In no branch of history is the culpability of the liquor traffic more thoroughly shown than in its relation to the slave trade. The making of rum aided and almost supported the slave trade in this country. The poor negroes were bought on the coast of Africa by New England sea captains and paid for with barrels of New England rum. These slaves were then carried on slave ships to the West Indies and sold at a large profit to planters and slave dealers for a cargo of molasses. This was brought to New England, distilled into rum, and sent off to Africa; thus the circle of molasses, slaves, and rum was completed.

In 1708 the West Indies afforded the great demand for negroes; they also furnished the raw material supplying the manufacture of the main merchandise which the thirsty Gold Coast drank up in barter for its poor, banished children. Governor Hopkins stated that for more than thirty years prior to 1764 Rhode Island sent to the Coast annually eighteen vessels carrying 1,800 hogsheads of rum. It displaced French brandies in the trade of the Coast after 1723. The commerce in rum and slaves afforded about £40,000 per annum for remittance from Rhode Island to Great Britain. Molasses and poor sugar, distilled in Boston and more especially in Newport into rum, made the staple export to Africa. Some obtained gallon for gallon of molasses, but the average was 96 to 100. Newport had twenty-two still houses. Boston had the best example, owned by a Mr. Childs. The cost of distilling was five and a half pence per gallon. Cisterns and vats cost fourteen to sixteen shillings per one hundred gallons, in 1735, not including lumber. The quantity of rum distilled was enormous, and in 1750 it was estimated that Massachusetts alone consumed more than 15,000 hogsheads of molasses for this purpose. The average price of molasses in the West Indies was thirteen or fourteen pence per gallon. The consumption of rum in the fisheries and lumbering and ship-building districts was large.

There was no article of merchandise comparable to rum on the African coast. Our forefathers' instincts were neither moral nor immoral; they were simply economic. They had tried dry-goods, and Africa rejected them in favor of the wet. Captain George Scott writes lamenting the purchasing of dry-goods and says, "had we laid out two thousand pounds in rum, bread and flour, it would purchase more in value than all our dry-goods."

The cargo of the Caesar, out-bound, was: eighty-two barrels, six hogsheads and six tierces of New England rum; thirty-three barrels of best Jamaica spirits; thirty-three barrels of Barbadoes rum; twenty-five pairs of pistols; two casks of musket-balls; one chest of hand arms; twenty-five cutlasses. The return cargo was: in the hold on board the scow Caesar, one hundred and fifty-three adult slaves, and two children.

The ships were light of draught and built for speed. The captain and the crew were men little troubled with scruples touching the work they had to do. Once off the coast of Mozambique or Guinea, the cargo was rapidly made up. If a band of blacks, moved by curiosity, came round the vessel in a skiff, they were sure to be lured on board, ironed, and hurried into the hold. If a boat's crew went on shore, they came back dragging some wretched man between them. For rum the native princes gladly sold prisoners that their subjects made in war. When every available inch of space had been filled, the slaver turned westward and made for some southern port. The coast line had scarcely disappeared from view when the hatches were taken off and the terrors of the voyage began. Every fine day at sunrise the slaves were driven on deck. Such as were noisy had the thumb-screws put on. Such as were hard to manage were chained in pairs by the arms, or the ankles, or the necks. At the first sign of insurrection the leaders were shot down and cast into the sea. Their food was salt pork and beans. Their sole exercise was dancing and capering about the deck. This they were made to do. If any refused the cat-o'-nine-tails or the rope's end was vigorously applied. When the sun set the whole band went below. The transactions of one of these slavers are preserved in the history of New Bedford and make interesting reading for those who would hold up the Puritan as innocent of the transgression which stains the character of the Cavalier.

The Southern Planter

Liquor and slavery combined produced the Southern planter, whose life has often been described by various writers. When Yeardley assumed control of affairs in Virginia, the Company required that there should be inserted in all formal grants of land a covenant that the patentees should not apply themselves either wholly or principally to the culture of tobacco, but should divide their attentions among a number of commodities carefully specified in each deed. These consisted of Indian corn, wheat, flax, silk-grass, and wine. Parton, in his Life of Jefferson, says that the Virginia planter expended the proceeds of his tobacco in vast ugly mansions, heavy furniture, costly apparel, Madeira wines, fine horses, and slaves.

