Whiskey rebellion
The Whiskey Rebellion is a rebellion of the settlers in the valley of the Monongahela River in western Pennsylvania in 1794, who fought against a tax on alcohol and alcoholic beverages .
Causes and course
The restricted government of the United States under the Articles of Confederation has just been replaced by a stronger federal government under the 1788 Constitution . This new government also took on the large debts from the War of Independence . One of the measures to pay off this debt was a tax on alcoholic beverages in 1791.
Large distilleries had a tax of 6 cents per gallon . The smaller distillers, mostly farmers in the remote western areas, had a higher rate of 9 cents per gallon. These settlers, however, had little money and no other practical way to sell the perishable crops than it ferment and relatively easily transportable whiskey to be distilled .
From Pennsylvania to Georgia there were repeated riots against government tax collectors in the western territories. In the summer of 1794, George Washington and Alexander Hamilton decided to make an example of state authority in Pennsylvania in memory of Shays' rebellion eight years earlier. George Washington had the tax evaders served before the Philadelphia District Court .
In early August protests grew stronger and a nationwide uprising threatened. On August 7th, several thousand armed settlers moved into the vicinity of Pittsburgh , Pennsylvania. Washington relied on the Militia Law of 1792 to draft the militia of several states. An army of 13,000 men was raised, roughly the strength of the entire army in the War of Independence. Under the personal command of Washington, Hamilton, and Henry “Lighthorse Harry” Lee , a Revolutionary War hero, the army marched into western Pennsylvania and quickly suppressed the revolt. Two leaders were arrested and imprisoned; they were later pardoned by Washington.
This was the first time that the federal government used strong military forces against its own citizens under the new constitution. It was also the only time that a president has personally commanded the battlefield.
The whiskey tax was abolished in 1802, it had not had much success.
In culture
Shortly after the rebellion, Susanna Rowson wrote a musical called "The Volunteers", the music was contributed by Alexander Reinagle . The piece is lost today.
In L. Neil Smith's novel The Probability Broach (1980), Washington loses the battle and is executed by the rebels. They then found the libertarian North American Confederacy.
literature
- Thomas P. Slaughter: The Whiskey Rebellion: Frontier Epilogue to the American Revolution. Oxford University Press, New York 1988, ISBN 978-0-19-505191-9 .
Web links
Individual evidence
- ^ Susan Branson, These Fiery Frenchified Dames: Women and Political Culture in Early National Philadelphia (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2001), 181.
- ^ John J. Pierce, When world views collide: a study in imagination and evolution (Greenwood Press, 1989), 163.
- ↑ Peter Josef Mühlbauer : "Frontiers and dystopias: Libertarian ideology in science fiction", in Dieter Plehwe et al., Eds., Neoliberal Hegemony: A Global Critique (Taylor & Francis, 2006), 162.