In the last decade of the eighteenth century the Whiskey Rebellion arose from the refusal of the Scotch-Irish whiskey distillers of Pennsylvania to pay the excise on whiskey. If a collector came among them he was attacked, his books and papers taken, his commission torn up, and a solemn promise exacted that he would publish his resignation in the Pittsburgh _Gazette_. If a farmer gave information as to where the stills could be found, his barns were burned. If a distiller entered his stills as the law required, he was sure to be visited by a masked mob. Sometimes his grist-mill was made useless, sometimes his stills destroyed, or a piece of his saw-mill carried away, and a command laid upon him to publish what had been done to him in the _Gazette_. One unhappy man, who had rented his house to a collector, was visited at the dead of night by a mob of blackened and disguised men. He was seized, carried to the woods, shorn of his hair, tarred, feathered, and bound to a tree. They next formed associations of those who, in the language of the district, were ready to "forbear" entering their stills. They ended by working themselves into a fury and calling a meeting of distillers for the 27th of July, at Restone, Old Fort, a town on which the inhabitants have since bestowed the humbler name of Brownsville. From this gathering went out a call for two conventions. One was to meet on the 23d of August at Washington, in Pennsylvania. The date chosen for the meeting of the second was September 7th, and the place Pittsburgh. Both were held. That at Washington denounced the law and called on all good people to treat every man taking office under it with contempt, and withhold from him all comfort, aid, and support. That at Pittsburgh complained bitterly of the salaries of the federal officers, of the rate of interest on the national debt, of the Funding System, of the Bank, and of the tax on whiskey. Meantime the collector for the counties of Washington and Alleghany was set upon. On the day before the Pittsburgh meeting a party of armed men waylaid him at a lonely spot on Pigeon creek, stripped, tarred, and feathered him, cut off his hair, and took away his horse. They were disguised, but he recognized three of the band, and swore out warrants against them in the district court at Philadelphia. These were sent to the marshal; but the marshal was a prudent man, and gave them to his deputy, who, early in October, went down into Alleghany to serve them. He hid his errand, and as he rode along, beheld such signs of the angry mood of the people, and heard such threats, that he came back with the writs in his pocket unserved. And now he determined to send them under cover of private letters, and selected for the bearer a poor, half-witted cow-driver. The messenger knew not what he bore; but when the people found out that he was delivering writs, he was seized, robbed of his horse and money, whipped till he could scarcely stand, tarred,