Another writer says:

"The gentleman of fortune rises about nine o'clock. He may perhaps make an excursion to his stables to see his horses, which is seldom more than fifty yards from his house; he returns to breakfast between nine and ten, which is generally tea or coffee, bread and butter and very thin slices of venison, ham, or hung beef. He then lies down on a pallet on the floor in the coolest room in the house in his shirt and trousers only, with a negro at his head and another at his feet to fan him and keep off the flies; between twelve and one he takes a bombo or toddy, a liquor compounded of water, sugar, rum, and nutmeg, which is made weak and kept cool; he dines between two and three, and at every meal, whatever else there may be, a ham and greens or cabbage is always a standing dish. At dinner he drinks cider, toddy, punch, port, claret, and Madeira, which is generally excellent here; having drank some few glasses of wine after dinner he returns to his pallet, with his two blacks to fan him, and continues to drink toddy or sangaree all the afternoon. Between nine and ten in the evening he eats a light supper of milk, fruit, etc., and almost invariably retires to bed for the night. This is his general way of living in his family when he has no company. No doubt many differ from it, some in one respect and some in another, but more follow it than do not. Pewter cups and mugs were everywhere to be seen and now and then a drinking horn. There were in the house for the purposes of drinking a variety of receptacles, such as the tumbler, the mug, the cup, the flagon, the tankard, and the beaker. The cups were known by a number of names, such as the lignum vitÆ, the syllabub, the sack, and the dram. Many planters in moderate circumstances were in possession of a quantity of silver plate."

MacMasters says of the Southern planter: "Numerous slaves and white servants attended them in every capacity that use or ostentation could suggest. On their tables were to be found the luxuries of the Old World and the New, and chief among these stood Madeira and rum. That the men of that generation drank more deeply than the men of this is not to be doubted." Another writer says: "The Maryland gentry ordered champagne from Europe by the cask and Madeira by the pipe and dressed in the latest fashion."

Betting and gambling were with drunkenness and a passion for duelling and running in debt the chief sins of the South Carolina gentleman.

The Indian Tribes

When Gladwyn wrote to Amherst, "If your Excellency still intends to punish the Indians farther for their barbarities it may easily be done without any expense to the crown by permitting a free sale of rum which will destroy them more effectually than fire and sword," he indicated the policy toward the Indian tribes which has been steadily pursued by all civilized nations on the American continent except the French. Irving, in his Knickerbocker's History of New York, has stated the truth on this, as he often does on other matters: "Our benevolent forefathers endeavored as much as possible to ameliorate their situation by giving them gin, wine and glass beads in exchange for their peltries, for it seemed the kind-hearted Dutchmen had conceived a great friendship for their savage neighbors; on account of their being pleasant men to trade with, and little skilled in the art of making a bargain." There is extant a letter of Ebenezer Hazard to Silas Deane of date February 25, 1775, in which Hazard says: "I am told the Committee appointed by the House to state the grievances of this Colony, though mostly Tories, have included all those complained of by Congress and mentioned some new ones, particularly the destruction of the Indian Trade by the Quebec Duty Act. You know that trade cannot be carried on without rum. By the Quebec Duty Act no rum may be sold in the Province but what is entered and the duty paid at Quebec or on Lake Champlain. The Virginians, etc., cannot afford to carry their rum to these places to be entered, and consequently can have no trade. This I am very credibly informed is one of the grievances they have enumerated."

