The Whiskey Rebellion. June 13, 2019

Copyright © 2019                               John F. Oyler 

June 13, 2019

The Whiskey Rebellion

For its May program meeting the Bridgeville Area Historical Society welcomed back one of its favorite speakers, Todd DePastino, and was rewarded with an entertaining presentation on the Whiskey Rebellion. His talk turned out to be an excellent complement to the Society’s recent “Second Tuesday” workshop which focused on George Washington’s role in that significant event.

Mr. DePastino is a legitimate historian, gifted with the ability to place specific events in context with the overall trends in history when they occurred. In this case he described the Whiskey Rebellion as merely one event, albeit a very relevant one, in a long term class struggle in the early days of our country.

He described three major schisms in the society of the brand new nation that called itself the United States, schisms which to a certain extent have survived until today. A major division was between the rich and the poor. He reported that most of the settlers were debtors, with high interest mortgages held by wealthy creditors in the big cities in the East.

According to the speaker, between 1783 and 1791, a third of the settlers in Western Pennsylvania lost their farms due to bankruptcy. This is a surprising statistic, one that is seldom mentioned as a root cause of the Whiskey Rebellion. It is well known to be the basis of Shays Rebellion in 1787. There is no evidence of this in our local Chartiers Valley history; perhaps it was more prevalent along the Monongahela, the epicenter of the dissent.

A second schism was rural versus city, particularly the newly prosperous cities on the Eastern seaboard – Boston, New York, Philadelphia, and Baltimore. It was fed by the frontiersmen’s complaints that the new government was rigged to benefit the city dwellers and that it ignored their needs – protection from the Indians, transportation infrastructure, etc. It was an uncanny prediction of today’s “red states vs. blue states” concept.

A third factor was the general concept of the frontier. The settlers in this area were adventurers, a different breed from the “establishment” folks on the other side of the Allegheny Mountains. They were eager to see Ohio and Indiana become available for settlement. They wanted the Mississippi River to be made accessible for them to ship goods to New Orleans. No one in the new government seemed to have any interest in helping them.

Secretary of the Treasury Alexander Hamilton’s Distilled Spirits Tax was the final straw when it was passed by Congress early in 1791. To the settlers west of the Alleghenies it appeared to be specifically intended to punish them. The legislation favored large commercial distillers at the expense of the farmers who operated their stills a couple of months out of the year, converting surplus grain into a commodity that could be transported East and sold. It required payment in cash, a near impossibility in an area where all the trade was done by barter.

Mr. DePastino described the reaction on the frontier as being a replay of the days immediately preceding the Revolution when the Sons of Liberty performed violent, obviously illegal actions, while the Continental Congress provided a facade of responsibility. In 1791 it was the Mingo Creek Association burning barns and tarring and feathering tax collectors, while high level citizens’ committees met and presented the appearance of trying to work within the system.

David Bradford, who was the deputy attorney general for Washington County, was the leader of a faction advocating independence for the frontier settlements and the establishment of a new country – Westylvania. His ambitions were opposed by other prominent citizens, notably Hugh Henry Brackenridge, Albert Gallatin, and William Findley.

The speaker emphasized that the activities in this area were not unique; opposition groups cropped up all along the frontier – western Virginia, Kentucky, western North Carolina, and Georgia. From the very beginning Hamilton wanted to use force to establish the sovereignty of the federal government and concluded that Western Pennsylvania should be the site of this demonstration. 

The events of mid-July 1794, which culminated in the destruction of Tax Inspector John Neville’s mansion, Bower Hill, finally gave Hamilton the excuse to carry out his plans. Militias from Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Maryland, and Virginia were combined to form an army of 13,000 men which marched across the mountains to Pittsburgh and convinced the locals that rebellion was a bad idea. An estimated two thousand rebels followed their leader, David Bradford, west and escaped arrest.

The concept of secession and forming a new country from the settlements west of the mountains persistrd. Bradford was only the first would-be emperor of “Westylvania”; General James Wilkinson and Vice President Aaron Burr each pursued similar ambitions in later years. 

We local history buffs tend to view the Whiskey Rebellion as an extremely exciting series of local events with national significance. It is interesting to consider its place in the “Big Picture” and to realize that many of its aspects are still relevant today and still have not been resolved.

We have already encircled July 20 and 21 on our calendar – that is the weekend of “Woodville Market Faire” at Woodville Plantation, an eighteenth century market featuring entertainment, sutlers, and craftsmen. Rumor has it Secretary of the Treasury Alexander Hamilton will be there, collecting his onerous excise tax on whiskey!

The Historical Society’s final program for the 2018/2019 season is scheduled for Tuesday, June 25, 2019 at 7:30 pm in the Chartiers Room, Bridgeville Volunteer Fire Department. Cortney Williams will discuss “The 1927 Brinks Armored Car Robbery in Bethel Park, by the Flathead Gang”.