The Whiskey Rebellion Essay

David McCoy

American History 202

Edward R. Crowther

4/4/2014

The Whiskey Rebellion

This book, written by William Hogeland, is a book that gives some history and information about helping fund the government. Secretary of Treasury Alexander Hamilton had a plan to exercise tax on American whiskey. This idea seemed like a brilliant one, but the citizens did not take to kind to this idea. Also described in this book is the economy of western Pennsylvania. Western Pennsylvania citizens wanted control, but they lacked it themselves. With the idea of a whiskey tax in place the citizens of Western Pennsylvania did not want this to take effect. The people started to rebel against paying taxes and thus caused the whiskey rebellion. Washington and the government had enough of the rebellion and started to fight back.

This all started in 1791 after the American Revolution. The government had to somehow pay off the debt that the Revolution war created. The Secretary of Treasury Alexander Hamilton had an idea to resolve the debt. A small idea that Alexander had was to exercise a tax on American produce whiskey. Alexander and other easterners thought of whiskey as a luxury more than a necessity. The citizens of Western Pennsylvania felt that whiskey was a necessity, and not a luxury. Alexander had to get this idea approved by Congress, which was approved by Congress at the time. Because of this idea of a tax, it made the citizens of Western Pennsylvania stress and worry. This also caused the economy of Western Pennsylvania stress as well.

Since the economy of Western Pennsylvania was terrible, people used whiskey to trade or pay off others with. People would use whiskey to pay off others for certain things and doing certain jobs. One example was that farmers would pay some of their helpers in whiskey as they could not give them money for their helping hand. Whiskey was in fact, one of the major resources used for barter and this is why Alexander had the idea to tax whiskey. When the government and Alexander made the tax go into effect they tried to collect the payment from the citizens. The people who depended on whiskey did not like this idea at all. The citizens became outraged and would tar and feather some of the collectors who would try to get the payment from them.

One of the federal tax collectors was a man named Robert Johnson. One night in September, he was out to do what he was assigned to do, which was to collect the fair share of the