TPS Eastern Region Waynesburg University Barb Kirby, Director Whiskey Rebellion Primary Source Set June 2018 Note: Transcripts for newspaper clippings appear on the page following the image. Click on title to view Primary Source The Excise Tax Excise Tax Act 1791 2 Alexander Hamilton on the Tax 1791 4 Albert Gallatin’s Petition Against the Tax 1792 6 1792 Meeting in Pittsburgh to Protest the Tax 7 The Rebels Protests Raising the Liberty Pole 9 Fort Gaddis Liberty Pole 10 Tarring and Feathering 11 Burning Cabin 12 Tom the Tinker Notice 13 Parkinson’s Ferry Meeting 15 Postal Theft and meeting in Braddock’s Field 17 Counsel Before the Attack at General Neville’s House 19 The Federal Reaction The Terrible Night (Image) 20 The Dreadful Night Text) 21 Washington’s Proclamation 22 Washington Calls Out the Militia 24 U.S. vs Vigol Trial 25 Vegol and Mitchell Sentencing 27 President Washington Pardons Vigol and Mitchell 29 Bradford Wanted Poster 30 President Adams Pardons David Bradford 32 2 Excise Tax 1791 A Century of Lawmaking for a New Nation: U.S. Congressional Documents and Debates, 1774 – 1875 1st Congress, 3rd Session p. 199 http://memory.loc.gov/cgi-bin/ampage?collId=llsl&fileName=001/llsl001.db&recNum=322 3 Excise Tax 1791 (continued) A Century of Lawmaking for a New Nation: U.S. Congressional Documents and Debates, 1774 – 1875 1st Congress, 3rd Session p. 203 http://memory.loc.gov/cgi-bin/ampage?collId=llsl&fileName=001/llsl001.db&recNum=322 4 Alexander Hamilton And The Whiskey Tax Simon, Steve. Alexander Hamilton and the Whiskey Tax. Alcohol and Tobacco Tax and Trade Bureau, U.S. Department of Treasury. https://www.ttb.gov/public_info/special_feature.shtml The Distilled Spirits Tax of 1791 (Excerpts) It has been said, "If George Washington was the father of the country and James Madison of the Constitution, then Alexander Hamilton was surely the father of the federal government." As the first Secretary of the Treasury, Hamilton acted to fund the new American Government, repay its debt, and assert its supremacy over the States. In doing so, he helped establish the strong Federal system we know today. After the ratification of the U.S. Constitution in 1789, President George Washington appointed Hamilton as Secretary of the Treasury. Of course, a strong Government requires money to operate, and that comes from taxes. Hamilton's assignment as Secretary of the Treasury was to put the new Government on a secure financial footing. This was a huge responsibility, because the Government was in debt from its first day. The new Constitution required the Federal Government to assume the National debt—incurred to finance the Revolutionary War. Under the Constitution, Congress has the power to levy taxes. The first U.S. customs duties were already law when Hamilton took office. In his first report to Congress, in January 1790, he proposed to increase the duty on imported distilled spirits and to impose a new excise tax on domestic distilled spirits (i.e., whisky ).Both proposals were enacted by Congress and approved by President Washington in 1791. Hamilton had a predisposition toward taxing alcohol beverages. In Federalist 12, he had stated: The single article of ardent spirits, under Federal regulation, might be made to furnish a considerable revenue. Upon a ratio to the importation into this State [i.e., New York], the whole quantity imported into the United States may be estimated at four millions of Gallons; which at a shilling per gallon would produce two hundred thousand pounds. That article would well bear this rate of duty; and if it should tend to diminish the consumption of it, such an effect would be equally favorable to the agriculture, to the economy, to the morals and to the health of the society. There is perhaps nothing so much a subject of national extravagance, as these spirits. In addition to revenue and social manipulation, Hamilton had a third reason to favor a whisky tax: It could be a means of augmenting Federal power. According to Hamilton's recent biographer, Ron Chernow, "Hamilton confessed to Washington an ulterior political motive for this liquor tax: he wanted to lay ‘hold of so valuable a resource of revenue before it was generally preoccupied by the state governments.' … [H]e wanted to starve the states of revenue and shore up the federal government." 