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Hello and thank you for joining the American revolution this week. Episode 385 the Whiskey Rebellion One of the main reasons that the Constitution replaced the Articles of Confederation was to provide a way for the government to raise taxes and pay off its debts from the war. The bulk of federal revenue came from tariffs on imported goods. These were collected on the eastern ports, places like Boston, New York, Philadelphia and Charleston. Various revenue acts passed in 1789 and 1790 had to do with the various rates and methods for taxing these foreign imports. In 1791, however, Congress passed the Excise Act. It imposed a tax on distillers who produced liquor. For Americans, this meant a tax on whiskey. Alexander Hamilton, in his report on public credit in 1790, recommended an excise tax on domestic distilled spirits. Hamilton argued that a tax on liquor made good sense. Liquor was an extravagance and a luxury. If people couldn't afford to buy liquor, they wouldn't have to pay the tax. Indeed, Hamilton pointed out that the Philadelphia College of Physicians made clear that domestic liquor was actually a ravaging plague on the country. If the tax reduced drinking and promoted sobriety, all the better. Hamilton also pointed out that imported liquor was taxed at a much higher rate than domestically produced liquor, so American producers were still at an advantage. If the government tried to raise all its revenues from foreign imports, it would put itself at risk of problems if world events cut off foreign commerce or if foreign countries reacted to very high tariffs by raising their own. Excise taxes had been a very common revenue source in Britain on things like liquor and, yes, tea. Many states also had their own excise taxes at this time. A few months later, Congress considered a proposal to create an excise tax that Hamilton had suggested, and Congress rejected it. At the time, Congress was fighting over a host of different issues, including the big one whether or not to assume state debts. The excise tax proposal got caught up in that fight and kind of got pushed aside. Hamilton and other proponents, however, were confident that they could get the bill passed once they had a deal with Assumption and some other issues. In early 1791, they tried again. Opponents argued that the proposal would fall particularly on poor frontier farmers who could least afford it. On the frontier, liquor wasn't a luxury. They used it instead of money. People exchanged bottles of liquor for other items. In this cash strapped society, the tax imposed was up to 25 cents per gallon. This was pretty high even in the east, where the price of whiskey could often be a dollar a gallon. In the west, where whiskey often sold for 25 cents a gallon, the tax would be 100% of the price. Even worse, the tax was based on the still's capacity. So if your still was big enough to make, say, I don't know, 200 gallons a year, you paid the tax based on that, even if you only actually made 50 gallons per year. Requiring farmers to pay a cash tax was also an impossibility. Because the Allegheny mountains made it impossible to ship grain to markets in the east, the only way to earn cash was to convert those grains to liquor. Those bottles could be shipped far more efficiently than the grain used to produce them. Because many of the stills were on small farms. The only way to enforce the tax would be to have government officials searching private homes, something else that the American people found abhorrent. Opposition came from all the states with large frontier populations, including Georgia, North Carolina, Virginia and Maryland. But some of the strongest came from Pennsylvania. Despite the opposition, Congress passed the excise bill. On March 3, 1791, the last day of the congressional session, President Washington signed the bill into law, and complaints over the taxation of whiskey was nothing new. Also, these complaints weren't limited to federal taxation. State tax laws had also met with resistance for years. The issue was not just the tax, which most people thought was unfair. It was also that agents had the authority to trespass on private land looking for violations. While the new federal law was exceptionally controversial, any excise tax had been the source of contention. In 1786, agents in Western Pennsylvania attempted to enforce its own state tax on whiskey. The government sent revenue agent William Graham to Washington County. The community there was united in its opposition to permitting the enforcement of this tax. A mob of men in disguise broke into his house. Graham was armed, but opted not to fire on the mob, believing that if he did, they would almost certainly kill him. The mob disarmed him and destroyed all of his tax document. They forced Graham to curse himself, his commission, and then the government officials who sent him next, they shave off half of his head and braided the other half. They put him on his horse and paraded him through the countryside, forcing him