Danver Steven L. (Edited). Revolts, Protests, Demonstrations, and Rebellions in American History: An Encyclopedia (ENG)
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By September, a federal army composed of nearly 13,000 troops was on its way
to the far side of the mountains. Known as the “Watermelon Army” because of its
inexperience, the president lent his enormous credibility to the enterprise, rendez-
vousing with them at Carlisle. As it traveled through increasingly hostile territory,
circumstances were exacerbated by the behavior of the army. They had few or no
provisions and were authorized by Hamilton to confiscate food and fodder from
often impoverished farmers just before the onset of winter.
By November, the army was ensconced at Fort Fayette and the roundup of non-
compliers in the Forks region was underway. Their punishment began with their
treatment b y the soldiers and officers. Many were marched in their nightclothes
through rain and sleet, forced to spend the nigh t in the open, and prod ded with
bayonets if they got too close to the fire. If they were fed at all, it was uncooked
dough and raw meat tossed to them on the ground. Discipline at Fort Fayette
was lax as the a rmy’s stay stretched into the winter. Even officers got into
brawls with the local population. Property was looted and destroyed, and t he
soldiers gained a reputation as an army of occupation having their way with the
locals. Fear of the standing army utilized to collect the excise tax proved well
founded.
The legacy of the Whiskey Rebellion, above all, was to further instill into a
populace already phobic about taxes the distrust of arbitrary rule from a distant
center of power. To many, there was now little difference between King-in-
Parliament and the federal government in Philadelphia. The democratic-
republican societies that the dissenting Jeffersonians had formed, and which
President Washington conde mned, swelled in number. The Jacobin radica ls of
the French Revolution were viewed sy mpat hetically by many in America, and
Edmund Genet h ad been welcomed by the Jeffersonians with open arms. The
polarizing effects of Hamilton’s economic policies were heightened, and an open
political struggle for power between the Federalists and the Jeffersonian Republi-
cans would characterize the remainder of the decade. While the Jeffersonians won
out in the short term, winning the election of 1800, Hamiltonian policies favoring
the wealthy a t the expense of the middle and lower classes returned with a ven-
geance. Some argue that they never really left, given the favoritism shown first
to land speculators and bankers, and later railroad men, industrialists, and bank-
ers. The Whiskey Rebellion was both a last gasp of the American Revolution
and a defining moment in setting the parameters of American politics to the
present day.
—Douglas S. Harvey
See also all entries under Shays’ Rebellion (1787).
234 Whiskey Rebellion (1794)
Further Reading
Baldwin, Leland B. Whiskey Rebels: A Story of a Frontier Uprising. Pittsburgh: University
of Pittsburgh Press , 1939.
Bouton, Terry. Taming Democracy: “The People,” the Founders, and the Troubled Ending
of the American Revolution. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press , 2007.
Boyd, Steven R., ed. The Whiskey Rebellion: Past and Present Perspectives. Westport, CT:
Greenwood Press, 1985.
Cooke, Jacob E. “ The Whiskey Insurrection: A Re-evaluation.” Pennsylvania History 30
(July 1963).
DeMay, John A. The Settlers’ Forts of Western Pennsylvania. Apollo, PA: Clossen Press,
1997.
Eckert, Allan W. T hat Dark and Bloo dy River: Chronicles of the O hio River Valley.
New York: Bantam, 1995.
Hogeland, William. The Whiskey Rebellion: George Washington, Alexander Hamilton,
and the Frontier Rebels Who Challenged America’s Newfound Sovereignty. New York:
Scribner, 2006.
Kohn, Richard H. “The Washington Administration’s Decision to Crush the Whiskey
Rebellion.” Journal of American Hi story 59 (December 1972).
Mainwaring, W. Thomas, ed. “The Whiskey Rebellion and the Trans-Appalachian
Frontier.” Topic: A Journal of the Liberal Arts 45 (Fall 1994).
Slaughter, Thomas P. The Whiskey Rebellion: Frontier Epilogue to the American Revolution.
Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 1986.
