Early in our history, in the second administration of Washington, a formidable, armed, organized resistance was made to the enforcement of the excise laws of the General Government in the western portion of Pennsylvania, which extended into a part of Virginia. It was computed that there were sixteen thousand men capable of bearing arms in the district in insurrection. Washington called out the militia of several of the States and, as Commander-in-chief, suppressed the revolt. The march of the troops was fatiguing and long, late in the fall, in rain and storms, which caused much suffering and, in the end, a good many deaths. The insurrection was crushed by the power of the General Government with promptness and vigor, much to the satisfaction of Washington and Hamilton then Secretary of the Treasury; it strengthened the government and the administration. Of the prisoners tried before the United States Court at Philadelphia two were found guilty of treason, who from some palliating circumstances were ultimately pardoned by the President.[62] [62] Hildreth’s _History_, vol. iv., p. 515. We have seen what were the opinions of the nature of the new government held by Hamilton, Mason, and Clinton, three of the persons Mr. Lodge named. There can be no doubt what Washington’s was. No one knew better than Washington, what a miserable condition the States, then petty in population and poor in resources, would be without a strong, indissoluble Union. Only one of the States, Virginia, had over half a million of inhabitants, nearly half slaves; two had about sixty thousand. Washington, long before, on the disbanding of the army in 1783, wrote to the governors of the States that, according to the policy the States should adopt, depended whether the revolution was a blessing; and he put “first” among the essential requisites “an indissoluble union of the States under one federal head.”[63] In his address as president of the convention submitting the Constitution to the Congress of the States, he said: “In all our deliberations on this subject we kept steadily in our view that which appeared to us the greatest interest of every true American, _the consolidation of the Union_, in which is involved our prosperity, felicity, safety, perhaps our _national_ existence.” In his farewell address, as President, to the people of the United States, in no less emphatic terms, he declared the importance and the success of the Union. He said: “The _unity of Government_, which constitutes _you one people_, is also now dear to you; it is justly so, for it is a main pillar in the edifice of your real independence--the support of your tranquillity at home, your peace abroad; of your safety; of your prosperity; of that very liberty which you so highly prize.”[64] [63] Eliot’s _Manual of United States History_, 266. [64] Sparks’ _Washington_, vol. xii., p. 214.