The Whiskey Rebellion

"In 1791, on the frontier of western Pennsylvania, local gangs of insurgents with blackened faces began to attack federal officals, beating and torturing the tax collectors who attempted to collect the first federal tax ever laid on an American product--whiskey. To the hard-bitten people of the depressed and violent West, the whiskey tax paralyzed their rural economics, putting money in the coffers of the already wealthy creditors and industrialists. To Alexander Hamilton, the tax was the key to industrial growth. To President Washington, it was the catalyst for the first-ever deployment of a federal army, a military action that would suppress an insurgency against the American government. With an unsparing look at both Hamilton and Washington, journalist and historian Hogeland offers a provocative, in-depth analysis of this forgotten revolution and suppression." -- cover.