The Whiskey Rebellion: Frontier Epilogue to the American Revolution [Paperback]

Thomas P. Slaughter (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 0195051912 | ISBN-13: 978-0195051919 | Publication Date: January 14, 1988

When President George Washington ordered an army of 13,000 men to march west in 1794 to crush a tax rebellion among frontier farmers, he established a range of precedents that continues to define federal authority over localities today. The "Whiskey Rebellion" marked the first large-scale resistance to a law of the U.S. government under the Constitution. This classic confrontation between champions of liberty and defenders of order was long considered the most significant event in the first quarter-century of the new nation. Thomas P. Slaughter recaptures the historical drama and significance of this violent episode in which frontier West and cosmopolitan East battled over the meaning of the American Revolution.
The book not only offers the broadest and most comprehensive account of the Whiskey Rebellion ever written, taking into account the political, social and intellectual contexts of the time, but also challenges conventional understandings of the Revolutionary era.

Editorial Reviews

From Library Journal

Slaughter restores the Whiskey Rebellion (1794) to its rightful place as a major event in our national history. He contends that it parallels the conflicts over taxation and representation of the Revolution. Slaughter ably reconstructs the rebellion's social, ideological, political, and personal concerns, and delineates its national and international dimensions. Most importantly, he shows that the frontier is truly central to understanding the period, and that the excise tax protest was frontier-wide, not limited to western Pennsylvania, as is so often believed. Slaughter's provocative treatment of nationalist leaders and his reliance on an "interregional interpretation" and a "liberty-order construct" are bound to stir lively discussion. Highly recommended for academic and large public libraries. Roy H. Tryon, Delaware State Archives, Dover
Copyright 1986 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Review

"A vivid account of how 7,000 rioting settlers in western Pennsylvania and beyond opposed a Federal tax on liquor."--The New York Times

"In this year when Americans will celebrate the 200th anniversary of the Constitution, [this] highly readable volume should provide much food for thought."--Philadelphia Inquirer

"Slaughter restores the Whiskey Rebellion to its rightful place in our national history....Highly recommended."--Library Journal

"[Slaughter] succeeds admirably in his goal of bringing this episode in frontier history to center stage in American history."--William and Mary Quarterly

"A vivid picture of the squalor of life west of the mountains and the insensitivity of speculators, including Washington himself."--History Book Review

"Slaughter's book will be the standard for the next generation....[It] will certainly stand in the forefront as the standard complete interpretation for years to come."--West Virginia History

"An intelligent and thorough study which links the back country to broader...issues....Well-done."--M. Bellesiles, Emory University

"Insightful and well-written...excellent."--Delmer G. Ross, Loma Linda University

"An unusual combination of meticulous scholarship and engaging narrative. [Slaughter's] highly readable volume should provide much food for thought."--The Philadelphia Inquirer

"An important reexamintation of the meaning of the American Revolution. The text is written to engage as well as inform ensuring that students will actually learn from it."--Barbara M. Kelly, Hofstra University

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 304 pages
• Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA (January 14, 1988)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0195051912
• ISBN-13: 978-0195051919
• Product Dimensions: 8 x 5.3 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 7.2 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (11 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #115,062 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

25 of 27 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars An excellent portrayal of the events of the rebellion., August 10, 1998

By 

Jeffrey A. Swanson (Shelby, MI USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Whiskey Rebellion: Frontier Epilogue to the American Revolution (Paperback)

This book was well documented and portrayed wonderfully the life of the frontiersmen and how they viewed the "oppression" of the Easterners. However, it equally balances the view of the Easterners toward their perceptions and interpretations of the actions of the frontiersmen. It offers the student of history a very balanced view of what took place two hundred years ago on the western Pennsylvania frontier in a very readable form. Slaughter always manages to give both sides to each issue and interprets the events thusly. Unfortunately, the one issue the author failed to cover was the impact of the frontier church in the shaping of events. Surely with the 2nd Great Awakening on the frontier's horizon this would have implications. The final compliment to the author is that I truly appreciated his stories that started each chapter. These real-life events vividly portray life as it was on the frontier; a hard and sometimes terrifying life. It is this strug! gle of life that we owe our forefathers respect that is deserving of applause. Slaughter did this for these people.