to stop at each of the stills that he was supposed to visit as an agent and have a drink there. Graham passively accepted all the abuse, knowing that any response or resistance would likely only make things worse. Eventually, the mob let him go, and he fled the region. He never attempted to press any charges or accuse any individuals of a crime. This was only one example of how revenue agents were routinely treated in western Pennsylvania. The result was that few agents were willing to try, and the revenue laws went unenforced. When the federal government passed its first excise tax in 1791, the people of western Pennsylvania held public meetings to organize their response. They posted articles in the Pittsburgh Gazette making clear that any agents attempting to enforce the revenue laws would be treated as public enemies. When an agent named Robert Johnson rode into the area, he was met by a mob of 15 to 20 disguised men who were armed with muskets, rifles, and clubs. They caught him on an isolated road near Pittsburgh. He was stripped naked, had his hair cut off, and covered in tar and feathers. Johnson, who lived in this community, recognized several of the men and filed criminal complaints against them. The federal marshal refused to serve the warrants for fear of his own personal safety. Instead, the sheriff hired a cattle drover named John Connor as a deputy and made him deliver the warrants. The locals captured and whipped Connor. Then they tar and feathered him. They also stole his horse and money, leaving him tied to a tree for over five hours. That attack also went unprosecuted. Remember that during this era, professional police forces didn't exist. Sheriffs and marshals depended on the cooperation of the community in bringing criminals to justice. If the community as a whole opposed the prosecution, as in these cases, law enforcement was simply unable to enforce the law. Most Americans favored this sort of system. It ensured that laws were supported by the people. Where the people as a whole opposed a law, it would be an act of tyranny to enforce it against the public will. Congress made some changes in the excise tax amendments of 1792 which attempted to mollify the opposition. They reduced the initial tariff rates, but at the same time, they also increased the penalty for failing to register a still to $250 more than most westerners made in a year. Another criticism of the original federal law was that any legal challenges to the tax collection had to be made at the district court in Philadelphia. The cost of traveling to Philadelphia from western Pennsylvania would cost more than the tax itself. Therefore, the people argued, there was effectively no due process. After passage of the 1792 tax, the Pennsylvania legislature, which had already voted to have their federal representatives oppose the bill, condemned this Passage In June, about three months after Congress passed the bill, the Pennsylvania assembly passed a resolution calling the tax subversive of peace, liberty and the rights of citizens. Some noted that state legislators were being hypocrites and were seeking to just win political points with their rhetoric. These opponents pointed out that the state still had its own excise tax on the books. But given that they were unable to enforce it in the western part of the state, which is where almost all liquor was distilled, the legislature ended up simply repealing their own excise tax. The apparent support of the state government encouraged Westerners to continue their own resistance. They held two conventions in Pittsburgh. The first one was convened in September 1791. Before the federal bill passed, representatives from Allegheny, Fayette, Washington and Westmoreland counties participated, drawing wealthy and highly respected members of the communities. Their primary goal was to address their concerns peacefully and hopefully avoid more violence. The convention passed a resolution arguing that the taxes infringed on their liberty and and discriminated against western settlers. They protested not only the tax, but the unfair methods of collection. The resolutions called for a repeal of the state tax and a petition to Congress not to pass a new federal tax. The second convention took place about a year later, in August of 1792. After passage of the federal bill and after the repeal of the state bill, the convention passed a resolution proclaiming that any person accepting a position as tax collector as unworthy of our friendship, that person would be ostracized from the community and no one would have anything to do with them. While the resolution didn't explicitly advocate violence, it would withdraw from them every assistance, withhold all the comforts of life, and upon all occasions treat them with that contempt they deserve. The convention also set up committees of correspondence to coordinate opposition with other eastern counties. Resistance to the new legislation was not limited to Pennsylvania. Opposition organized throughout the frontier. Groups in western Virginia, Maryland, North