Whiskey Rebellion

Whiskey Rebellion, 1794 uprising in western Pennsylvania by settlers protesting a federal excise tax on distilled whiskey.Although similar protests erupted elsewhere, western Pennsylvania became the flash point because it was where the federal government tried to enforce the tax by legal coercion and military intimidation.

A tax on whiskey at the still was part of Secretary of the Treasury Alexander Hamilton's program, enacted in 1790–1791, to fund federal and state debt. But the excise measure roused anger in the cash‐poor backcountry, particularly because it taxed large distillers at a lower rate, forcing small, seasonal distillers either to absorb the added cost or charge more to their customers, many of whom were small farmers and rural laborers. As backcountry protests, intimidations, and stonewalling erupted from Georgia to Pennsylvania, halting tax collections, President George Washington and Hamilton, mindful of Shays's Rebellion of 1786, decided in the summer of 1794 on a forceful response. Because of western Pennsylvania's proximity to the federal capital at Philadelphia, it was selected as a test case. As federal marshals served court orders requiring noncomplying distillers to appear in federal district court in Philadelphia, several thousand armed men defiantly gathered near Pittsburgh. In August and September, Washington called up thirteen thousand militia and ordered them into western Pennsylvania. With Washington and Hamilton personally leading the troops, along with the Revolutionary War hero Henry Lee, organized resistance collapsed. Two ringleaders convicted of treason were pardoned by Washington.

For the first time under the new Constitution, the central government had marshaled impressive power to uphold federal authority. Although the government in fact never effectively collected the whiskey tax, which was repealed in 1802, Federalists could nevertheless plausibly claim that the new nation had demonstrated its determination to enforce the law against defiant citizens. This display of Federalist power, however, also stirred resentments that helped elect Thomas Jefferson president in 1800.
See also Early Republic, Era of the; Federalist Party; Taxation.

Bibliography

Thomas P. Slaughter , The Whiskey Rebellion: Frontier Epilogue to the American Revolution, 1986.
Stanley Elkins and and Eric McKitrick , The Age of Federalism, 1993, Chapter 10, pp. 451–488.

Roger H. Brown