Thomas P. Slaughter’s book, The Whiskey Rebellion, Frontier Epilogue to the American Revolution, details the events during a critical period of American history, the decade following the ratification of the United States Constitution. Slaughter poses three themes, the emerging two party political system, the disillusionment with the results of the American Revolution on part of the western frontier populace, and the changing yet continuous nature of political ideology that would suggest that the Revolution was not really over until the end of the Whiskey Rebellion of 1794.
Before we can delve into the themes and issues of the book, a short synopsis of Slaughter’s work is in order. He divides the book into three parts, context, chronology, and consequence. In part one Slaughter details some essential conditions that existed at the time. He notes that tax collectors have never been a favorite character in American history, or Great Britain’s either. You never do hear a story about the kindly tax collector and April fifteenth ranks up there as one of Americans’ least favorite days (even if you get money back, you seem to harp on the IRS). The western frontier of the new United States was struggling for its own identity and government and many people believed that eventually there would be two nations, one in the east and one in the west.
The people in the east and west also differed on their politics. To easterners, the west was a land of uncultured people who needed someone to look after them. To westerners, the east was more concerned with commercial interests and not at all with their concerns of trade routes, protection from indian incursions, and fair taxation. Westerners were indeed a different type of people. They were the ones too confined by the cities of the east, disagreed with the politics or religion of the east, or were simply escaping trouble back east. Slaughter also uses the case of George Washington to illustrate how rich investors from the east bought up many of the better lands in the west and, much to the annoyance of the western population, operated as absentee landlords.
Part two takes us closer to the events that led to the Whiskey Rebellion beginning with the passage of the excise tax on whiskey in 1791. Westerners believed fully that a tax on top of all the other hardships they had to endure to scratch out a life on the frontier was unjust. Somewhat settling was Kentucky’s statehood, also in 1791, but this did little for the residents of western Pennsylvania. Up and down the western frontier people refused to pay the tax and, although there was some violence, the common method of opposition was organizing assemblies to petition the national government to repeal the tax.
The political debates were also beginning to stir as the those who favored a strong national government (friends of order) such as President Washington and Alexander Hamilton clashed with those who favored a bit more power to the people (friends of liberty) like Thomas Jefferson and James Madison. Not surprisingly, those who opposed the whiskey excise fell in line with the friends of liberty. Add in international tensions with Great Britain and Spain, and a yellow fever epidemic in Philadelphia (where the national government sat) in 1793, the residents of western Pennsylvania thought they had won a victory over the issue of the excise tax due to the inactivity of the national government.
The last part of the book, consequences, centers on the actual rebellion and the federal response. The actual rebellion occurred on July 15-17, 1794, and took place at Brower Hill, the home of John Neville who was in charge of collecting the excise taxes in the four western counties of Pennsylvania. At the most there were only five casualties over the three days. The response from the federal government in Philadelphia was a strong one, sending nearly 13,000 men to put down the rebellion with President Washington present at times to inspire the troops (and create good press for those back east). The strong response was a mixture of influences. The need to assert the power of the new national government at home and abroad, a show of force to dissuade other like minded westerners, and the close proximity of western Pennsylvania to Philadelphia all played a factor.
The end result was that six men were taken back to Philadelphia for trials, only two were convicted and they were pardoned. Many of the locals most opposed to the tax pushed out further west. Those who stayed benefitted from the government money used to pay the troops left behind, and those eastern land speculators sold land to the troops who decide to stay. Eventually, seven years later in 1801, excise taxes on whiskey and other goods were repealed by the Jefferson administration.
The story of the Whiskey Rebellion, occurring on the heels of the American Revolution and at the head of a new form of government under the Constitution, gives insight to three themes that characterized this period. First, a political division emerged between the friends of liberty and of order. Second, there was disenchantment with “the fruits of revolution” among the western populace. And third, there was both great change occurring and continuity in American political ideology.
Slaughter presents a good view on the split between politicians who favored a strong central government, which he termed “the friends of order,” and those who supported strong local government, “the friends of liberty.” This division was a relatively new concept in that it needed the implementation of the Constitution to give those who favored a strong national government a platform to pursue their ideas. There had always been divisions within the United States, the rich and poor, merchants and farmers, city and rural, north and south, but until now there had been no political implications to polarize interests. Now, there were Antifederalist Republicans with an ideology of liberty attracting individuals who saw their interests infringed upon by the Federalists who were bent on creating a strong central government through an ideology of order. Thus interests and ideology were now irrevocably tied together.
