Capture of the Whiskey-Tax Collectors, depicting the apprehension of tax collectors in Pennsylvania during the Whiskey Rebellion of 1794. (From Columbus and Columbia: A Pictorial History of Man and the Nation [ca. 1893]. Private collection/© Look and Learn/The Bridgeman Art Library)
RUM WAS THE DOMINANT American spirit before the Revolutionary War. However, when the war broke out in 1775, the importation of molasses from the Caribbean almost ceased, and it remained difficult to acquire molasses during the following eight years. Whiskey, however, was the obvious alternative. Whiskey could be made from abundant locally grown grain, so its production and consumption skyrocketed during the war.
In 1778, distilleries in Virginia bought so much of the available grain for whiskey making that the state legislature prohibited the distilleries from using it to make spirits; legislators wanted to ensure there was enough grain for bread production. It is noteworthy that this law was in effect for only three months before it was repealed.1 When the American Revolution ended in 1783, the British forbade molasses trading with their colonies in the Caribbean, but the other European colonies increased their exports of molasses to the new nation. Although rum distillers quickly regained some of their market share on the East Coast, many Americans had become fond of whiskey; in addition, it was less expensive than rum. Therefore, whiskey’s popularity continued to grow after the war’s end.2
The Revolutionary War caused another important change to American whiskey drinking. Prior to the war, the British had decreed that the lands west of the Appalachian Mountains were reserved for the American Indians. Some settlers from the East Coast violated this decree, but when the peace treaty ending the American Revolution gave all British-controlled lands east of the Mississippi River to the fledgling nation, thousands of American settlers headed west. The population of western Pennsylvania increased from 33,000 at the war’s end to 95,000 by 1800. Most settlers west of the Appalachians carved out subsistence farms and grew grains, including wheat, rye, and corn. Because transportation was difficult for bulky goods, grains could be more easily converted into whiskey, which was more compact, easier to transport, and valuable. Whiskey production increased, and it would soon become America’s spirit of choice. But before this happened, a problem arose: Congress needed money to help pay the debts incurred during the American Revolution. An excise tax on distilled spirits, including whiskey, was the solution—and it would lead to a rebellion.
Background
Fermented beverages such as wine, cider, and beer were created in ancient times and commonly produced in prehistoric Europe. Consisting mainly of water, these ancient beverages were relatively low in alcoholic content—from 1 to 6 percent, depending on the product and the process by which it was made.
The concept of distilled spirits arrived in Europe from Muslim lands in approximately the twelfth century. Distillation is a relatively simple process in which alcohol is separated from a fermented liquid, such as wine or cider. Because water has a higher boiling point than alcohol, heating a fermented liquid to at least 172°F but less than 212°F will vaporize the alcohol but not the water. The gaseous ethanol then can be captured through a still; once cooled, the alcohol returns to a liquid state. This method is not perfect; some water also evaporates, but the alcoholic content can be intensified by repeating the distillation process several times. After the introduction of distillation, distilled spirits quickly spread throughout the continent of Europe, becoming an important part of daily life. Distilled spirits were used medicinally; they also were added to wine to increase its alcoholic content.
Making distilled spirits became quite popular in some places in Europe. In the Middle Ages, Europeans frequently called distilled spirits by the Latin name aqua vitae, which means “water of life.” In the Gaelic language of Ireland, the phrase became uisce beatha, which may have been transformed into the English word “whiskey”—a distilled liquor made from grains (mainly wheat and rye).
