shields and then he says at the end of it, if it's not too complicated, we should add neptune in the ocean. and a lot of waves. maybe a trident. he really was enthusiastic. but clearly what that's bringing to life is the idea that the the united states was well aware of the watchful and even threatening attention of the world. so given that context, you can see how the new nation's reputation, its national honor in the eyes of the world would have mattered. not only to hamilton, but to the founding generation. generally. you can see hamilton worrying about national honor right after the war. in a letter that he wrote in 1783, he urged new york governor george clinton to treat loyalists in new york cityç fairly as a war came to a close, not to penalize them or deprive them of their property. because as hamilton described in

this letter, it was a matter of national honor. american treatment of loyalists after the war would say a lot about the character of the new nation and hamilton wanted the nation to start off on the right foot. so hamilton was thinking about national honor almost from the launching of the new nations, but he really concerned himself with the preservation of national honor when he became the nation's first secretary of the treasury in 1789. hamilton was the man responsible for dealing with the new nation's enormous disorganized war debts so essentially he was responsible for establishing national credit. now hamilton's concern makes sense if you think about the meaning of the word credit. the formal focus of hamilton's job. credit is essentially honor in another form. credit, a person with credit is trustworthy. a person with credit has a reliable and upstanding character. a nation's credit represents all of those things as well as its standing in the eyes of the world, a nation's reputation.

so credit and national honor are very much bound together. that's precisely how hamilton understood the idea of national credit. he assumed that it was fundamentally bound up with national honor. to hamilton a nation with bad credit was a nation without honor. as he put it in an unfinished report that he wrote, defending his financial system after he stepped down, bad credit, quote, prostrated the national honor. now given hamilton's utter conviction that bad credit meant national dishonor and given how firmly he believed his policies were best for the nation, and given how much he tied his own reputation to the founding of the nation, imagine how he felt when his policies were tampered with. so for example, in 1795 when uli congress didn't follow his suggestions concerning the nation's unsubscribed debt, hamilton went wild. as he put it in a letter to his

r@end, rufus king, the unnecessary, capricious and abominable assassination of the national honor by the rejection of the propositions respecting the debt in the house of representatives haunts me every step i take and affects me more than i can express. to see the character of the government and the country so exposed puts my heart to the torture. now listen to where he goes from there which is even more interesting. he goes on to say, am i then more of an american than those who drew first breath on american ground? or what is it that thus torments me and a circumstance so calmly viewed by almost everybody else? am i a fool or is there a constitutional defect in the american mind? now that's a remarkable statement and it really shows you how national honor was an intensely personal issue for hamilton. a deeply felt personal issue that he, himself, sort of bound

up his identity with. in fact, hamilton took the defense of national honor so seriously that he chose a really interesting word to describe the sacrifice of national honor. he called it suicide. at least twice, hamilton insisted that not defending national honor was suicidal. as he put it in the defense of his funding system in 1795, not attending properly to the national debt at the launching of the government would have humiliated the united states before the eyes of the world, or as he put it, quote, it would have been an act of suicide in the government as a very commencement of its existence. not defending national honor was an act of political suicide. it's an idea that he used more than once when discussing national policy. now that idea that sacrificing honor is suicidal brings us to the topic of the third part of my talks this afternoon. hamilton's defense of his honorr in the duel that led to his

death in 1804 and the logic .lmç behind it. over time people have suggested that hamilton wases suicidal in fighting that duel, but i think if you understand his idea that not defending honor is suicidal and if you combine that idea with an understanding of how the code of honor and dueling worked in the period, you find that his duel with burr was not that simple. before we turn to hamilton's duel with burr, i want to turn for just a moment to the code of honor and dueling. now i have already said for an herbal national politician, honor was more than just a vague sense of self-worth. it was proving he was a deserving political leader. if you think about it, among men who were touchy about their reputation and had to be, rules of their behavior became very important. this makes sense. where insults carry such grave consequences where the wrong word might lead you to the

dueling ground, there have to be clearly defined rules and standards so accidental insults can be avoided. the code of honor set out clear standards of conduct. words you were supposed to avoid, actions you were supposed to avoid, and when a line was crossed and honor was offended, the code of honor offered a regulated way of settling the dispute hopefully with negotiations but sometimes with gun play on a dueling ground. for example, there were a number of what i suppose i call alarm bell words that you could never use in reference to another gentleman. words like liar, coward, rascal, which has kind of lost a lot of its sting in the 21st century, scoundrel, and puppy, which really lost all of its zing in the 21st century. everyone knew insulting a man with one of those words was as good as challenging him to a duel. in a sense it was a dare that demanded a response. to ignore it would be to dishonor yourself.