There were but few storekeepers in Virginia in early days who were not engaged in the Indian trade. Guns, ammunition, rum, blankets, knives, and hatchets were the articles in greatest demand among the tribes. When in the ordinary course of events a young American in Virginia or elsewhere felt himself impelled to leave the paternal roof he put aside his gun and fishing rod, and asked of his father some money, a slave, and a canoe. His brow grew thoughtful, and he adopted a pipe. With his money he purchased beads, trinkets, blankets, guns, powder, not forgetting for various reasons a supply of rum. With these he purposed laying the foundation of his fortunes as an Indian trader. If the trader had several servants with him or was associated with other traders he would fix his quarters in some large Indian town and send his subordinates to the surrounding villages, with a suitable supply of blankets, guns, hatchets, liquor, tobacco, etc. This wild traffic was liable to every species of disorder, a fruitful source of broils, robberies, and murders. The fur traders were a class of men held in contempt among the Iroquois and known among them by the significant title of Rum Carriers. The white trappers seem to have been as dissipated as the Indians. One writer declares that most of the Canadians drink so much brandy in the morning that they are unfit for work all day. Another says that when a canoe man is tired he will lift a keg of brandy to his lips and drink the raw liquor from the bung-hole, after which, having spoiled his appetite, he goes to bed supperless, so with drink and hardship he is an old man at forty. The type of French trapper left in the old Northwest may still be seen far north in the great fur land; he is idle, devoted to singing, dancing, gossip, and drinking to intoxication; having vanity as his besetting sin. The Jesuits denounced the traffic. Their case was a strong one, but so was the case of their opponents. There was a real and imminent danger that the thirsty savages, if refused brandy by the French, would seek it from the Dutch and English of New York. It was the most potent lure and the most killing bait. Wherever it was found, there the Indians and their beaver skins were sure to go, and the interests of the fur trade, vital to the colony, were bound to go with it. Cadillac was especially incensed against the Jesuits on account of their opposition to the sale of spirits. So strong was their hostility that Louis XIV, in 1694, referred to the Sorbonne for decision the question of allowing French brandy to be shipped to Michilimackinac. The decision of the Council gave to the Northwest its first prohibitory law; and the commandant was not more willing to enforce the order than his successors have been to carry out similar laws. "A drink of brandy after the repast," he maintained, "seems necessary to cook the bilious meats and the crudities which they leave in the stomach." Again, at Detroit, Cadillac quotes from a sermon by Father Carhail, whose wing he was engaged in plucking. The Jesuit had maintained that there was "no power, either human or divine, which can permit the sale of this drink." Hence, you perceive, argues the crafty commandant, "that this Father passes boldly on all matters of state, and will not even submit to the decision of the pope." The question was indeed a hard one for Cadillac. He understood clearly that unless he had liquor to sell to the savages he might as well abandon his post; for the Indians would go straight to the English at Albany where goods were cheap and rum was unlimited. To give up Detroit never entered Cadillac's plan. He therefore chose the middle course. Instead of prohibition he would have high license. In the restrictions which he threw about the traffic in liquors he was both honest and earnest; and, as events proved, he was far in advance of his times. In the report of M. d'Aigrement, who inspected Detroit in 1708, it is mentioned as one of the grievances of the savages against Cadillac that "in order to prevent disturbances which would arise from the excessive use of brandy, he caused it all to be put into the store-house and sold it at the rate of twenty francs a quart. Those who will have brandy, French as well as Indians, are obliged to go to the store-house to drink, and each can obtain at one time only the twenty-fourth part of a quart. It is certain that the savages cannot become intoxicated on that quantity. The price is high, and as they cannot get brandy only each in his turn, it sometimes happens that the savages are obliged to return home without a taste of this beverage, and they seem ready to kill themselves with disappointment. Though the Jesuits refused absolution to all who sold brandy to the Indians, they sold it themselves. LaSalle had detected them in it." Count Frontenac declares that "The Jesuits greatly exaggerate the disorders caused by brandy and they easily convince persons who do not know the interested motives which have led them to harp continually on this string for more than forty years.... They have long wished to have the fur trade entirely to themselves." Appeal was made to the King, who with his Jesuit confessor, guardian of his conscience, on the one side, and Colbert, guardian of his worldly interests, on the other, stood in some perplexity. The case was referred to the fathers of the Sorbonne and they pronounced the selling of brandy to the Indians a mortal sin. It was next referred to the chief merchants and inhabitants of Canada. Each was directed to write his views. The great majority were for unrestricted trade in brandy, a few for limited and guarded trade, and two or three declared for prohibition. Decrees of prohibition were passed from time to time, but they were unavailing. The King was never at heart a prohibitionist. His Canadian revenue was drawn from the fur trade, and the singular argument of the partisans of brandy, that its attractions were needed to keep the Indians from contact with heresy, served admirably to salve his conscience. The Dutch and English being the heretics, he distrusted the Bishop of Quebec, the great champion of the anti-liquor movement. He wrote to Saint Vallier, Laval's successor in the bishopric, that the brandy trade was very useful to the kingdom of France, that it should be regulated, not prevented, that consciences must not be disturbed by denunciations of it as a sin, that the zeal of the ecclesiastics might be affected by personal interests and passions.

From the time, in 1620, when Samoset and Tisquantum brought Massasoit to Plymouth to drink strong waters with the Puritans, liquor played a steady part in all negotiations between the white men and the red men. When Hamor went to visit Powhattan he was received with royal courtesy, "bread was brought in in two great wooden bowls, the quantity of a bushel of sod bread, made up round, of the bygnesse of a tenise-ball, whereof we ate some few." After this repast Hamor and his comrades were regaled with "a great glasse of sacke" and then ushered into the wigwam for the night. From this time on at all Indian negotiations a large percentage of the Indians expected rum or whiskey to be produced.