Carolina and South Carolina all proclaimed opposition and in many cases engaged in outright resistance. Pennsylvania, however, became the center of resistance and a focus for the federal government since Philadelphia newspapers highlighted the resistance happening there. Despite the Pittsburgh convention's advocacy of non violent resistance, the locals had not given up on the use of violence. The focus of their wrath fell on other locals who were facilitating enforcement of the law. Benjamin Wells became an obvious target. Wells had been a wealthy member of the community. In 1791, he accepted an appointment as the tax collector for Fayette and Westmoreland counties. In April 1793, while Wells was away from home, a mob broke into his house, terrorizing his Wife and children. The attackers made clear to his family that he needed to resign his commission or suffer real harm. Despite the attackers wearing disguises, Mrs. Wells recognized some of them. She filed a complaint with the sheriff, but the sheriff was afraid to act. Wells was a tough frontiersman and not one to back down from a fight. It wasn't uncommon with him to have physical confrontations and outright fights with landowners when he was investigating their properties. He held on to his commission and continued in vain efforts to bring the attackers to justice. These efforts led to another attack six months later. Six armed men broke into his home again at 2 in the morning on November 22. The men had blackened their faces and wore handkerchiefs as masks. They pointed pistols at Wells's head and told him that he would die right there and then unless he turned over all of his books and papers related to the excise tax. At first, Welles refused, but eventually complied. Before the intruders left, they ordered Welles to publish his resignation from office in the Pittsburgh Gazette or they would return. They strongly implied that the next visit would be a fatal one for Wellesley. Wells published his resignation, but secretly just continued on with his duties. He sought to have his son, John Wells appointed to continue the work, and he also traveled to Philadelphia to provide testimony before the federal district judge regarding the attacks on his home. Protests began to grow in early 1794. Anonymous posts began to appear in the Pittsburgh Gazette notifying farmers that if they even registered for the tax, the their stills would be destroyed. John Neville became one of the primary targets of local wrath in 1794. Originally from Virginia, Neville had actually been an old friend of George Washington. The two men had been neighbors in Winchester. Neville had been a part of the Virginia militia that Washington commanded at the Jumonville Massacre way back in 1754. This was one of the events that started the French and Indian War. Neville also fought alongside Colonel Washington during the Braddock Campaign of 1755. Before the Revolution, Neville had been a sheriff and a justice of the peace in Winchester, Virginia. In 1775, Virginia sent Neville, who was a colonel in the militia, to take command of Fort Pitt, which Virginia called Fort Dunmore at the time. Neville built a home near the fort and lived there for about a year before joining the Continental Army. There he served under General Washington at places like Trenton, Germantown and Monmouth. He was captured in 1780 and became a prisoner of war. After he was released and just near the end of the war in 1783, he was a brevet brigadier general. After the war, General Neville settled on his 400 acre plantation just outside of Pittsburgh in an area now considered part of Pennsylvania. He was one of the wealthiest and most politically powerful men in the area. Over time, his land holdings grew up to around 10,000 acres. He was also one of the few large scale slave owners in Pennsylvania, as did most farmers in the region. Neville produced a large amount of whiskey and was a vocal opponent of the whiskey tax. He controlled the sale of whiskey and other military supplies to the army which was garrisoned at Fort Pitt. In part because of his opposition to the excise tax. He was generally popular in the region, but in 1793 his old friend President Washington gave him a commission as the inspector of revenue for Western Pennsylvania. His neighbors saw this as a betrayal. Many also believed that he would use his office to destroy smaller distilleries that were his competition and consolidate a monopoly in the whiskey business for Western Pennsylvania. The spark that really ignited what we know as the Whiskey Rebellion came about in July of 1794. A month earlier, Congress had addressed one of the concerns of the opponents and that was being dragged to federal court in Philadelphia to contest any indictments for violations of the excise law. Congress allowed local state courts to hear the matter, meaning that accused people would not have to make the 300 mile journey to Philadelphia. Neville decided to stick it to some of the farmers in the area who he didn't like. On July 15, 1794, Neville accompanied US