both by New York and Massachusetts. Conflicting claims, awaking
much bitter feeling, arose under grants from each government. In
1791, the sheriff of Columbia County was ordered by the courts,
in the course of a lawsuit, to sell a tract of this land.
Seventeen persons disguised as Indians appeared at the time of
sale to resist it, and he was killed by a shot from one of
them.[Footnote: Report Am. Historical Association for 1896, I,
152, note.]

Then came the Whiskey Rebellion in Pennsylvania. The statutes of
the United States[Footnote: United States Revised Statues, 5299.]
provide that if their courts meet with opposition of a serious
nature, the President may use the army or call out the militia of
one or more States to restore order. Opposition to the
enforcement of the revenue tax on whiskey in 1794 called for the
first exercise of this power. Marshals were resisted in serving
process, and several counties were in a state of insurrection.
Washington sent so large a force of troops to suppress it that
the rioters vanished on their approach, and there was no further
obstruction of the ordinary course of justice. The total expense
to the government in this affair was nearly $1,000,000.[Footnote:
Wharton's "State Trials," 102.] In 1799, somewhat similar
opposition arose in the same State against the enforcement of the
house taxes laid by Congress. President Adams here also sent a
sufficient force of militia to suppress it.[Footnote:
_Ibid_., 48, 459.]

In 1839, a general combination was formed among the tenant
farmers in New York holding long or perpetual leases from
manorial proprietors to resist the payment of the stipulated