During the colonial period, an estimated 250,000 Scots-Irish immigrants arrived in America, bringing their love of whiskey with them. By 1760, whiskey making was a common practice throughout the colonies.3 Whiskey was frequently drunk in the morning, when it was combined with wild cherries (or other bitter fruit or bitter bark) to produce morning bitters. Workers at harvest time also devoured it in great quantities.4
Grain growers who were located west of the Appalachians, faced a challenge. Few mountain roads connected their lands to the East, and no navigable rivers or canals ran from the East Coast to the western areas. Moreover, the mouth of Mississippi River, then controlled by Spain, was often closed to American shipping. Shipping bulky grain over the mountains to eastern cities was thus too expensive to be profitable. The solution was to convert the grains, mainly rye, into a less bulky product—whiskey. Not only was whiskey a cheap substitute for rum, which had to be conveyed over the mountains from the East Coast, but it also was a liquid asset. Small quantities could be carried on horseback to local and regional markets, where it was bartered for commodities, such as salt or iron, that were not produced in the West.5 Sharecroppers and tenant farmers could even pay their rent with whiskey, and employers could compensate their laborers with it as well.6
There was always plenty of whiskey to go around on the frontier—maybe even too much. Whiskey-loving frontiersmen were prone to violence when they overindulged, and their behavior exceeded anything that visiting easterners had previously witnessed.7 Perhaps it was just snobbery; those who visited the frontier and wrote about their experiences were mainly from the upper class. To them, whiskey was the poor man’s drink. The elite preferred imported wine or brandy, of which they drank copious quantities.8
Anti-Whiskey Movement
The rise of American whiskey production elicited some fervent opposition. During the Revolutionary War, Continental Army soldiers were given a daily ration of whiskey, rum, or cider when available. Soldiers could also buy alcohol from sulters and other local sources. Soldiers and officers drank considerable quantities of alcohol, and inebriation caused many problems during the war.9
One man who was deeply concerned with drinking in the Continental Army was Dr. Benjamin Rush of Philadelphia, the nation’s first surgeon general. During the American War for Independence, Rush became concerned with alcoholism in the army, so he wrote a pamphlet, Directions for Preserving the Health of Soldiers (1777), arguing against the use of alcohol to diminish the effects of extreme cold or heat. The use of alcohol for this purpose, Rush pointed out, did not produce the desired effect; it was merely an excuse to drink. Rush also was concerned with the alcohol consumption of army officers. He urged his friend John Adams, the future president of the United States, to pass a resolution stating that “if any major or brigadier general drink more than a quart of whiskey … in twenty-four hours, he shall be publically reprimanded at the head of his division or brigade.”10 Rush and George Washington had a falling out, and Rush was removed from his position with the Continental Army; however, he remained an important political leader.
Rush wrote a letter to the Pennsylvania Journal in 1782 arguing against the then-common practice of providing workers with generous allotments of distilled beverages during harvest time; he suggested water, beer, and buttermilk as alternatives, but his advice was widely ignored. Rush believed the best way to discourage people from drinking was to educate them. In 1773, he helped establish Dickinson College in Carlisle, Pennsylvania, located in a region on the frontier settled initially by Scots-Irish immigrants and later by Germans. While visiting the college in 1784, Rush saw still houses on virtually every farm. “The Quantity of Rye destroyed & of Whisky drank in these places is immense,” he wrote in his diary, and he feared “its effects upon thier industry—health & morals are terrible. I was sorry to hear that the Germans in some places were beginning to be corrupted with it.”11 The Scots-Irish did indeed enjoy their whiskey, which was the national beverage in Ireland. They had brought their love of uisce beatha with them to western Pennsylvania.
Upon returning to Philadelphia after his visit to Carlisle, Rush launched an educational campaign against distilled spirits with the publication of a pamphlet, An Enquiry into the Effects of Spirituous Liquors on the Human Body and Their Influence upon the Happiness of Society (1784). In it, he concluded that “a people corrupted by strong drink cannot long be free people” and that Americans should give up ardent spirits “suddenly and entirely.”12
Rush then encouraged the prestigious College of Physicians of Philadelphia to endorse temperance. It worked. The college proclaimed that distilled alcoholic beverages—rum, whiskey, and brandy—gave rise to serious and tragic illnesses, including “Dropsy, Epilepsy, Palsy, Apoplexy, Melancholy and Madness; which too seldom yield to the powers of medicine.” The college further observed that “where distilled spirituous liquors do not produce these terrible and obstinate diseases they generally impair the strength of the body so as to lessen its ability to undergo that labour, either in degree or duration, which it is capable of without them.” The College of Physicians requested that the Pennsylvania state legislature enact a law “for the checking the improper use of distilled spirituous liquors.”13
Whiskey Tax
As a result of the American Revolution, the states that had borne the brunt of the conflict were left with heavy debts. Some states paid down their debts, but others did not. When the Constitution was ratified and Congress first met in 1789, one of the important questions for those attending was what to do with these debts. Secretary of the Treasury Alexander Hamilton and others wanted the federal government to assume responsibility. Virginians Thomas Jefferson, then the secretary of state, and James Madison, a leader in the House of Representatives, opposed this. They argued that since Virginia had already paid off half of its war debts, it was unfair that Virginians should now pick up part of the burden for other states that had not bothered to do so. However, Jefferson and Madison wanted the nation’s capital (then in Philadelphia) to be moved south, so they reached a compromise: the federal government would take care of the states’ unpaid war debts, and the nation’s capital would be moved to a spot along the Potomac River, which ran between Virginia and Maryland.