Marshal David Lennox to serve summonses several delinquent distillers. These summonses had been issued before the changes to the law. This meant that they were still in federal court because the law was not retroactive. Farmers served by these summons would have to travel to Philadelphia to contest their claims. The following day, around dawn, a group of 50 armed militia on horseback rode toward Neville's home on Bower Hill. One of the men riding that day was William Miller, a small farmer who had been served the day before with a summons to pay a $250 fine for operating an unregistered distillery. After shouting out a warning, Neville fired on the group, killing Miller's nephew, Oliver Miller. This began a firefight that lasted nearly an hour. The militia outnumbered the defenders but were unwilling to storm the well fortified house. Neville continued to fire on the attackers while his wife and her friend reloaded his guns for him. He managed to hit four more of the attackers before they finally withdrew. Neville's son, Breslie Neville, was in Pittsburgh at the time and tried to call out the Pittsburgh militia to defend Bower Hill. He was however, unable to get any militia support or even a posse. Neville did find one man, Major Abraham Kirkpatrick. The Marylander was a Continental veteran who served as a commissary officer in Pittsburgh. He was also married to Mrs. Neville's sister. Kirkpatrick managed to get 10 or 11 soldiers who rode out to Bower Hill to defend the plantation. Meanwhile, the numbers of rebel militia continued to grow as news that Neville had killed a man during the fight. The following day, July 17th, more than 600 rebel militia assembled. Some reports say it was as many as 800. They chose Major James McFarlane to lead them. McFarlane was also an experienced Continental officer and organized the militia into an organized and disciplined fighting force. The militia army marched on Bower Hill that afternoon. General Neville had fled his home, but Major Kirkpatrick and his soldiers remained. Also defending the home were a number of Neville's armed slaves. After reaching Bower Hill, McFarlane sent a messenger up to the house. Under a flag of truce, they demanded that Neville come out and surrender his commission. Kirkpatrick informed the attackers that Neville had left the property. So they then demanded that six men be allowed to enter the home and search through Neville's papers and that the defenders had to come out of the house and ground their arms. Major Kirkpatrick refused. They did, however, agree to let the women leave the home. After the women fled, the battle began in earnest. Several militia members began setting fire to the outbuildings as both sides opened fire on each other. As the fighting raged, Presley approached his father's home along with Marshal Lennox. The sight of the marshal had no impact on the attackers. They simply held both men under guard and continued the fighting. After about an hour, firing from inside the home ceased and a white flag appeared in a window. Major McFarland stepped out from behind a tree to halt the attack when a shot from inside the home hit him in the groin. It was a fatal shot. Firing resumed until the attackers were able to set the main house on fire. Kirkpatrick and his defenders finally surrendered and were taken prisoner. That evening, the rebels looted the house and then burned everything to the ground. The only structures on the property that survived were the slave quarters and another building where the slaves stored their food. The slaves had begged the attackers not to destroy them. This open, brazen attack on a federal official would finally get the federal government to act decisively. Next week, we'll see how the government reacts to all of this. This episode is brought to you by Scribe. Back in the time of the American Revolution, one of the most powerful forces wasn't just strategy or leadership. It was information who had it, how clearly it was shared, and whether it made it to the right people at the right time often made the difference between coordination and complete chaos. And that's a problem that really hasn't gone away. It just looks different today. In modern teams, things don't usually break because people aren't capable. They break because knowledge is scattered, processes aren't clearly documented, and manual documentation never quite gets done when people are busy actually doing the work. That's exactly the problem today's sponsor, Scribe, was built to fix. 