by hamilton's logic, to commit political suicide. once a man felt dishonored, matters followed predikts bl ritualistic steps. the man who felt offended would include five basic statements. first it would say i have been told that you insulted me. second, it would repeat the insult precisely. third, it would ask if this account true or false. fourth, it would ask do you have an explanation. fifth, it would demand an immediate response typically by demanding, quote, to the respect due to a man of honor. now that kind of letter really almost a form letter was an alarm bell signaling that honor had been offended and the person writing the letter was willing to fight. and from that point on, as soon as you received that kind of a letter, you were engaged in an affair of honor and every word and action could result in a duel. this is typically the point

where each man would appoint a second to represent him. a person who acted as a kind of lawyer, negotiating terms for his client, hopefully finding a way to forge an apology without humiliating either party. ideally, these negotiations allowed honor to be satisfied without any violence. the point of an affair of honor was to demonstrate your willingness to die for your honor. not necessarily to engage in gun play and not necessarily to kill your opponent, and it's counterintuitive, but true. the point of the duel is to prove you're willing to die for your honor. you don't need to have a gun in your hand to prove that. you need to prove you're willing you need to prove you're willing to duel. even on a dueling ground, you're not trying to kill your opponent, particularly in political duels. you're trying to prove you're brave enough to be there and take part in that duel, willing to die for your honor. now once you understand political dueling in this way

and recognize all the letter sending and negotiations as an affair of honor, you discover there are many more affairs of on nr in early america than most people think. for example, hamilton was involved in at least ten of these affairs of honor, which are in a sense, duels without gunfire before his duel with burr. in new york city alone in the 12 years surrounding the burr/hamilton duel, there were 17 other political duels, many of them interrelated. in other words, the burr/hamilton duel wasn't a lone duel in and of itself but part of a larger trend. when you look at these political duels together, you notice some interesting patterns. most of them took place shortly after an election and they were deliberately provoked and a common ploy was one man would call another a self-interested politician. there's only one response to that sort of an insult, which was you're a liar. poof, you have a duel. in most cases the loser of an election or one of his friends

would provoke the winner or one of his friends into a duel. so what we're talking about here when we're looking at these political duels are not impulsive, irrational events, not guided by suicidal impulses or murderous rage, they were deliberately provoked and strategically timed. in other words, many early political duels were like counterelections. someone who was dishonored by an election by losing an election tried to redeem his reputation with an arift craftic contest of honor. a dual. so in essence, american political duels were deliberate attempts to prove one self eligible for future leadership. to protect one's honor and prove one's self a deserving political leader. remember that idea as we turn now to the burr/hamilton duel. the year was 1804. burr was vice president of the united states, but his national political career was looking grim. president thomas jefferson

didn't trust him and had basically cut him out of his administration. aware he wouldn't have a second chance at vice presidency and ambitious for a position of leadership, he turned to state politics and decided to run for governor of new york. now hamilton at this point was a practicing lawyer in new york city. he was not particularly politically active, but he became more active when he learned the man he most distrusted in the world, aaron burr, was running for governor of his own state. by 1804, burr and hamilton had been political rivals for 15 years. both men were intense individuals, they were ambitious, they moved in the same social circles, went to-o the same parties, they had many of the same friends. sometimes they even argued legal cases together as joint counsel. but according to hamilton, there was one central way in which two men were extremely different. hamilton was exceedingly ambitious so there was no denying that and i don't think hamilton himself would have denied that.

