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In the aftermath—the ruling order having been unmistakably asserted—many of the protestors' demands were actually met, but by then Herman Husband was on the run, a notorious and very much wanted insurrectionist. He fled to south-central Pennsylvania, soon calling his family to him. There he once again engaged in his familiar avocations: buying land and meditating on the Bible. As the Revolution came and went, Husband became convinced of two things. One, the new United States was nothing other than the New Jerusalem prophesied in the Book of Ezekiel; this he based on both biblical interpretations and measurements made on long surveying trips up and down the Appalachians. Two, by buying up as much land as he could in this new west, the seat of a future divinely ordained empire, Herman Husband could make a lot of money.

Well, something like that; Hogeland usually isn't so crass as to accuse historical characters he likes of actually wanting to make money. Moneymaking is an activity engaged in by the élite or would-be élite. Nice chaps like Herman Husband invest in real estate; nasty old patriarchs like, say, George Washington, speculate in land.

Another old patriarch, who was definitely speculating, as well as trying to make money on just about any other scheme he could conceive, was General John Neville. He was a Virginian, a veteran of the Revolution. After the war, he moved to southwestern Pennsylvania. There he farmed land with slaves (unusual in that part of the world); built a very fine home and furnished it appropriately; and set up a syndicate of relatives and friends equally determined to make money in the frontier economy.

For there was indeed a frontier economy, and Hogeland is very good at depicting it: "The Mingo Creek area," south of Pittsburgh, "was a four-county hub: The rivers divided the area in discrete sections; along the rivers were strung boat works, mills, tanneries, iron furnaces and artisan shops. Eastern visitors, overawed by mountain outcroppings and virgin timber, could mistake this area for howling wilderness and miss the fact that it was also a complex of neighborhoods and industries." These settlers along Mingo Creek and elsewhere were more than subsistence farmers. They were also artisans and small-time (so far) manufacturers. General Neville and his "Neville Connection" were a threat to them; and to make matters worse, these small manufacturers saw the Neville Connection as a repudiation of the radicalism of the War for Independence.

The artisans and manufacturers who opposed Neville (and eventually General George Washington, too) were men like the brothers John and Daniel Hamilton. Originally from York, Pennsylvania (and no relation to the St. Croix-born Secretary of the Treasury), they had both fought in the Revolution and then moved west, settling along Mingo Creek near a new town named Washington—so named because the general himself was reputed to own much of the acreage in what would become his epynonymous county and city. Like the Hamilton brothers, numerous Revolutionary war veterans squatted on land that wasn't theirs but which they regarded as their own by right of occupation, use, and service to America.

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September (Web-only) 2006, Vol. 50