In the 1790s, the newly-founded United States was deeply in debt and had no reliable sources of revenue. The 1789 Constitution had given the Federal government the right to levy both direct and indirect (excise, import, etc.) taxes, something the Articles of Confederation made almost impossible. Despite having agreed to this change, many Anti-Federalists, who favored state power over centralized government, were wary of allowing Congress to impose non-customs taxes on Americans. In an attempt at compromise, Treasury Secretary Alexander Hamilton proposed an increase in customs duties on coffee, tea, wine, and liquor; while also placing an excise tax on domestically produced spirits. 1 Hamilton targeted alcohol in part for moral reasons; he called spirits “pernicious luxuries” and felt perhaps the increase in whiskey prices would discourage soldiers from drinking to excess.2 Representatives from Pennsylvania, Maryland, Virginia, North Carolina, and Georgia all opposed the Whiskey Act from the start, but the law was still passed in March 1791.
Excise taxes, which are paid by the producer and not the consumer, disproportionately affect small-scale manufacturers such as the whiskey distillers of western Pennsylvania. These farmers relied on whiskey as an efficient means of transporting grain over long distances. According to one scholar’s estimates, one horse could carry the equivalent of twenty-four bushels of rye in barrels of whiskey, compared to only four bushels of unprocessed rye. 3 Because of the scarcity of paper money in these rural regions, the whiskey itself was often used as currency, and enough cash to pay the excise collectors was rarely on hand.
On a broader scale, the opposition to Hamilton’s tax plan was a continuation of ideological battles which had taken place at the Constitutional Convention. Despite their ratification of the 1789 document, Anti-Federalists harbored concerns that the central government would overstep its bounds in attempting to raise revenue. Some felt betrayed by their ideological leader Thomas Jefferson, who agreed to let the Hamilton’s National Treasury assume states’ debts in exchange for the nation’s capital being built in Virginia. 4 Anti-Federalists saw Hamilton’s deal as an excuse for higher taxes and more federal oversight, and it was from this suspicion that much opposition to the 1791 excise tax originated.
The anger of westerners was not limited to the excise tax, however. They saw Secretary Hamilton’s entire financial system as a scheme to enrich speculators. During the Revolutionary War, the government had sold bonds for $75 and promised to pay the buyer $100 at war’s end. By the mid-to-late 1880s, investors had lost faith in the American government’s ability to repay them and were selling their bonds to speculators for just $20. As the Constitutional Convention was about to adjourn, bondholders petitioned the body for a decision on how they would be repaid. The most popular option among congressmen was to pay for the bonds at market value–in other words, repay the approximately $20 for which a bond could be sold in 1789 instead of the $100 it was originally worth. 5 Alexander Hamilton, however, was concerned with the building of national credit, and as such advocated for repayment at face value–to pay back any less than the full amount of the government’s debt would give the United States a bad financial reputation. While this debate was raging, congress people and their allies were buying bonds for low prices based on their belief that Hamilton would repay them the full $100.
Westerners saw inside traders, as well as the speculators who had previously bought the bonds from their original owners, as greedy and un-American. Rural wrath was directed against Hamilton especially, as he was the main proponent of repaying the full amount of each bond. Knowing that as finances stood in the 1790s, the federal government did not have enough money to go through with this plan, many Americans west of the Alleghenies felt that Hamilton’s financial system–including and especially the whiskey excise–was a ploy to use taxpayer money to enrich the speculators. 6 Doubly insulting to the farmers was the fact that while Hamilton deplored their avoidance of the whiskey tax, his officers were known to be lenient on merchants who dodged import taxes. 7
The first two years after the Whiskey Act was passed were relatively peaceful. Aware on some level of the farmers’ concerns, Hamilton had not given revenue officers the right of indiscriminate search, and rural farmers were largely able to avoid the tax. 8 The tax rate was reduced in 1792 to encourage compliance, but the federal government received no excise revenue from any of the rural territories in the entire year of 1793. 9 Local excise officers reported that farmers were threatening to destruct the property of anyone who followed the law, and relatively weak governmental presence in rural areas meant that these offenders almost never faced consequences.
