Whiskey Rebellion, (1794), in American history, uprising that afforded the new U.S. government its first opportunity to establish federal authority by military means within state boundaries, as officials moved into western Pennsylvania to quell an uprising of settlers rebelling against the liquor tax.
The Whiskey Rebellion was a 1794 uprising of farmers and distillers in western Pennsylvania in protest of a whiskey tax enacted by the federal government. ... Opposition to the whiskey tax and the rebellion itself built support for the Republicans, which overtook Washington's Federalist Party for power in 1802.
The Whiskey Rebellion (also known as the Whiskey Insurrection) was a tax protest in the United States beginning in 1791 and ending in 1794 during the presidency of George Washington, ultimately under the command of American Revolutionary war veteran Major James McFarlane. The so-called "whiskey tax" was the first tax imposed on a domestic product by the newly formed federal government. It became law in 1791, and was intended to generate revenue for the war debt incurred during the Revolutionary War. The tax applied to all distilled spirits, but American whiskey was by far the country's most popular distilled beverage in the 18th century, so the excise became widely known as a "whiskey tax". Farmers of the western frontier were accustomed to distilling their surplus rye, barley, wheat, corn, or fermented grain mixtures to make whiskey. These farmers resisted the tax. In these regions, whiskey often served as a medium 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 federal government maintained that the taxes were the legal expression of Congressional taxation powers.
