The Whiskey Rebellion

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The Whiskey Rebellion

Unread postby bourbonv » Sat Dec 04, 2004 10:55 am

This is a subject that is filled with history and lore. It was a historical event that was mutated with a lot of legend and lore. I thought I might write a few thoughts on the subject this Saturday morning while I am working the library at the Filson.

There really was a "Whiskey Rebellion" and despite the legend, it was not just in western Pennsylvania. The event started because the new Federal government needed income to pay its debts. Part of the campaign to get the new constitution passed was a promise for the Federal government to assume the debts from the states to pay for the revolutionary war. This meant it needed to tax something to raise money to pay these debts. It was decided to tax whiskey. The tax would be levied right off the still and based upon the proof gallon as determined by a "Dycas' Hydrometer". The tax would be paid in specie. This last part is what really caused the turmoil in the west.

Hard currency was hard to come by in this new nation, but especially hard on the frontier. Whiskey was a form of barter currency for these farmers in the western United States. When the tax collectors came to gather the tax, they could not be paid in whiskey so the distillers could not pay the tax. They complained to no avail and finally tarred and feathered a few tax collectors to protest this unfair situation. Did they really want to "rebell" against the government? Not really. Most of them eventually paid the taxes. The show of force by the government was not really necessary to get them to pay their taxes, but was important as an example for the government to show its willingness to enforce its laws. One of my favorite quotes comes from Thomas Jefferson about the rebellion. It goes something like this "A rebellion was declared, armed for, marched against, but never found". Indeed there were only three people arrested by this grand army and two of them were acquitted and the other found to be mentally deficient.

Legend has it that the rebellion led Pennsylvania distillers to Kentucky to escape the tax. I have never seen any real proof of this happening. First of all there was resitance to the tax in Kentucky as well as Pennsylvania. Mary K. Tachau wrote a book about the early Kentucky court system and the Whiskey Rebellion was one of the main subjects of the book. She points out that the Federal government knew of the resistance in Kentucky but chose not to send troops for two reasons. The first was they did not think they could get an army over the mountains into Kentucky. The second was that if they did they they would then drive the western people out of the United States and into the arms of Spain, who controled Louisiana at the time. They chose instead to send a very patient judge to Kentucky who would work with the people through the courts to collect the taxes. It worked here and probably would have worked in western Pennsylvania.

There was other areas where the tax was also resisted. Here at the Filson I was reading a letter in the Arthur Campbell papers the other day. In this letter, the author was writing Campbell and discussing the "rebellion in Pennsylvania and Virginia". This was in 1794 so Kentucky was already a state and the author was writing from the "state of Franklin". (Any guesses as to where the State of Franklin was located? At least on member of this forum should know.) Distillers in Virginia resisted the tax. I suspect, but have not seen written evidence yet, that North Carolina was another place where tha tax was resisted. These are all places with frontier lands where specie was hard to come by for the distillers.

The rebellion was quickly "put down" and the distillers eventually paid their taxes. When Thomas Jefferson was elected President, part of his campaign included a pledge to balance the Federal budget and repeal the whiskey tax. He kept this promise and the tax was repealed in 1802. There was not a tax on spirits again until 1812 when the United States again had a war to pay for, but that is another story in itself, so to speak.

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Unread postby Strayed » Sat Dec 04, 2004 1:29 pm

the author was writing from the "state of Franklin". (Any guesses as to where the State of Franklin was located? At least on member of this forum should know.)


Yes, I know... but I won't tell :lol:

And don't forget another one, Westsylvania. In addition to all you've pointed out, there was another important factor in making the Whiskey Rebellion more of an issue in the Westmoreland/Allegheny/Washington/Fayette counties of Pennsylvania. The element being attacked by Washington's troops were not just dumb tax-dodging scofflaws, they included powerful political leaders who were establishing an independent nation (tentatively called Westsylvania) whose anti-American Federalist citizens were on the brink (or maybe even over... depending on whose accounts you read) of secession. The events in western PA were really America's FIRST civil war, albeit on a far smaller scale. Washington (who actually owned a large part of that area and who certainly did not oppose distilling) wasn't keen on ordering Americans to attack Americans, which is evident in the way those who were captured were dealt with. But had he not acted with overwhelming force, the fragile, brand-new nation would likely have collapsed completely as other states followed suit. On top of that, the Spanish across the Mississippi had a strong interest in allying with the new Westsylvania and had that happened I'm not sure France would ever have aquired Louisiana. With Spain and allies on both sides of the river there's some reason to doubt a loose association of English-speaking states without a strong central government would have lasted more than a few years.

Interestingly, I think Franklin might have outlasted many of the others. Other than at the Alamo, they didn't do too badly against another Spanish-speaking army a few decades later.
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Unread postby cowdery » Sat Dec 04, 2004 7:46 pm

I think it is very appropriate to call the Whiskey Rebellion America's first Civil War, especially because it laid the groundwork for the rationale behind the decision to maintain the union by force if necessary. I think this is very hard for people today to understand. Why were seccessionist movements supressed so vigorously? Because the young republic felt, with ample cause, that it was surrounded by enemies on all sides, enemies that would be more than happy to take over the new nation in whole or in part. The English were threatening on our northern and northwestern borders, the Spanish were on our southern and southwestern borders, and we weren't so sure about the French either. The Whiskey Rebellion was hardly the end of this concern. It was followed, in 1823, by the Monroe Doctrine, then there was the Mexican War and the Civil War, both of which had us looking over our shoulders at Europe. It was only with the Spanish-American War at the end of the century that America really felt secure in its hemisphere, safe from the depredations of the traditional Western European powers, only to find ourselves facing new threats from Central Europe, Eastern Europe and Asia.

