Whiskey Rebellion
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The Whiskey Rebellion was a popular uprising that had its beginnings in 1791 and culminated in an insurrection in 1794 in the locality of Washington, Pennsylvania, in the Monongahela Valley. It was conducted by Appalachian settlers who resisted the excise tax on liquor and distilled drinks. This tax had been proposed by United States Secretary of the Treasury Alexander Hamilton, [1] passed by Congress, and signed into law by President Washington.
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[edit] Background
The weak and ineffective government of the United States under the Articles of Confederation had been replaced by a stronger federal government under the United States Constitution in 1789. This new government, at the urging of Secretary of the Treasury Alexander Hamilton, assumed the states' debt from the American Revolutionary War. One of the steps taken to pay down the debt, that was requested by Hamilton, and approved by Congress, was a tax imposed in 1791 on distilled spirits. Large producers were assessed a tax of six cents a gallon. However, smaller producers, most of whom were of Scottish or Irish descent located in the more remote western areas, were taxed at a higher rate of nine cents a gallon. These Western settlers were short of cash to begin with, and lacked any practical means to get their grain to market other than fermenting and distilling it into relatively portable distilled spirits, due to their distance from markets and the lack of good roads, and transportation.
From Pennsylvania to Georgia, the western counties engaged in a campaign of harassment of the federal tax collectors. "Whiskey Boys" also made violent protests in Maryland, Virginia, North and South Carolina, and Georgia.
[edit] Rebellion
The tax on whiskey was bitterly and fiercely opposed on the frontier from the day it was passed. Western farmers considered it to be both unfair and discriminatory, since they had traditionally converted their excess grain into liquor. The whiskey thus produced could easily be transported and sold while the grain itself could not. Many protest meetings were held, and a situation arose which was reminiscent of the opposition to the Stamp Act of 1765 before the American Revolution.
By the summer of 1794, tensions reached a fevered pitch all along the western frontier as the pioneer/settlers' primary marketable commodity was threatened by the federal taxation measures. Finally the civil protests became an armed rebellion. The first shots were fired at the Oliver Miller Homestead in present day South Park Township Pennsylvania-about ten miles south of Pittsburgh. As word of the rebellion spread across the frontier, a whole series of loosely organized resistance measures were taken, including robbing the mail, stopping court proceedings, and the threat of an assault on Pittsburgh. One group disguised as women, assaulted a tax collector, cropped his hair, coated him with tar and feathers, and stole his horse.
George Washington and Alexander Hamilton, remembering Shays' Rebellion from just eight years before, decided to make Pennsylvania a testing ground for federal authority. Washington ordered federal marshals to serve court orders requiring the tax protesters to appear in federal district court. On August 7, 1794, Washington invoked the Militia Law of 1792 to summon the militias of Pennsylvania, Virginia and several states. The rebel force they sought was likewise composed of Pennsylvanians, Virginians, and possibly men from other states. [2]
The militia force of 13,000 men was organized, roughly the size of the entire army in the Revolutionary War. Under the personal command of Washington, Hamilton and Revolutionary War hero General Henry "Lighthorse Harry" Lee, the army assembled in Harrisburg and marched into Western Pennsylvania (to what is now Monongahela, Pennsylvania) in October of 1794. The rebels "could never be found," according to Jefferson, but the militia expended considerable effort rounding up 20 prisoners, clearly demonstrating Federalist authority in the national government. The men were imprisoned, where one died, while two were convicted of treason and sentenced to death by hanging. Washington, however, pardoned them on the grounds that one was a "old person," and the other, "fat."
[edit] Consequences
This marked the first time under the new United States Constitution that the federal government used military force to exert authority over the nation's citizens. It was also one of only two times that a sitting President personally commanded the military in the field. Or so the Americans were meant to believe. George Washington rode his horse halfway to the site of the Whiskey Rebellion to let people know he was coming. Then he switched with another man from the military, dressed him in the same apparel, and put him on a white horse. By the time the decoy Washington arrived, the rebels had fled. (The other was after President James Madison fled the British occupation of Washington, D.C. during the War of 1812.)
The military suppression of the Whiskey Rebellion set a precedent that U.S. citizens who wished to change the law had to do so peacefully through constitutional means; otherwise, the government would meet any threats to disturb the peace with force.
The suppression of the Whiskey Rebellion also had the unintended consequences of encouraging small whiskey producers and other settlers to relocate to more distant lands in Kentucky and Tennessee, which remained outside the sphere of Federal control for many more years. In these frontier areas, they also found good corn-growing country as well as limestone-filtered water and therefore began making whiskey from corn. [3] Additionally, the rebellion and its suppression helped turn people away from the Federalist Party and toward the Democratic Republican Party. This is shown in the 1794 Philadelphia congressional election, in which upstart Democratic Republican John Swanwick won a stunning victory over incumbent Federalist Thomas Fitzsimons, carrying 7 of 12 districts and 57% of the vote.
The hated whiskey tax was repealed in 1803, having been largely unenforceable outside of Western Pennsylvania, and even there never having been collected with much success. [4]
[edit] Popular Culture
L. Neil Smith's novel "The Probability Broach" contains an alternate history where Albert Gallatin convinced the milita force not to put down the Whiskey Rebellion, but instead to march on Pennsylvania, execute George Washington for treason, and to replace the Constitution with a revised Articles of Confederation. As a result, the United States becomes a libertarian utopia called the North American Confederation. Albert Gallatin's intervention in the Whiskey Rebellion comes as a result of an additional word in the Constitution, which in the parallel universe contains the phrase "deriving its just powers from the unanimous consent of the governed".
[edit] See also
[edit] References
- Baldwin, Leland. Whiskey Rebels: The Story of a Frontier Uprising. Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1939.
- Cooke, Jacob E. "The Whiskey Insurrection: A Re-Evaluation." Pennsylvania History, 30 (July 1963), pp. 316-364.
- Kohn, Richard H. "The Washington Administration's Decision to Crush the Whiskey Rebellion." Journal of American History, 59 (December 1972), pp. 567-584.
- Slaughter, Thomas P. "The Whiskey Rebellion: Frontier Epilogue to the American Revolution." Oxford University Press 1986. # ISBN 0-19-505191-2
- Hogeland, William. "The Whiskey Rebellion: George Washington, Alexander Hamilton, and the Frontier Rebels Who Challenged America's Newfound Sovereignty." Scribner, 2006
