The Whiskey Rebellion was an outbreak of armed violence and collective disorder that erupted in 1794 in western Pennsylvania when federal tax collectors attempted to serve court summonses for failure by farmers and distillers to pay an excise tax on whiskey.
In 1791 Secretary of the Treasury Alexander Hamilton proposed, as a part of his financial plan for the United States, a series of excise taxes to raise revenue for the new federal government. The most controversial of these taxes fell on distilled spirits with a 25 percent tax on all whiskey production. This new excise tax was particularly burdensome on farmers in the West, where whiskey was used as a form of barter and was an integral part of the economy.
The excise tax met with widespread resistance, especially in the frontier areas of Pennsylvania and its collection was difficult. That region, and the frontier as a whole, suffered from a lack of hard currency that was required to pay the taxes. Without ready cash, farmers became increasingly frustrated at what they perceived to be an unresponsive government that did not understand the hardships they faced due to a lack of specie. Moreover, citizens in the West resented having to travel to distant courts in Philadelphia to plead their cases rather than using local courts.
Throughout 1792 and 1793, local resistance to the tax oftentimes led to violence. After several meetings denouncing the law, farmers took matters into their own hands. Following a pattern of collective behavior similar to the action practiced during the resistance MOVEMENT (1764-75) against Great Britain, a group of individuals calling themselves the “whiskey boys” attacked federal tax collectors, shaving their heads, stripping them naked, tarring and feathering them, and leaving them tied to trees deep in the woods. Even the nonviolent protest became heated as Democratic-Republican societies (anti-Washington administration political clubs) in the East as well as the West called for a repeal of the tax.
Failed efforts to collect the tax only strengthened the federal government’s resolve. In the summer of 1794, at the urging of Alexander Hamilton, Marshal David Lennox and Supervisor of Collection John Neville tried to serve writs to western Pennsylvanians to appear in Philadelphia courts to answer for non-compliance with the tax law. In response to these efforts by the government, some 50 armed local men assembled at the Mingo Creek Church in Washington County. Word spread quickly, and soon an even larger group gathered to confront the marshal and Neville. On the morning of July 16, the men surrounded John Neville’s house on Bower Hill. These individuals believed they would find David Lennox there, and they planned to demand the surrender of both the writs and Neville’s commission as tax collector. However, only Neville, his wife, and granddaughter were in the house. In a brief skirmish, Neville repulsed the attackers, wounding several and killing one. The next day, after Neville left his house in the hands of a military guard, the whiskey rebels renewed the assault. During this exchange of gunfire at Bower Hill several men were wounded and at least two were killed before the government forces surrendered and the rebels destroyed the house. Among the dead was insurgent leader James McFarland, a Revolutionary War (1775-83) hero and militia captain, who became a martyr to the insurrectionists and a regional symbol of the anti-excise cause.
Events moved faster after the violence at Bower Hill. At a meeting on July 23, David Bradford, a Democratic-Republican Party politician and the county’s attorney general, emerged as a spokesman for the more radical insurgents. Bradford called for the raising of a militia as well as confiscating the federal mails to determine government sympathizers. Angered by what he found in the captured mail Bradford threatened to march the local militia on Pittsburgh as a show of force. Moderates managed to convince the whiskey rebels not to follow Bradford’s call to occupy Pittsburgh. In the meantime, the federal government sent a commission to western Pennsylvania to assess the situation, and it determined that it was impossible to resolve the conflict peacefully. Approximately 12,000 troops were then mustered, from Pennsylvania, Maryland, Virginia, and New Jersey by order of the administration of George Washington to quell the rebellion. With Washington in the lead, the army marched to Fort Cumberland, where Washington turned command of the army over to General Henry Lee. By the time the federal army reached Pittsburgh, the rebel leaders, including David Bradford, had already fled the region. Still, the army arrested about 150 insurgents. Many of these individuals were released, but about 20 men were marched back to Philadelphia to stand trial; only two were found guilty, and they were later pardoned by President Washington.
The suppression of the Whiskey Rebellion strengthened the power and legitimacy of the federal government to enforce law. It also allowed the president to lay the blame for the rebellion squarely on the Democratic-Republican Societies, thus discrediting and permanently damaging their effectiveness to criticize the Washington administration.
See also Brackenridge, Hugh Henry.
Further reading: Leland D. Baldwin, Whiskey Rebels: The Story of a Frontier Uprising (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1939); Thomas P Slaughter, The Whiskey Rebellion: Frontier Epilogue to the American Revolution (New York: Oxford University Press, 1986).
World History
