When news of the tax spread to Western Pennsylvania, individuals immediately voiced their displeasure by refusing to pay the tax. Despite resistance from Anti-Federalists like Thomas Jefferson, Congress passed the legislation. Secretary Hamilton, a Federalist supporting increased federal authority, intended to use the excise tax to lessen this financial burden. By 1794, the Whiskey Rebellion threatened the stability of the nascent United States and forced President Washington to personally lead the United States militia westward to stop the rebels.īy 1791 the United States suffered from significant debt incurred during the Revolutionary War. In January 1791, President George Washington's Secretary of the Treasury Alexander Hamilton proposed a seemingly innocuous excise tax "upon spirits distilled within the United States, and for appropriating the same." 1 What Congress failed to predict was the vehement rejection of this tax by Americans living on the frontier of Western Pennsylvania.
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