but hamilton felt he was guided by his thirs for honor and fame as understood in the 18th century. a desire to win glory in the eyes of posterity by serving the public good. so in a sense that meant hamilton was self-interested because he wanted fame and glory. he felt the best we to earn those things was through great acts of public service. he made no such claims. to many people at the time, he didn't seem to be bound by any grand political principles. he seemed to seize on the politics of the moment to get things done, and many politicians of the time were impressed and sometimes a little shocked at this. he didn't seem to have, as one politician put it, pesky political principles tieing him down. he didn't seem to have pesky political principles tying him down. he seemed to be an incredible useful person to have around during political battles for elections. now this is terrifying to hamilton. burr was talented, charming, just as ambitious as hamhamilto

but in hamilton's view, with seemingly no political restra t restraints. no guiding star holding him back. to hamilton, that made burr a dangerous man. someone who had to be stopped. so hamilton focused on destroying burr's gubernatorial campaign. the roots of the duel were at a dinner party in new york. hamilton was there as well as another federalist who described the party in a letter. i'm going to give you a bad paraphrase of the letter here. cooper said, you should have heard hamilton talk about burr over dinner. he says burr was a dangerous man man who ought not hold the reins of government, and i can detail to you a still more despicable opinion, which general hamilton expressed, but i won't because letters these days tend to get stolen from the mail and printed in newspapers by political enemies. of course, what happens to cooper's letter? it's stolen by political enemies and published in a newspaper.

so, that happens. it's public. burr loses the election not necessarily due to hamilton's opposition, but he was humiliated by the loss. he began to feel desperate to prove he was still a deserving leader, especially to his supporters who were beginning to doubt him. why cling to burr as a leader if he couldn't offer you anything, no patronage, no influence? some supporters said this quite literally. as one put it, burr had to fight back. quote, if he tamely sat town in silence, what must have been the feelings of his friends? they must have considered him as a man not with own firmness and to defend and unworthy of their support. so to prove himself a political leader, burr felt he had to redeem his reputation and that's the frame of mind he was in when someone put cooper's letter in his hand.

burr sent hamilton an alarm letter on june 18th that included those five key phrases i mentioned. he said something still more despicable amount me. is this true or false? do you have an explanation? and reply promptly as i deserve as a man of honor. so this was a threat. and immediately upon receiving this letter, hamilton would have known he was now involved in an affair of honor and there was the possibility that a duel might result. but hamilton was puzzled because in burr's letter he accused hamilton of saying something despicable, but there was no specific insult him to deny or explain. to hamilton his insult seemed too vague to merit a duel and how do you apo popologize for something that vague? hamilton's response shows how torn hamilton was between his need to face burr's challenge and defend his honor as a gentleman and his natural desire to avoid a duel. trying to find his way out of

his predicament, he began his letter by debating the meaning of the word despicable which burr took as an insulting grammar lesson. he then concluded his letter quite logically by showing he wasn't afraid to duel if he had to. he wrote that he would not be held responsible for hearsay and that he was always willing to face the consequences for his actions. in a sense, not surprisingly, burr did not respond well to hamilton's letter. he said, it revealed nothing of that sincerity and delicacy which you profess to value. in other words, hamilton was not acting like a gentleman. which was a highly offensive insult that hamilton would not ignore. so now hamilton felt insulted and couldn't back down. b burr felt insulted and more insistent on fighting and began to see how things spiraled to their ultimate conclusion at this point. before the duel, hamilton had one final decision to make. he wasn't sure if he would shoot

at burr. to hamilton, shooting at a man didn't seem to be the christian thing to do. he agonized about this decision and the night before the duel he made his choice. ]ñxm>zxfií÷yçvjlíññ)?ksv thnathanial benpendleton, resul from what he called religious scruples and could not be altered. and hamilton was aware that this was a difficult decision for people to understand. for example, they might think he was being suicidal. so he decided to explain himself and defend his reputation one last time in a statement addressed to posterity to be made public only in the event of his death. this is another one of those documents that as a historian you thank the heavens for. because it's a remarkable explanation of his feelings at this moment of climax, of such a decision in his life. in his final statement, hamilton acknowledged all the reasons he didn't want to duel. his family, his debts, his religious and moral scruples and

his desire to live. he also explained why he felt compelled to fight. he had seriously insulted burr and he believed what he had said so he couldn't apologize particularly since burr had insulted him during the negotiations. but most fundamental of all, hamilton felt that as he put it, quote, all the considerations which constitute which men of the world denominate honor impressed on me i thought a peculiar necessity not to decline the call. the ability to be in future in the crises of our public affairs which seem likely to happen would probably be unseparable to a conformity of public practice in this particular. which is a long way of saying hamilton expected a future political crisis of some kind and in his mind, if he did not satisfy public expectations of leadership, if he did not defend his honor, he would be dishonored, cast off and useless at the moment of crisis.

