company, in the doubtful predicament in which I stood.”
The questioning continued that afternoon until Hamilton called a halt. “My breast begins to ache,” he said. Brackenridge wrote that he did not know how to interpret Hamilton’s remark.
Things turned in the lawyer’s favor the next morning. “Your conduct has been horribly misrepresented, owing to misconception” Hamilton told him. “You are in no personal danger.”
While Hamilton took 20 Whiskey Rebels back to Philadelphia for trial, no one was hanged. George Washington ultimately pardoned the only two rebels convicted of treason. “Hamilton feared that this clemency would only encourage lawless behavior,” Chernow wrote in his biography of Hamilton. His book “Alexander Hamilton” is the basis for the musical now on stage at the Benedum.
While he avoided criminal punishment, Brackenridge couldn’t escape suspicion among his neighbors. In the Oct. 11, 1794, edition of The Pittsburgh Gazette, Brackenridge was accused of lying about the statements he made at Braddock’s Field both by Isaac Craig, the son-in-law of John Neville, whose home had been burned by rebels, and by the rebel leader David Bradford. “I must inform you that Mr. Brackenridge has either a very treacherous memory, or a strong disposition to assert falsehoods if he asserted as you state,” Bradford wrote in the newspaper.
The Pittsburgh lawyer perhaps took heart from Hamilton’s comment that, despite initial misgivings, the treasury secretary no longer held any unfavorable impressions about Brackenridge. In that same edition of the newspaper, Brackenridge advised voters in Washington and Allegheny counties that he was still a candidate for Congress. “I may at present have less popularity than I had, but the time will come when I shall be considered as having deserved well of the country, in all the delicate conjunctures in which we have been situated.”
He nevertheless lost that race and never again won an elective office.
Len Barcousky (lbarcousky@gmail.com) is a former Post-Gazette editor and reporter. He will talk briefly about the real Alexander Hamilton’s visit to Pittsburgh during the Post-Gazette’s Town Meeting on “The Legacy of Hamilton.” The free program will begin at 6 p.m. Monday, Jan. 14 in the Heinz Field Hyundai Club. For more information and registration, call 412-263-1541 or go to promo.post-gazette.com/Hamilton.