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How Revolution that's Scribe H O W Revolution this episode is brought to you by Ethos. Life insurance has always been important to me. I lost my father when I was seven years old. His life insurance made sure that my mother could raise my brother and me, keep our house, and stay out of debt. I was sure to get my own policy as soon as I had children. I considered anything else to be irresponsible. Ethos makes getting life insurance fast and easy. You can get up to $3 million in coverage with policies as low as $30 per month. The whole process is online and you can get an answer in minutes. No medical exam, just answer a few health questions. Take 10 minutes to get covered today with life insurance through Ethos. Get your free', @ethos.com revolution.com that's ethos.com revolution application times may vary, rates may vary. Life insurance is not something you should put off. Go to ethos.comrevolution today and check out your options. Hey, thanks for joining the American Revolution podcast Aftershow, part of the Airwave Media Network. Thanks to my Patreon supporters in the Alexander Hamilton Club, George Davis and Gordon Kemp. Thanks to Robert Morris Circle supporters Anthony McGinnis and Curtis Johnson. I also want to thank Tim Sweeney who joined as a standard bearer on Patreon, and to Michael Parvis and Richard Smith who both upgraded to Privy Council. Everyone who supports this podcast on patreon at the $10 level or higher receives a special limited edition magnet with a scene from the Revolutionary War. Also thanks to Tom Magner, Michael Volmar and Chris Rouch for one time gifts via PayPal or Venmo. A reminder that our next American Revolution Roundtable will take place on Wednesday evening, May 13, 2026. Anyone is welcome, but if you want to receive a zoom link, you need to join my mailing list on mailchimp or register as a member on Patreon. That's where I post the notifications with the zoom links. If you really don't want to do either of those, you can just email me for the link, but I really prefer you be on my mailing list. I only use it for that purpose this month we will be joined by four experts from various sites around Washington's Crossing so in this week's episode we covered the events leading up to the Whiskey Rebellion. The attack on Bower Hill ended up being the largest combat of this event, but the numbers of rebels swelled after this attack. As we'll see next week, these men did not see the attacks on revenue agents as a form of anarchy or rebellion. They believed they were acting in the American tradition. Remember that protesters in Boston in the colonial era had engaged in similar actions of violence and intimidation against customs agents. If an entire community opposed a law that they deemed unfair, they considered violent tactics of resistance to be a legitimate response. The whiskey tax remained in effect after the rebellion ended. Distillers gave up on the idea of resisting violently and instead turned to hiding their stills and making alcohol at night. We get the term moonshine from the fact that distillers did their work in secret at night by the light of the moon. The tax also remained controversial and a partisan issue. When Democratic Republicans won the White House and a majority in Congress in the election of 1800, they repealed the whiskey tax. In fact, they abolished all internal revenue and terminated all tax collectors. The country relied entirely on import duties. However, it came back a decade later when they needed the money for the War of 1812. One person I left out of this week's story was Herman Husband. I find him interesting because he was one of the instigators at the Battle of Alamance in North Carolina. Before the Revolutionary War even began. Alamance was also a violent dispute about Westerners on the frontier, protesting taxes imposed on them by those back East. Husband was a preacher who railed against injustice. He advocated for lots of things like a progressive wealth tax, an income tax, and communal ownership of land. He was also a Quaker and abhorred violence. He'd been present on the morning when the Battle of Alamance began, but rode away when it became clear that violence was going to break out. After that fight, he fled from North Carolina to Maryland and eventually settled in Western Pennsylvania. Once again, years later, he found himself railing against unfair taxes to a willing audience. When the whiskey tax became a big issue there after the rebellion, Husband was one of the leaders arrested and taken to Philadelphia for trial. He was tried for sedition, but was acquitted because witnesses reported that he had only ever advocated peaceful resistance. Despite his acquittal, Husband had been held for about six months awaiting trial. He was 70 years old when a jury released him. The government just set him free in Philadelphia, forcing the old man to make the 300 mile journey home on foot. He didn't get very far before he fell sick and died. In case you're wondering, the whiskey tax was pretty high compared to the cost of whiskey at the time. At 25 cents per gallon in inflation adjusted dollars, that would be about $7.50 today. The current federal tax on whiskeys is even higher, though. $13.34 per gallon. Although there is a discount for distillers for the first hundred thousand gallons produced each year, that rate is only $2.70 per gallon. Many states also impose their own excise tax. Pennsylvania's tax is also about $7.50 a gallon, the same rate after adjusting for inflation, that it imposed during the Whiskey Rebellion. So if you