This chapter analyzes literary engagements with two linked military campaigns of the 1790s: the wars against the United Indian Nations in the Ohio Country, and the Western Pennsylvania dissidents in the “Whiskey Rebellion.” These two events, considered minor episodes in popular memory of the early republic, mark a major turning point in the US nation-state, one that tells the origin story of the US military complex and how the United States claimed the western frontier as settler-colonial space. In a reading of Hugh Henry Brackenridge, Hendrick Aupaumut, Herman Husband, and others, the author argues that an important subtext further links the war against the United Indian Nations to the Whiskey Rebellion: the struggle to define not only the geopolitical but also the racial-ethnic boundaries of the United States in a moment when Indigenous peoples and backcountry immigrants were often lumped together as “savages” living outside the law of Anglo-Saxon civilization – that is, as enemies of white fiscal-military empire.

The Federalists who crafted the United States’ 1788 Constitution planned for a republic free of party or faction. By 1793, however, regional and political divides had become acute. The situation was exploited by renegade French ambassador Edmond-Charles Genêt, who cultivated pro-French fervor and personally named a new club network, the Democratic-Republicans. The clubs became accused by Federalists of cultivating sedition with 1794’s Whiskey Rebellion, but by the 1796 election a powerful coalition developed.

Chapter 2 discusses the First Amendment right to peaceably assemble and the related right to form associations. In their original proposed constitutional amendments, George Mason and James Madison both included a right “peaceably to assemble to consult for the common good.” Historically the assembly right was a powerful one, entitling the people to gather in public places without prior permission from government officials.Furthermore, even disruptive assemblies were tolerated so long as they did not cross into violence because assembly was recognized as an essential element of popular sovereignty. After all, in an era before electronic communications, physical gatherings were the only way ordinary citizens could exchange and jointly formulate their political beliefs. For similar reasons, the First Amendment has also been long interpreted to protect the right to form permanent associations. This right emerged from efforts during the Washington Administration to suppress the Democratic-Republican Societies, founded to support the French Revolution. Today, the Supreme Court accepts that meaningful citizen participation in government requires stringent protection for associations because it is only through joining groups that individual citizens are able to influence policymaking. The hard question that remains is whether to tolerate discriminatory associations.