During the second half of the 18^th century, the Forks of the Ohio, where the Monongahela and Allegheny Rivers come together to form the Ohio River, were a vortex of conflict that dramatically influenced the course of events in North America and the unfolding of a young United States.  In his latest book, The Whiskey Rebellion: A Distilled History of an American Crisis, historian Brady J. Crytzer adds to his already substantial body of work exploring the critical role the region played in American history.  It is a must read.

            In 1791, Congress passed a whiskey tax to raise revenue and pay off war debts.  Treasury Secretary Alexander Hamilton, whose brainchild the whiskey tax was, designed the tax to help consolidate capital for investment in the country’s infrastructure.  Small farmers, who constituted the bulk of distillers on the frontier, rebelled.  Their resentment of the tax was not driven merely by its existence, but also by its structure, which they argued discriminated against small farmers.   They had a point.  Whiskey, not just as commodity, was a medium of exchange because hard currency was scarce on the frontier.   Thus, in some ways, the whiskey tax resembled the stamp tax; one had to pay it to engage in normal commerce.  The tax could be levied both on stills and the amount of whiskey each distiller produced.  Large enterprises who ran their stills year-round could pay the tax.  Small farmers, however, primarily ran their stills for brief periods in order to convert grain crops to more readily transportable whiskey.   Moreover, the tax had to be paid in cash, which was scarce on the frontier.  As a result, the tax was regressive and more difficult for smaller farmer to pay than for large the large distillers.  

            Rebellion was in some ways the predictable outcome.  By 1791, the frontier was populated by people with a tradition of resisting governments they believed were run for the benefit of others.  Whether those elites were in far-off London or distant Philadelphia was immaterial.  Pittsburgh might be a federalist outpost as a frontier center for exercising the authority of the newly-established United States government, but the more populous surrounding countryside was dominated by small farmers and small communities.  They responded much in the same way Americans had before the Revolution: community meetings and remonstrances, isolated attacks on officials, intimidation of those cooperating with distant governments, destruction of property, the creation of new political institutions, and the old stand-by: tarring and feathering.  Events culminated in a two-day battle for General John Neville’s home and a large muster of rebels at the site of British Major General Edward Braddock’s defeat on the Monongahela River.

            Those already familiar with the rebellion are likely accustomed to reading about it from the perspective of federal officials in Philadelphia: President Washington, Treasury Secretary Hamilton, and Secretary of War Henry Knox.  It was an early test of the U.S. Constitution and how federal officials would interpret the document and their authorities to suppress rebellion and maintain the new government.  Washington famously raised an army and dispatched it west to suppress the rebellion and reassert legitimate government.  Rebels melted before the display of raw power and dispersed.  Arrests under horrid conditions and some trials followed, but enforcing federal authority was next to impossible as reliable witnesses made themselves scarce.  Hamilton, who sought to break the area in an assertion of federal power, came up short in his trials and Washington issued a general amnesty in 1795.  

            Crytzer turns the formulaic presentation on its head, telling the story of the Whiskey Rebellion from the bottom up.  He pays close attention to the ways in which the rebellion escalated.  In particular, Crytzer reminds the reader of early efforts by political leaders to organize the rebellion into a political movement for their own benefit and their subsequent distancing from it as thing turned violent, at least in part to preserve their political viability.  In some ways, events ran away from them.  That was probably inevitable; leadership had its place, but people on the frontier had a fierce independent streak in them.  Unless federal authorities were prepared to impose a draconian, nearly arbitrary order on the area, even a federal army would be unable to maintain the peace.  Hamilton, and Washington, probably had no alternative to the general amnesty when faced with independent citizens determined to maintain the sovereignty of the people.  Ultimately, events elsewhere changed the region’s role in the future of the United States and enabled everyone to move on.  The question of limits on federal authority, of course, did not and Crytzer finds parallels between the philosophical motivations among Pennsylvania’s rebels and Thomas Jefferson’s presidential campaigns.    

            Crytzer’s nuanced narrative moves swiftly and surely over people, places, and events that might otherwise threaten to overwhelm the story of the Whiskey Rebellion.  With the practiced eye of an experienced writer and historian, he introduces individuals with enough background and color to fix them in a reader’s mind without burying us in details that might distract.  For those interested in visiting the area, he includes helpful location information about key places and buildings—some of which remain—where events took place.  A healthy number of illustrations help flesh out the story.  The Whiskey Rebellion is a must read for anyone who wants to understand frontier history and the ever-present potential for escalating resistance to the immoderate use of federal authority.