Note 72 — Chapter XXVI

Washington was so impressed with the sense of danger to be apprehended by the Democratic Societies, that he contemplated making them a topic in his forthcoming annual message to Congress. In a letter to the secretary of state, written at Fort Cumberland on the sixteenth of October, he said, “My mind is so perfectly convinced, that if these self-created societies can not be discontinued they will destroy the government of this country, that I have asked myself, while I have been revolving on the expense and inconvenience of drawing so many men from their families and occupations as I have seen on their march, where would be the impropriety of glancing at them in my speech, by some such idea as the following: 'That, however distressing this expedition will have proved to individuals, and expensive to the country, the pleasing spirit which it has drawn forth in support of law and government will immortalize the American character, and is a happy presage that future attempts, of a certain description of people, to disturb the public tranquillity will prove equally abortive.'"

Mr. Randolph, though a democrat, was favorable to some such expression of sentiment regarding these societies. In a letter, to which the president's was a response, he had intimated the propriety of taking advantage of the prevailing reprobation of the insurrection, to put down those societies. “They may now, I believe, be crushed,” he said. “The prospect ought not to be lost.” Washington did allude to them in his annual message, as we shall observe presently.