Professor Thomas Slaughter has provided a most thorough overview of the Whiskey Rebellion, which he asserts had by the time this book was conceived nearly two centuries after the episode transpired, had become a largely forgotten chapter of our nation's history since the time of the Civil War. He cites as direct evidence of this fact the almost complete absence of any mention of the event in many contemporary textbooks of the conservative era of the 1980's, which this reviewer can attest to as well, having been a high school student in the late 1970's, who never heard of the Whiskey Rebellion until years later. Building off of his own dissertation on the topic, the author convincingly shows that the Whiskey Rebellion was in fact an event of tremendous importance for the future of the fledgling United States of America, which was spawned by the head-long collision of a variety of far-reaching forces and factors in the still quite primitive environs of western Pennsylvania that summer and fall. Slaughter contends that one must place the frontier at the center of the great political debates of the era and fully explore the ideological, social, political, and personal contexts surrounding the episode in order to fully understand the importance of its place in American history. In doing so the author has produced a very readable work that may be enjoyed by casual readers, who will likely find the individual vignettes which open each chapter particularly fascinating, and a highly useful basis of further research by future scholars into the importance of the frontier region as it relates to events on a national scale in those early days of the republic.
He sets about exploring these important facets of the drama by dividing the work into...
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...ke George Washington especially had veritable fortunes personally vested in the outcome. His work makes it apparent also that this was not a localized protest comprised of a mere handful of ardent participants from what was then the extreme fringe of American civilization, but rather the dissent was in fact a wide-spread crisis, which very much had the potential to be the undoing of the new nation. Slaughter reveals the extreme sectionalism which plagued the nation throughout its first century of existence was well established prior to the dawn of the nineteenth century. He asserts also that the precedent was set regarding the question of national versus state or local authority, which has continued in effect since.
Works Cited
Slaughter, Thomas P. The Whiskey Rebellion: Frontier Epilogue to the American Revolution. New York: Oxford Univ Press, 1986. 291. Print.
The political crisis of the 1850’s is one of the most underrated influential decades in US history. Many people talk about the 1920’s and the 1940’s and 50’s; however, much of that history ─ especially of that between the late 1940’s and the late 1960’s ─ was predicated upon by the crisis of the 1850’s. To understand its importance, one must understand its composition, its origin, and its effect. The crisis of the 1850’s, predicated upon the furious debates of slavery in new western territories and consisting over debates of states’ rights versus federal power, had lasting effects directly concerning the Civil War and on the nation especially in relation to the century long ideological battle over race in America.
In Woody Holton's Forced Founders, that most revered segment of the revolutionary generation, the elitist gentry class of Virginia, comes across very much as a group of self-serving reactionaries, rather then the idealized revolutionaries of the great patriotic myth of popular history. He sets about disassembling a central portion of the myth created by earlier generations of Consensus historians, by asserting that rather then gallantly leading the charge for independence, Virginia's elitist gentry resorted to independence as their last and only means of saving their elite ruling status, their economic futures, and even their very lives many feared. While this is very much an example of revisionist history, Holton has not so much rewritten history, as he has provided the back story of the complexity and diversity of the Virginia colony on the eve of the American Revolution. For while the book's title may insinuate otherwise, lowly groups like slaves and Indians discussed here are afforded only the status of “founders” by pressing those traditionally thought of in this role to take the plunge for independence. Still the papers and correspondence of the iconic figureheads of the revolutionary generation like Washington, Jefferson, and Madison make up the bulk of primary sources.
2.Morgan, Edmund S. The Birth of the Republic, 1763-89. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992.
The March of the Paxton Boys, the Regulator Movement, Shays’ Rebellion, and the Whiskey Rebellion all illustrate the tensions between the governing bodies before, during, and after the War for Independence.
Hogeland, William. The Whiskey Rebellion: George Washington, Alexander Hamilton, and the frontiers rebels who changed America's Newfound Sovereignty. New York: Scribner, 2006.
Between the years of 1786 and 1787, there were a series of protests that were given the name “Shays’s Rebellion”. These protests consisted of farmers, who were unhappy with their situations in regards to taxes and debts. Shays’s Rebellion occurred in New England, and was the most prevalent in Massachusetts. The revolt was named after Daniel Shays, who was one of the leaders of this large rebellion. Shays’s Rebellion was a major turning point in American history because it influenced changing The Articles of Confederation, it resulted in tax relief and a moratorium on debt, and it raised public awareness.
