The Whiskey Rebellion : Frontier Epilogue to the American Revolution

When President George Washington ordered an army of 13,000 men to march west in 1794 to crush a tax rebellion among frontier farmers, he established a range of precedents that continues to define federal authority over localities today. The "Whiskey Rebellion" marked the first large-scale resistance to a law of the U.S. government under the Constitution. This classic confrontation between champions of liberty and defenders of order was long considered the most significant event in the first quarter-century of the new nation. Thomas P. Slaughter recaptures the historical drama and significance of this violent episode in which frontier West and cosmopolitan East battled over the meaning of the American Revolution. The book not only offers the broadest and most comprehensive account of the Whiskey Rebellion ever written, taking into account the political, social and intellectual contexts of the time, but also challenges conventional understandings of the Revolutionary era. "A vivid account of how 7,000 rioting settlers in Western Pennsylvania and beyond opposed a Federal tax on liquor."--New York Times In 1794, "the single largest example of armed resistance to a law of the United States between the ratification of the Constitution and the Civil War" occurred in four frontier counties of western Pennsylvania when angry farmers there refused to pay an excise tax on whiskey-- a tax recently enacted by the new Federal government in Philadelphia. Forming themselves into mobs and sometimes disguised as Indians in deliberate imitation of the Boston Tea Party, the farmers physically assaulted the excise collectors. The response of Washington's first administration to this "Whiskey Rebellion" was swift and dramatic- he ordered an army of 13,000 to march west and crush this rebellion, thereby establishing a range of precedents that continue to define federal authority over localities to this day. The author presents not only a major new scholarly interpretation of the event, but a bold bid to establish the rebellion as a paradigm for understanding the ongoing debate between the defenders of liberty and the advocates of order through the entire sweep of our nation's history. -- Howard Lamar, Book jacket Frontmatter Introduction (page 3) PART ONE: CONTEXT (page 9) One. The Tax Man Cometh (page 11) Two. The Quest for Frontier Autonomy (page 28) Three. Sectional Strife (page 46) Four. Lice, Labor, and Landscape (page 61) Five. George Washington and the Western Country (page 75) PART TWO: CHRONOLOGY (page 91) Six. Indians and the Excise (page 93) Seven. Assembly and Proclamation (page 109) Eight. Liberty, Order, and the Excise (page 125) Nine. Alternative Perspectives (page 143) Ten. Federalism Besieged (page 158) PART THREE: CONSEQUENCE (page 173) Eleven. Rebellion (page 175) Twelve. Response (page 190) Thirteen. A Tale of Two Riots and a Watermelon Army (page 205) Conclusion (page 222) AFTERWORD (page 229) NOTES (page 233) INDEX (page 279) People sometimes act out their ideologies and perceived self-interests with their feet or their fists, or both.