not defending his honor would be self-destructive. you could say in a sense, suicidal. to be in future useful, to use hamilton's words, he had to defend his honor. so on july 11th, 1804, hamilton and burr met on a tooduel grounn new jersey, hamilton was fatally wounded and died the next day. 210 years ago today, he was laid to rest just outside these doors. it was a tragic end to a remarkable life. a product of choices that made sense to him, although they might not make sense to us. that point, the fact that hamilton and actually every other founder made some choices that might seem flawed to us is where i want to close my comments today. because to really understand the founders and actually the american founding generally, we need to understand and remember that they were people. sometimes flawed, sometimes

selfish, sometimes selfless and farseeing. to deny that is to deny the meaning, and i suppose you could even say the majesty of america's founding moment. these men weren't demigods. they were real people, not sure what they were doing, sometimes on their best behavior, sometimes not. this human story of trial and error is the real story of our nation's founding. if these very human people could accomplish great things, perhaps future generations could do so as well. it's the logic that inspired their greatest hopes for the future, the ultimate message that they hoped to impart. thank you very much. [ applause ] bank . coming up, more from our american history tv programs normally seen weekends an

c-span3. next, a discussion of pennsylvania's whiskey ra bellon and other uprisings against the federalist led u.s. government in the 1790s then a look at alcohol use in colonial america. each week, american history tv sits in on a lecture with one of the nation's college professors. you can watch the classes here every saturday at 8:00 p.m. and midnight eastern. next, university of north carolina, greensboro professor watson jennison, significance of local uprisings against the federalist led u.s. government. he focuses on the whiskey rebellion in pennsylvania and the trans-tacony republic. this class is about an hour. >> so today's class is going to be on the political unrest of the 1790s. the political unrest of the 1790s. we have this notion oftentimes

that once the constitution was passed everything was fine, but as we read for today, there was far more than what met the eye. indeed, what we saw is there was continued conflict. there were continued divisions within america that pit different citizens against one another over the fate of the revolution. over what the revolution should look like. over what the revolution was about. as we've discussed, there are different motivations for joining the battle against the british. people were opposed to the british but could come together through that. as they began to think through what the revolution actually met, we start to see divisions coming to the fore, emerging and dividing what had not been a united patriot bloc, but divisions had not been as clear. before we get going on the political unrest of the 1790s, i want us to quickly recap the substitution we had last class on the ratification, the forecasting of the constitution and the ratification of the

constitution. what were the key elements of that discussion? what is most important about our discussion of the constitution? what did we learn from that? what are two clear sides that emerged as a result of the -- yes? >> you have the federalists who support a strong central government. >> great. so what we saw on the eve of the ratification vote, on the eve of the vote for the constitution, as people were discussing the document, itself, there were divisions, deep divisions. we think about today, of course, if you're an american, you believe in the constitution. everybody believes in the constitution.wá1na>y but at this time in the 1780s as we saw not every american believed in the constitution. indeed some americans saw it as a centralization of power. we saw that some of these folks were what was the name of the group that opposed the constitution? the anti-federalists tried to

mobilize forces to try to ensure that it wasn't passed. inevitably, however, we do see that the constitution was passed, but, and ratified, but it was in large part to multiplication undertaken on the part of the folks who were in favor of the constitution. to placate the concerns of those people who saw the constitution as being something that would grow in size and take over power and centralize power. what the anti-federalists required was some sort of amendments. and these amendments were added on to the constitution and eventually the first ten became the bill of rights and they were ratified in 1791. so what we saw was conflict. conflict that led eventually to the passage of, or ratification of the constitution. but it wasn't as though everyone was on board. indeed, we get a sense of the

divisions based on the ratification vote, alone. which states did not vote to ratify? north carolina. we remember north carolina and rhode island, two states that said we're not sure we're in favor of this. now eventually nine states did ratify and eventually the constitution would become the law of the land, would become official, but what we see is there were struggles. struggles over its ratification. not everyone agreed. now if we think about the constitution somehow the ratification of the constitution somehow smoothing out all the differences, what we read for today is it's clearly not the case. what we see is in the 1790s, many of the divisions, many of the concerns that people who viewed the constitution and the centralization of government, the increasingly large federal government, these folks came to see this still as a problem in the 1790s.

