Summary

• The Whiskey Rebellion was a tax revolt in Western Pennsylvania from 1791 to 1794, sparked by Alexander Hamilton’s whiskey excise tax, which disproportionately affected frontier farmers who relied on whiskey as a form of currency.
• Resistance to the whiskey tax escalated into violence, culminating in the Battle of Bower Hill, where rebels attacked the estate of General John Neville, a prominent whiskey tax collector and distiller.
• President George Washington responded to the growing insurrection by invoking the Militia Act of 1792 and mobilizing a force of 12,000 soldiers to confront the rebels, who disbanded without a single shot being fired.
• The Whiskey Rebellion marked the first significant challenge to federal authority in the young United States and demonstrated the government’s ability to enforce its laws, although the whiskey tax itself was later repealed under President Thomas Jefferson in 1802.

The Whiskey Rebellion began with whiskey tax, which sparked a rebellion in West Pennsylvania  that involved over 7,000 insurrectionists, lasting from 1791 to 1794.  President George Washington responded to the rebellion by sending a 12,000 soldiers to Pennsylvania  to confront the rebels, who disbanded without a single shot fired. The Whiskey Rebellion marked the first major challenge to federal authority in the young United States.

What Caused the Whiskey Rebellion?

Freedom from British rule had not come cheap; each colony had accrued significant debt during the Revolutionary War that remained on the books when the colonies became part of the United States. In his First Report on the Public Credit in 1790, Treasury Secretary Alexander Hamilton argued for the “assumption” of this $25 million in outstanding debt by the Federal government. As long as the states held these debts, they would compete with the Federal government for both creditors’ dollars and for tax revenue. He faced stiff opposition in converting his plan into Congressional action, but eventually prevailed.

Hamilton also fought an uphill battle for an excise tax on whiskey. Taxes on commodities were an easy way to raise the money the government needed to pay the service on the debt and to provide much-needed revenue for basic government functions. President George Washington initially resisted Hamilton’s idea, but after a trip across southern Pennsylvania and northern Virginia in early 1791, where local officials assured him it was a good idea, he threw his support toward the excise bill. The First Congress passed the bill in the spring of 1791.

Under the new law, producers would pay based on the size of their stills. A still that could produce up to 400 gallons of whiskey per year would be taxed at between 7 and 18 cents per gallon, depending on proof. Smaller producers would pay 10 cents per month or 7 cents per gallon, depending on which number was smaller. Later changes to the law reduced the tax burden on the largest distillers fractions of a penny per gallon.

Because the whiskey tax was universally detested, Congress was quickly flooded with petitions and letters from all over the country asking for its repeal. However, most distillers just passed their increased costs onto consumers.

Resistance to Whiskey Tax

The exception was Western Pennsylvania, where detest of the whiskey tax quickly hardened into outright resistance. At the time, this area was considered the American frontier: an isolated and impoverished region where there was little hard currency, but a lot of whiskey. Unable to easily move agricultural products to large markets, farmers were used to converting their surplus grain to whiskey, which could then be used for barter. So there were many small stills in the area, run by farmers who had little hard cash to pay the tax.

The first attempt to collect taxes gave the government a taste of what was to come. On September 11, 1791, excise officer Robert Johnson set off on his collection rounds. He was soon confronted by a group of 11 men dressed as women. They dragged him off his horse, stripped him naked, tarred and feathered him and abandoned him in the woods. Johnson was able to recognize some of his attackers and swore out warrants for their arrest. With few men willing to take on the task, the warrants were given to an elderly cattle drover named John Connor. He, too, was confronted by a mob, horsewhipped, and tied to a tree for hours.

The Battle of Bower Hill

Sporadic attacks on tax collectors continued over the next three years, as the resistance grew larger and more organized.

Anger began to swirl around General John Neville, a tough Revolutionary War veteran who had moved to the region from his native Virginia in the 1780s. Neville had accumulated substantial wealth and property, with a 10,000-acre plantation, capped with a gracious hilltop manor at Bower Hill, near present-day Pittsburgh.

In 1791, he had been named as the district of the revenue, which stuck many in the area as putting a fox in charge of the henhouse; Neville was in charge of collecting the whiskey tax, and he was possibly the largest commercial producer of whisky in Western Pennsylvania. Neville had originally opposed the tax, but once he received his appointment, he changed his position. As inspector of the revenue, he drew a salary of $450 a year and 1 percent commission on all taxes collected. More significantly, cracking down on illegal producers could allow him to cut down on competition and sell more of his own product under lucrative deals with the Army.

On July 15, 1794, Neville agreed to escort U.S. Marshal David Lenox to serve a warrant for nonpayment of taxes on a farmer named David Miller. When Miller refused the summons, Neville and Lenox decided to leave, only to be confronted with a pitchfork-wielding mob. They escaped unharmed, but the mob continued to grow in size, and by the next morning, a group of around 600 men marched on Neville’s Bower Hill estate.