Whiskey Rebellion (1794) 235
Federal Supremacy
Federal supremacy was the concept enshrined in the U.S. Constitution, ratified in
June 1788, in which the individual states, hoping for increased security, sacrificed
much of their sovereignty to a newly created federal government. The effort to
establish federalism had begun with a n ationalist movement in 1781 as the
Continental forces were scoring a key victory against Lord Cornwallis at
Yorktown. The finances of the Continental Congress as well as those of most states
were in dismal shape and, beginning among economic elites, the movement for a
strong c entral government with the p ower of taxation was increasingly seen as a
solution to the new republic’s economic woes.
To some, federal supremacy was a betrayal of the Revolution. The bottom-up
nature of the rebellion of the 1760s and 1770s ran into serious financial trouble
as the fighting wore on. Profiteering by some members of Congress and their
appointees led some to wonder what the point of the war was if British “placemen”
were to simply be replaced by their American equivalents. Issuance of paper
money and various certificates of loan created state and national debts that were
astronomic for the period. Typically, in the colonial period, such loans and paper
issuances would be reabsorbed into the economy as raw materials were traded
for finished goods. But that arrangement was dependent on the reputation of
British financiers and the power of the British Empire. The struggling new repub-
lic had no such reputation or unbridled trade with an economic powerhouse like
the Empire. Financial elites in Boston, New York, Philadelphia, and Virginia—
people like Robert Morris, Alexander Hamilton, and James Madison—argued for
a stronger central government and, in some cases, forced punitive state taxes
through state legislatures to pay interest on debts. Often, these debts were owed
to the very people who were pushing this legislation through at the state level.
Even before federal supremacy was hatched in Philadelphia in 1787, Daniel
Shays and others led a revolt against such punitive taxes in Massachusetts. These
reflected similar discontent that had occurred in the western lands of Carolina
and Virginia in the 1760s. When Madison and Hamilton called for a convention
to “rework” the Articles of Confederation, supporters of state sovereignty—people
like Patrick Henry of Virginia—said they “smelled a rat.” But by the late 1780s,
the economic situation of the United States had reached a point where many peo-
ple of middling economic status supported the concept of a stronger central power
that could tax the citizenry and encourage foreign investment. However, western-
ers, like their predecessors the Regulators of the 1760s in Carolina, the Sons of
Liberty after the Stamp Act, and Shays’ Rebellion in Massachusetts in the
1780s, saw this as an attempt by the rich to usurp power and enslave the citizenry.
237
Indeed, it is unlikely that the new Constitution would have been ratified had its
supporters not promised a Bill of Rights guaranteeing that the new federal
government would not usurp certain individual rights.
Federal suprema cy wa s enshrined in Article VI, Paragraph 2 of the new
Constitution. Almost immedi ately, the new secretary of the treasur y, Alexander
Hamilton, began implementing a plan to tax westerners to pay interest and princi-
pal on the United States’ war debt. This tax, placed on whiskey, created a great hue
and cry in places like western Pennsylvania, where whiskey was the lifeblood of
the economy. This led to the “Whiskey Rebellion,” which was considered the
greatest rebellion against federal policy until the Civil War.
Federalism continued to be a bone of contention even after the whiskey rebels
gave up their struggle. Fries’ Rebellion among ethnic Germans in eastern Pennsylv a-
nia in the late 1790s was a protest against the property taxes instituted by the federal
government. The election of Thomas Jef ferson as president in 1800 quieted some of
this protest, but the proponents of centralized power and rule by an economic elite
per sisted. The rise of the iss ue of slavery impacted the federalism–states’ righ ts
dilemma in the mid-19th cent ury. Southerners feared that a northern-controlled
federal gov ernment might, like the British and French, abolish slavery. As emancipa-
tion gained steam in the Atlantic world, proslav ery forces in the American South dug
in their heels. When a northern president was elected in 1860—Abraham Lincoln—
the deep South seceded from the Union, ostensibly to prevent a federal intrusion into
their states’ economies. After the Civil War, violent repercussio ns manifested in
southern “Redeemers” who set out to terrorize freed blacks into “keeping their
place” in a white-supremacist society. Redeemers were successful in curbing efforts
by the federal government to “reconstruct” southern society. Other localist move-
ments have expressed disdain for federalism, from separatist movements in such dis-
parate locations as western Kansas and Vermont. Often, resistance to federal
supremacy has found expression in rural southern and western groups who feel
controlled from afar by those who do not have their interests at heart. It is an old
dichotomy that shows no signs of permanently dissipating.
