George Washington reviewing the troops being deployed against the Whiskey Rebellion - Washington Reviewing the Western Army, at Fort Cumberland, Maryland, 1794. Courtesy The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, NY.
Taxes. One of the founding principles of our country, or actually the reluctance to pay them that was the founding principle. Needless to say, we’ve had a bad relationship with taxation ever since.
Nobody likes to pay taxes, but we can all agree there are some things we can do better as a community than we can do by ourselves. Building roads, public utilities, law enforcement, fire department, the list goes on and on. But, defense, is a big check mark on the list. As a nation, one third of our federal budget is devoted to the military.
But, how do you finance a war effort if you can’t levy taxes? During the Revolutionary War the young United States had that very problem. They literally begged, borrowed, and stole whatever money they could from various sources by any means possible, including piracy (they called it “privateering”). They also obtained high interest loans from the other countries, including France and Spain, they cut deals with investors from the Netherlands, and borrowed hard currency from all 13 colonies. Interesting times they were; fighting a war for independence on borrowed money and borrowed time, being crushed by interest payments- thoughts ofpaying down the principle were far off in the future. They were in a spiral, from the beginning of the rebellion in 1775 until the Treaty of Paris in 1783, the only real choice that the Continental Congress had was to continually borrow more money to cover the interest on the loans that were already in arrears. By the end of the war the world’s newest republic was broke. The Continental Dollar was worthless, they owed money to investors and the states, and had nothing to pay the soldiers and sailors of the Continental Army or the US Navy, many of which had not been compensated from the beginning of their service. Their first order of business was getting the government in order, and to do that they had to figure out a way to implement and levy taxes and raise some coin… But what were they going to tax?
One of the things they decided on was whiskey. And that decision almost caused a civil war seventy years before the big one.
Just a small sample of the whiskies and liqueurs available at Paddy Malone’s, Jefferson City MO
Whiskey has been a part of our history from the beginning of the English colonies in North America. And it only makes sense that art of whiskey making was brought to North America by British subjects, many of whom were from Ireland and Scotland, the cradle of whiskey’s evolution.
Irish monks in the late First Millennia AD brought the art of distillation to Ireland from the Near East. But, distilling was not used to produce alcohol for consumption as we would think of it today; it was used for producing medicines and perfumes. Arabs and Moors had been using the alembic still for production of aromatics, perfumes, and medicines for probably 2,000 years before the science reached Western Europe. The aforementioned monks, traveling to the Holy Lands and Northern Africa, brought Alembic stills back to the monasteries of Ireland and Scotland, to be used for the very same reasons as the Middle Eastern cultures; medicinal and aromatic therapies.
Drawing of an Alembic Still credited to Persian alchemist Jabir ibn Hayyan, circa late 9th Century or early 10th Century CE
So, at some point in time, we are not sure when, some of these monks had the brilliant idea of distilling ale. Basically, what we call neutral grain spirits is nothing more than a fermented mash of grain and/or malt that is then distilled. Distillation is pretty simple chemistry; it is separating of alcohol from the other liquid in a solution. This is easily achieved because the boiling point of alcohol is 79 degrees Celsius, whereas water boils at 100 degrees. Within an enclosed still, the solution is heated in a lower chamber, the alcohol turns to vapors before the water does, those vapors rise into an upper chamber where they condense, turning into liquid, which then flows into a reservoir. This is distillation at its simplest form, and the basic process for creating any spirit.
The monks called these earliest distilled spirits Aqua Vitae, Latin for “The Water of Life,” but in the local vernacular, the Gaelic language, Water of Life was Uisce Beatha, which over time was shortened to Uisce, and later was Anglicized by the English speakers to “Whiskey.”
Image of monks distilling Aqua Vitae, circa 15th Century CE
The first written record of whiskey comes from Ireland, in The Annals of Clonmacnoise in 1405, where it was described that a head of one of the clans died at the monastery after drinking an excessive amount of aqua vitae.
Within the next 100 years, in Scotland, the distillation of whisky was well underway; in 1494, James IV of Scotland granted a large amount of malt to one Friar John Cor specifically for the making of aqua vitae for the Scottish court.
In England and Ireland, whiskey distillation made its way into the public realm after King Henry VIII’s dissolution of all of the monasteries in the first half of the 16th Century.
