Whiskey Rebellion: Frontier Epilogue to the American Revolution

From Library Journal
Slaughter restores the Whiskey Rebellion (1794) to its rightful place as a major event in our national history. He contends that it parallels the conflicts over taxation and representation of the Revolution. Slaughter ably reconstructs the rebellion's social, ideological, political, and personal concerns, and delineates its national and international dimensions. Most importantly, he shows that the frontier is truly central to understanding the period, and that the excise tax protest was frontier-wide, not limited to western Pennsylvania, as is so often believed. Slaughter's provocative treatment of nationalist leaders and his reliance on an "interregional interpretation" and a "liberty-order construct" are bound to stir lively discussion. Highly recommended for academic and large public libraries. Roy H. Tryon, Delaware State Archives, DoverCopyright 1986 Reed Business Information, Inc.


Book Description
When President George Washington ordered an army of 13,000 men to march west in 1794 to crush a tax rebellion among frontier farmers, he established a range of precedents that continues to define federal authority over localities today. The "Whiskey Rebellion" marked the first large-scale resistance to a law of the U.S. government under the Constitution. This classic confrontation between champions of liberty and defenders of order was long considered the most significant event in the first quarter-century of the new nation. Thomas P. Slaughter recaptures the historical drama and significance of this violent episode in which frontier West and cosmopolitan East battled over the meaning of the American Revolution. The book not only offers the broadest and most comprehensive account of the Whiskey Rebellion ever written, taking into account the political, social and intellectual contexts of the time, but also challenges conventional understandings of the Revolutionary era.


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"A vivid account of how 7,000 rioting settlers in Western Pennsylvania and beyond opposed a Federal tax on liquor."--New York Times


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