When the news of the disturbances in Massachusetts, in the autumn of 1786, was received in Congress, it happened that intelligence from the Western country indicated a hostile disposition on the part of several Indian tribes against the frontier settlements. A resolve was unanimously adopted, directing one thousand three hundred and forty additional troops to be raised, for the term of three years, for the protection and support of the States bordering on the Western territory and the settlements on and near the Mississippi, and to secure and facilitate the surveying and selling of the public lands.[263] From the fact that the whole of these troops were ordered to be raised by the four New England States, and one half of them by the State of Massachusetts, and from other circumstances, it is quite apparent that the object assigned was an ostensible one, and that Congress intended by this resolve to strengthen the government of that State and to overawe the insurgents.[264] But this motive could not be publicly announced. The enlistment went on very slowly, however, until February, when a motion was made by Mr. Pinckney of South Carolina to stop it altogether, upon the ground that the insurrection in Massachusetts, the real, though not the ostensible, object of the resolve, had been crushed. Mr. King of Massachusetts earnestly entreated that the federal enlistments might be permitted to go on, otherwise the greatest alarm would be felt by the government of the State and its friends, and the insurrection might be rekindled. Mr. Madison advised that the proposal to rescind the order for the enlistments should be suspended, to await the course of events in Massachusetts. At the same time, he admitted that it would be difficult to reconcile an interference of Congress in the internal controversies of a State with the tenor of the Articles of Confederation.[265] The whole subject was postponed, and the direct question of the power of Congress was not acted upon. In the Convention which framed the Constitution, it was very early declared, that the Confederation had neither constitutional power, nor means, to interfere in case of a rebellion in any State.[266] This generation can scarcely depict to itself the alarm which these disturbances spread through the country, and the extreme peril to which the whole fabric of society in New England was exposed. The numbers of the disaffected in Massachusetts amounted to one fifth of the inhabitants in several of the populous counties. Their doctrines and purposes were embraced by many young, active, and desperate men in Rhode Island, Connecticut, and New Hampshire, and the whole of this faction in the four States was capable of furnishing a body of twelve or fifteen thousand men, bent on annihilating property, and cancelling all debts, public and private.[267]