JAMES WILSON — NATION BUILDER were instructed by the Legislature to oppose the law as one "established on principle subversive of peace, liberty, and the rights of citizens." The agents of the National Government sent to collect the excise tax were maltreated and driven away, and United States marshals attempting the service of writs were tarred and feathered. Even Albert Gallatin, afterwards Secretary of the Treasury under Jefferson, was a leader in the opposition to the collection of the tax, serving as secretary of a mass meeting of seven thousand armed insur gents on August 1, 1794. The situation had become most critical, Washington sub sequently declaring that many persons in the western parts of Pennsylvania "have at length been hardy enough to perpetuate acts which I am advised amount to treason, being overt acts of levying war against the United States." The Governor of Penn sylvania, General Thomas Mifflin, declined to take the initiative in calling upon the National Government for assistance. Wil son, however, was equal to the emergency, and unflinchingly met the issue on the 4th of August, 1794, by a brief and formal communication to President Washington notifying him: "In the counties of Washington and Alle gheny in Pennsylvania, laws of the United States are opposed and execution thereof obstructed by combinations too powerful to be suppressed by the ordinary course of judicial proceedings or by the powers vested in the marshall of that district." There he stopped, — he made no recom mendation. His statement was all suffi cient. Washington promptly acted, and on August 7th, by his proclamation, called upon the insurgents to disperse and retire peace ably to their homes. The warning being unheeded, Washington issued a requisition on the governors of Pennsylvania, Virginia, Maryland, and New Jersey, for fifteen thou sand militia and in person accompanied the troops as far as Carlisle. The insur rection was suppressed merely by the show
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of federal force at the scene of the disturb ances. Had Wilson temporized with the situation and lacked the courage to certify the facts to Washington, it is probable the insurrection would have gained such head way as seriously to affect the ability of the national government to suppress it with out bloodshed and resultant bitter feeling and resentment towards the Federal author ities. The climax, however, in Wilson's career came in 1793, when he wrote the all potent and powerful opinion in the case of Chisholm v. Georgia,1 declaring the United States to be a nation, the court standing with him three to two. Speaking of the decision in that case, Judge Cooley, in his lectures on constitutional law, says: "Justice Wilson, the ablest and most learned of the associates, took the national view and was supported by two others. . . . The Union could scarcely have had a valu able existence had it been judicially deter mined that the powers of sovereignty were exclusively in the States or in the people of the States severally." Another able writer, in an article 2 char acterizing Wilson as "The Pioneer of Ameri can Jurisprudence," declares: "On the foundation of this decision rests the governmental fabric of the United States. . . . Wilson set to himself the task of answering the question, 'Do the people of the United States form a nation?' This question is illustrated by copious classical, historical, and juridical references, presented with the vivacity of an earnest debater, the answer constituting a thesis in which the broad observations of a scholar, the close analysis of a jurist, and the pro found researches of a philosopher are happily united . ' ' Still another,3 referring to this great decision and Wilson's invaluable services to our nationality as exemplified therein, asserts : 1 2 Dallas, 4ig. 1 Professor J. O. Pierce in The Dial, Vol. XX, p. 236. 1 The Nation, Vol. LXII, p. 494 (1896).