—Douglas S. Harvey
Further Reading
Boyd, Steven R., ed. The Whiskey Rebellion: Past and Present Perspe ctives. Westport, CT:
Greenwood Press, 1985.
Hogeland, William. The Whiskey Rebellion: George Washington, Alexander Hamilton,
and the Frontier Rebels Who Challenged America’s Newfound Sovereignty. New York:
Scribner, 2006.
Kohn, Richard H. “The Washington Administration’s Decision to Crush the Whiskey
Rebellion.” Journal of American History 59 (December 1972).
238 Whiskey Rebellion (1794)
Slaughter, Thomas P. The Whiskey Rebellion: Frontier Epilogue to the American Revolution.
Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 1986.
Hamilton, Alexander (1755–1804)
Alexander Hamilton was something of a lightning rod in the opening years of the
American republic. His policies regarding debt assumption and taxation incited
the so-called “Whiskey Rebellion,” one of the most s erious insurgencies in the
United States before the secession of the South in 1860. Hamilton sought to tie
the welfare of the federal government to the interests of the financier class—
bankers, merchants, and manufacturers—much as Sir Robert Walpole had done
with the British Parliament earlier in the 18th century.
Alexander Hamilton was born on January 11, 1755, on the British sugar island
of Nevis, to a French Huguenot mother and a Scottish merchant father. When
Hamilton’s parents moved to the Danish island of St. Croix, they learned that their
marriage was invalid because Danish law did not permit a divorce
´
e to remarry.
This is the source of the well-known “illegitimacy” of Hamilton’s birth, something
that haunted his adult life. The elder Hamilton’s business ultimately failed, and he
returned to England. Shortly after, Alexander’s mother died of a fever at the age of
32 in 1768. Young Alexander was entrusted to his employers at the counting house
of Nicholas Cruger and David Beekman.
Alexander showed great aptitude in business finance, and at age 17, with the
support of his employer Cruger and Hugh Knox, he immigrated to New York.
Friends of his St. Croix benefactors, William Livingston and Elias Boudinot, as
well as his cousin Ann Lytton Mitchell, aided him once he was on the contine nt.
Hamilton rose through the ranks of the Continental army, and married Elizabeth
Schuyler, daughter of the well -con nected General Philip Schuyler. He was soon
invited into the inner circle of the revolutionary power structure with his appoint-
ment as an aide-de-camp to General George Washington.
After the war, moneyed and properti ed interests in the new United States f elt
increasingly threatened by rural soldier-farmers who were shouldered with state
tax burdens they often found unreasonable. James Bowdoin of Massachusetts
and Robert Morris of Pennsylvania were among those whom Hamilton joined in
an effort to create a strong central government with the power to tax. These men
supported a system of taxation that would make payments on the debts incurred
during the course of the war and afterward. Some of this debt was owed to people
like Bowdoin and Morris, and the taxes that work ing people and farmers would
Whiskey Rebellion (1794) 239
pay included interest payments on these debts. Hamilton and his allies also hoped
that some of these taxes would go toward subsidizing manufactures that would
bring handsome profits for the owners. His “Economic Plan,” proposed as soon
as the new federal Constitution allowed him to be sworn in as the secretary of
the treasury, included creating a bank that would be controlled by the wealthy
and would serve to collect taxes and pay down debt.
Protests such as the Whiskey Rebellion, Fries’ Rebellion, and others were
responses to Hamilton’s economic proposals. In the c ase o f the Whiskey Rebe l-
lion, Hamilton pushed a tax through the new federal Congress on the production of
whiskey, most of which was produced in the country in and over the Appalachian
Mountains. Westerners resented the tax because it was intentionally designed to be
more punitive to small distillers. These were typically farmers who could not
afford to bring their corn to eastern markets in its raw form, so they turned it into
whiskey to make it more valuable and easier to transport. The la rger producers
were better funded, had access to capital, and could afford to pay the yearly assess-
ment as opposed to the more laborious and expensive per-gallon rate the smaller
distillers paid. The only options many of the smaller distillers had, in their minds,
was to quit and go to work for the bigger distillers, or protest and work toward
either a repeal of the tax or secession from the federal government. To many of
them, this was the same reason why th ey had just fought a long and costly wa r
against the British. On top of this, Hamilton and Morris countenanced the collec-
tion of tax by those who both benefited from the tax as large distillers, and received
a commission on taxes collected. All in all, Hamilton’s heavy-handed policies fol-
lowed the model of the British Empire and the Bank of London, both of which had
been on the opposing side in the Revolution. Since the advent of federalism, sup-
porters of rule by a wealthy few have looked back to Hamilton as their progenitor
and inspiration. Alexander Ham ilton was a champion of big finance and cen tral-
ized power in the United St ates, which is why he was a lightni ng rod for those
whose power is restricted to protest, riot, and rebellion.
