This law, the “Whiskey Tax,” placed an excise tax on spirits distilled in the United States and became the first tax ever levied by the United States on a domestic product. Alexander Hamilton, Secretary of the Treasury, wanted to use the tax money to pay Revolutionary War debts
But to famers in western Pennsylvania, Virginia, and the Carolinas, the tax was considered a tax on one of life’s necessities. In the west, whiskey was used freely at weddings to toast the bride and at funerals to mourn the deed.
The excise tax was immediately controversial, and resistance developed into the 1794 Whiskey Rebellion, an insurrection that has achieved almost mythic status.
Spirited debate turned to violence in July 1794 after an amendment made it so that violators of the excise tax would be tried at state courts instead of in their own towns.
Tax collectors were tarred and feathered by angry mobs. Liberty poles with slogans against unjust taxation were planted in the ground. them to lose money. Protestors, called “Whiskey Boys” attacked tax collectors. They attacked them in Georgia, North Carolina, and Virginia. This continued for three years. The Whiskey Boys’ leader was Tom the Tinker. He wanted revenge on those who made the tax.
Citizens all over the newly-formed United States were negatively affected by the tax, but the farmers of Washington, Westmoreland, Fayette, and Allegheny counties of Pennsylvania as well as Ohio and Monongalia counties in Virginia were historically known for their distrust of central government and therefore primed for rebellion.
President Washington saw the rebels as a threat to federal authority. Under the Constitution, Congress had the power to pass the tax. He assembled some 13,000 men from state militias. The army approached western Pennsylvania in November of 1794. By this time, most of the rebels had fled, and the Whiskey Rebellion ended without a battle.
Whiskey Rebellion (1791-1794)