In the Scottish Reformation, under the Stuart dynasty, the monasteries were not dissolved, however they were not allowed to recruit any new members., and by 1573, during the reign of James VI of Scotland, Catholic monasteries in that kingdom, for all intent and purposes, ceased to exist.
The friars and monks in both Scotland and Ireland, who had previously distilled whiskey for the church, then began to work for the wealthy lords and landowners within the realms, taking whiskey making to the public. The tenants and workers on these estates learned the art of distillation from the monks and then began practicing it themselves. To avoid taxation, even in these early years, these illicit Scots and Irish distillers practiced their craft far up into the mountain draws, and generally did their work at night. This illegal spirit that they concocted began to be called by a couple of now quite famous nicknames; mountain dew and moonshine.
In 1620, the first recorded distillation of whiskey in the North American English colonies was chronicled. George Thorpe, a settler of the Berkley Hundred in the young colony of Virginia, first figured out how to distill a sour mash made from maize, what they called Indian corn, ushering in the first truly unique American alcohol, Sour Mash Corn whiskey. Later on this became the key ingredient in both Kentucky Bourbon and Tennessee Whiskey. Thorpe’s venture didn’t last long, however; in 1622 he was killed in the Powhatten Indian uprising of the James River area of Virginia.
Image depicting George Thorpe distilling corn liquor on Berkley Plantation in 1620.
But, the making of whiskey didn’t really catch on in the American colonies for another century after Thorpe. Rum was the prevalent distilled spirit in the American Colonies throughout the late 1600’s and into the early 1700’s, and even remained the primary spirit of choice in New England until the beginning of the American Revolution. Molasses from the West Indies was the primary ingredient in the production of rum. Yankee merchants, especially those from Massachusetts, shipped molasses up from the Caribbean to New England, where it was distilled. Rum was cheap, it was plentiful, and was the primary hard liquor consumed in the colonies until the arrival of a new immigrant group beginning in the early 18th Century; the Scots Irish. Without them, America isn’t America and the story of American whiskey would have been completely different.
The Scots Irish were primarily of Scottish lowland stock, people from the border area of southern Scotland along the border with England. In the late 1500’s and early 1600’s the English crown under Elizabeth I and her successor, James I, invited these Scots to settle on lands in Ireland, mainly in the province of Ulster in the north of the island. These lands had recently been seized from the Irish Catholic lords who the English had defeated in the Nine Years War, who then ran off to the continent.
These Lowland Scots had always been a thorn in the side of the English. They were fiercely independent, staunchly loyal to each other, and very undisciplined. They kept their own council, they took care of their own, and they gave their allegiance to neither the English nor the Scottish crowns. They practiced a staunchly Calvinist brand of the Presbyterian faith, and hated Anglicans and Catholics alike, considering both churches to be idolatrous. A good number of their population made a living as reivers, that is cattle thieves. They lived very meagerly, in shoddily built hovels or cabins, so if they found themselves in trouble with the authorities or were on the run from another warring clan or family, they would quickly abandon their homes, move into the hills, where they would easily build another shelter and hide until they needed to move again.
Now, these people are not to be confused with the Highland Scots. The lowland Scots were their own culture all together. They didn’t speak Scottish Gaelic, nor did they speak English. They had a unique vernacular dialect that had developed over a thousand years, a mix of Gaelic, English, and Scandinavian. This native tongue was sometimes called Broad Scots or Lallenders.
The English crown’s theory was this; if we offer these Lowland Scots, who have always been a pain in our ass, lands of their own in Ulster, they would be able to keep the Irish Catholic peasantry in check. This was known as the “Great Plantation of Ireland” and was the beginning of the troubles in Ireland between Protestants and Catholics that has only recently abated with the Good Friday Peace Accords of 1998.
Beginning in 1603 with the ascension of James I to the English Throne, for the next century, with only brief respites here and there, there was a continuous state of guerrilla warfare existing between the transplanted Scots and the native Irish. These Ulster Scots were not backing down, and in most years they were winning, primarily because they had the strength of the British garrisons in Ireland behind them. But, the English, in their infinite wisdom began to alienate these loyal subjects. A series of statutes call The Penal Laws were passed in Ireland. One law in particular, seemed to piss everybody off. At first, it forced only the Catholics to tithe to the Anglican church, but, then somebody thought this law should apply to all faiths dissenting from the Anglican church, including Methodists, Baptists, Quakers, and Presbyterians.
