Escalating the Whiskey Rebellion
A friend texted earlier today to tell me that it was on this date in 1794 that President George Washington wrote to Henry "Light-Horse Harry" Lee about the unrest in Western Pennsylvania over excise taxes related to distilled whiskey. The crisis had begun in 1790 when Treasury Secretary Alexander Hamilton sought ways to pay down the national debt after the compromise that would eventually place the nations’s capital on the Potomac in exchange for consolidation of state financial obligations dating back to the War of Independence. The following year Congress passed, and Washington signed, the excise tax on whiskey. Distilled spirits were an integral part of American life for several reasons. For one thing, it was often healthier than water itself, which was non-potable in many communities due to contamination with animal and human waste, the effluvia from tanneries, and other discharges into the water supplies. Thus beer, wine, malt and whiskey were a regular staple not just of the saloon but the American table. What is more, many farmers in rural communities found it easier, and thus cheaper, to ship distilled whiskey as opposed to the wheat used to make it.
The Washington Administration tried for three years to resolve the issue peacefully, with no such luck. After years of threats in July 1794 residents of Western Pennsylvania and elsewhere began taking things into their own hands, just as they had during the tea parties of the 1770s and the Stamp Act riots of the 1760s. Some communities even ran up liberty poles. Now though the gloves were coming off. In his letter to General Lee, President Washington in part wrote:
“As the Insurgents in the western counties of this State are resolved (as far as we have yet been able to learn from the Commissioners, who have been sent amongst them) to persevere in their rebellious conduct until what they call the Excise law is repealed; and Acts of oblivion & amnesty are passed; it gives me since<re> consolation amidst the regret with whi<ch> I am filled, by such lawless & outrageous c<on>duct, to find by your letter abovemention<ed,> that it is held in general detestation by the good people of Virginia; and that you are disposed to lend your personal aid to subdue this spirit, & to bring those people to a proper sense of their duty.”
What followed next in September 1794 would be some of the most consequential weeks in American history.
(image / circa 1792 drawing of an exciseman carrying two barrels of whiskey being pursued by farmers threatening the taxman with tar and feathering; sketching courtesy of the Atwater Kent Museum)