The desire for a strong central government coupled with the economic programs of Hamilton, of which the whiskey excise was a part, to bring the United States out of debt set in motion the political debate that launched political parties. Borden supports this claim by asserting that Hamilton’s programs were a catalyst in the development of political parties. Wilentz presents further evidence in the documents of chapter three. The words and tone of Jefferson, the Democratic Society of Pennsylvania, and the Country Democrat typify the message of the friends of liberty and reach back to the American Revolution and the Declaration of Independence. Conversely, President Washington, Adams, and the Federalist newspaper account of the trial of David Brown speak in elitist tones, reminiscent of the Tory rhetoric of the 1760s and 1770s.
The second theme, the disillusionment with the results of the American Revolution by the western populace, is clearly established by Slaughter throughout the book. In part one the taxman is lamented as well as the lack of political representation, two goals of the Revolution but not attained on the frontier. Part two details some of the responses to the excise tax, activities that the participants knew very well from a not too distant past. The description of the Boston Riot of 1765 as told by Governor Bernard (Brown) is very similar to the treatment many tax collectors suffered in trying to set up shop in western Pennsylvania in the early 1790s. The mobs even dressed up as Native Americans in imitation of the Boston Tea Party. The actual rebellion and Federal response in part three also reminds one of the heavy handed tactics used by the British to subdue the populace of Boston in the wake of the Tea Party with the Coercive Acts of 1774 (Brown). The response of the rebels was one that was directed at “another central government gone awry” and given their experiences they felt justified in their reaction as stated by a Country Democrat on the Whiskey Rebellion, 1796 (Wilentz).
The last theme, change and continuity, is readily seen in Slaughter’s work. As a popular twentieth century poet put it, “the times they are a changin’.” The United States had just ratified a new system of government that was not only new to them but to the world. Political parties began to take shape as the country wrestled with how to implement the novel Constitution. Factionalism, across politics, geography, and class, was emerging on a national level. The country was growing and two new states had already been added by 1791. By 1794, our one time oppressor, Great Britain, was now our ally and France, our essential ally a decade earlier, was now the enemy.
Yet, as fast as things were changing on the political scene, some ideas remained consistent. Despite the success on part of the federal government to assert its authority during the Whiskey Rebellion, it still struggled to effectively collect the taxes it won the right to put in effect. This was remarkably similar to the British experience during the 1760s as Greene and Maier point out in their essays on colonial resistance to taxes (Brown).
On another level, the division between easterners and westerners took on the same flavor as the British and Colonists once had. Now that the eastern seaboard was “established,” they took on the same attitude towards the western populace as Marshall described the British did toward their colonies. The east was somehow more “American” than the rabble that infested the frontier. This attitude is depicted very well by Buel and Buel with regards to Mary Fish’s son Jose and his children, especially Rebecca. They were viewed as culturally backward even though they were family.
Likewise, the westerners felt a lack of respect from the easterners in regards to political representation and military support. It was if they were lost patriots and were still fighting the Revolution out on the frontier, only the opposition had changed. This was reflected in the tactics they used when faced with an intolerable tax; organized assemblies and petitions, mob violence, burning effigies, raising liberty poles, and tarring and feathering tax collectors. The ideology was the same only the opposition had changed.
That the Whiskey Rebellion was the epilogue to the American Revolution is a valid conclusion on Slaughter’s behalf. The event did solidify the role and presence of the Federal government in directing the internal affairs of the United States. It also provided a strong impetus for the continual westward expansion of the United States as people pushed further away to live out the American ideas of freedom and liberty on their own terms. However, the three themes presented are enduring throughout American history.
We still have a decidedly two party political system that binds
ideology and interests. We still have groups who resist the ideas
of the federal system and live their lives in remote isolation and would
rather die than submit to Federal authority. And, ironically, the
more things seem to change with regards to society, technology, politics,
and economics, the more things seem to be the same over the long haul.
In that sense the Whiskey Rebellion was a prologue to the American experience.
Sources:
Morton Borden, Parties and Politics in the early Republic, 1789-1815 (Wheeling, IL, Harlan Davidson, Inc., 1967).
Richard D. Brown, Major Problems in the Era of the American Revolution, 1760-1791, second edition (Boston, Houghton Mifflin Company, 2000).
Joy Day Buel & Richard Buel, Jr., The Way of Duty (New York, W.W. Norton and Company, 1984).
Sean Wilentz, Major Problems in the Early Republic, 1787-1848 (Lexington,
MA, D.C. Heath and Company, 1992).