This low-level tax evasion was pushed towards rebellion on June 5, 1794, when Congress amended the excise law to have defendants tried in state courts instead of in their county court. This change led to widespread attacks on excise collectors, forcing the federal government to take a stronger stance on the issue. The first attack against an excise officer had occurred just four months after the whiskey excise passed Congress: Robert Johnson, tax collector for Allegheny and Washington counties in Pennsylvania, was tarred and feathered by a group of local farmers disguised in blackface and women’s clothes.10 Such attacks only became more common over the years, culminating in a skirmish at the home of John Neville, the Supervisor of Collection for western Pennsylvania. He was attempting to subpoena 60 tax evading distillers and take them to court in distant Philadelphia. Six hundred men attacked Neville’s home on July 16, 1794; James MacFarlane, leader of the rebel side, was killed, and Neville’s house and barn were burned to the ground.11
As early as 1792, George Washington announced that his administration would not accept any obstruction of United States law, and after two more years of violence the president decided to call a militia. 12 Washington had long delayed this decision, because he feared mobilizing federal troops against American citizens would validate Anti-Federalist fears of presidential tyranny. 13 On August 7, 1794, Washington ordered insurgents to “disperse and retire peaceably to their respective abodes” by September 1. 14 On August 25, Hamilton wrote to Governor Henry Lee of Virginia that his state’s militia would likely be called to quell the protests, but that no orders should be given until after the first. 15
Many militiamen resisted the order to fight against their countrymen, either empathizing with the rebel cause or seeing a military action as expensive and unnecessary. As more states were called to join the force, some units fell into line, but others erected Liberty Poles–decorated mast posts which had previously represented resistance to the British crown and which Whiskey rebels co-opted for their uprising. On September 25, Washington himself made another proclamation, again declaring that resistance to United States law would not be tolerated. 16 Military leaders had agreed to collect forces from Pennsylvania, Maryland, New Jersey, and Virginia in the small town of Carlisle, PA, which lay just west of the Susquehanna river; many considered that river to be the boundary between urbanized eastern Pennsylvania and the rural west.
In all, between 10,000 and 15,000 men arrived in Carlisle by the end of September 1794. 17 The troops were encamped at “the extensive common at Carlisle,” thought to be the land which is now Dickinson College. 18 19 Though Congressman William Findley and Washington County official David Redlick met with President Washington to offer the collective surrender of the western counties, the President felt that farmers needed to see the power of the federal government in action 20
Washington led the New Jersey and Pennsylvania troops west from Carlisle on October 11th; the rebellion fell apart quickly and the entire army marched home starting on November 19th. General Lee issued pardons for all rebels, excepting only 28 Pennsylvanians and 5 men of Ohio County, Virginia. 21 These men were the first to be tried for treason in the United States, and their cases set the precedent that armed opposition to federal law fit under the Constitutional definition of treason. 22 Washington’s decision to mobilize the militia marked the first time a Commander in Chief led troops against American citizens, thus further clarifying the consequences of treason in a republic. Federalists retained control of the American government for six more years–the experience of the Rebellion strengthened their desire for strong central government and their fear of excessive democracy. Thomas Jefferson repealed the excise on domestic liquors in 1802.
The Pennsylvanians who led the Whiskey Rebellion were disproportionately affected by the 1791 excise tax on domestic liquor because the majority of western farmers were small-scale distillers, who also had the expensive disadvantage of having to transport their product over the Allegheny mountain
[1] William D. Barber, “‘Among the Most Techy Articles of Civil Police:’ Federal Taxation and the Adoption of the Whiskey Excise,” The William and Mary Quarterly 25, no. 1 (1968): 69.
[2] Anthony Brandt, “Rye Whiskey, Rye Whiskey!” American History (August 1, 2014): 43.
[3] Jerry A. Clouse, The Whiskey Rebellion: Southwestern Pennsylvania’s Frontier People Test the American Constitution (Harrisburg: Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission, 1994): 6.
[4] Ibid 19.
[5] Thomas Landenburg, “Paying the National Debt,” Digital History (Houston: University of Houston, 2007): 13.
[6] Terry Bouton, Taming Democracy: “The People,” the Founders and the Troubled Ending of the American Revolution (New York: Oxford University Press, 2007): 221.
[7] Ibid 229.
[8] Barber 73.
[9] Clouse 22.
[10] Brandt 41.
[11] Ibid 46.
[12] Ibid 20.
[13] Bouton 229.
[14] Ibid 29.
[15] Ibid 33.
[16] Ibid 36.
[17] Thomas G. Tousey, Military History of Carlisle and Carlisle Barracks (Richmond: The Dietz Press, 1939): 165.
[18] Ibid 165.
[19] Lenore E. Flower, Visit of President George Washington to Carlisle, 1974 (Carlisle: The Hamilton Library and Cumberland County Historical Society, 1932): 10.
[20] Clouse 37.
[21] Ibid 41.
[22] Ibid 41.