Stokesbury, James L. A short History of the American Revolution. New York. William Morrow and Company, Inc. 1991.
Greene, J. P., & Pole, J. R. (Eds.). (2008). A Companion to the American Revolution (Vol. 17). John Wiley & Sons.
This four-page undergraduate paper discusses the opposition that American leaders encountered after the Revolution, as a result of deciding to form a central government. The states feared that such a government would suppress them and would interfere with their internal affairs. Consequently, heated debates and uprisings characterize this period, which started with the framing of Articles in 1777 and ended with the final adoption of the United States constitution in 1787.
The whiskey Rebellion Witten by Thomas P. Slaughter talks bout a rebellion that setup a precedent in American history. It gives us the opportunity to really comprehend this rebellion that thanks to fast action from the Federal government didn’t escalate to a more serious problem like civil war. The book the Whiskey Rebellion frontier of the epilogue to the American Revolution captures the importance and drama of the rebellion. The book is divided into three sections context, chronology and sequence. In the first section Slaughter explain the reason why the taxes was needed in the first place. According to Anthony Brandt in his article of American history name “Rye Whiskey, RYE Whiskey” Alexander Hamilton, secretary of the
As the American Revolution ended and Americans freed themselves from the British, many Americans were left without money. After the American Revolution was won, the Founding Fathers including John Adams, Benjamin Franklin, Alexander Hamilton, John Jay, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison and lastly our first president George Washington helped create a new government, the Articles of Confederation. The Articles of Confederation were the first national government. This government had plenty of weaknesses, such as the need for unanimous votes, no direct power to tax, no ability to raise troops, and they were hard to amend. Along with those weaknesses came several rebellions
The American Revolution has too often been dominated by the narrative of the founding fathers and has since been remembered as a “glorified cause.” However, the American Revolution was not a unified war but a civil war with many internal disputes that wreaked havoc and chaos throughout America. In his book, The Unknown American Resvolution, Gary B. Nash attempts to unveil the chaos that the American Revolution really was through the eyes of the people not in power, including women, African American slaves, and Native Americans. In his book, Gary B. Nash emphasizes their significance in history to recount the tale of the American Revolution not through the eyes of the privileged elite but through the eyes of the people who sacrificed and struggled the most, but were left forgotten, in their endeavors to reinvent America.
Roark, James L. et al., eds. The American Promise: A Compact, Vol. I: To 1877. 3rd edition. Boston and New York: Bedford/St. Martin’s, 2007.
AMONG the numerous advantages promised by a well constructed Union, none deserves to be more accurately developed than its tendency to break and control the violence of faction. The friend of popular governments never finds himself so much alarmed for their character and fate, as when he contemplates their propensity to this dangerous vice. He will not fail, therefore, to set a due value on any plan which, without violating the principles to which he is attached, provides a proper cure for it. The instability, injustice, and confusion introduced into the public councils, have, in truth, been the mortal diseases under which popular governments have everywhere perished; as they continue to be the favorite and fruitful topics from which the adversaries to liberty derive their most specious declamations. The valuable improvements made by the American constitutions on the popular models, both ancient and modern, cannot certainly be too much admired; but it would be an unwarrantable partiality, to contend that they have as effectually obviated the danger on this side, as was wished and expected. Complaints are everywhere heard from our most considerate and virtuous citizens, equally the friends of public and private faith, and of public and personal liberty, that our governments are too unstable, that the public good is disregarded in the conflicts of rival parties, and that measures are too often decided, not according to the rules of justice and the rights of the minor party, but by the superior force of an interested and overbearing majority. However anxiously we may wish that these complaints had no foundation, the evidence, of known facts will not permit us to deny that they are in some degree true. It will be found, indeed, on a candid review of our situation, that some of the distresses under which we labor have been erroneously charged on the operation of our governments; but it will be found, at the same time, that other causes will not alone account for many of our heaviest misfortunes; and, particularly, for that prevailing and increasing distrust of public engagements, and alarm for private rights, which are echoed from one end of the continent to the other. These must be chiefly, if not wholly, effects of the unsteadiness and injustice with which a factious spirit has tainted our public administrations.
“The Stono River Rebellion in South Carolina,” in Kennedy, David M. and Thomas A. Bailey. The American Spirit: United States History as Seen by Contemporaries. Vol. I: To 1877. Eleventh Edition. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2006