—Douglas S. Harvey
Further Reading
Bouton, Terry. Taming Democ racy: “The People,” the Founders, and the Troubled Ending
of the American Revolution. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 2007.
Boyd, Steven R., ed. The Whiskey Rebellion: Past and Present Perspe ctives. Westport, CT:
Greenwood Press, 1985.
Chernow, Ron. Alexander Hamilton. New York: Penguin, 2004.
Hogeland, William. The Whiskey Rebellion: George Washington, Alexander Hamilton,
and the Frontier Rebels Who Challenged America’s Newfound Sovereignty. New York:
Scribner, 2006.
240 Whiskey Rebellion (1794)
Kohn, Richard H. “The Washington Administration’s Decision to Crush the Whiskey
Rebellion.” Journal of American Hi story 59 (December 1972).
Slaughter, Thomas P. The Whiskey Rebellion: Frontier Epilogue to the American Revolution.
Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 1986.
Martial Law
Martial law is, by most definitions, the suspension of civil law and its replacement
by military law. The origins of martial law, like most American legal doctrines, are
found in the English tradition. One thread in the history is that martial law comes
from the medieval Court of the Marshall and Constable of England. This court sys-
tem dealt with offenses occurring within the military, and began to be suppressed
by common-law courts during the 17th century. Another thread argues for its ori-
gins in the e arly modern period with jurisdiction over British soldiers and alien
enemies. Known as “military law” and eventually as “martial law,” it came to be
accepted as legitimate by parliamentary common law barristers. Thus, whether
“Marshall” or “martial” law, both of these pedigrees seem to be applicable.
In the North American colonies, colonial governors were warned against using
it. During the period of colonial unrest prior to full-blown revolution, Lord
Dunmore of Virginia was instructed, “You shall not upon any occasion whatever
establish or put into execution any articles of War or other Law Martial upon any
of Our Subjects, Inhabitants of Our said C olony of Virginia, without advice and
consent of O ur Council there.” By the end of 177 5 however, both Dunmore and
General Thomas Gage in Boston had declared martial law.
In the early republic, New Orleans was the scene of two martial-law declara-
tions. One was a largely trumped-up affair initiated by General James Wilkinson
seeking to distance himself from Aaron Burr. The two men had conspired with
numerous others to launch a filibustering trip to Spanish territory in Mexico and
perhaps Florida after the acquisition by the United States of the Louisiana Pur-
chase. The political enemies of Burr, who were many, set out to discredit this
expedition and have the instigators arrested. In 180 6, Wilkinson declared martial
law in New Orleans, allegedly to protect it from the very militia force he had
recently hoped to organize—a force that he in fact invented to separate himself
from Burr. Writs of habeas corpus were issued by New Orleans judge James
Workman, but Wilkinson ignored them and arrested the judge. Territorial governor
William C. C. Claiborne protested that only the legislature could declare martial
law, but Wilkinson ignored Clairborne as well, arresting others thought to be
Whiskey Rebellion (1794) 241
associated with Burr’s filibustering plans. This episode culminated in the U.S.
Supreme Court’s decision Ex parte Bollman and Swartwout, which pointed to
the second paragraph of Article I, Section 9, of the U.S. Constitution in declaring
that only the federal legislature could declare martial law.
New Orleans was also the scene of the next instance of martial law in the United
States, this time during the War of 1812. Colonel Andrew Jackson had brought an
army to the city to defend against British invasion. New Orleans was a multina-
tional, multiethnic c ity, and was thought to be rife with British spies. To secure
control, Jackson issued a proclamation of martial law on December 16, 1814. Any-
one entering or exiting the city had to check in at the adjutant general’s office or
face arrest and interrogation. A passport was required for all watercraft leaving
the city, obtainable only from Jackson, his staff, or Commodore Daniel T. Patter-
son. Street lamps were ordered extinguished at 9:00 p.m., and anyone aboard after
that time was arrested and held as a spy.