The Ulster Scots were furious. Now granted, most did not leave Northern Ireland, most remained behind, especially those who had built up reasonably large estates in that country, and they stayed and lobbied the crown to rescind the laws. But, there was a significant minority who had nothing to lose by picking everything up and going to the colonies of North America.
A trickling of immigrants from Northern Ireland occurred prior to 1700, but the major migration occurred after.
In 1717, Philadelphia based Quaker merchant Jonathan Dickenson wrote in a letter to a colleague, “…from Ye north of Ireland many hundreds (arrived in Philadelphia) in aboute four months.”
Two years later, Dickenson wrote, “This summer we have had 12 or 13 sayle of ships from the North of Ireland (with) a swarm of People.” Following that first wave of immigration in the second decade of the 18th century, anotherwave, even larger, occurred in the late 1720’s, and then again an even larger wave in the 1730’s.
They were not always openly welcomed by the colonists already in Pennsylvania and the other colonies, and truthfully at times openly disdained by the settled populations of British North America. But, between 1700 and 1775, a quarter of a million people emigrated from Northern Ireland to the American Colonies, and the greatest portion of those came through the port of Philadelphia. But, where did they go?
They went to where there was land. And there was land on the frontier.
Scots-Irish settlers on the 18th Century Appalachian Frontier
An uneasy truce had developed on the American colonial frontier between the British and French empires with the end of the Queen Anne’s War in 1713. During that Conflict, the majority of the Native Americans of the Appalachian and Trans Appalachian frontiers had allied with the French, and the tribes were still unhappy with the incursions of the English colonists into their lands. The English colonies needed a buffer, something between the settled eastern seaboard and the wilderness of the Appalachian Mountains. Send in the Scots Irish. The colonies offered these immigrants lands of their own on the frontier, and all they had to do was settle and improve their claims. And the Scots Irish were the perfect people to go the frontier. They never backed down from a challenge, they were survivalists who knew how to live off of the land, being independent and self-reliant.
In 1744 King George’s War broke out again between the French and their Indian allies and the British colonies. The conflict saw the Scots Irish settlers playing an important role in the security of the frontier, acting as rangers and scouts. As far as Colonial North America is concerned, that war ended in a stalemate in 1748, however, the long bitter rivalry between France and Britain reignited just six years later in 1754. The French and Indian War, known in Europe as the Seven Years War, ended in 1763, with Great Britain ultimately victorious.
With the signing of the Treaty of Paris signed France ceded all of its territory in North America to Britain, which included all of the lands west of the Appalachian Mountain and east of the Mississippi River.
And the ranks and file of the British colonial militias that fought that war, and helped Britain obtain all of that new territory, were filled with Scots Irish frontiersmen.
But besides a fighting spirit and tenacity, the other thing that the Scots Irish brought to the American frontier was the art of whiskey making which they had been illicitly perfecting in Northern Ireland over the previous generations. As they were settling on the western frontiers of colonial Pennsylvania, Maryland, Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina and Georgia, they shared the art of distilling with other disenfranchised ethnic groups that also settled along the edge of the wilderness; Welsh, English from the northern counties of England, French Huguenots, and German Palatines.
What these frontier hunter-farmers soon discovered was that transporting grain from their farms on the wilderness borderlands to the eastern markets was labor intensive and expensive. A far more efficient way of optimizing income from grain farming was to turn their grain into alcohol. Alcohol was easier to transport; one bushel of maize, after turned into sour mash, will make about 3 to 3 and ½ gallons of 80% ABV corn whiskey. It was easy to see how much simpler, and more profitable, it would be to haul distilled spirits versus bulk grain over distances where the best of roads were really only little better than deer paths. Once these frontiersman began to cross the Appalachians and settle in the newly won territories of Kentucky, Ohio, and Tennessee, it became even more important to be to able turn their grain into spirits.
Before the end of The French and Indian War, there was hardly any reason to believe that the British American colonies would ever take up arms against Mother England. As a part of the greatest military power in the world, the Colonies received the full protection of the Crown from any outside incursions or attacks, potentially from Spain and France, but there were also other world powers to consider; the Netherlands, Portugal, and Russia were still in expansion mode in the late 18th Century. Also, the colonists paid little in taxes compared to their counterparts in England, Scotland, Wales and Ireland. Domestic economic activities- that is buying and selling of goods internally- received very little interference from London.
