Analyze The Effects Of The Whiskey Rebellion

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In January 1791, President George Washington's Secretary of the Treasury Alexander Hamilton proposed a seemingly innocuous excise tax "upon spirits distilled within the United States, and for appropriating the same."1 What Congress failed to predict was the vehement rejection of this tax by Americans living on the frontier of Western Pennsylvania. By 1794, the Whiskey Rebellion threatened the stability of the nascent United States and forced President Washington to personally lead the United States militia westward to stop the rebels.

By 1791 the United States suffered from significant debt incurred during the Revolutionary War. Secretary Hamilton, a Federalist supporting increased federal authority, intended to use the excise tax to lessen this financial burden. Despite resistance from Anti-Federalists like Thomas Jefferson, Congress passed the legislation. When news of the tax spread to Western Pennsylvania, individuals immediately voiced their displeasure by refusing to pay the tax. Residents viewed this tax as yet another instance of unfair policies dictated by the eastern elite that negatively affected American citizens on the frontier.

Western farmers felt the tax was an abuse of federal authority wrongly targeting a demographic that relied on crops such as corn, rye, and grain to earn a profit. However, …show more content…
By the time the militia reached Pittsburgh, the rebels had dispersed and could not be found. The militia apprehended approximately 150 men and tried them for treason. A paucity of evidence and the inability to obtain witnesses hampered the trials. Two men, John Mitchell and Philip Weigel, were found guilty of treason, though both were pardoned by President Washington. By 1802, then President Thomas Jefferson repealed the excise tax on whiskey. Under the eye of President Washington, the nascent United States survived the first true challenge to federal
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Year’s War), The Albany Plan, The Iroquois Nation (Six Nations), Benjamin Franklin, Join or Die, General Braddock, William Pitt, Impressment, The Fall of Quebec, Wolfe and Montcalm, Treaty of Paris, Effects of the War, Colonialists vs. British, Proclamation (Line) of 1763, King George III, Pontiac’s Rebellion, The Imperial Crisis, Debt, Prime Minister George Grenville, The Sugar Act, Parliamentary Acts, Committees of Correspondence, , Revenue Act (Sugar Act of 1765), The Stamp Act (1765), Internal vs…

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