The conflict culminated in the British defeat on January 8, 1815. But Jackson
maintained martial law for weeks after the battle, and the French population
became increasingly restless with the situation. A letter written anonymously
by state senator Louis Louiaillier calling for an end to martial law brought out
Jackson’s well-known vindictive side. Louiaillier was arrested and subsequently
applied for and received a writ of habeas corpus from Judge Dominick Hall.
Jackson responded by arresting Hall. Both men were released when martial
law was suspended, when Jackson was fined $1,000 by Judge Hall, a fine that
Jackson paid. However, near the end of his life, the now-former president Jack-
son appeal ed to Congress to pay him back his $1,000 fine, genera ting a debate
over the constitutionality of his declaration of martial law. Because of the effect
on the popular sentiment of the subsequent Battle of New Orleans, in which the
nation felt a restored sense of dignity afterathrashingbytheBritishinthe
Chesapeake, the legality of Jackson’s declaration of martial law was largely
overlooked by t he Madison administration. In 1841 , a Democratic-dominated
Congress, Jackson’s party, granted the reimbursement, but th e process left a
cloud over the legality of Jackson’s martial law proclamation of 1814.
The most widely known example of a martial law case is that of Lambdin P.
Milligan and the declaration of martial law by President Lincoln in Indiana during
the Civil War. Milligan was a southern sympat hizer living in Indiana and report-
edly involved with a secret society called “The Order of American Knights.” The
group was reportedly working toward the overthrow of the federal government.
Milligan was arrested by the general of the military district of Indiana, tried, and
sentenced to death by a military commission. Milligan applied for a writ of habeas
corpus from the Circuit Court of Indiana. The Circuit Court judges were in dis-
agreement over the legality of the request and certified the case, now known as
242 Whiskey Rebellion (1794)
Ex parte Milligan, to the U.S. Sup reme Court. The Supreme Court ruled that the
military trial of Milligan was unconstitutional. But it was split on the question of
whether the president or Congress can institute military courts.
Other examples of martial law exist, but they are mainly occurrences at the state
level and are typically of the “qualified” or limited variety. Curiously, these exam-
ples consist mainly of the use of troops in labor disputes almost universally against
striking and protesting workers. Legal scholars differ on the legitimacy of martial
law as a tool of the executive branch; but the Constitution clearly allows the sus-
pension of ha beas corpus rights in Article I, Section 9, paragraph 2, in the event
of “Rebellion or Invasion.” Whether this means only in the event of a dysfunc-
tional civil law, or whether the power can be used by the executive, are still legal
bones of contention.
—Douglas S. Harvey
Further Reading
Baldwin, Leland B. Whiskey Rebels: A Story of a Frontier Uprising. Pittsburgh: University
of Pittsburgh Press , 1939.
Bouton, Terry. Taming Democracy: “The People,” the Founders, and the Troubled Ending
of the American Revolution. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press , 2007.
Higham, Robin, ed., Bayonets in the Streets: The Use of Troops in Civil Disturbances,
Manhattan, KS: Sunflower University Press, 1969.
Hogeland, William. The Whiskey Rebellion: George Washington, Alexander Hamilton,
and the Frontier Rebels Who Challenged America’s Newfound Sovereignty. New York:
Scribner, 2006.
Kohn, Richard H. “The Washington Administration’s Decision to Crush the Whiskey
Rebellion.” Journal of American Hi story 59 (December 1972).
Slaughter, Thomas P. The Whiskey Rebellion: Frontier Epilogue to the American Revolution.
Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 1986.
Tom the Tinker
The early years of the American republic saw n umerous protests against the tax
policies of the new federal government. Many citizens saw the excise tax on whis-
key as a repeat of King-in-Parliament’s Stamp Act they had rebelled against in
1765. The whiskey tax, instituted by the Federalists led by Alexander Hamilton
in 1791, led to outright rebellion in western Pennsylvania. During the height of
this “Whiskey Rebellion,” opponents of the tax used the threat of physic al
Whiskey Rebellion (1794) 243