No other cause has been as prolific of Indian wars as the liquor traffic.

The war of the Indians with the Dutch in 1675 in New York was caused by the sale of liquor and firearms to the Indians, as well as all the trouble that the Dutch ever seem to have had with their Indian neighbors.

Liquor entered largely as a consideration into the purchase of land from the Indians, and the dispute over title and inadequate amounts frequently caused trouble.

In 1675 Robert Livingston purchased a tract of land on the east side of Hudson river, near Catskill, which was paid for in guilders, blankets, shirts, cloth, tin kettles, powder, guns, twenty little looking-glasses, fish hooks, awls, nails, tobacco, knives, strong beer, four stroud coats, two duffel coats, four tin kettles, rum and pipes, ten pairs large stockings, ten pairs small stockings, adzes, paint, bottles, and scissors. The treaty with the Creek Indians was signed on October 21, 1733, when the governor distributed the following presents among the Indians: A laced coat and a laced hat and shirt to each of the chiefs; to each of the warriors, a gun and a mantle of duffils (a coarse woolen cloth with nap and fringe), and to all their attendants coarse cloth for clothing; a barrel of gunpowder; four kegs of bullets; a piece of broadcloth; a piece of Irish linen; a cask of tobacco pipes; eight belts and cutlasses with gilt handles; tape, and of all colors; eight kegs of rum to be carried home to their towns; one pound of powder, one pound of bullets, and as much provision for each one as they pleased to take for their journey home.

In the spring of 1795 the directors of the Connecticut Land Company sent out surveyors through the Mohawk, over the portage of Wood creek, Oneida lake, and the Oswego river to Lake Ontario. At Buffalo the agent bought of the Indians their remaining claim to the lands east of the Cuyahoga river for five hundred pounds, New York currency, two beef cattle, and one hundred gallons of whiskey. The murder in 1774 without provocation of the family of Logan, a friendly chief of the Cayuga nation and of great influence, Jefferson shows was due to the drunkenness of two traders, Greathouse and Tomlinson, and caused Logan to deliver the speech which is often given in school readers. The Seminole War had the combined causes of slavery and liquor. President Jackson gave slave traders permission to buy slaves of the Seminole Indians. The trader, knowing that the Indians were intoxicated, would induce them to give bills of sale for negroes they did not own, and the complications thus caused led to the Seminole War.

The Black Hawk War was directly caused by the liquor traffic, while the career of Pontiac, the ablest Indian statesman his race ever produced, illustrates that drunkenness was the bane of the Indian race. In the same speech in which Pontiac said, "our people love liquor and if we dwelt near your old village of Detroit, our warriors would be always drunk," he concluded his harangue with the desire that the rum barrel might be opened and his warriors allowed to quench their thirst. His life was ended by an English trader named Williamson, who bribed a strolling Indian of the Kaskia tribe by a barrel of rum to murder him, and for that reward the savage stole softly behind Pontiac while he was meditating in the forest and buried his hatchet in his brain.

Of the influence of the white man on the Indians the less said the better. They eradicated none of his vices and they lent him many of their own. They found him abstinent, and they made him a guzzler of fire water. They found him hospitable, and they made him suspicious and vindictive. They found him in freedom, the owner of a great country: they robbed him of the one, and crowded him out of the other. The Dutch were too much beer drinkers, became with speed rum consumers, and opposed prohibiting the sale of rum to the Indians. William Penn wrote in 1683: "Ye Dutch, Sweed and English have by brandy and specially rum almost debauched ye Indians all." On arriving at a trading post an Indian hunting party would trade perhaps a third of their peltries for fine clothes, ammunition, paint, tobacco, and like articles. Then a keg of brandy would be purchased and the council held to decide who was to get drunk and who was to stay sober. All arms and clubs were taken away and hidden and the orgie would begin, all the Indians in the neighborhood being called in. It was the task of those who kept sober to prevent the drunken ones from killing one another, a task always hazardous and frequently unsuccessful, sometimes as many as five being killed in one night. When the keg was empty brandy was brought by the kettle full and ladled out with large wooden spoons, and this was kept up until the last skin was disposed of. Then, dejected, wounded, lamed, with their fine new shirts torn, their blankets burned, and nothing but the ammunition and tobacco saved, they would start off down the river to hunt, and begin again the same round of alternating toil and drudgery. Nevertheless, with all their rage for brandy they sometimes showed a self control quite admirable in its way. When at a fair, a council, or a friendly visit their entertainers regaled them with rations of the coveted liquor, so prudently measured out that they could not be the worse for it, they would unite their several portions in a common stock, which they would then divide among a few of their number, thus enabling them to attain that complete intoxication which, in their view, was the true end of all drinking. The objects of this benevolence were expected to requite it on a similar future occasion. In 1708, of the sixty-three settlers at Detroit, thirty-four were traders, and the only profitable articles of trade were ammunition and brandy, the English being able to undersell the French in all other commodities. At the time of the sales of furs every house in Montreal was a drinking shop. In a letter of Governor Halderman to Captain Lernoult, dated July 23, 1729, Halderman says: "I observe with great concern the astonishing consumption of rum at Detroit, amounting to seventeen thousand five hundred and twenty gallons a year."