But, the colonists were required to adhere to the Navigation Acts in regards to foreign trade, which required that all goods shipped to foreign lands had to first go through England before reaching final destination, and that all transportation of goods within the British Empire be done on ships that were constructed, owned, and a manned by British subjects.
These rules in themselves didn’t bother the majority of the colonists, although a few members of the wealthier merchant class might have had a slight problem with them, but not so much that it would foment rebellion.
But, then the Crown started to pass some laws which affected the day to day lives of the common man. First, Britain changed its stance on land policy on the frontier; whereas before 1763 settlers were encouraged to claim lands and act as a buffer between the settled areas and the wilderness, after that year all western settlement was forbidden by the Proclamation Line of 1763. Britain’s primary objective behind the Proclamation was to seize control of the lucrative fur trade in the Trans Appalachian frontier, but they tried to sell it to the colonists as cost cutting feature. The Crown claimed it could not afford to protect its subjects beyond the Appalachian Mountains. So, not only did the Proclamation forbid any further land claims west of the mountains, it nullified any existing claims.
This was especially unpopular with the settlers of western Pennsylvania, eastern Kentucky and Tennessee. The new policy immediately put these folks, mostly Scots Irish, in violation of the law. To enforce this new policy, a standing army of 7,500 regulars was posted throughout the frontier in the recently captured French forts and outposts. And to pay for these soldiers, the Brits had to raise some coin. And, this contributed and led up to the taxation policies that brought on the revolution.
Now, some historians have said that the taxes that Britain levied in America between 1763 and 1775 were absolutely necessary for the protection of the Colonists, by maintaining a standing army on the frontier. But, this could debated. Here’s why. For 100 years prior to the French and Indian War, the colonists had been protecting themselves and settling the western frontiers without any aid from the Redcoats. Secondly, the Army wasn’t on the frontier to protect the colonists; it was there to keep settlers from homesteading and hunting on protected lands. Fur trading enterprises, like the chartered Northwest Company, were obtaining furs off of the frontier through trade with the native tribes. This was big business in the 18th Century, and big business didn’t want the little guys horning in on their fat pile of cash, or in this case pelts, furs, and skins. In my opinion, this issue is the cradle of the American Revolution. Everything after this is just a result of the Proclamation of 1763.
A contemporary map illustrating the Proclamation of 1763. Cantonment of His Majesty's forces in N. America according to the disposition now made & to be compleated as soon as practicable taken from the general distribution dated at New York 29th. March 1766 by Daniel Patterson
Source: Library of Congress
Between 1763 and 1775, a series of taxes and acts upon the colonies passed by Westminster created a powder keg, which finally blew at Lexington-Concord; the Sugar Act, the Stamp Act, the Quartering Act, the Townshend Duties, the Tea Act, and the Intolerable Acts, all led up to convincing a third to a half of all American colonists that they would be better off on their own. A few months after Lexington Concord, the Continental Congress drafted the Olive Branch Petition, and sent it to George III. The petition asked for the recognition of American rights, some form of representation in Parliament, and the repeal of the Intolerable Acts in exchange for a ceasefire in Massachusetts.
The King summarily rejected Congress’s proposal, and he then he declared the colonies to be in open rebellion.
The fact of the matter was this: the American Colonists, even with all of those taxes that were passed just before they opening of the Revolutionary War, were paying only 2 to 3 % per capita of what the British subjects in England, Scotland, Wales and Ireland paid at that very same time. Let that sink in for a moment. Keep that in mind while you read the rest of this blog.
So during the war, with Congress having no power to impose taxes (and I doubt it would have gone over well with the people if they could have), they ran a huge debt to finance the war, with costs climbing to one hundred and 65 million Pounds Sterling, or around 22 billion dollars in today’s currency. Most of the money had been borrowed from the individual states, but some came from France, and Spain, and more yet from Dutch investors. With the war ending in 1782, all of these notes started to come due; Congress had really only been able to pay the interest on most of these loans during the war, and only paid the principle when it was absolutely necessary to stay in the good graces with the lenders.