A serious problem remained, however: How could the federal government pay off the debts? The nation’s main source of revenue at the time was import duties. Hamilton informed Congress that import duties would not cover the costs of both the federal government and the servicing of the war debts. At the request of Congress, Hamilton submitted the “Report on Public Credit” in January 1790. In the report, Hamilton recommended a tax on distilled spirits:
Some of them, in the excess in which they are used, [are] pernicious luxuries. And there is, perhaps, none of them which is not consumed in so great abundance as may justly denominate it a source of national extravagance and impoverishment. The consumption of ardent spirits, particularly, no doubt very much on account of their cheapness, is carried to an extreme which is truly to be regretted, as well in regard to the health and the morals, as to the economy of the community.14
Although his proposal for taxes included several other beverages, including tea and coffee, the others were imported and already part of the federal government’s purview; these were not new taxes but only increases in previously established revenue sources. However, an excise tax on the domestic production of spirits, such as whiskey, was a new tax.
Pro-Tax
Excise taxes on spirits had been levied previously in other countries, such as England and Ireland, but these laws proved ineffective because distillers simply refused to pay and enforcement was weak. Since its founding as a colony, Pennsylvania itself had passed at least nineteen laws taxing distilled spirits; these laws had levied fees on the retail sale of distilled spirits rather than on the production of the alcohol.15 In March 1783, the Pennsylvania legislature passed another excise tax on distilled liquor that evoked strong opposition, particularly from farmers in western Pennsylvania. The inhabitants of Westmoreland County, for instance, petitioned the state legislature to repeal the tax. They viewed the law with “general disapprobation” and “universal abhorrence and detestation.” Farmers reported that spirits were absolutely necessary to attract the hordes of laborers required for harvest. Moreover, since distilleries supplied whiskey in the same way that mills supplied flour, they wondered why they “should be made subject to a duty for drinking our grain more than eating it.”16 The Pennsylvania legislature rescinded the excise tax on distilled spirits and directed its senators and congressmen to vote against the bill to levy an excise tax on whiskey production that was introduced into Congress in May 1790.
Nationally, strong arguments on both sides of the excise tax issue were presented. Its supporters saw the bill as a good solution to the issue of war debts; if passed, it also promised public health benefits because it was thought that increasing the price of hard liquor would discourage consumption.17 On the anti-tax side, there was strong opposition because of concern about the ability of the federal government to tax citizens directly—a power that the Confederation did not have. Pennsylvania representatives opposed the bill as directed by their state legislature. Southern representatives opposed the bill because whiskey was more commonly manufactured in the western portions of their states. The tax opponents carried the day, and the bill was soundly defeated in Congress in June 1790. Over the next few months, Congress explored other possible revenue sources, but all were rejected. Many feared that if legislators could not agree on a solution, the compromise reached earlier that year might be in danger.
