A Voice in the Wilderness: Alexander Addison’s Case for Peace during the Whiskey Rebellion
On the first day of September 1794, while tension seized western Pennsylvania over whiskey excises, Alexander Addison, president of the Court of Common Pleas for the Fifth Circuit, delivered a charge to the Grand Jury of Allegheny County on behalf of peace and order. Addison's presentation came at an important moment, as new whiskey excise laws had threatened to sever relations between the young United States government in Philadelphia and the western counties of Pennsylvania. At the time of Addison's presentation, the citizens of western Pennsylvania, gathered together in township halls, were asked to choose whether or not to consent to legal terms of submission to the United States in an effort to avoid a violent confrontation between the government and western "insurgents."1 In his presentation, Addison made a plea for submission to the laws of the United States and to peace.