Responding to President Washington’s and Alexander Hamilton’s Call to the Nation During the Whiskey Rebellion, a State Forms Its Militia

After several years of tension and hardships faced by farmers on Pennsylvania’s western frontier (for whom whiskey was a principal source of income), violence began spreading against the region’s tax collectors in what is called the Whiskey Rebellion. The present separately-printed Act, approved by George Washington on May 9, 1794, authorized the President to require the governors of each state “to organize, arm and equip” and “hold in readiness to march at a moment’s warning.

In June 1794, Rhode Island passed its own law to meet the President’s demand and raise its militia. It sent out the call to its various counties and towns. Among the acts of this period to arm its militias and find officers and soldiers to fill the posts was a Jun 16, 1794 Act setting the “Conditions upon which the non-commissioned officers and privates of the detachment from the military force of this is, by an order of the General Assembly, made at the session in June AD 1794, to be raised.” This act sets out the salaries and rations of these officers.

The many districts were then sent to report back to the government, through the Adjutant General of the State of Rhode Island, Robert Rogers, the organization of the various militias.

This is Rogers’ archive of returns, dated June through July, 1794, Rhode Island’s response to the Whiskey Rebellion, including a copy of the original act and his summation document of the status of the Senior regiments, consisting of 18 separate detailed returns of men and arms, signed by the various regimental heads, sent to Rogers to form the militia. There are 22 documents in total.

We have never seen so inclusive an archive showing one state’s response to the Washington Administration’s domestic military crisis.