Whiskey Rebellion is the succession of turbulence in 1794 intended against the enforcement of a U.S. centralized law of 1791 striking an excise tax on whiskey. The yoke of the tax, which had been sponsored by the Federalist head and secretary of the treasury Alexander Hamilton, fell principally on western Pennsylvania, after that one of the chief whiskey-producing regions of the country. The grain farmers, mainly of who were moreover distillers, depended on whiskey for more or less all their proceeds, and they well thought-out the law an attack on their independence and monetary well-being. Organized confrontation to the tax, even including the tarring and feathering of federal revenue officials, quickly assumed grave proportions. Warrants for the arrest of a large number of noncomplying distillers were issued by the federal authorities in the spring of 1794; in the riots that followed a federal officer was killed, and a mob burned the home of the regional inspector of the excise. (Robert V. Remini (1981)
In a declaration issued in August 1794, President George Washington prepared the insurgents to dissolve and requested the governors of Pennsylvania, Maryland, New Jersey, and Virginia to rally contingents of armed force. The president moreover dispatched three commissioners to Parkinson's Ferry, Pennsylvania, to discuss with delegates representing the western section of the state, however the negotiations proved ineffective. On October 14, 1794, Washington planned the militia to proceed to the western counties. They met little resistance. The troops detained a number of people, most of who were soon released for want of evidence. Two offenders were convicted of treason; however they were pardoned by Washington. The purported Whiskey Rebellion is significant in U.S. history mostly for the reason that it provided the initial real test of the federal government's prerogatives and law enforcement control, including the president's right to control the use of state militias................