While many in this small rebel army were drunk by the time they reached the foot of the hill, most were Army veterans with a muscle memory for the drums and shouted commands of their officers, and the force made an impressive sight as they moved in formation to surround the main house. The women and children of the family were allowed to escape. Marshall Lenox had fled as well, taken under escort to the nearby garrison at Couch’s Fort. This left Neville, a handful of soldiers, and a few armed slaves to stand against the rebels.

The rebels began setting the outbuildings on fire and shooting the house, as soldiers fired from inside the building and slaves fired from their cabins on the margins of the main yard. Revolutionary War veteran and rebel commander Major James McFarland was shot dead by a sniper on the upper floor of Bower Hill. Another man was killed and many others injured in the fight, and Bower Hill itself was set ablaze. The shooting eventually ended, and the rebels retreated.

At a public meeting in Pittsburgh a couple days after the attack, the rebels claimed a moral victory over Neville and the federal government. But to the surprise of the rebels, leader Hugh Brackenridge argued “what had been done might be morally right, but it was legally wrong.” By forming a military force and attacking agents of the federal government, the rebels were now flirting with treason. They had also given President George Washington a clear path to invoke the Militia Act of 1792 and send an army in to quell the rebellion.

Federal Response to the Whiskey Rebellion

The “murder” of Major James McFarland energized the rebels, and the number of insurrectionists actually grew following the Battle of Bower Hill. By August 1, 1794, more than 7,000 men were massed at Braddock’s Field, just east of Pittsburgh. Many of these men did not own stills, or even land. Their grievances ran towards wealth inequality, the failure of the government to protect them from Native American attacks, and other philosophical issues of the day. Some spoke of sacking and looting Pittsburgh’s elite, while others weighed declaring independence from the new union.

President Washington at first pursued reconciliation with the rebels, dispatching a team of negotiators to the region in late July. The negotiators met with a committee of rebels, and while the committee eventually agreed to renounce violence and obey federal authority, a referendum of citizens did not find the majority willing to submit. Negotiators told Washington that military force would likely be required to enforce order.

Washington had been convinced since June 1794 that only military force could bring the area back under control, and after negotiations failed, he was ready to act. He called an emergency meeting of the Cabinet, which agreed almost unanimously to call out the troops. Under the Militia Act of 1792, at least one Supreme Court Justice needed to certify that an area was in rebellion and could no longer be controlled by local authorities. On August 4, Justice James Wilson declared on “in the counties of Washington and Allegany [sic], in Pennsylvania, the laws of the United States are opposed and the execution thereof obstructed by combinations too powerful to be suppressed by the ordinary course of judicial proceedings or by the powers vested in the marshal of that district,” and were therefore in a state of rebellion.

Washington issued a lengthy proclamation on August 7, laying out the the government’s case against the insurgents and concluded “it is in my judgement necessary under the circumstances of the case to take measure for calling forth the milita in order to suppress the combinations aforesaid, and to cause the laws to be duly executed; and I have accordingly determined so to do, feeling the deepest regret for the occasion, but withal the most solemn conviction that the essential interests of the Union demand it, that the very existence of Government and the fundamental principles of social order are materially involved in the issue, and that the patriotism and firmness of all good citizens are seriously called upon, as occasions require, to aid in the effectual depression of so fatal a spirit.”

Calling on Pennsylvania, Maryland, New Jersey, and Virginia, Washington assembled a militia force of about 12,000 by the fall of 1794. Furthermore, the old soldier descided to join them as they made their way into Western Pennslylvania, leaving Philadelphia in the presidential coach on September 30. He traveled with the troops as far west as Carlisle. Although he was in poor health and in pain from various illnesses, he reveled at being back in camp, falling back into familiar routines of military life. Still, he did not directly command the troops, and left the day to day movements to militia commanders and Alexander Hamilton. He returned to Philadelphia as the troops prepared to move into the contested territory.

This massive show of force caused the rebels to disband without a single shot being fired. The militia moved systematically through the settlements and rounded up key insurgents, and the whole insurrection quickly fell apart. Aside from a small garrison of about 1,200 soldiers charged with keeping the peach, the main column of the militia was heading east by late November.

Aftermath

Two dozen rebels were indicted for high treason and ten eventually stood trial in Philadelphia. Two were convicted and sentenced to hang, only to be pardoned by President Washington, saying they had “abandoned their errors.” It took over two years for all cases to be heard and all remaining prisoners to be released.

Washington’s actions were seen as a victory for centralized government. Federal forces were able to put down the rebellion with minimal effort, and violence in the region largely ceased after 1794. But the actual collection of the taxes still proved to be next to impossible, and it was eventually repealed by President Thomas Jefferson in 1802.

Sources:

Boyd, Steven R., ed. The Whiskey Rebellion: Past and Present Perspectives. Westport, Connecticut: Greenwood Press, 1985.

Cooke, Jacob E. “The Whiskey Insurrection: A Re-Evaluation,” Pennsylvania History 30 (July 1963): 316–64.

Hogeland, William. The Whiskey Rebellion: George Washington, Alexander Hamilton, and the Frontier Rebels Who Challenged America’s Newfound Sovereignty. New York: Scribner, 2006.

Citation Information