Abel J. Morneault Memorial Library

Includes bibliographical references (p. [233]-278) and index

Context: -- The tax man cometh -- The quest for frontier autonomy -- Sectional strife -- Lice, labor, and landscape -- George Washington and the western country; -- Chronology: -- Indians and the excise -- Assembly and proclamation -- Liberty, order, and the excise -- Alternative perspectives -- Federalism besieged; -- Consequence: -- Rebellion -- Response -- A tale of two riots and a watermelon army; -- Conclusion

In 1794, "the single largest example of armed resistance to a law of the United States between the ratification of the Constitution and the Civil War" occurred in four frontier counties of western Pennsylvania when angry farmers there refused to pay an excise tax on whiskey-- a tax recently enacted by the new Federal government in Philadelphia. Forming themselves into mobs and sometimes disguised as Indians in deliberate imitation of the Boston Tea Party, the farmers physically assaulted the excise collectors. The response of Washington's first administration to this "Whiskey Rebellion" was swift and dramatic- he ordered an army of 13,000 to march west and crush this rebellion, thereby establishing a range of precedents that continue to define federal authority over localities to this day. The author presents not only a major new scholarly interpretation of the event, but a bold bid to establish the rebellion as a paradigm for understanding the ongoing debate between the defenders of liberty and the advocates of order through the entire sweep of our nation's history. -- Howard Lamar, Book jacket

This book assesses the rebellion in relation to interregional tensions, international diplomacy, frontier expansion, republican ideology and the social and political conflict of the l780s -1790s