The Whiskey Rebellion and the Fight for Equal Taxation in Early America

In response to Hamilton’s upwardly redistributive “funding system,” which directed revenue from a regressive tax on whiskey to the wealthy owners of public debt, western Pennsylvania farmers revolted, seeking a new tax system that was “equal” – that is, proportionate to wealth. To the extent they are remembered at all, the “Whiskey Rebels” make up part of a misleading history of the American frontier. Western intransigence in the face of taxation has been misunderstood as evidence that Americans have always been independent, self-sufficient, knee-jerk opponents of government. In reality, frontiersmen wanted more and stronger government, in the form of military support for American settlers’ invasion of indigenous lands, and higher taxes on the wealthy, to protect the rough economic parity among white men they saw as critical to the survival of the American political experiment in republican self-government.