Sunday 11 January 2009 Carl Watner on the Whiskey Rebellion of 1794 Share This:





By Carl Watner



Imagine that you were the leader of a revolutionary government that had recently and successfully wrested power from its parent country. Imagine that some of your citizens refused to obey the laws that you and your legislature had promulgated. What would you do? Would you ignore their disobedience; or would you send the police and army after them? How would you assert your authority, and maintain the power and legitimacy of your government?



Such a situation faced President George Washington and Secretary of the Treasury Alexander Hamilton after Congress passed a federal revenue law on March 3, 1791. [1] How they responded to this and other early threats to their power illustrates that even newly-founded and limited governments, so-called, share the same predicament as established States. They must collect their revenues regardless of the cost. If they fail to suppress disobedience, they will only be faced with more disobedience, with the end result being an ultimate challenge to their existence.



Over the years, I have published articles describing the western Pennsylvania Whiskey Rebellion of 1794. My purpose in those articles has generally been to demonstrate that our early American government has always had, and always exercised, its sovereign power to tax and seize the property or body of anyone refusing to pay their taxes. [2] What recently renewed my interest in the topic was reading an article on civil disobedience in the Kentucky territory during the same era. [3] As it turns out, resistance to payment of the federal excise tax on whiskey was widespread in all American frontier areas, from northern New York to southern Georgia. Furthermore, as Mary Tachau, author of this study, observes; until recently "this remarkable story of tax evasion" has experienced a near historical blackout and cover-up. [4]



Resistance to the excise was part and parcel of the frontiersman's British heritage and tradition. The inhabitants of the British Isles, especially Irishmen, had distilled their own whiskey for centuries. When a levy on spirits in Ireland was introduced in 1661, "it was totally ignored." [5] Englishmen, too, developed a "hearty dislike" for excise taxes. [6] In the era before modern science, whiskey was valued not only for its intoxicating effects, but for its use as an anesthetic, antiseptic, and common everyday medicine. To the frontier farmer, distilling was not only a natural birthright, but a condition necessary to his economic survival. It was practically the only way to convert his grain into ready money, by transporting it over the mountains to where there was a cash market for his brew. As far as the American frontiersman was concerned, his whiskey and freedom hung together. [7] He owned the seed grain, he owned the land, he labored to harvest the crop, and he used his own equipment to distill the brew. Whose property had he violated; whom had he hurt; and was there any identifiable party to whom he owed money for the right to do as he pleased? "To convert [his] grain into spirits was considered to be as [much] a natural right as to convert grain into flour" for his bread. Why should he be subject to a duty for drinking his grain, rather than eating it? [8]



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Printer Friendly Wendy McElroy - Sunday 11 January 2009 - 15:08:56 - Permalink "Freedom an' whisky gang thegither": The Problem of Governance in the Early American RepublicBy Carl WatnerImagine that you were the leader of a revolutionary government that had recently and successfully wrested power from its parent country. Imagine that some of your citizens refused to obey the laws that you and your legislature had promulgated. What would you do? Would you ignore their disobedience; or would you send the police and army after them? How would you assert your authority, and maintain the power and legitimacy of your government?Such a situation faced President George Washington and Secretary of the Treasury Alexander Hamilton after Congress passed a federal revenue law on March 3, 1791. [1] How they responded to this and other early threats to their power illustrates that even newly-founded and limited governments, so-called, share the same predicament as established States. They must collect their revenues regardless of the cost. If they fail to suppress disobedience, they will only be faced with more disobedience, with the end result being an ultimate challenge to their existence.Over the years, I have published articles describing the western Pennsylvania Whiskey Rebellion of 1794. My purpose in those articles has generally been to demonstrate that our early American government has always had, and always exercised, its sovereign power to tax and seize the property or body of anyone refusing to pay their taxes. [2] What recently renewed my interest in the topic was reading an article on civil disobedience in the Kentucky territory during the same era. [3] As it turns out, resistance to payment of the federal excise tax on whiskey was widespread in all American frontier areas, from northern New York to southern Georgia. Furthermore, as Mary Tachau, author of this study, observes; until recently "this remarkable story of tax evasion" has experienced a near historical blackout and cover-up. [4]Resistance to the excise was part and parcel of the frontiersman's British heritage and tradition. The inhabitants of the British Isles, especially Irishmen, had distilled their own whiskey for centuries. When a levy on spirits in Ireland was introduced in 1661, "it was totally ignored." [5] Englishmen, too, developed a "hearty dislike" for excise taxes. [6] In the era before modern science, whiskey was valued not only for its intoxicating effects, but for its use as an anesthetic, antiseptic, and common everyday medicine. To the frontier farmer, distilling was not only a natural birthright, but a condition necessary to his economic survival. It was practically the only way to convert his grain into ready money, by transporting it over the mountains to where there was a cash market for his brew. As far as the American frontiersman was concerned, his whiskey and freedom hung together. [7] He owned the seed grain, he owned the land, he labored to harvest the crop, and he used his own equipment to distill the brew. Whose property had he violated; whom had he hurt; and was there any identifiable party to whom he owed money for the right to do as he pleased? "To convert [his] grain into spirits was considered to be as [much] a natural right as to convert grain into flour" for his bread. Why should he be subject to a duty for drinking his grain, rather than eating it? [8]