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governments in Philadelphia. When Washington’s secretary of the treasury, Alexander Hamilton, imposed a tax on the whiskey western farmers distilled from their grain, surliness rapidly became hostility.
    Rabble-rousers denounced the “eastern aristocrats,” and federal agents who tried to collect the taxes became targets for threats and harassment. From Canada, the British watched this development with considerable interest. They had hopes of confining their former colonies to the eastern seaboard, and they were arming and arousing the Indian tribes in the Ohio River Valley to launch a war of terror and murder against the Americans entering these fertile lands. A secession of the western counties of Pennsylvania, and perhaps of Virginia and North Carolina, fit neatly into this nasty plan. Some sort of satellite nation could be fabricated from these malcontents, financed by British pounds sterling.
    President Washington soon saw the whiskey rebels as a menace to the Union. He summoned fifteen thousand militia from Virginia, Maryland, and Pennsylvania and put one of his best soldiers in command of it—Henry “Light Horse Harry” Lee, a brilliant cavalry leader during the Revolution. When this well-armed host descended on the whiskey rebels, their bravado vanished. In a few days they were pleading for mercy. The president pardoned them all, satisfied that he had made a very large point: the federal union was perpetual and its laws were to be obeyed by everyone in the nation.
    Jefferson and his followers pointed to the lack of resistance and claimed that Washington had made a political mountain out of this local molehill.President Washington let them talk. He was content to have set an example to which other presidents could turn. It fit nicely into the central purpose of his presidency—to create an office that had the power to deal with crises without waiting for an indecisive Congress to make up its collective mind. 2
    Unfortunately, this foreign and domestic turmoil convinced Washington that it would be a grave mistake to bring an issue as divisive as emancipation before the public. Recently, historians have found evidence that the president was seriously considering it. In 1794, he discussed with his confidential secretary, Tobias Lear, the possibility of selling his western lands to enable him to “liberate a certain species of property which I possess, very repugnantly to my own feelings.” But he reluctantly abandoned this idea, which might well have given slavery a mortal wound, if not a deathblow. 3
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    In 1796, the final year of his second term, Washington found himself bombarded with pleas to run for president again. Shrewd politician that he was, he saw this would play into the hands of the Jeffersonians, who would orate about him becoming “president for life.” He was also a very tired man. But he remained deeply concerned about the future of this nation to which he had devoted forty-five years of his life. He decided to issue a statement explaining why he chose not to seek a third term—and also advising the American people on the course he hoped they would pursue to reach that elusive goal proclaimed in the Declaration of Independence—happiness.
    The result was a document instantly christened “The Farewell Address” and printed in virtually every newspaper in the nation. It contained a great deal of good advice, based on Washington’s experience as a general and president. He urged everyone to avoid “passionate attachments” to foreign nations. He praised “morality and religion” as the “great pillars of human happiness.” But at the head of his list of concerns was the issue that remained central to his vision of America’s future—the federal union.
    â€œThe unity of government which constitutes you one people . . . is a main Pillar. . . of your