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Title details for The Whiskey Rebellion by William Hogeland - Available

The Whiskey Rebellion

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

by William Hogeland
Simon Vance
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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 product — whiskey. In only a few years, those attacks snowballed into an organized regional movement dedicated to resisting the fledgling government's power and threatening secession, even civil war.


With an unsparing look at both Hamilton and Washington — and at lesser-known, equally determined frontier leaders such as Herman Husband and Hugh Henry Brackenridge — journalist 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 drama — whose climax is not the issue of mere taxation but the very meaning and purpose of the American Revolution.

  • Creators

  • Publisher

  • Release date

    June 5, 2006

  • Formats

    • OverDrive Listen audiobook

      • ISBN: 9781400122479
      • File size: 260124 KB
      • Duration: 09:01:55

  • Languages

    • English

  • Reviews

    • AudioFile Magazine
      This work describes the first major domestic challenge to this nation. In 1794 many on the frontier revolted against a federal tax on the distilling of whiskey. The rebellion was met by a large military crackdown led by President Washington and Secretary of the Treasury Alexander Hamilton. The author takes a critical view of these two Founders, perhaps too critical. Still, this work does extremely well in describing American culture in the Federalist era. Simon Vance, a Brit, may not seem like the man to narrate this work. However, he captures the listener's ear in the first few minutes. He is amazingly clear in pronouncing every word and has a deliberate drollness that is quite winsome. M.T.F. (c) AudioFile 2006, Portland, Maine
    • Publisher's Weekly

      December 12, 2005
      Soon after Americans ousted inequitable British taxation, Secretary of Finance Alexander Hamilton, hatched a plan to put the new nation on steady financial footing by imposing the first American excise tax, on whiskey makers. The tax favored large distillers over small farmers with stills in the mountains of Pennsylvania, Maryland and Virginia, and the farmers fomented their own new revolution—a challenge to the sovereignty of the new government and the power of the wealthy eastern seaboard. In a fast-paced, blow-by-blow account of this "primal national drama," journalist Hogeland energetically chronicles the skirmishes that made the Whiskey Rebellion from 1791 to 1795 a symbol of the conflict between republican ideals and capitalist values. The rebels engaged in civil disobedience, violence against the tax collectors and threatened to secede from the new republic. Eventually Washington led federal troops to quell the rebellion, arresting leaders such as Herman Husband, a hollow-eyed evangelist who believed that the rebellion would usher in the New Jerusalem. Hogeland's judicious, spirited study offers a lucid window into a mostly forgotten episode in American history and a perceptive parable about the pursuit of political plans no matter what the cost to the nation's unity.

Formats

  • OverDrive Listen audiobook

subjects

Languages

  • English

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