On April 4 a detachment of five hundred soldiers marched from Philadelphia into Bucks and Northampton Counties, Pennsylvania, to put down a revolt against the United States government. The force was overwhelming, and the campaign, which brought together state militia, federal regulars, and even a company of artillery, had been prepared meticulously for weeks. There was only one problem: By the time the soldiers arrived on the scene, there was no longer any rebellion.

The source of the unrest had been an unpopular new tax on land, houses, and slaves. Congress had enacted the tax to pay for its military buildup against a presumed threat from France. To calculate the value of houses, assessors had been hired to record the dimensions, building material, and size and number of windows. In eastern Pennsylvania the local German farmers took great exception to this echo of the feudal European customs they had fled. Angry Hausfrauen poured boiling water on assessors as they stood beneath their windows taking measurements, giving the affair its alternative name, the Hot Water War. Agents appointed to collect the tax (almost all non-Germans and many of them unpopular locally to begin with) were reviled and intimidated into resigning. By early March federal marshals had found it necessary to arrest about twenty prominent citizens for nonpayment.

The leader in fighting the tax was a Bucks County man named John Fries. Years before, Fries had served in the Revolution, and as a militia captain he had helped suppress the Whiskey Rebellion of 1794. Now, once again, he was a rebel himself. As much as anything else, Fries seems simply to have enjoyed making speeches and leading soldiers. With the glibness and volubility that made him a successful auctioneer, he gathered an irregular force of 100 to 150 lightly armed men. On March 8 they descended on the Sun Tavern in Bethlehem, where the prisoners were being held. Confronted by superior force, the marshals released them, and everyone went home.

Over the ensuing weeks, with the excitement over, resistance to the tax faded and most citizens grudgingly paid. In the meantime, however, word reached the federal capital of Philadelphia about the Pennsylvanians’ defiance of the law. Alexander Hamilton, the Army’s inspector general, jumped at the chance to assert the federal government’s authority and burnish his own credentials. He bustled about giving orders, appointing officers, and dispatching troops. Four weeks after the Sun Tavern affray, the soldiers finally arrived and found no sign of any uprising. They contented themselves with cutting down liberty poles, raiding hostile newspaper offices, and harassing rebel sympathizers. They then tracked down and arrested Fries (who hid in a swamp until his barking dog, Whiskey, revealed his location) and five dozen alleged fellow insurrectionists and delivered them to federal authorities for trial.

Fries was convicted of treason and sentenced to death. In 1800, however, President John Adams—against the unanimous advice of his cabinet—granted