In 1781 with Washington’s victory at Yorktown, the war was all but over, only a peace treaty remained to be signed. Congress appointed financier and Pennsylvania Congressman Robert Morris as Superintendent of Finance. His charge was to keep the young Republic from complete bankruptcy. Morris devalued the dollar, and then begged, borrowed, and stole $2 million from the states. But his most controversial move was to suspend the pay of the Continental Army soldiers and officers. Instead, he gave them debt certificates or land grants of property in the west that the country would receive in the peace settlement. In other words, they were given IOU’s and promises of land that the country didn’t yet have to give. This gave the government some breathing room, but didn’t solve the problem. In 1782, Morris suggested that total debt was so high that Congress just set up a schedule to pay the interest and –in his words- “… leave posterity to pay the principle.” A strategy we are all to familiar with in the modern age.
With the implementation of the Constitution in 1789, economically things began to stabilize for the country. The Constitution brought order to the nation’s finances, created a common market, common currency, it regulated commerce and trade between the states. But, there was still that one thing that loomed over the young nation’s shoulder: that massive amount of debt, most of it going back to the war. By this time the Federal government still owed $54 million in debt, and the individual states in all held debt in the amount of another $25 million.
Our 1st Secretary of the Treasury, and the most influential founder in determining American fiscal policy.
Secretary of the Treasury Alexander Hamilton persuaded Congress to lump all of the debt together, and then the Federal government would work out the method of paying it down. The young country made most of its money at this time on import duties of luxury goods from Europe, and Hamilton believed those rates were as high as the consumers would tolerate. So, a new tax had to be implemented. And that tax was on Whiskey.
It was actually an excise tax on all distilled spirits, but since the rum production in New England had nearly ended after losing access to Britain’s sugar plantations in the Caribbean, whiskey was the main spirit that the new law impacted. It was the first tax in the history of the country that was levied upon a domestically produced product. The Washington administration knew the tax would be unpopular, but they didn’t really know how much so.
In March of 1791, The Distilled Spiritis Excise Tax went into law. George Washington’s administration, under the leadership of Hamilton, set up revenue districts and appointed revenue supervisors, inspectors, and enforcement officials. Many citizens on the frontier immediately announced that they wouldn’t pay the tax. The farmers in the western regions of the states believed that the tax economically targeted them unfairly; it was harder for them to transport grain to the eastern markets, giving eastern farmers an unfair advantage. Also in the west, hard currency was often scarce, and many workers and laborers were paid in whiskey, which they could then drink or sell to someone else. Essentially, for these working people and those who paid them, the whiskey tax was, in this regard, an income tax that wealthy easterners did not have to pay.
Cries of no taxation without representation bellowed out from the frontier, the same rallying cry that had been used to recruit many of the frontiersmen to the Continental Army. Remember, a large portion of the Continental Army veterans had been given land grants on the frontier in lieu of payment for their service to their country. Furthermore, they did not understand why they, those living in the west, should have to pay for debts accrued by the rest of the states, especially those who lived in the east.
Another thing that burned the western farmers’ butts was a payment policy instituted by the government that they saw as favoring larger distillers. See, Hamilton set up two methods of paying the tax; the distiller could either pay a flat fee or he could pay by the gallon. Larger distillers generally had cash on hand to pay the fee, whereas small distillers, many of which were little more than dirt scratch farmers, usually did not have enough cash to pay such a fee. See the more whiskey that a distiller could produce, if he paid the flat fee, and he made enough whiskey, he could get his tax costs down to 6 cents on the gallon, while the rate if paid by the gallon was 9 cents per gallon. This regressive tax rate put a greater burden upon smaller producers than it did on the large operations.
Another thing that contributed to the westerners irksome disposition to the tax was that on the cash strapped frontier, whiskey sold for considerably less than it did in the more populated cities and town of the east, so a larger percentage of any profits, on any thing sold locally, would be lost to taxation. Some of the smallscale distillers believed that Hamilton had it in for them, that the flat fee was set up to favor larger producers, and thereby making the markets too competitive for smaller producers to compete, which promoted big business and forced smaller competitors out of the market. So, whether intentional or not, larger distillers saw the advantage that the tax gave them in the marketplace and they supported the tax.
In the Summer of 1791 a convention of concerned westerners met in Pittsburgh and drafted a petition listing their grievances regarding the tax, and it was sent to Washington (the President not the city, the city didn’t exist yet), the Pennsylvania State Assembly, and to the United States Congress. As a result of this and other petitions, Congress dropped the excise tax on the whiskey by 1 cent per gallon, going into effect in May of 1792. Like most tax cuts, you’ll take what you can get, but of course, the folks on the frontier wanted more relief.
