The Whiskey Rebellion: George Washington, Alexander Hamilton, and the Frontier Rebels Who Challenged America's Newfound Sovereignty

About this book

A gripping and provocative tale of violence alcohol and taxes The Whiskey Rebellion pits President George Washington and Secretary of the Treasury Alexander Hamilton against angry armed settlers across the Appalachians. Unearthing a pungent segment of early American history long ignored by historians William Hogeland brings to startling life the rebellion that decisively contributed to the establishment of federal authority. In 1791 at the frontier headwaters of the Ohio River gangs with blackened faces began to attack federal officials beating and torturing the collectors who plagued them with the first federal tax ever laid on an American productwhiskey. In only a few years those attacks snowballed into an organized regional movement dedicated to resisting the fledgling governments power and threatening secession even civil war. With an unsparing look at both Hamilton and Washingtonand at lesser-known equally determined frontier leaders such as Herman Husband and Hugh Henry Brackenridgejournalist and popular historian William Hogeland offers an insightful fast-paced account of the remarkable characters who perpetrated this forgotten revolution and those who suppressed it. To Hamilton the whiskey tax was key to industrial growth and could not be permitted to fail. To hard-bitten people in what was then the wild West the tax paralyzed their economies while swelling the coffers of greedy creditors and industrialists. To President Washington the settlers resistance catalyzed the first-ever deployment of a huge federal army led by the president himself a military strike to suppress citizens who threatened American sovereignty. Daring finely crafted by turns funny and darkly poignant The Whiskey Rebellion promises a surprising trip for readers unfamiliar with this primal national dramawhose climax is not the issue of mere taxation but the very meaning and purpose of the American Revolution. With three original maps by Jack Ryan.