15 of 16 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Battle for the Meaning of the American Revolution, February 2, 2005

By 

Theo Logos (Pittsburgh, PA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Whiskey Rebellion: Frontier Epilogue to the American Revolution (Paperback)

In October of 1794, President Washington sent an army nearly 13,000 strong across the Allegheny Mountains into the frontier regions of Western Pennsylvania to suppress a popular uprising against the federal government. This event marked the greatest internal crisis of Washington's administration, and the most significant crisis of disunion to the United States prior to the Civil War. This significance of this event, both at the time, and to the continuing debate about the meaning of America, has often been overlooked or forgotten in popular histories. Thomas Slaughter's book goes a long way toward correcting that oversight.
The Whiskey Rebellion was a reaction against an excise tax place on spirits, and shared much in common with the similar tax revolt against the Stamp Act that ignited the flames of the American Revolution. Indeed, the Whiskey rebels saw themselves as upholding the spirit of the Revolution, and believed that the leaders of the federal government had abandoned those principles in favor of personal gain.
Slaughter does an outstanding job of telling each side of the story without a strong bias toward either side. He paints the rebellion as a massive failure to communicate between the parties involved. The conflict illustrated a deep divide between the East and the West of the country, setting urban against rural interests, localist ideologies against nationalist, and of course, all the familiar divisions that are inherent in class and economic differences. Slaughter describes the federal government and its supporters as having "generally shared a Hobbesian-type fear of anarchy as the starting point for their consideration," while he says that the Whiskey Rebels and their friends "took a more Lockeian-type stance," believing "that protection of liberty, not the maintenance of order, was the principal task of government." The federal government emphasized the power of the Constitution, while the Whiskey Rebels emphasized the much more radical Declaration of Independence.
The Whiskey Rebellion was a turning point in America's history. It showed the central government's willingness and ability to enforce its laws even at great distance from it center of power. It was a midwife to the birth of true political parties that emerged in the following years. And it set the parameters of the great political debate of just what the meaning of the American Revolution and what it means to be an American really is, a debate that continues along remarkably similar lines to this day.
This book will be of particular interest to those interested in the early Republic and the Washington Administration, the career of Alexander Hamilton, the Federalist - Anti-Federalist question, or the early American frontier. It is well written, well reasoned, and highly recommended.

Theo Logos

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Excellent book on a fascinating topic, very fresh, insightful writing, August 19, 2007

By 

Howard Schulman (Providence, RI) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: The Whiskey Rebellion: Frontier Epilogue to the American Revolution (Paperback)

"The Whiskey Rebellion" by Thomas Slaughter is an excellent book about a truly seminal event in early US history otherwise not well explained in numerous other books I have read covering the same time period. Chernow's book on Alexander Hamilton and Peterson's book on Thomas Jefferson, both absolutely first rate gold standard books, have barely a single page each on the topic.

The United State had just come together under a new Constitution. The Federal government had just assumed huge wartime debts of the states, and in order to pay these debts, the government enacted an excise tax on whiskey, which the entire western section of the country refused to pay. It wasn't just western Pennsylvania, as Slaughter points out, it was the entire rural western US at the time. Slaughter points out and explains how the tax wasn't fair to the westerners and how the struggle over the tax, more than anything else, caused a division in government leading to the formation of the Federalist and Republican political parties....Big stuff!

The book itself started out as Slaughter's PhD thesis at Princeton (my alma mater, too!) and was condensed (!) into this book. The book reads on the slower side, but I had a hard time putting it down because it contained so much fascinating insight. Slaughter does a great job of using primary source quotes to show the westerner's perspective, thankfully picking out the most juicy quotes and facts instead of asking the reader to wade through paragraphs of antiquated language.

Slaughter also shows that by time Hamilton convinced Washington to send in the troops, the "Rebellion" was a lot more civil than many in the East had been lead to believe. In fact, future Secretary of the US Treasury (for Thomas Jefferson) Albert Gallatin was one of the leaders of the rebellion.

In summary, this is a very fine book that covers a critical period in US history from a refreshingly different perspective. I highly recommend it to anyone interested in early US history, though I would also be reluctant to recommend it to those just beginning to read on this topic. I would also highly recommend the book on Shays's (spelling is correct, three "s"'s) Rebellion by Leonard Richards.