Congress thus requested that Alexander Hamilton write another report identifying potential revenue sources. Hamilton submitted the “Further Report on Public Credit” in December 1790. In the report, Hamilton again recommended a tax on whiskey, and a new bill was introduced. This time, however, the excise tax generated considerable public support. The main reason for this shift was that Benjamin Rush and other physicians came out for the bill, hoping that the tax would reduce alcohol use and alcoholism. The College of Physicians of Philadelphia passed a resolution requesting that Congress endorse the excise tax as a means of reforming the “morals and manners” of whiskey drinkers. The physicians proclaimed that the “pernicious effects” of distilled spirits caused “a great proportion of the most obstinate, painful and mortal disorders, which affect the human body” and that “they are not only destructive to health and life, but … they impair the faculties of the mind, and thereby tend equally to dishonor our character as a nation, and to degrade our species as intelligent beings.” They ardently urged Congress to “impose such heavy duties upon all distilled spirits as shall be effectual to restrain their intemperate use in our country.” This resolution was published in the Gazette of the United States in January 1791, as were letters supporting the measure. One reader wrote that if women had been able to vote on this measure, it would readily pass because women suffered more from men’s excessive drinking of distilled spirits. If the writer had his way, a 100 percent tax would be leveled on whiskey.18
The new bill would impose three different levels of taxes on distilled spirits. The heaviest tax was on imported spirits, such as wine and brandy; prices for these goods would increase by about 50 percent as a result of the new taxes, but the elites who enjoyed these luxury items could well afford the additional cost. A middle tax rate was levied on domestically manufactured spirits made from imported products—mainly rum, which was distilled from imported molasses. Rum was produced almost entirely on the East Coast, and these added costs were also easily passed on to consumers. The lowest tax rate was placed on distilled spirits made from domestic ingredients. This tax was 4 pence (about 8 cents) for each gallon of liquor distilled. For whiskey producers in the East, this tax was again simply passed on to consumers, who did not make much of a fuss about the increase.
In frontier areas, however, this last provision of the tax bill caused an upheaval. At the time, a gallon of whiskey cost about 28 cents in western Pennsylvania, so the 8-cent tax increased the price by almost 25 percent. This was a hefty increase for subsistence frontiersmen, who produced whiskey to barter for goods they needed. Even worse, in the eyes of the frontiersmen, was that the tax had to be paid in coin by the manufacturer: there was little specie on the frontier, and what was available went for absolute necessities that could not be acquired by barter.
Yet another point of contention was that the tax bill did not discriminate between whiskey made for personal use or for commercial sale. Both were taxed equally. This did not affect large distillers engaged in a commercial business because they did not drink up their profits or barter their goods. But for smaller distillers on the frontier who produced whiskey for their own use as well as for sale, this was a heavy burden to bear. In addition, because much of the whiskey on the frontier was bartered, small producers had to pay the tax and then figure out a way to recoup the expense when bartering their whiskey.
Most of all, westerners objected to the enforcement provisions of the tax bill. In light of the failures of past efforts to collect excise taxes on distilled spirits, Hamilton had insisted on strong enforcement provisions that included taxation districts, government agencies, and a cadre of federal officers to administer and collect the funds.19 The Pennsylvania legislature again directed its representatives to vote against the law, and other state legislatures opposed it is as well. In fact, all congressmen representing frontier districts voted against the bill with the excise provisions when it was brought to a vote in Congress in March 1791.
James Madison, then a leader in the House of Representatives and an opponent of Alexander Hamilton, concluded that there were no other obvious sources of revenue to pay down the debts and believed that an excise tax on distilled spirits would increase “sobriety and thereby prevent disease and untimely deaths.” Madison restrained opposition to the bill in the House, making it possible for the legislation to pass Congress.20 Passage was one thing; implementation, another.
Anti-Tax
When the excise tax became law, the federal government had been in place only a few years, and many Americans did not yet understand its function or powers. This lack of knowledge was particularly common in frontier areas; the arrival of news on the frontier was often severely delayed, and the information was limited and often thoroughly garbled when it did arrive.
Frontiersmen had strongly supported the American Revolution, and they faced great difficulties fighting American Indians incited by the British during the war. According to the Treaty of Paris, which ended the war in 1783, the British agreed to surrender forts in the frontier areas, but they still had not completely done so in 1791. Virtually every male on the frontier was a member of a militia; most had engaged in fighting Indians who continued to be encouraged by the British well after the war’s end.
Many settlers on the western frontier were immigrants from Scotland, Ireland, or Germany who had opposed and successfully evaded previous excise taxes. These independent frontiersmen were not of a mind to deal reasonably with the new governmental entity of the U.S. Congress, which was trying to impose an excise tax from the national level. They were ready to fight.
Rebellion
The initial and most vociferous opposition to the whiskey tax arose in western Pennsylvania counties: Fayette, Westmoreland, Washington, and Allegheny. The anti-tax movement there was led by moderates, such as Albert Gallatin, a Swiss-American immigrant who farmed in Fayette County; Hugh Henry Brackenridge, an immigrant from Scotland living in Pittsburgh who helped found the Pittsburg Gazette; Judge William Findley of Westmoreland County, a Scots-Irish immigrant who was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives; and Irish-born John Smilie, who was an assemblyman in the Pennsylvania legislature. The people in the movement held meetings, passed resolutions opposing the tax, and drew up petitions that were signed and sent to the U.S. Congress and the Pennsylvania legislature.
