Whiskey Rebellion In The 1790s

Superior Essays
Whiskey rebellion also known as “Whiskey Insurrection” happened in the western Pennsylvania in the 1790s, during the presidency of George Washington. This was one of the huge conflicts that United States had to face after American Revolution. George Washington and many more people from federal government thought that the Whiskey Rebellion was the single most significant event in the history of the United States in the 1790s. This event caused many problems and issues for the people and government of the United States, because of the disagreement they had about the tax on whiskey. After the Revolutionary war, the United States had borrowed money to meet expenses. Government needed to find a way to pay all those debts and the only possible way for them was to add on taxes. “In 1791 Congress placed an excise tax on whiskey; an idea suggested by Secretary of the Treasury Alexander Hamilton as a measure to help retire the $54 million national debt.”(Anthony Brant, Rye Whiskey, Rye Whiskey) The federal government decided to put tax on whiskey because in that times people specially farmers used a lot of whiskey. Whiskey in west was not only a drink of choice, it also serve as a money, medicine and mendacity. In the western Pennsylvania the majority of the population were farmers, there was often a limited market for the sale of their grain locally and it was difficult to transport the grains to the east for sale. The goods had to be transported by horses over the mountains and roads and the horses could only carry limited amounts at a time. Converting the grain to whiskey made it more transportable and there was a better market for this product. By having tax on whiskey, farmers could lost a lot of money and jobs, so for that they start to disagree with government and realizing this tax on whiskey is same as stamp act and it’s only going to hurt people and make huge conflicts between people and the government. The Whiskey tax on west did not have any fans because people thought it was completely unfair. The amount of the tax they put on the whiskey was not impressive at all. The amount of tax was depending on the gallon and capacity. “Distillers had to pay a flat tax based on their stills' capacities” (Anthony Brant, Rye Whiskey, Rye Whiskey). If their whiskey had better quality and was more impressive, they had to pay less amount of tax which was 6 cents per gallon. This was good for the large farmers because they had big stills and produced whiskey in big volumes, so they could afford to pay that amount of tax. On the other side, the smaller farmers who didn’t have enough time and help to keep their stills for a full season had to pay more taxes on their whiskey which was around 9 cents per gallon. Then, small farmers were forced to sell their lands to other farmers who had the ability to produce bigger volume of whiskey. “Western Pennsylvania had more than a quarter of all the stills in the entire United States at the time” (William Wilson McKinney, Eighteenth Century Presbyterianism in Western Pennsylvania: Part II, 104). So, the …show more content…
The government tried to pay all their debts by putting pressure on their citizens to pay tax on something really important in that time Whiskey. This shows how much the government’s law can affect their citizen’s professional and personal lives. In Whiskey rebellion people learned that even if they disagree with something that government was doing, they should not act violence. Rebellions were hurting not only tax collectors but also regular people who obeyed the law and were paying their taxes. So, President Washington sent his troops to go and end that rebellion because it was hurting a lot of citizens. This proof how much United States government and military became stronger after the revolution. Before revolution for ending those kind of problems, never the country’s troop was involved. However, United States became so powerful that for protecting their people, they send an army that had more troops that they had for whole

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