buy a 750 milliliter bottle of whiskey in Pennsylvania today, that's about a fifth of a gallon. A little over $4 of that would be excise taxes in combined federal and state taxes, or about 15% of the total cost. In addition to the excise tax, Pennsylvania charges another 18% sales tax that's incorporated into the sales price, as well as an additional 6% sales tax that is added after the retail price. Sales taxes didn't exist at all in 1794. So if you bought a fifth of whiskey today in Pennsylvania for, say, around $30, more than a third of your cost would be excise and sales taxes. There are many good books and academic articles that focus on the Whiskey Rebellion. You can view a more thorough list of them in the Notes that I include at the bottom of each episode's blog entry. However, I usually try to pick just one as a recommendation, a book that covers the topic thoroughly and accurately. So my book recommendation this week is the Whiskey Frontier Epilogue to the American Revolution by Thomas Slaughter. This book, first published in 1986, covers the topic well. It puts the rebellion in context and also follows a good chronological process of events. It's less than 250 pages, but I think does a really good job. The author is a history professor at the University of Rochester, so if you want to get just one book to learn more about this topic, get the Whiskey Rebellion Frontier Epilogue to the American Revolution by Thomas Slaughter. For my online recommendation, I usually like to go with a primary source or a free ebook that contains a great many primary sources. This week I want to recommend a free book that was published in 1795 called Incidents of the Insurrection in the Western Parts of Pennsylvania in the year 1794 by Hugh Henry Breckinridge. The book's author is someone I'm going to talk about a little bit more next week. He was an attorney in Pittsburgh who was right in the middle of all the events as they were unfolding. He is his own primary source for the events that took place. As always, I've included direct links on my blog and in the show notes for this book, which of course is in the public domain and is available on arXiv.org My question this week is a little different. It involves the podcast itself and we're not discussing the revolution. Melissa Wiebe asks a question on social media. Why am I getting ads for a feed when I'm paying for a subscription through Airwave History? Well, first, a little background. When I started this podcast back in 2017, I really didn't think it was going to go anywhere. I just did it as a little hobby while working in another job for many years. I didn't even attempt to put commercials on it. I never really expected it to be profitable in any way. Well, you folks proved me wrong. The podcast proved to be more popular than I ever imagined and as a result, a few years ago I began working on it full time, which required both donations and commercials for me to help make ends meet. A lot of you folks stepped up at the time and provided more support to help me keep going. Recently, though, I have to say, support has fallen off as has commercial revenue. It's hard to say if it's the economy or maybe the podcast has just run its course. In any event, if it does keep going, I Need to make a living at it now. To get to your question, I joined Airwave Media Network shortly after going full time and they provide all the commercials that you hear on this podcast. I don't like commercials more than anyone else, but it was the only model available that seemed to make financial sense. If you listen to the main feed, you're going to get commercials. I've created three options for those who want to avoid commercials. The first is to support this podcast on Patreon. If you join there for as little as $2 a month, you can get a commercial free feed to the podcast with all the episodes available commercial free. The second option is the Into History Network. This gives you access to about a dozen different history podcasts, including the American Revolution Podcast. You get commercial free access to all of them for $8 a month, all commercial free. The third option is also run by Airwave Media and I think this is where our questioner got stuck. They have a channel on Apple Podcasts where you can listen to a group of podcasts that are part of their network. They run two different feeds, one with commercials and one without. You can get a subscription for the ad free episodes. Unfortunately, I have the least control over this option since it's run entirely by the network. But I do upload a commercial option and a commercial free option to this channel for each episode, so be sure to be accessing the correct one. If you pay the monthly fee, you should be able to get the commercial free access. If you have a question you'd like me to answer, please reach out to me either via email or on X, Facebook, Quora or Reddit. Well, that's all for this week. I hope you will join me again next week for another American Revolution podcast.
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