Then, in September 1791, events took a violent turn when tax collectors were tarred and feathered by rogue gangs. Federal judges issued warrants for the arrest of the perpetrators, but the process servers were whipped, tarred, and feathered themselves. One was stripped and branded in several places with a hot iron. People who spoke in favor of the whiskey tax, or who were thought to support it, were treated similarly. William Faulkner—a captain in the army—was threatened with scalping, tarring, and feathering and compelled to print a notice in the Pittsburg Gazette stating that he would not support the whiskey tax. Opponents of the tax also broke into the homes of tax supporters and threatened the families. Local sheriffs refused to serve warrants for those identified as responsible for these acts, and the sheriffs themselves were indicted by federal judges. Meanwhile, some distillers announced that they would not pay the tax, and the opposition became highly organized.
The difficulty of enforcing the excise tax in western Pennsylvania raised more questions in Congress about the wisdom of the law. Alexander Hamilton defended the equity of the tax in his “Report on the Difficulties in the Execution of the Act Laying Duties on Distilled Spirits,” which he wrote on March 5, 1792, to educate Congress on the ins and outs of the law. Hamilton believed that the tax was equitable because distilled spirits were so widely devoured throughout the United States. Because the taxes would be passed on to the consumers, the amount individuals paid would depend on their “relative habits of sobriety or intemperance.” Although Hamilton understood that small producers made whiskey for themselves, he encouraged them to consume less.21
As a sop to protestors, Congress lowered the tax rates, but these changes and an appeal from President George Washington seemed only to embolden the insurgents in their opposition to the law.22 Harassment of federal tax collectors became more widespread and violent. As the incidents of violence accumulated, President Washington stepped in. On September 15, 1792, Washington issued a proclamation that admonished “all persons whom it may concern to refrain and desist from all unlawful combinations and proceedings whatsoever, having for object or tending to obstruct the operation of the laws aforesaid; inasmuch as all lawful ways and means will be strictly put in execution for bringing to justice the infractors thereof, and securing obedience thereto.”23
Federal marshals, district attorneys, and tax inspectors enforced the law, prosecuting tax delinquents and seizing their distilled spirits on the way to market. As a result, by late 1793 some large whiskey distillers complied with the law, and others expressed their willingness to do so. It looked as if the worst anti-tax fervor was over, but in January 1794 some of those complying with the tax had their barns burned, their stills and equipment destroyed, and their families intimidated.
Congress modified the whiskey tax yet again to make it more equitable, but this further encouraged those who wanted the law repealed. John Neville, the excise inspector for western Pennsylvania, helped to serve warrants on individuals who intimidated tax collectors and warrant servers. On July 16, 1794, forty opponents of the excise tax approached Neville’s fortified home; Neville and others inside the house fired at them, wounding several. Neville sent a messenger requesting assistance from nearby justices and soldiers at Fort Lafayette in Pittsburgh, and twelve soldiers were dispatched to help. The following morning, 500 armed men marched on Neville’s home, which was defended by only those twelve soldiers from the fort. Several attackers were killed or wounded; a number of the soldiers were also wounded, and one later died of his injuries. The other soldiers escaped along with Neville and his family, but Neville’s house and property were destroyed. Neville fled first to Pittsburgh and then to Philadelphia.
Several thousand armed insurgents, with representatives from western Virginia and Maryland, met to discuss the tax. Albert Gallatin (a Swiss immigrant who had been elected to the U.S. Senate in 1793, but was removed from office because he had not lived in America for the requisite nine years), Hugh Henry Brackenridge (a judge), and William Findley (a U.S. congressman) were all opponents of the tax and urged moderation. However, the radicals ignored their advice and marched on Pittsburgh. As the insurgents neared the city, the townspeople proclaimed their opposition to the tax and brought out whiskey for the ragtag army, who greatly appreciated the drink. When the army of insurgents thought more soberly about taking Fort Lafayette, they remembered that it was well armed with cannons and decided it would be more prudent to skirt around it. Only one house was burned in the city. Without a clear target, the group gradually broke up without staging the attack.
