Some appearance of timidity and inertia in Pennsylvania state authority was indirectly but effectually counteracted by measures which showed that the military expedition would move even if Pennsylvania held back.

Although some troops were to gather at Carlisle, Pennsylvania, others were to meet at Cumberland Fort, Virginia.

The business was so shrewdly managed that Pennsylvania state authority fell obediently into line, and the insurgents were so cowed by the determined action of the Government that they submitted without a struggle.

Washington thought that this event would react upon the clubs and "effectuate their annihilation sooner than it might otherwise have happened." A general collapse among them certainly followed, and they disappeared from the political scene.
It is in the nature of precaution that the more successful it is the less necessary it appears to have been, and thus the complete success of Hamilton's management furnished his enemies with a new argument against him of which they afterwards made great use.

The costly military expedition that had no fighting to do was continually held up to public ridicule.