In his notes on Virginia, Jefferson states that the census of 1669 showed that the Indians of Virginia in sixty-two years decreased about one-third, which decrease Jefferson attributes to spirituous liquors and the smallpox. When president, Jefferson recommended that the sale among the Indian tribes of intoxicating liquors be prohibited.

Of the traffic and its effect on the Indians a large amount of practically unanimous evidence can be produced. LeClercq observes with truth and candor that an Indian would be baptized ten times a day for a pint of brandy or a pound of tobacco. Father Etienne Carheil says: "Our missions are reduced to such an extremity that we can no longer maintain them against the infinity of disorder, brutality, violence, injustice, impiety, impurity, insolence, scorn, and insult which the deplorable and infamous traffic in brandy has spread universally among the Indians of these parts. In the despair in which we are plunged, nothing remains for us but to abandon them to the brandy sellers as a domain of drunkenness and debauchery."

On one occasion the French Denonville lectured Dongon, the English governor, for allowing West India rum to be sent to the Long House. "Think you that religion will make any progress while your traders supply the savages in abundance with the liquor, which as you ought to know converts them into demons, and their wigwams into counterparts of hell." One seems to see the Irishman's tongue curl under his cheek as he replies: "Methinks our rum does as little hurt as your brandy, and in the opinion of Christians is much more wholesome."

Politics and Elections

The presidential campaign of 1840 surpassed in excitement and intensity of feeling all which had preceded it. Delegations to the whig conventions carried banners and often had a small log cabin mounted on wheels in which was a barrel of hard cider, the beverage of the campaign. Early in Harrison's campaign comments were made on the elegant style of living in the White House during Van Buren's administration. Van Buren was charged with being an aristocrat and a monarchist while the masses toiled and suffered to pay for his luxurious living. A Richmond newspaper observed derisively of Harrison, "Give him a barrel of hard cider and a pension of two thousand dollars and our word for it he will sit for the remainder of his days contented in a log cabin." Log cabins and hard cider thus became the symbols of a popular crusade. The log cabins were decked in frontier style with coonskins, bunches of corn, strings of peppers and dried apples and the like, and were set up in cities and villages. Inside these cabins copious supplies of cider were on tap to be drunk with gourds. The appropriateness of the symbol came from the fact that Harrison had formerly resided in a western log cabin, and the cider was meant to typify western hospitality. The result was that young and old drank the cider freely and the whig meetings often degenerated into mere drunken carousals, the example of which was especially injurious to the rising generation.

There are men still alive who claim that a single glass of wine drunk by Herschel V. Johnson was responsible for the wreck of the democratic party in 1860 by unfitting him to reply to the speech of Howell Cobb in favor of separate democratic nominations at the Georgia democratic state convention. The Count de Paris says of the vigilance committees that terrorized the South into secession: "The bar-room was generally the place of their meetings. Around the counter on which gin and whiskey circulated freely a few frantic individuals pronounced judgment upon their fellow citizens, whether present or absent."

In one of the Lincoln-Douglas joint debates Douglas described his own father as an excellent cooper. Lincoln said he did not doubt the truth of the statement for he knew of one very good whisky cask he had made. As Douglas was short and thick-set and a heavy drinker the joke was enjoyed.

On another occasion, Douglas said that when he first knew Lincoln, Lincoln was a good bar-tender. Lincoln in admitting that he had sold whisky said Douglas was one of his best customers, adding that he had left his side of the counter but Douglas had stuck to the other side.