The first whiskey tax collector to be attacked was tarred and feathered in Washington County, western Pennsylvania in September of 1791. The officials who were sent to serve warrants on those who had attacked the tax collector were also tarred and feathered. Other tax collectors and officials were also threatened with violence, so in many parts of the western states, the taxes went uncollected in 1791 and 1792. In the newest state, Kentucky, which entered the union on June 1st, 1792, no one could be found who would take the position and enforce or prosecute the distillers for tax evasion. Hamilton was furious over the resistance to the tax, and advocated military action to arrest those in violation, but Attorney General Edmund Randolph convinced President Washington the it would be hard to prosecute those in violation.
Tax Collector being tarred and feathered by Whiskey Rebels.
In August 1792, a second convention of tax resistors was called in Pittsburgh. This gathering was much more radical. Calls for secession from the country were discussed by the angiest of those gathered. One group, the Mingo Creek Association, took control of their local militia, and urged other groups to do the same.
Meanwhile, back in Philadelphia, President Washington and Secretary Hamilton saw this resistance to Federal law as embarrassing and unacceptable. The President put the wheels in motion to quash the whiskey rebels. A Presidential Proclamation was drafted, denouncing the rebels and their resistance to legislatively initiated excise taxes. It was signed by the President and published on September 15, 1792 in newspapers and on broadsides to be posted throughout the western areas.
Over the next few months, all along the western counties of Appalachia, anyone associated with the Federal government or the collection of taxes was intimidated, turned out, or forced away. Farmers who complied with the law and paid their taxes would be tarred and feathered, or had their barns and houses burned by the rebels. One tax collector was abducted from his home and held at gunpoint until he renounced his commission with the federal government.
It was 1794, and George Washington had had enough.
He ordered federal district attorneys to serve writs upon any and all distillers who had not paid their excise taxes. The writs were really never meant to have the cases go to trial, but merely to coerce the violators to pay their taxes. But, most ignored their tax bill. And some even retaliated against the government officials.
In July 1794, a group of armed insurrectionists surrounded the fortified home of one General John Neville, at Bower Hill, Pennsylvania. Neville had been appointed by the Washington administration as an Inspector of Revenue over the whiskey tax. The whiskey rebels believed that a federal marshal was in his home, however that man had left earlier in the day for Pittsburgh. Shots were exchanged, with one of the rebels being mortally wounded. The next day the rebels returned with a force of 600 anti-tax militiamen, led by Major James McFarlane, a veteran of the Revolutionary War. Neville had also received enforcements from Pittsburgh, but only numbering a handful of soldiers, led by a Major James Kirkpatrick. Before the rebels arrived, at Kirkpatrick’s insistence, Neville and his family escaped the house, and hid in a nearby ravine. After a brief negotiation between McFarlane and Kirkpatrick (both SCOTS IRISH names, eh?), the women and children in the house were allowed to leave the home, then the shooting did begin. After about an hour of firing, it became obvious to McFarlane that the anti-tax forces could not take the house, and he called for a ceasefire. As he stepped into a clearing under a white flag, someone from inside the house shot the Major down. The militiamen went into a frenzy, set fire to the house and outbuildings. Kirkpatrick surrendered and was taken prisoner. The surviving United States soldiers were sent back to Pittsburgh to tell the rest of the garrison there that they should leave.
McFarlane was given a heroes’ funeral, and his death galvanized the frontier against the federal government and, as they saw it, it’s oppressive taxation. A few days later, a band of rebels robbed a U.S. Mail coach as it left Pittsburgh, finding a number of letters from civic leaders who were condemning the actions of the rebels.
On August 1 a gathering of over 7,000 anti-tax rebels and resistors assembled on Braddock’s Field just east of Pittsburgh. The anger over the whiskey tax had spread. Convinced that if they did not stand against this tax, others were soon to follow. At this gathering there were calls to march on Pittsburgh, burn the homes of the rich, and burn the government buildings to the ground. There was praise for the French Revolution (imagine that, on the frontier of North America), and a call to bring the guillotine to the United States. There was talk of seceding from the United States and joining the monarchies of England or Spain. The crowd marched through Pittsburgh, but the only buildings it burned were those of the prisoner Major Kirkpatrick.
