The Whiskey Rebellion of 1794

The Whiskey Rebellion

Background
Staggering under a huge national debt after winning the Revolutionary War, the federal government looked for any revenue source they could find. That included a tax on liquor. The large distilleries had well-established political connections, ensuring their taxes remained low – six cents a gallon (about a dollar in today’s money). Small distillers and farmers, however, had no such connections and had to pay a tax of nine cents for every gallon they produced.

Rebellion
At the time, western Pennsylvania was the frontier, so far from civilization that the only way for farmers to get their grain to market was to distill it into spirits. Furthermore, most farmers could not have paid even if they wanted to. They had very little money. The result was that “revenooers” in the western counties were harassed, beat up – and seldom paid.

Result
President George Washington conferred with his treasury secretary, Alexander Hamilton. Keeping in mind the chaos of Shays’s Rebellion they decided to draw a line in the sand in Pennsylvania and make an example of the farmers. Washington summoned the protesters to federal district court; they responded by setting up camps in the Monongahela Valley near Pittsburgh. Faced with several thousand armed tax protesters, Washington temporarily became a general again, leading 13,000 troops from several states’ militias to western Pennsylvania accompanied by Hamilton and General “Lighthouse Harry” Lee. It was the largest army ever commanded by Washington, and it was the first and last time that a sitting president would personally command an army in the field.

In the face of that kind of force, the tax protesters backed down. Two of the leaders of the revolt were convicted of treason, but were pardoned by Washington. What became of the tax? Although it stayed on the books until 1802, the government gave up trying to enforce it.

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