Early Defiance of Law

In the last decade of the eighteenth century the Whiskey Rebellion arose from the refusal of the Scotch-Irish whiskey distillers of Pennsylvania to pay the excise on whiskey. If a collector came among them he was attacked, his books and papers taken, his commission torn up, and a solemn promise exacted that he would publish his resignation in the Pittsburgh Gazette. If a farmer gave information as to where the stills could be found, his barns were burned. If a distiller entered his stills as the law required, he was sure to be visited by a masked mob. Sometimes his grist-mill was made useless, sometimes his stills destroyed, or a piece of his saw-mill carried away, and a command laid upon him to publish what had been done to him in the Gazette. One unhappy man, who had rented his house to a collector, was visited at the dead of night by a mob of blackened and disguised men. He was seized, carried to the woods, shorn of his hair, tarred, feathered, and bound to a tree. They next formed associations of those who, in the language of the district, were ready to "forbear" entering their stills. They ended by working themselves into a fury and calling a meeting of distillers for the 27th of July, at Restone, Old Fort, a town on which the inhabitants have since bestowed the humbler name of Brownsville. From this gathering went out a call for two conventions. One was to meet on the 23d of August at Washington, in Pennsylvania. The date chosen for the meeting of the second was September 7th, and the place Pittsburgh. Both were held. That at Washington denounced the law and called on all good people to treat every man taking office under it with contempt, and withhold from him all comfort, aid, and support. That at Pittsburgh complained bitterly of the salaries of the federal officers, of the rate of interest on the national debt, of the Funding System, of the Bank, and of the tax on whiskey. Meantime the collector for the counties of Washington and Alleghany was set upon. On the day before the Pittsburgh meeting a party of armed men waylaid him at a lonely spot on Pigeon creek, stripped, tarred, and feathered him, cut off his hair, and took away his horse. They were disguised, but he recognized three of the band, and swore out warrants against them in the district court at Philadelphia. These were sent to the marshal; but the marshal was a prudent man, and gave them to his deputy, who, early in October, went down into Alleghany to serve them. He hid his errand, and as he rode along, beheld such signs of the angry mood of the people, and heard such threats, that he came back with the writs in his pocket unserved. And now he determined to send them under cover of private letters, and selected for the bearer a poor, half-witted cow-driver. The messenger knew not what he bore; but when the people found out that he was delivering writs, he was seized, robbed of his horse and money, whipped till he could scarcely stand, tarred, feathered, blindfolded, and tied to a tree in the woods.

In 1794 a process went out from the district court at Philadelphia against seventy-five distillers who had disobeyed the law. Fifty were in the five counties of Fayette, Bedford, Alleghany, Washington, and Westmoreland. Each writ was dated the 13th of May, and each was entered in the docket as issued on the 31st. But the officials were so tardy that it was July when the marshal rode west to serve them. He arrived in the hurry of harvest, when liquor circulated most freely and drunkenness was most prevalent. Yet he served his writs without harm till but one was left. It was drawn against a distiller named Miller, whose house was fourteen miles from Pittsburgh, on the road to Washington. On the morning of July 15th the marshal set out from Pittsburgh to serve it. He found Miller in a harvest field surrounded by a body of reapers. All went well till he was about to return, when one of them gave the alarm. While some threw down their scythes and followed him, others ran back to the house of the brigade inspector near by. There the Mingo creek regiment had gathered to make a select corps of militia as its quota of the eighty thousand minute men required by Congress. All had drunk deeply, and as the messengers came up shouting "The federal sheriff is taking away men to Philadelphia," they flew to arms. Though it was then night many set off at once, and gathering strength as they went, drew up the next morning, thirty-seven strong, before the house of Revenue Inspector Neville, near Pittsburgh. At the head of them was John Holcroft who whitened half the trees in the four counties with the effusions of Tom the Tinker. The inspector demanded what they wished. They answered evasively. He fired upon them. They returned the shot, and were instantly opened on by a band of negroes posted in a neighboring house. At this the mob scattered, leaving six wounded and one dead. Tom the Tinker was a nom-de-guerre which originated from the house of an obnoxious official being pulled to pieces by a mob whose members gave out that they were "mending it." Mending and tinkering being interchangeable terms, the members dubbed themselves "tinkers," and "Tom the Tinker was shortly evolved as the popular watchword of the first rebellion against the United States government."