President Washington read the reports and considered them carefully. This was perhaps the most critical incident in the short history of the young republic. He first sent commissioners to negotiate with the rebels, but also called for the raising of an army to prepare for the march west. On September 1st, when it became obvious that the negotiations were fruitless, Washington issued an executive command that the insurgents disperse immediately or else. Now, the full power of the United States was heading to western Pennsylvania.
The state militias of Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Virginia, and Maryland were assembled in Philadelphia, a force of over 12,000 fighting men; as large an army as Washington had commanded during the Revolution. In October of 1794, Washington rode west to lead the troops, the first and only time a sitting president has ever led troops in the field. Alexander Hamilton, who had been Washington’s Aide de Camp during the Revolution, rode at his side.
The insurrectionists fled before the army arrived, and the whiskey rebellion was over before the end of October, 1794. A federal grand jury issued 24 warrantsfor high treason, however most of the accused fled deep into the frontier, and only 10 were arrested to stand trial. Of those 10, only two were found guilty of treason, and they were sentenced to death by hanging, but, before the sentences could be carried out, the men were pardoned by President Washington. The Pennsylvania state courts, however, were far more successful and were able to issue warrants, arrests, and convictions for assault, battery, and property damage related to the whiskey rebellion.
Washington’s handling of the rebellion was met with widespread national approval. And our first president’s actions set a precedent for the enforcement of federal law. He truly was the Father of our country. One thing that continued after the rebellion, however, was the difficulty in enforcing the whiskey tax on the frontier. Those Scots Irish settlers, well they just turned back to their old ways of moonshining, distilling whiskey in the hills and hollows by the light of the moon.. When Thomas Jefferson became president in 1801, two years after President Washington’s passing, he, along with congress repealed the whiskey tax.
A couple of things to leave you with. George Washington, in the last decade of his life leading up to death in 1799, had a successful whiskey distillery operation at Mount Vernon. It was operated by a Scots Irish immigrant named James Anderson. President Washington’s whiskey was made primarily from rye, and they now produced a reproduction of that recipe at the National Historic Landmark.
Video of living history of demonstration of making whiskey at George Washington’s Mount Vernon.
And you remember how the colonists were so eager to leave Great Britain because they were paying too much in taxes. Well, be careful what you wish for. You see, one of the results of independence was that the tax burden per capita after the formation United States grew to 10 times more per capita for the Americans than what it was when they were British subjects.
See, being free isn’t free.
HISHTORY Episode 3, released December 6, 2016
Writer/Producer: Allen Tatman
Technical Director: Brian McGeorge
Recorded at Rivers Edge Studios and Paddy Malone’s Pub, in Jefferson City MO.
A Wylde Irish Production, all rights reserved, Wylde Irish Productions LLC
Facebook
Twitter
Please subscribe, like, and post a review on iTunes, SoundCloud, or Stitcher.
Tell your friends about us and share our information.
Please Enjoy Your Favorite Alcoholic Beverages Responsibly.
Works Consulted:
Baack, Ben. “Economics of the American Revolutionary War”. EH.Net Encyclopedia, edited by Robert Whaples. November 13, 2001 (updated August 5, 2010). URL http://eh.net/encyclopedia/the-economics-of-the-american-revolutionary-war/
Cummings, Hubertis M., Scots Breed and Susquehanna. University of Pittsburgh Press, 1964
Ellis, Joseph J., Founding Brothers: The Revolutionary Generation. New York, Random House, 2002
Regelski, Christine. “The Revolution of American Drinking.” U.S. History Scene, 2016. http://ushistoryscene.com/article/american-drinking/
Smiley, Ian B. BSc. , Making Pure Corn Whiskey. Canada, Self Published. 1999
Smith, John L. Jr., “How Was the Revolutionary War Paid For?” Journal of the American Revolution. February 23, 2015. https://allthingsliberty.com/2015/02/how-was-the-revolutionary-war-paid-for/
Standage, Tom, A History of the World in Six Glasses. New York. Walker & Co., 2005
Theobald, Mary Miley, “When Whiskey was the King of Drink.” Colonial Williamsburg, Summer 2008. http://www.history.org/foundation/journal/summer08/whiskey.cfm
Uncredited. “George Washington’s Distillery.” George Washington’s Mount Vernon. 2016. http://www.mountvernon.org/the-estate-gardens/distillery/