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The Whiskey Rebellion was an uprising that had its origins in 1791 and culminated in an insurrection in 1794 in the Monongahela Valley in western Pennsylvania by Appalachian settlers who fought against a federal tax on liquor and distilled drinks. *
Background
The relatively weak federal government under the Articles of Confederation had been removed and replaced by a stronger central 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 this debt, as 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 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.
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.
Rebellion
By the summer of 1794, tensions reached a fevered pitch all along the western frontier as the pioneer/settlers primary source of commerce was threatened by the federal taxation measures. Finally the civil protests became an armed rebellion, when 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 threatening 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. *
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 marched to Western Pennsylvania (to what is now Monongahela, Pennsylvania) and quickly suppressed the revolt. The rebels afterwards hid in the woods, but twenty were captured and paraded down Market Street in Philadelphia. 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 "simpleton," and the other, "insane."
Consequences
This marked the first time under the new Constitution that the federal government had used strong military force to exert authority over the nation's citizens. It also was one of only two times that a sitting President would personally command the military in the field. (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 told US citizens who wished to change the law that they 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 the then-frontier lands of Kentucky and Tennessee, which were outside the sphere of Federal control for many years. In these frontier areas, they also found good corn-growing country and smooth, limestone-filtered water to make their whiskey. *
The whiskey tax was repealed in 1802, having been largely unenforceable outside of Western Pennsylvania, and never having been collected with much success. *
See also
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 0195051912
"Whiskey Rebellion"