<P> The Republicans wanted to pressure Britain to the brink of war (and assumed that America could defeat a weak Britain). Therefore, they denounced the Jay Treaty as an insult to American prestige, a repudiation of the French alliance of 1777, and a severe shock to Southern planters who owed those old debts, and who were never to collect for the lost slaves the British captured . Republicans protested against the treaty, and organized their supporters . The Federalists realized they had to mobilize their popular vote, so they mobilized their newspapers, held rallies, counted votes, and especially relied on the prestige of President Washington . The contest over the Jay Treaty marked the first flowering of grassroots political activism in America, directed and coordinated by two national parties . Politics was no longer the domain of politicians; every voter was called on to participate . The new strategy of appealing directly to the public worked for the Federalists; public opinion shifted to support the Jay Treaty . The Federalists controlled the Senate and they ratified it by exactly the necessary 2⁄3 vote, 20--10, in 1795 . However, the Republicans did not give up and public opinion swung toward the Republicans after the Treaty fight; and in the South the Federalists lost most of the support they had among planters . </P> <P> The excise tax of 1791 caused grumbling from the frontier including threats of tax resistance . Corn, the chief crop on the frontier, was too bulky to ship over the mountains to market, unless it was first distilled into whiskey . This was profitable, as the United States population consumed, per capita, relatively large quantities of liquor . After the excise tax, the backwoodsmen complained the tax fell on them rather than on the consumers . Cash poor, they were outraged that they had been singled out to pay off the "financiers and speculators" back East, and to salary the federal revenue officers who began to swarm the hills looking for illegal stills . </P> <P> Insurgents in western Pennsylvania shut the courts and hounded federal officials, but Jeffersonian leader Albert Gallatin mobilized the western moderates, and thus forestalled a serious outbreak . Washington, seeing the need to assert federal supremacy, called out 13,000 state militia, and marched toward Washington, Pennsylvania, to suppress this Whiskey Rebellion . The rebellion evaporated in late 1794 as Washington approached, personally leading the army (only two sitting Presidents have directly led American military forces, Washington during the Whiskey Rebellion and Madison in an attempt to save the White House during the War of 1812). The rebels dispersed and there was no fighting . Federalists were relieved that the new government proved capable of overcoming rebellion, while Republicans, with Gallatin their new hero, argued there never was a real rebellion and the whole episode was manipulated in order to accustom Americans to a standing army . </P> <P> Angry petitions flowed in from three dozen Democratic - Republican Societies created by Citizen Genêt . Washington attacked the societies as illegitimate; many disbanded . Federalists now ridiculed Republicans as "democrats" (meaning in favor of mob rule) or "Jacobins" (a reference to The Terror in France). </P>

What party did the grange start to support