The Whiskey Rebellion

The Whiskey Rebellion by William Hogeland

Category: History Grade: B-

First, a digression. Go to the last entry on my blog - not the email you received, but follow the link to mseriff.blogspot.com and look at the entry for the book called The Rabbit Factory and you'll something really interest and, to me, exciting and a little intimidating. Look down below the review and you'll see a comment posted to the blog by the book's author, Marshall Karp! This is just very, very cool. Back in the day, when I was still involved in building AOL, one of the buzz words that got thrown around was "disintermediation". All that really means is that online services allow simple, cheap and casual direct connections between the producers and consumers of information - i.e. between authors and readers. I really enjoy doing these reviews and knowing that there are around 40 of you or so out there who (I hope) read them is terrific. But the thought that, with no effort on my part, this is a means to, occasionally, meet (sort-of) the authors that create the books is just amazing to me. In hindsight, though, I'm really glad I gave The Rabbit Factory a good review!

Now on to The Whiskey Rebellion. The myth that we learn in school is that the Founding Fathers created the United States with little or no opposition and that the country was off and running towards its smooth, democratic futures. The only big hiccup was the Civil War. The reality is that almost continuously until after the Civil War, the odds on this country surviving as a single country was constantly in doubt. Even the structure of government - democracy or pseudo-monarchy - was up for grabs. There was much talk of making Washington king rather than president and the political battles inside the establishment were vicious.

Hogeland's book, while not the best written history I've read, does cover an interesting period - something that could easily be called the first civil war (maybe even the second if you count Shay's Rebellion). As the name implies, the rebellion grew out of opposition to the first tax on domestic production - the whiskey tax. The tax was devised by Alexander Hamilton - Washington's Secretary of the Treasury. While the obvious reason for the tax was to raise federal dollars, mostly to pay off the debts of the revolutionary war, Hamilton's backstory was that the tax would go a long way to create the industrialized, financially oriented nation that he was trying to create. His primary opponent in this was Thomas Jefferson, the leader of the anti-federalists. In the short term, this disagreement forced Jefferson to resign the cabinet and gave Hamilton a clear, although not very long lived, advantage.

The tax was a killer to small distillers and, especially to western distillers (remember that "western" in this age means Pittsburgh). In the west, whiskey was used almost as currency. Grain was big, bulky and hard to ship so it wasn't particularly valuable. Take the same grain and distill it to whiskey and you could use it to pay the rent or easily and profitably ship it east. The new tax, however, had to be paid in coin - something most distillers didn't have. In addition, the way the tax was implemented, it strongly favored the huge distillers (mostly eastern or at least with eastern connections) over the small - forcing the little guys out of business.

Hogeland goes in to great detail introducing us to the people of the west who masterminded the rebellion (and some who just got caught up the flow). Some were just nuts - e.g. Henry Husband who had gone a wealthy family to being a wealthy Quaker to, eventually becoming an unkempt religious hermit. Others, like Henry Breckinridge, who got caught trying to be the moderate who mediated between the sides and ended being persecuted by both. Of course, Hamilton and Washington play a big roll.

Washington eventually decides that defiance of the law, however motivated, can't stand and for the first time, sends troops (federalized state militias since there is not yet any federal standing army) against U.S. citizens. In the face of the show of force, the rebellion completely falls apart with a few leaders fleeing and only a few people ever prosecuted. The long term impact is a huge victory for Hamilton and his concepts setting the stage for the financial structure that would, in the long run, make this country a great economic power.

Sometimes books are worth reading because they're well written; sometimes because they tell a great story. The real winners are the ones that do both. While this book isn't one of those, if you like history, especially early American history, you'll probably like this one.