A gripping and sensational tale of violence, alcohol, and taxes, The
Whiskey Rebellion uncovers the radical eighteenth-century people's
movement, long ignored by historians, that contributed decisively to the
establishment of federal authority. In 1791, on the frontier of western
Pennsylvania, local gangs of insurgents with blackened faces began to
attack federal officials, beating and torturing the tax collectors who
attempted to collect the first federal tax ever laid on an American
product--whiskey. To the hard-bitten people of the depressed and violent
West, the whiskey tax paralyzed their rural economies, putting money in
the coffers of already wealthy creditors and industrialists. To
Alexander Hamilton, the tax was the key to industrial growth. To
President Washington, it was the catalyst for the first-ever deployment
of a federal army, a military action that would suppress an insurgency
against the American government. With an unsparing look at both Hamilton
and Washington, journalist and historian William Hogeland offers a
provocative, in-depth analysis of this forgotten revolution and
suppression. Focusing on the battle between government and the
early-American evangelical movement that advocated western secession,
The Whiskey Rebellion is an intense and insightful examination of the
roots of federal power and the most fundamental conflicts that
ignited--and continue to smolder--in the United States.