The Whiskey Rebellion

by William Hogeland

2006 · Simon and Schuster

A tale of violence, alcohol, and taxes, this story 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, journalist and popular historian Hogeland brings to life the rebellion that decisively contributed to the establishment of federal authority. In 1791, frontier 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, Hogeland offers a fast-paced account of the remarkable characters who perpetrated this forgotten revolution, and those who suppressed it.--From publisher description.