On October 28, after days of sliding along muddy roads, Washington rolled back into Philadelphia, right before Congress came into session. In his sixth annual address to Congress, on November 19, he defended his conduct in western Pennsylvania and singled out “certain self-created societies” as having egged on the protesters and assumed a permanently threatening character to government authority.18 For those who missed the glaring reference, the Federalist Fisher Ames claimed that the Democratic-Republican Societies, inspired by the French Jacobin clubs, “were born in sin, the impure offspring of Genet,” and produced “everywhere the echoes of factions in Congress.”19 Washington’s rare display of public temper generated a mood of high drama; one Federalist congressman vouched that he had “felt a strange mixture of passions which I cannot describe. Tears started into my eyes, and it was with difficulty that I could suppress an involuntary effort to swear that I would support him.”20

Washington’s allusion to the new societies, which sounded sinister, produced deep reverberations in American politics. The Senate applauded his warning, but in the House James Madison denounced what he saw as the censure of legitimate political clubs. “If we advert to the nature of republican government,” he said, “we shall find that the censorial power is in the people over the government, and not in the government over the people.”21 It was an astounding development: James Madison, the former confidant of Washington, was now openly condemning his mentor. So unwarranted did Madison consider Washington’s criticism of the “self-created societies” that he privately told Jefferson that it was “perhaps the greatest error” of Washington’s political life.22 Madison descried a strategy to denigrate the societies by associating them with the Whiskey Rebellion, and then to denigrate congressional Republicans by associating them with the societies—all as part of an effort to boost the Federalist party. For Jefferson, Washington’s speech was a patent attack on free speech, confirming a monarchical mentality that was “perfectly dazzled by the glittering of crowns and coronets.”23 For Madison and Jefferson, this was the pivotal moment when Washington surrendered any pretense of nonpartisanship and became the open leader of the Federalists.

As Washington anticipated, the display of military might in western Pennsylvania caused the uprising to wither. But it would stand as the biggest display of armed resistance to the federal government until the Civil War. Approximately 150 prisoners were taken into custody, and Washington showed commendable clemency in dealing with them. After two rebel leaders were tried and sentenced to death, Washington, drawing on this constitutional power for the first time, pardoned both men. Throughout the ordeal, he had shown consummate judgment, acting with firmness and moderation, trying diplomacy first but then, like a stern parent, preparing to dole out punishment. Given the giant scale of the protest and the governmental response, there had been remarkably few deaths. In a classic balancing act, he had conferred new luster on republican government, showing it could contain large-scale disorder without sacrificing constitutional niceties, and his popularity only grew in consequence.

The aftermath of the Whiskey Rebellion led to a dramatic shift in Washington’s cabinet. If the episode augmented Republican fears about Hamilton’s influence, the treasury secretary had a surprise in store for them. On December 1, the same day he returned to Philadelphia, he notified Washington that he planned to relinquish his Treasury post at the end of January, a decision possibly influenced by his wife’s miscarriage in his absence. As the contrasting behavior of Hamilton and Knox during the Whiskey Rebellion made clear, Washington warmed to Hamilton because the latter never let him down, never disappointed him, and always delivered in an emergency. Washington had allowed no Republican diatribes against Hamilton to weaken his opinion of a supremely gifted, if sometimes flawed, public servant. Just how highly Washington rated Hamilton was shown in the letter he wrote in accepting his resignation, an encomium that embraced both his wartime and his government service: “In every relation which you have borne to me, I have found that my confidence in your talents, exertions, and integrity has been well placed. I the more freely render this testimony of my approbation, because I speak from opportunities of information w[hi]ch cannot deceive me and which furnish satisfactory proof of your title to public regard. My most earnest wishes for your happiness will attend you in your retirement.”24 To replace Hamilton, Washington elevated the comptroller of the treasury, Oliver Wolcott, Jr., the Connecticut lawyer who had earlier been the department’s auditor.

Even as the Whiskey Rebellion deepened the bond between Washington and Hamilton, it appeared to dissolve the almost-twenty-year connection between Washington and Knox. Underscoring his displeasure with Knox, Washington sent him few letters that fall. In early December Knox told a friend that he contemplated stepping down at the end of the month, a decision only strengthened by another episode. On December 23 Senator Pierce Butler complained to Washington about abuses committed during the construction of the new U.S. frigates. In forwarding this letter to Knox, Washington was notably brusque, merely saying, “I request that strict inquiry may be instituted into the matter and a report thereupon made to me.”25 Knox knew how to read his chief’s subtleties. On December 28 he submitted his resignation to Washington, beginning the letter with the frosty “Sir” instead of the customary “Dear Sir.” In explaining his decision, Knox cited the claims of “a wife and a growing and numerous family of children” and tried to end on a personal note. “But in whatever situation I shall be, I shall recollect your confidence and kindness with all the fervor and purity of affection of which a grateful heart can be susceptible.”26

Where Washington had accepted the resignations of Hamilton and even Jefferson with “Dear Sir” letters, he addressed Knox as “Sir.” He made no effort to urge him to stay in office, and his letter, while correct, did not begin to capture the former warmth of their relationship: “I cannot suffer you, however, to close your public service without uniting, with the satisfaction which must arise in your own mind from a conscious rectitude, my most perfect persuasion that you have deserved well of your country. My personal knowledge of your exertions . . . justifies the sincere friendship which I have ever borne for you and which will accompany you in every situation of life.”27 One senses that Washington was trying to temper old gratitude with recent disenchantment. He had never made personal excuses for himself at times of crisis and apparently had little tolerance for Knox’s doing so. It is hard to avoid the impression that Washington thought Knox had behaved negligently during the whiskey crisis, and Knox was never fully reinstated in his good graces.

For Knox’s successor, Washington chose Timothy Pickering, a curmudgeonly character who, during his wartime stint as adjutant general, was critical of Washington. In 1791 the president had chosen him as postmaster general and also employed him periodically on diplomatic missions to the Indian nations. The choices of Wolcott and Pickering confirmed that Washington could not duplicate the quality of his first-term team and was moving toward a more overtly Federalist cabinet. After the flap over the Democratic-Republican Societies and his estrangement from Jefferson, Washington began to think that he deserved absolute loyalty from department heads and could no longer strive for political balance. The departures of Jefferson, Hamilton, and Knox only made Washington long more wistfully for the solace of Mount Vernon. In January 1795 he told Edmund Pendleton that “altho[ugh] I have no cause to complain of the want of health, I can religiously aver that no man was ever more tired of public life, or more devoutly wished for retirement, than I do.”28 Unfortunately, the cabinet turnover pushed the day of retirement ever further into a cloudy future.