To a delegation of the insurgents who met him on
the way to complain of such an armed force coming to conquer them,
Washington replied that although we had made a republican form of
government and enacted laws under it, yet we had given no testimony
to the world of being able or willing to support our Government; that,
this being the first instance of the kind since the commencement of
the Government, he thought it his duty to bring out such a force as
would not only be sufficient to subdue the insurgents if they made
resistance, but to crush to atoms all opposition that might arise in
any quarter.
Washington foresaw the effects of using the military power in behalf
of the Union. "The most delicate and momentous duty the chief magistrate
of a free people can have to perform," he called it. Early in the
excise resistance he had declared that the Government must not use the
regular troops if order could possibly be effected without this aid.
"Otherwise," said he, "there would be a cry at once, 'The cat is let
out; we now see for what purpose an army was raised!'" But
individualistic spirits who were alarmed at this new distortion of the
Government toward centralisation feared the results of using even the
militia.
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