the United States notified to me that "in the counties of Washington and
Allegheny, in Pennsylvania, laws of the United States were opposed, and the
execution thereof obstructed, by combinations too powerful to be suppressed
by the ordinary course of judicial proceedings or by the powers vested in
the marshal of that district".

On this call, momentous in the extreme, I sought and weighted what might
best subdue the crisis. On the one hand the judiciary was pronounced to be
stripped of its capacity to enforce the laws; crimes which reached the very
existence of social order were perpetrated without control; the friends of
Government were insulted, abused, and overawed into silence or an apparent
acquiescence; and to yield to the treasonable fury of so small a portion of
the United States would be to violate the fundamental principle of our
Constitution, which enjoins that the will of the majority shall prevail. On
the other, to array citizen against citizen, to publish the dishonor of
such excesses, to encounter the expense and other embarrassments of so
distant an expedition, were steps too delicate, too closely interwoven with
many affecting considerations, to be lightly adopted.

I postponed, therefore, the summoning of the militia immediately into the
field, but I required them to be held in readiness, that if my anxious
endeavors to reclaim the deluded and to convince the malignant of their
danger should be fruitless, military force might be prepared to act before
the season should be too far advanced.

My proclamation of the 7th of August last was accordingly issued, and
accompanied by the appointment of commissioners, who were charged to
repair to the scene of insurrection. They were authorized to confer
with any bodies of men or individuals. They were instructed to be
candid and explicit in stating the sensations which had been excited in the