the ratification of the constitution did not do away with these divisions. instead they continued to manifest themselves. and we can see them manifest themselves in a variety of ways. we're going to talk about three ways today that are two clear examples. examples that highlight the ways in which certain individuals, american citizens decided that they were going to rebel against the constitution and the federal government. in the 1790s we see two examples where rebels decided they didn't want to be part of the united states anymore, perhaps. they decide to try to form their own more perfect union, their own country. one of these events takes place, or both of them take place in 1794. the first of them that we're going to discuss is the whiskey rebellion, which takes place in 1794 in pennsylvania. as we'll discuss, it's a far larger protest. not exclusively to pennsylvania.

the second incident that we see in which the -- a group of citizens decide to rebel. they decide to oppose the federal government. this occurs in georgia. it's called the trans-oconee republican. now these two examples highlight c the tiff visions that were emerging, especially among groups in the west. the western parts of the states towards the federal government. these two examples, as i said, highlight continued opposition to the reach of the federal government and portions of the american public were not happy with the way power had been centralized in the hands of the whiskey rebels and the

trans-oconee, rebels. they undertook their actions for very different reasons. on the one hand with the whiskey rebels, it was an an excise tax imposed upon them unfairly. for the trans-oconee republicans, what they viewed as the key problem to try to spur them to leave the united states is they didn't agree with the federal government's ability to conduct diplomacy with the indians. in particular what they wanted to see was the federal government remove all of the indians of the southeast and expel them, push them west of the mississippi river. many of these rebels in the trans-oconee had fought in the revolutionary war and fought against the indian tribes that neighbored georgia, the creek and cherokee. during the war there had been brutal instances of combat, of warfare between the settlers in georgia and what we see as the

indian tribe surrounding. after the war, after the patriots emerged victorious, what many of the republicans thought was of course the u.s. government should expel these folks. they should be pushed west and allow for white expansion, for american exprangs. so these two examples highlight, as i said, the fact that there are these divisions to centralize power in the hands of the federal government. though they are different, they both demonstrate the precariousness of the american experiment. republicanism. both of them demonstrate the precariousness. we from our vantage point we look back and we know that america is going to be this great power. it's inevitable. they didn't know that at the time. in the 1790s this was just an experiment by a group of people who are on the other side away from europe on the other side of the atlantic. much of europe looks on thinking this is going to fall horribly

wrong. it's going to go horribly wrong. this new experiment represented something different. no one was sure what would happen, how it would turn out. as the 1790s unfolded, what we see is them trying to uncover, trying to uncover what will take place, trying to shake the events. now to give us a sense, i want to start off just to give us a sense of what kind of division we're talking about and how they manifest themselves. we're going to see a happen once it warms up here. we're going to talk about the whiskey rebels first in kentucky. the whiskey rebellion in kentucky. it takes place in the summer of 1794 but it grew out of a disagreement that went back to 1791 and emerged as a full-blown crisis in the summer of 1794 but the origins of the disagreement that would lead to this blowup,

this flare of conflict between the whiskey rebels and federal government emerges in 1791 and it's connected to the excise tax, the excise tax. in 1791 alexander hamilton helped to push through what was, as the secretary of the treasury, he convinced congress to impose an excise tax on distillers. he convinced them to impose an excise tax on distillers of whiskey. he thought this would be one of the best means, one of the best means of keeping the nation together. he devised this plan as a mean to keep the nation united. he believed the best course of action would be to purr has this state's debts. we talked about how the states had gotten deeply in debt over the course of the revolution in an attempt to try to pay for the war. we talked about the inflationary spiral. we talked about how the currency had become virtually worthless. that many of the states were issuing. that the continental congress issued currency and it had fallen apart.

