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.