American Rum 25: The Whiskey Rebellion

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American Rum 25:  The Whiskey Rebellion

During the Revolution, the Royal Navy blockaded American ports, and rum and molasses imports from the West Indies therefore became very scarce in the areas controlled by the Continental Congress. Whiskey distilled from relatively abundant local grain was used to fill the demand for spirits. And the demand was huge, both from civilians and soldiers. Actually, so much grain ended up as whiskey that the Continental Congress, fearing food shortages, tried to limit distilling, but without success. In spite of Washington’s bad opinion of whiskey, the Continental Army was one of the largest consumers. As we have seen, often there was no rum to be had, or it was too expensive, and so whiskey was often distributed in its place, so that many soldiers got to know it and became accustomed to its flavor. 

After the war, Rum distillers faced a new and unpleasant situation. Before the Revolution, rum had been the universal beverage and whiskey had been rare; so rare that when in 1774 Anthony Benezet use the word Whisky he felt he had to explain to readers that it was a “spirit made of grain”. Rum distillers resumed capital - intensive, large-scale operations, but things had changed and it was getting more and more difficult to compete with whiskey. By 1790 rum already accounted for “only” two-thirds of all hard liquor consumed, and whiskey had become so popular that, along with domestic fruit brandy, it accounted for the remaining one-third.

Moreover, the enemies of spirituous liquors took as their model England’s mid-eighteenth-century imposition of an excise tax on gin, which had proved successful in cutting its consumption, thus putting an end to the traditional cheapness of American distilled spirits.

But the excise tax was extremely unpopular and impossible to enforce in the political and legal framework of the 1777 Articles of Confederation, the first, almost forgotten, Constitution of the United States. Initially, the opponents of spirits took action in individual States, though without success. Then they decided to act at the Federal level, joining the political debate then underway which, once again simplifying greatly, saw the supporters of the States’ rights in a Confederation with limited powers up against those who wanted a true Federal State with a strong central government. Their strongest ally was the Federalist leader and Secretary of the Treasury Alexander Hamilton, a key figure in the early years of the new Republic.

Hamilton had a huge problem to solve: public debt. Like Great Britain after the Seven Years’ War, the new Nation came out of the Revolution with a huge public debt that needed to be paid. At first Congress hoped that most of the money would come from the usual and widely accepted, at least in theory, import duties, including duties on imported molasses and rum. Under the new Constitution, in 1789 Congress imposed rum and molasses duties, but the experience suggested that these duties alone would not provide sufficient funds to pay the debt and to cover the expenses of the central government. And so, in a cruelly ironic twist of history, the Federal Government ended up following pretty much in the footsteps of the British Parliament in the 1760’s, deciding to impose a new excise tax on the production of alcohol and the possession of stills and in 1791 approved a new excise on whiskey. I do not believe  Hamilton was interested in the arguments in favor of temperance, but he did use them in his speeches in favor of the excise tax.

The protests against the excise on whiskey began immediately all over the country, and it turned out to be difficult, expensive and dangerous to collect the new tax. Maybe by modern standards the excise tax of 1791 does not seem oppressive. Distillers were taxed based on the size of their stills. Stills with the capacity to annually produce at least 400 gallons of whiskey were taxed between 7 and 18 cents a gallon, depending on the proof of the liquor. Distillers who made stronger whiskey paid a higher tax. Smaller stills were taxed at a rate of 10 cents for every month a still was in operation, or 7 cents for every gallon produced, whichever was lower. Based on these rates, the average distiller was required to pay only a few dollars in liquor tax each year. But even an annual tax of $5 would have consumed a large percentage of the disposable income earned by farmers in the barter-based economy of western Pennsylvania. 

The rebellion began in Pittsburgh during October of 1791 when a group of disguised farmers snatched a federal tax collector from his bed, and marched him five miles to a blacksmith shop where they stripped him of his clothes, and burned him with a poker. Over the next three years dozens of tax collectors were beaten, shot at, tarred and feathered, and otherwise terrorized, intimidated, and humiliated. The home and plantation of John Neville, the chief tax collector for southwestern Pennsylvania, were burned to the ground. By 1794 the excise tax lay largely uncollected in western Pennsylvania. The national debt was rising, and respect for federal authority was waning. Rebel forces had swelled to 5,000. In October President George Washington dispatched 15,000 troops to quell the resistance. The federal troops met little opposition. Within a month, most of the rebels had dispersed, disavowed their cause, or left the state.

By extinguishing the Whiskey Rebellion, the U.S. government withstood a formidable challenge to its sovereignty. Preceded by Shays’ Rebellion in 1786, and followed by Fries’ Rebellion in 1799, the Whiskey Rebellion is distinguished by its size. While all three Rebellions were motivated by their opposition to burdensome taxes, but neither Daniel Shays nor John Fries ever gathered more than a few hundred supporters at any one time, instead as many as 15,000 men and women marched on Pittsburgh in armed opposition to the federal excise tax on whiskey.

However, in 1802, following President Thomas Jefferson’s recommendation, Congress repealed the excise tax, a real disaster for the rum industry as we will see in the next article.

-Article written by Marco Pierini- 

My name is Marco Pierini, I was born in 1954 in a little town in Tuscany (Italy) where I still live. I got a degree in Philosophy in Florence and I studied Political Science in Madrid, but my real passion has always been History. Through History I have always tried to know the world. Life brought me to work in tourism, event organization and vocational training. Then I discovered rum. With Francesco Rufini, I founded La Casa del Rum (The House of Rum), that runs a beach bar and selects Premium Rums in Italy, www.lacasadelrum.it

And finally I have returned back to my initial passion: History, but now it is the History of Rum. Because Rum is not only a great distillate, it’s a world. Produced in scores of countries, by thousands of companies, with an extraordinary variety of aromas and flavors; it has a terrible and fascinating history, made of slaves and pirates, imperial fleets and revolutions.

I have published a book on Amazon: AMERICAN RUM. A Short History of Rum in Early America.