By this point, however, the insurrection had gone too far. President George Washington had a choice—either enforce the tax law or fail to do so, thereby weakening the ability of the federal government enforce laws and raise revenue in the future. Washington sided with Hamilton. On August 17, 1794, he issued a proclamation demanding that those who attacked federal officers be brought to justice. Washington called out 12,950 militia detachments from Virginia, Maryland, New Jersey, and eastern Pennsylvania to suppress the insurrection. The president assumed his constitutional power as “commander in chief” to lead federal troops to western Pennsylvania. He traveled to Bedford, Pennsylvania, to review the troops, and then traveled to Maryland to view another portion of the army. As the troops moved toward Pittsburgh, the insurgent army dispersed. Some leaders fled westward; the majority just returned to their homes.
The federal army arrived in Pittsburgh in November 1794, but there was no bloodshed. Agents took testimony from many individuals and identified the leaders of the insurrection. Dragoons were sent to arrest them. Some were nowhere to be found; others who were arrested were released immediately due to lack of evidence. Alexander Hamilton wanted some of the most influential and visible leaders of the insurrection—specifically Findley and Gallatin—to be convicted of treason, but there was not much evidence against them either. A few minor participants were bound and carted off to Philadelphia, where they were held in prison for several months and then released without trial. Only twelve participants in the insurrection were tried; of these, ten were acquitted. There were too few witnesses, and those who did speak up gave contradictory testimony. Only two fairly low-level participants in the insurrection were convicted of treason and sentenced to be hanged. With the crisis over, President Washington stepped in and pardoned these last two insurgents. Officials issued pardons to other participants of the insurrection, most of whom signed loyalty oaths.
An unexpected but welcome bonus resulted: the economy in western Pennsylvania boomed in the aftermath of the turmoil. Soldiers who had come to enforce the liquor tax spent money on food, lodging, and supplies. Among other things, the troops bought liquor from local distillers—as long as they could prove that they had paid the excise tax.24 Meanwhile, distillers paid the whiskey taxes as long as the troops remained in western Pennsylvania. When they left, however, enforcement slackened, and distillers went back to their old ways.25
Western Pennsylvania was the flashpoint in the insurrection against the excise tax, but it was by no means the only place where opposition flared. Local distillers also rose up in portions of Kentucky, Maryland, Virginia, North Carolina, and Georgia.26 In Kentucky, the men responsible for enforcing the tax were treated as roughly as those in western Pennsylvania.27 In western Virginia, anti-tax forces assaulted excise officers, destroyed their property, and terrorized proponents of the excise tax. A year after the insurrection was put down, no excise taxes were collected in Kentucky, the Northwest Territory, or the western parts of Virginia and South Carolina.28 However, tax revenues from the nation as a whole increased during the remainder of the 1790s.
When Thomas Jefferson became president in 1801, he urged Congress to repeal the whiskey tax, which it did. A visiting Frenchman who was on hand for the celebration of the repeal wrote that the lodges were
filled with drinkers, who made a shocking tumult, and appeared excessively intoxicated. The chambers, the entries, and the stairs were strewed with men, that were dead drunk; and those, to whom utterance remained, expressed only grumblings of rage and horrid imprecations. The passion for spiritous liquors is one of the traits, that characterizes the inhabitants of the interior. This passion is so strong, that they quit their homes from time to time to go and get drunk at the tavern; and it may be doubted, whether there are ten in a hundred, who can refrain, when they have the opportunity for indulgence.29
Whiskey Dominant
The suppression of the insurrection against excise taxes on distilled spirits—more commonly known as the Whiskey Rebellion—established the principle that the federal government could tax citizens directly without having to go through individual state legislatures. This principle strengthened the national government and helped ensure its initial viability. However, such federal-state issues would be raised often over the next six decades and would be among the causes of the Civil War.
Not everyone was pleased with the outcome of the rebellion. At least 2,000 residents of western Pennsylvania moved farther west—many of them to Kentucky.30 Whiskey had been distilled in Kentucky before the Whiskey Rebellion, but several of the early distillers were from western Pennsylvania. Corn was easy to grow in Kentucky, and it became the most important basis for distilled spirits there. Corn yielded a sweeter whiskey than that made from rye or wheat. The apotheosis of “corn liquor” was Kentucky bourbon, a uniquely American beverage that emerged in the early nineteenth century.
