“This uneasiness has produced acts absolutely unjustifiable,” Jefferson wrote, “but I hope they will provoke no severities from their governments.” He didn’t approve of the insurrection, but he feared how the authorities might respond. “Unsuccessful rebellions indeed generally establish the incroachments on the rights of the people which have produced them,” a fact that “should render honest republican governors so mild in their punishment of rebellions, as not to discourage them too much.” Were insurrections like this one a threat to democracy? No, they were a concomitant of democracy....