1. In the counties of Bucks, Montgomery, and Northampton, Penn., many German-speaking inhabitants opposed recent federal legislation, including the direct tax, the formation of a provisional army, the Alien and Sedition Acts, and a 1797 tax on stamped paper, for which see vol. 12:420. To articulate their opposition, inhabitants drew up petitions to Congress signed by over 3,000 people, erected liberty poles, declared they would not allow their homes to be assessed, and threatened local tax assessors. By 6 March 1799 twenty resisters of the direct tax in Northampton Co. had been arrested and transported to the Sun Tavern in Bethlehem. The next day, Capt. John Fries of Bucks Co., an auctioneer and veteran of the Revolutionary War and Whiskey Rebellion, led a group of nearly 400 armed men and unarmed resisters to the tavern, where he obtained the prisoners’ release over the objections of the arresting marshal, William Nichols. On 12 March JA issued a proclamation ordering the protesters to disperse under threat of military intervention, and on 21 March James McHenry issued orders to Gen. William MacPherson to mobilize troops to suppress the insurrection.

In all, more than ninety protesters were indicted, including Fries, who was tried, convicted of treason, and sentenced to hang. Fries’ initial conviction was dismissed, for which see TBA to William Smith Shaw, 29 June, and note 6, below, but on 25 April 1800 he was again convicted and sentenced to hang. An additional 32 people were convicted and sentenced to between two months and two years in prison and fined between $40 and $1,000. On 21 May, however, JA pardoned everyone involved, declaring that “the ignorant, misguided, and misinformed in the counties, have returned to a proper sense of their duty” (Paul Douglas Newman, “Fries’s Rebellion and American Political Culture, 1798–1800,” PMHB description begins Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography. description ends 119:45, 46, 49–50, 52–58 [April 1995]; Newman, Fries’s Rebellion description begins Paul Douglas Newman, Fries’s Rebellion: The Enduring Struggle for the American Revolution, Philadelphia, 2004. description ends , p. 138, 166–180, 183–184; Amer. State Papers, Miscellaneous description begins American State Papers: Documents, Legislative and Executive, of the Congress of the United States, Washington, D.C., 1832–1861; 38 vols. description ends , 1:187–188; JA, Works description begins The Works of John Adams, Second President of the United States: with a Life of the Author, ed. Charles Francis Adams, Boston, 1850–1856; 10 vols. description ends , 9:178–179).

2. TBA to JA, 1 March 1799, above.