in terms of its value. we see declining value. well, in an attempt to try to ensure the nation, that the experiment continued, what alexander hamilton believed is if the federal government purchased the state's debt, it would help the federal government and would also help the states. it would help the states by relieving them of their debts. it would also make sure that people outside of the government would have a stake in the government. part of the way he managed to, alexander hamilton managed to not ensure, but devise a plan he would be able to get support, to keep it going, a plan in which the currency would be paid back in its full credit. you were a merchant or trader, you could go out and buy this currency for cheap. for pennies on the dollar. that's how much it was worth at this time. when alexander hamilton

implemented his new policy that when he created the policy that would have the states sell back their debt to the federal government, what we see is that much of the currency increased in value tremendously..oben-++;r if you were smart enough to purchase this currency at a low rate to pennies on the dollar and the federal government was going to turn around and give you full face value for it, it meant an increase in what you were going to get. if you bought it for 30 cents and now you were going to get a made 70 cents on that purchase. what we see is that many of the people with money who were necessary to help fund the government would buy in, hamilton believed. he expected the creation of a new national debt would give creditors a stake in the economic stability of the nation. hamilton's program proved to be a boom to spectators, as i said, merchants as well and other money men from port cities. they accumulated large amounts of currency and much was

purchased at considerably depressed prices which meant the policy would bring them considerable wealth. now, the whiskey tax was devised to pay off this debt. how there is a shift in the people who are actually going to have to pay it off. it's the financiers who are going to make money. the speculators were going to money off of this deal. but the government as it pays it out, where are they going to get the funds to pay back this money? they decided they would get it from an excise tax on whiskey. that meant that certain parts of the country would bare a disproportionate amount of tax to pay for the government's investment, to pay for the government's debts. i brought this map up here to give us a sense of the kinds of, enlarge it, what we can see here is a map that indicates where there's majority federalists and anti-federalists. evenly split area. what we can see is certain

patterns develop. if we look to pennsylvania, one o the places where we're going to see this play out, where the concern over the excise tax plays out, it's very mixed. there are strong holds of federalist support, strong areas of anti-federalist support and large areas that are divided. as we've been discussing, there was no unanimity surrounding the constitution and this would continue to play out. people who had been opposed to the constitution once it passed were not necessarily onboard with the powers that would then be granted to the federal government. now, as i said, what we see is this new excise tax that is going to be imposed. this is really the spark that pushes the whiskey rebels to action. at first, what we see is after the enactment of the law in march of 1791, we see that protest break out throughout the appalachian region, really from pennsylvania all the way down to georgia in the western sections,

appalachians and west of the appalachians. what we see are residents in these areas propest itesting, u arms. the reasons they're up in arms is because many of the folks who lived there relied upon whiskey production, a core part of what they did. now, many of these folks were grain farmers. whether it was wheat or corn. they grew different kinds of grain. what they did with the surplus grain after they used what they needed, they would bamake it in liquor because it makes sense. fwr grain is bulky, difficult to travel and transport. it entailed quite a bit of cost to put it on a wagon and bring it across. you could distill grains into liquor and tridrink it as well. benefits come from distilling excess grains down into liquor.

what the excise tax would have done would have charged these people, would have charged them. it would have imposed a tax on what they were doing. now, before many of these farmers had supplemented their incomes relying upon distilling liquor. now they found that they faced a tax. and the tax was equal to about 25% of the retail value of the liquor. about 25% of the real value of the liquor which meant that the profit that would go to the farmers pretty much evaporated once the tax was imposed. now, as i said, throughout the western sections of pennsylvania, maryland, virginia, north carolina, south carolina georgia, appalachian areas, there is unrest and spreads into the western part, into kentucky as well. the western part of virginia which is not yet kentucky. but of all the places where we see it really take hold the strongest, where we see the protest reach its most radical stage was in western pennsylvania. it was most radical in western pennsylvania. the opposition there was

