The Whiskey Rebellion was a tax protest in the United States beginning in 1791 during the presidency of George Washington. The whiskey tax was the first tax put in place on a domestic product with the new government. It was intended to help reduce debt from the revolution. The tax was on all spirits but since whiskey was the most popular one of all.
The tax was resisted by farmers in the western frontier regions who were used to distilling their surplus grain and corn into whiskey. In these regions, whiskey was sufficiently popular that it often served as a form of exchange. Many of the resisters were war veterans who believed that they were fighting for the principles of the American Revolution, in particular against taxation without local representation, while the U.S. federal government maintained that the taxes were the legal expression of the taxation powers of Congress.
Throughout counties in Western Pennsylvania, protesters used violence and intimidation to prevent federal officials from collecting the tax.
Britain had expected the Southern colonies to remain loyal, in part because of their reliance on slavery. Many in the Southern colonies feared that a rebellion against the mother country would also trigger a slave uprising against the planters.