And now, of course, Mars.
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Unread postby bourbonv » Sat Dec 04, 2004 10:01 pm

John and Chuck,
I would disagree only in your terms. I would not call it a civil war because the farmers were never really serious about fight the army the government sent to Pennsylvania. I would call it more of America's first civil protest. It did lead to the Virginia and Kentucky Resolutions which set the stage for seccession in 1861.
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P.S. Still no guesses as to where the State of Franklin was located?
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Unread postby bunghole » Sat Dec 04, 2004 11:18 pm

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Unread postby TNbourbon » Sun Dec 05, 2004 12:33 am

bunghole wrote:Tenneesse


More specifically, East Tennessee, an area of Scots-Irish hardscrabble, hill-country farmers. In 1794, Tennessee was still the western part of North Carolina (statehood didn't arrive until 1796). During the Civil War, the 'State of Franklin' again applied for statehood -- a la West Virginia -- in an effort to secede from Tennessee and remain in the Union. Unlike West Virginia, however, 'Franklin' was surrounded by the Confederacy, and the effort wasn't seriously entertained in Washington.
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Unread postby bourbonv » Mon Dec 06, 2004 10:20 am

Tim,
Actually, since Kentucky was never part of the Confederacy (at until after the war) it was more of a case where the Confederate Army was able to maintain a presence in Franklin that they could not in West Virginia.
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Unread postby bourbonv » Fri Jun 02, 2006 7:19 pm

With the discussion of Hogeland's book, I thought I would revisit what I had wrote in this post a year and a half ago. If I was writing this now, I would add just a few other points.
1) This issue did come about from the differences and conflicts that were east/west orientated. The people of the east were facing completely different problems from the people of the west. The problems of the settlers into the new west, or first American West had been solved for the most part 100 years earlier by the people living on the coast. Many scholars emphasis the new nation's divide between North and South because that divide did eventually tear the nation apart in a civil war, but if you read Madison's Notes from the Constitutional Convention, our fore fathers were just as concerned about the people of the west. They even considered whether there should be allowed new states to form in the west because they worried about what those people would want and try to get Congress to pass.

2) The American Revolution was not an event of the distant pass. The people involved in the Whiskey Rellion were often veterans of that war. This meant that they truely believed that revolution can work because they had just did it and they were willing to fight if it protected what they saw as their rights earned during that revolution. Many of the most radical whiskey rebels saw that they were trying to protect the freedoms of the common man.

3) In the end, Hamilton and his forces won the struggle because they proved the Federal Government's right to tax and they also created policies that favored big business.

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Unread postby cowdery » Sat Jun 03, 2006 12:04 am

Hogeland shows that it really was a civil war, albeit an incipient one. He also shows that Hamilton's, if not Washington's, willingness to suppress the uprising by ruthless means was a winning strategy, at least in the short term. What Hogeland doesn't address is that much of what Hamilton built, including the excise tax itself, was undone by Jefferson and even more so by Jackson, after whom the nation reached something close to the balance between economic justice and laissez faire capitalism that we have today.
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Unread postby bourbonv » Sat Jun 03, 2006 8:54 am

Chuck,
I think Hogeland does a very good job of pointing out that there never really was a "civil war" but instead it was more of "civil protest". Hamilton wanted a war. He would have been much happier if there had been a battle and some of rebels could have been captured and hanged, but that never happened. The people did "rebel" and did take it to the brink of war, but quickly backed down or fled when the army appeared. In this matter, Hamilton lost.

I agree whole heartedly with the fact that first Jefferson and then Jackson did all they could do to tear down Hamilton's policies and to create the economic system that we enjoy today. Even so, Hamilton's policies were never completely gone and as far as the distilling industry is concerned, he won in the long run. His goal was to encourage big distilleries and eliminate the small ones. His goal was to do this with taxes that favored the richer, larger producers. This is exactly what happenedin the last half of the 19th century. This process was aided by the growth of the prohibition movement, but not in the way most would think. The tax on whiskey was actually favored by those in the industry and opposed by prohibitionist, who knew that if the government became dependent upon that tax, it would be hard to eliminate the industry.

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Unread postby cowdery » Sat Jun 03, 2006 7:05 pm

I say "incipient civil war" rather than "civil protest" because large numbers of the westerners were itching for a fight, they just lost their nerve when a real army got close.
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Unread postby bourbonv » Sat Jun 03, 2006 8:06 pm

I would agree with that.

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Unread postby bourbonv » Sun Jul 09, 2006 9:08 am

For anybody that is a fan of the PBS show "History Detectives", thye will be airing a story on the whiskey rebellion at the end of August or the beginning of September. They were looking for images to use in the show and contacted Mark who contacted me. I was able to help them out with some images.

I talked to one of the producers on the telephone and I am not sure how much he wanted to be public knowledge before the show, so let me simply say that it is about the whiskey rebellion and I am looking to see the episode. As you might guess, I am a fan of the show.

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Unread postby bourbonv » Wed Aug 30, 2006 11:40 am

The History Detectives show on PBS which features a story on the whiskey rebellion is due to air here in Louisville next Tuesday on KET1 at 8:00. I also know because Larry, here at work looked it up, It will air in the New York area on Monday. If you are interested, check it out.
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Unread postby Brewer » Thu Aug 31, 2006 6:05 am

I will definitely have to try to get to see that episode. Thanks for the headds up Mike.
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