centered in the western section of the state and the counties of allegheny, washington state, we westmoreland counties. for those who know pennsylvania. have to know it's western, western areas. in the western section of pennsylvania, what do we see in terms of support for the constitution? it's mixed, right? we can see a pretty significant portion of western pennsylvania, once you get to the other side of the mountains, is opposed to it. this is before the ratification of the constitution. this is prior. what we can see is longstanding grievances continue to fester. they on the toñbeyz÷ manifest themselves. imagine you didn't support the constitution. now you've got a new federal government which now is taxing you. what does that seem a whole lot like? who? it seems a lot like the british. right? which is what in of the western

what they complained about was taxation without, and this is, in this instance, local representation. they didn't believe that their local interests were being properly represented. they had no say in the passage of this tax. so what we see is throughout 1791 and 1792, we see residents of appalachia opposed to the tax, protesting in a range of different çways, many of the ws they were protesting is rim this sent of the revolutionary. what are some of the various ways we saw protests conducted during the revolutionary era? riots. we think about urban, riots, land riots, think about urban riots. proud politics as they were also known. think about the ways in which they sometimes expressed their intimidation. think about what holton saw. such graphic detail. yeah? tarred feathering. right? we can think about the tar and feathering which was not

something like we saw loony tunes where you get tar put on you and feathers and things are okay in the end. this is a brute, brutal treatment. a brutal punishment. what we start to see are similar actions conducted. we can see the similar kind of activity being mount ed slowly but surely in western pennsylvania. now, many of the folks who are engaging in this sort of dissent, this opposition, they were revolutionary veterans. these are men who had gone off and fought in the war, either served in the militia or the continental army and now they had come back home hoping to establish themselves, hoping to live life in the new republic they had helped to create. many of them now felt as though their sacrifice in some ways was being ignored as this tax was imposed. one of the militant factions, there are various factions within western pennsylvania, one of the more militant groups was named the mingo creek association. the mingo creek association.

they led much of the organized resistance to the collection of taxes. now, at first, as i said, what you see are the protesters followed the same basic script that had been provided by the revolution. they even used the same kind of rhetoric in their demands and complaints. they organized two conventions shortly after the passage of the excise tax. and they did this in pittsburgh. they did it to make their demands clear. they wanted to articulate their demands. after organizing these conventions they petitioned the state government in philadelphia. they also sent a petition to the u.s. house of representatives. and for all of their efforts what they saw is that the federal government decided that they could work with the people. congress could work but they dropped down the tax by a penny, which was negligible by most of the opponents in their view. this meant nothing. it didn't change the outcome. what they needed was a serious revision. so, imagine we have these men in western pennsylvania who are up

in arms, up in arms that their treatment to the federal government from this new tax that has been imposed from far away with the federal government. so many of them, it smacked of the same sort of issues they had fought against. the same sort of issues seemed to be coming back. when the conventions in other kinds of protests failed to bring about the response they had hoped for, the resistance grew more intense and violent in western pennsylvania. the protesters at this point, they began to evolve into rebels. but august of 1792, what we see is that local leaders of the movement decided to block federal agents, federal officials from conducting their business that is from enforcing the laws. they made it impossible for federal officials to conduct their official duties in western pennsylvania, which included, among other things, collecting taxes. they made it so hostile, the environment, that the tax

collectors were fearful of traveling in this area because it was known that their presence was not accepted. local residents also organized themselves into committees of correspondence, like the committees of safety during the revolution. and they targeted those who favored or disobeyed the law. or obeyed the law, excuse me. if you were a proponent of the law, you could find yourself like being a loyalist, tarred and feathered for supporting the wrong side. usually the folks who were tarred and feathered were agents of the federal government, but you could still face intimidation if you didn't believe it was that bad a thing. these efforts, as i said, included tar and feathering and tax collectors and other representatives of the federal authority. with little to stop them, they became increasingly brazen in their actions. the official in charge of collecting the tax in western pennsylvania, a man named john neble. he admitted as much when he told