The rebellion and the exodus to Kentucky had little effect on what frontiersmen drank. An English visitor in the early nineteenth century noted that they unquestionably drank “too much, spirituous liquors,” but there were good reasons for it: there were “no apples, and consequently no cyder. Malt liquor will not keep.” Spirituous liquors were easily prepared and were “in fact the only beverage to which the settlers have access.”31
Whiskey was drunk by men of all classes in great quantities. Production skyrocketed, and the price dropped. By the 1820s, whiskey was the cheapest of all beverages. The sole exception was water, but in many places whiskey was actually a safer drink due to contaminated water supplies. Whiskey was enjoyed in all regions of the country, but it was the universal alcoholic beverage in the western frontier areas, where it was variously called “fighting whiskey,” “chain-lightning,” “mountain howitzer,” “tarantula juice, strychnine, red-eye, corn juice, Jersey lightning, leg-stretcher, ‘tangleleg,’ and many other hard and grotesque names.”32
Excise taxes on liquor were reimposed in 1814 due to financial pressures related to the War of 1812, but were repealed four years later. Excise taxes were again levied during the Civil War to help pay for the war; unlike the earlier taxes, these taxes were maintained after the war. By 1875, excise taxes became the second most important source of the federal government’s revenue, generating an estimated one-fourth of the total federal income. Anti-Prohibition advocates frequently pointed to these taxes as important financial contributions to the United States.33 It was not until the passage of income tax in 1913 that it became possible for the federal government to survive without the excise taxes on liquor. This shift contributed to the drive for national prohibition, which took effect in 1920. When many Americans became unemployed during the Great Depression, federal revenues from income taxes sharply declined. One argument for the repeal of Prohibition was the reinstatement of excise taxes on liquor. When Prohibition ended in 1933, excise taxes were reimposed, and they have remained a federal revenue source ever since.
Contrary to the predictions of Benjamin Rush and many subsequent temperance proponents, the price increase that accompanied the excises taxes on distilled spirits did not reduce the amount of spirits Americans drank. Americans were willing to pay more for their whiskey rather than give it up.34 For those unwilling to pay the tax, homemade moonshine was always an option, particularly in rural areas, and it thrived.
Postscript
Benjamin Rush remained a strong opponent of distilled spirits for the rest of his life. His pamphlet An Enquiry into the Effects of Spirituous Liquors went through several editions and numerous reprints during the next fifty years, and it would be cited thereafter as America’s first temperance work. By the time he died in 1813, the temperance movement was well under way in America, and Rush has frequently been credited as its founding father. Alexander Hamilton, a proponent of the excise tax on whiskey, resigned as secretary of the treasury in 1795; he was killed in a duel with Aaron Burr in 1804.
George Washington was pleased with the way everything turned out after the Whiskey Rebellion. Congress had passed a law and the law had been enforced. This was an important precedent for the future. He was also pleased with the new national interest in whiskey—so much so that he built two very profitable stills at his home in Mount Vernon. He left office in 1797 and died two years later.
Thomas Jefferson served two terms as president and then retired to Monticello, his home in Virginia, where he died in 1825.
James Madison, whose support of the excise tax in 1791 guaranteed its passage in Congress, was elected president in 1808. He served two terms and died in 1836.
Albert Gallatin, an opponent of the excise tax (Alexander Hamilton wanted him hanged for his involvement in the Rebellion), ran for Congress and defeated Hugh Henry Brackenridge. In 1801, he became secretary of the treasury and supported efforts to repeal the act in 1802.
Hugh Henry Brackenridge founded the Pittsburgh Academy, which was later renamed the University of Pittsburgh. He died in Carlisle, Pennsylvania, in 1816.
William Findley, an opponent of the whiskey tax, became a strong supporter of Jefferson and Madison. He served for twenty-eight years in the U.S. House of Representatives and died in 1821.
John Smilie was elected to the House of Representatives in 1794 and served two terms. He died in 1812.
In 1964, the U.S. Senate passed a proclamation stating that bourbon was a “distinct product of the United States” and prohibited the importation into the United States of anything “designated as ‘Bourbon Whiskey.’”35