5 In proposing his whisky tax, Hamilton walked a tightrope. To get the tax enacted, he had to show that it was not burdensome, and even possibly beneficial to people. But to get the tax collected, he had to give it some teeth. One means of providing teeth was "taxation at the source," meaning the Government collects the tax from the producer, not the ultimate consumer. This concept is still used in the collection of Federal alcohol excise taxes today. Theoretically, the producer will pass the tax burden along to the consumer in the price of the product. But in the late 18th century, it seemed to some producers that Hamilton's whisky tax imposed costs that they couldn't pass along. These producers, generally small farmers on the young Nation's western frontier in the Appalachian Mountains, often distilled whisky from their surplus corn crop. This whisky was then often used as a form of currency on the cash-strapped frontier. These frontier distillers quickly came to believe that the new Federal Government was taxing them in a discriminatory way. The tax on whisky distilled in a city, town, or village was based on the quantity distilled. Since the retail price of whisky in the West was about half what it was in the East, the effective tax rate in the West was twice as high, computed as a percentage of the price. Further, stills located outside of a city, town, or village were taxed on their capacity, regardless of whether they actually produced that much. Large distillers (located primarily in the East) could defer their tax payment if they posted a bond, but small (mostly western) distillers had to pay immediately, before removal of their product from the distillery. These and other features of the law made the whisky tax so unfair to the western farmer-distillers that some Hamilton critics have suggested that he intended to provoke opposition, giving the Federal Government a chance to show its strength. 6 Petition against the Excise Tax By Inhabitants of Western Pennsylvania [Penned by Albert Gallatin], 1792 Credit: Henry Adams, The Writings of Albert Gallatin (Philadelphia, 1879), I, 2-4. A digital version of this primary source may be viewed at the Pennsylvania Historical and Museum website. http://explorepahistory.com/odocument.php?docId=1-4-16D 7 1792 Meeting in Pittsburgh in opposition to the Excise Tax Gazette of the United-States., September 05, 1792, Page 111, Image 3 Gazette of the United-States. (New-York [N.Y.]), 05 Sept. 1792. Chronicling America: Historic American Newspapers. Lib. of Congress. <http://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn83030483/1792- 09- 05/ed-1/seq-3/> 8 Transcript: 1792 Meeting in Pittsburgh in opposition to the Excise Tax Gazette of the United-States., September 05, 1792, Page 111, Image 3 Gazette of the United-States. (New-York [N.Y.]), 05 Sept. 1792. Chronicling America: Historic American Newspapers. Lib. of Congress. <http://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn83030483/1792-09-05/ed-1/seq-3/> At a Meeting of sundry Inhabitants of the Western Counties of Pennsylvania, held at Pittsburgh, August 22, 1792, The following report of a Committee was unanimously adopted, viz.— Strongly impressed with a sense of the fatal consequences that must attend an Excise, convinced that a tax upon liquors which are the common drink of a nation operates in proportion to the number and not to the wealth of the people, and of course is unjust in itself, and oppressive upon the poor: taught by the experience of other countries that internal taxes upon consumption, from their very nature, never can effectually be carried into operation, without vesting the officers appointed to collect them with powers most dangerous to the civil rights of freemen, and must in the end destroy the liberties of every country in which they are introduced; feeling that the late Excise Law of Congress, from the present circumstances of our agriculture, our want of markets, and the scarcity of a circulating medium, will bring immediate distress and ruin on the Western Country. WE think it our duty to persist in our remonstrances to Congress, and in every other legal measure that may obstruct the operation of the law, until we are able to obtain its total repeal. Therefore resolved, That David Bradford, James Marshal, Albert Gallatin, Peter Lisle, and David Philips, be appointed for the purpose of drawing a remonstrance to Congress stating our objections against the law that imposes a duty upon spirituous liquors distilled within the United States, and praying for a repeal of the same, and that the Chairman of the meeting be directed to sign the same in the name of the meeting, and to take proper measures to have it presented to Congress at their next session. Resolved, That in order that our measures may be carried on with regularity and concert, that Wm. Wallace, [here follows 20 other names] be respectively appointed committees of correspondence for the counties of Washington, Fayette and Allegheny, ad that it shall be their duty to correspond together and with such committee as shall be appointed for the same purpose in the county of Westmoreland, or with any committees of a similar nature that may be appointed in other parts of the United States, and also, if found necessary, to call together either general meetings of the people in their respective counties, or conferences of several committees.