his superior, wrote a report that he could not go into washington county which was the center of the opposition. he could not go there just to see what was going on for fear of his life. he thought he would get killed by these whiskey rebels that were growing in power, they were growing in numbers and they were growing in their assertiveness. the conflict came to a head in 1794, in the summer of 1794, when u.s. marbles traveled to western pennsylvania to serve ritz to 60 distillers who had refused to pay the tax. these are men who said, no, we're not going to do it. so these agents of the federal government, these marshals went to deliver ritz telling them not only would they have to, if convicted, pay a penalty, they would also have to -- this punishment inflicted upon them but they would also have to travel all the way from western pennsylvania, they would have to travel, of course, over land all the way to philadelphia where the federal court was. this was not only -- this was insult to injury in many ways. it was one thing to have to pay

the tax and be forced into it, but then to have to travel over land a very long distance to go to western pennsylvaniaima hardship on these men. not only would they have to stop working but they would have to pay for themselves to get out there. now, when the agents arrived, word quickly spread within these communities and very quickly what we see is a 500 man, 500 man local militia formed under the leadership of a former veteran, a former revolutionary veteran, a man named jack mcfarland. jack mcfarland. so, imagine what we see here, the situation. we have these marshals who are trying to hand out these ritz to these distillers, people find out about it and they start mobilizing. and they mobilize to confront these tax agents. that's exactly what they did. led by mcfarland, they went to neble's house and they attacked his house. this is a representative of the federal government.

and they attacked his house and a melee ensued. it in midst of this me lay, jack mcfarland was killed. to many folks who were living there he become a martyr to that movement. he e becomes a martyr. in the weeks that followed, support for these rebels grew and not only among the distillers in western pennsylvania, but also among poor people. among people who were landless. among people who had anger toward the wealthy. for a variety of different reasons. people were coming together because they viewed federal power as something that was growing too strong and proof positive was the excise tax. it also tapped into deep hostility that was there simmering below the surface in western pennsylvania as society went through these changes. it wasn't only distillers by the

end. it was also small armers who didn't own stills. it was men who had grievances for one reason or another. at its peak, 7,000 men, about 7,000 men formed this group of rebels. the core of this group of rebels. not long after that attacked john neble's house, word reached washington. word reached president washington and he responded cautiously. he responded cautiously. he sent representatives to meet with the rebels while at the same time prepared to move militarily against them. on august 7th, 1794, washington announced with quote his deepest regret the beginning of a military action against the rebels, a military action now against other americans. at the lead of a 13,000 man army composed of militiamen provided by virginia, maryland, new jersey and eastern pennsylvania, washington moved to subdue the rebels. the first and only time an

acting president has actually commanded the u.s. military from the front. we think about the president being the commander in chief. well, in this instance he was literally the commander in chief at the head of this army that was moving inwards to the interior of pennsylvania to put town what he and many in his cabinet and many others in his administration believed was an insurrection. it wasn't men who were just upset about paying a tax. it was answer an ins protection. they were thinking about leaving the union, leaving the united states. contemplating radical actions. they created their own flag even. just to give us a sense of their seriousness. they had their own flag which they hoped to begin a new country. six counties. five counties from pennsylvania and one county from virginia would form this new unit. but this is among the most

radical of the rebels. not everyone agreed with this. there was some who were more moderate and calling for reconciliati reconciliation. they were radical rebels who were calling for a break. now, after mobilizing the army, washington led the forces to the center of the state, as i said. by the time the army reached western pennsylvania in october of 1794, however, the insurrection had disintegrated as word of washington's forces reached the rebels. this gigantic force of 13,000 men who was larger than the army that washington actually commanded for most parts of the american revolution for the war of independence. this was a larger army that he had under his command at this point than he had had during the war of independence. when the rebels heard about this overwhelming force they fled. they left. they decided that it didn't make sense to actually engage washington and the federalized milit militia. in the end, about ten men were sent to philadelphia for this

and put on trial. and two were convicted and sentenced to death but they were later pardoned by washington. so, the whiskey rebellion, what's the significance and what is the importance of this rebellion? well, it set severe limits or at least the response of the federal government. it set severe limits on public opposition to federal policies. in the early 1790s, many americans still assumed it was legitimate to protest unpopular laws using the same tactics which they blocked the parliamentary measures like the stamp act in 1765. by firmly suppressing this challenge to national authority, washington served notice that citizens who resorted to violent or other extralegal means of political action would feel the full force of the federal authority. what we see is a change. right? that may have worked in the 1760s. but the same sort of actions