Whiskey Rebellion Truth: Noncompliance, Resistance, and Federal Retreat
Almost everything taught about the Whiskey Rebellion stems from a coverup. The prevailing myth presents an unbeatable federal government easily crushing resistance, discouraging any modern challenge to centralized power.
But the real history tells a very different story – one of widespread tax resistance and successful nullification that forced the federal government to abandon its hated excise tax.
THE OFFICIAL MYTH VS. REALITY
The conventional narrative goes like this: Western Pennsylvania farmers, angry over what they saw as an unfair and oppressive internal tax on whiskey, refused to pay. Their resistance escalated beyond noncompliance to include intimidation of tax collectors and violent confrontations. In response, President George Washington, urged by Alexander Hamilton, personally led a massive military force into Pennsylvania to crush the insurrection.
This, we’re told, was a decisive show of federal power – quick, effective, and total.
But believing this myth has dangerous implications. It suggests that any resistance to federal authority is futile, that centralized power cannot be challenged. In reality, the Whiskey Rebellion was far from a quick federal victory.
Instead, it was an eight-year saga of mass noncompliance that exposed the federal government’s inability to enforce its own laws, and it eventually repealed the tax.
NORTH CAROLINA: WIDESPREAD NONCOMPLIANCE AND RESIGNATIONS
In North Carolina, resistance to the whiskey tax was immediate and intense.
During congressional debates, Congressman John Sevier predicted the tax would be unenforceable in the frontier and that widespread noncompliance would give local distillers a price advantage.
“Should the excise bill be passed, we shall derive great benefits from it; we can keep clear ourselves, as it would have a direct tendency to encourage emigration into our country, and enable us to sell the production of our own distilleries, lower than our neighbours.”
His prediction proved accurate: North Carolina distillers regularly sold – at lower prices – to customers in Virginia and elsewhere.
Tax collectors faced threats of violence, including an infamous threat to mutilate an inspector with a grindstone should he not resign. Faced with relentless opposition, he did just that.
Tench Coxe, writing to Alexander Hamilton in October 1792, acknowledged the intensity of resistance in North Carolina’s western districts:
“In the 5th. or Western Survey of North Carolina menaces of the property of the Officers and strong dispositions to Violence have appeared.”
Coxe observed that enforcing the whiskey tax was nearly impossible. One inspector admitted being unable to execute the laws, while the supervisor warned that hostility – already present – had sharply escalated.
“The irregularities in that Survey are not particularly stated by the Inspector who resigned nor yet by the Supervisor, but it is generally mentioned by the former that he has been unable to execute the laws, and by the latter that the discontents and dispositions to opposition which existed before, had suddenly become very voilent.”
What’s especially striking is that while the conventional narrative focuses almost entirely on Pennsylvania, Coxe made it clear that North Carolina’s resistance rivaled it:
“I consider that Survey as the most opposed of any in the United States except No. 4 in Pennsylvania.”
Even Hamilton, in a letter to George Washington, admitted that in large parts of North Carolina, the tax “has never been in any degree submitted to.”
The widespread noncompliance was so effective that during one fiscal year, North Carolina returned zero dollars in duties on spirits and stills – despite expectations of substantial collections of $16,000 or more.
VIRGINIA: RESISTANCE ALONG THE FRONTIER
Virginia’s border counties – particularly Ohio, Harrison, and Monongalia (modern-day West Virginia) – were hotbeds of anti-excise sentiment.
In Monongalia County, William McCleary received a letter warning that if he did not resign, he would be forced to give up his commission and his property would be destroyed. Eventually, McCleary was forced to flee his home in disguise.
Morgantown became a center of resistance, with anti-excise protesters besieging the town for days. Alarmed by the growing unrest, Virginia’s Governor Lee and other officials feared that resistance would spread further.
Edward Smith stated, “Some of the Distillers in Hampshire and Hardy counties, which join the boundaries of Monongalia express their doubts of longer paying the duties, and would embrace the earliest opportunity of non-compliance if they could calculate on protection in their opposition.”
KENTUCKY: THE HEART OF MASS RESISTANCE
Kentucky’s resistance was arguably the most widespread – and effective.
Organizing a tax collection system there proved nearly impossible – resignations among tax officials were rampant, often outpacing new appointments, with few willing to enforce the unpopular law.
Tench Coxe suggested that Colonel Thomas Marshall, father of future Chief Justice John Marshall and chief revenue officer for Kentucky, start offering rewards for complying distillers to inform on non-compliers.
But even with rewards offering 50% of collected penalties and fees, they failed to find any informants.
Distillers almost completely ignored the paperwork requirements, and even those small farmers and distillers who were exempt from the excise didn’t even bother to register to get the official exemption.
For four years, Kentucky’s grand juries refused to bring any charges – even in the face of widespread, blatantly public noncompliance.
The first federal prosecutor didn’t bring any actions in court, and resigned after just a year. President Washington’s attempts to appoint a replacement federal prosecutor were met with rejection – both George Nicholas and John Breckenridge turned him down.
No reputable lawyer wanted to be associated with enforcing the excise. As one correspondent to Senator John Brown put it, “The excise is so very odious that no lawyer who has a reputation to lose will accept office.”
Almost the entire population of Kentucky successfully resisted and defied the federal law for eight full years.
THE FEDERAL RETREAT
As resistance persisted in Kentucky, Alexander Hamilton made a last-ditch attempt to salvage compliance by backing down on enforcement with an offer to accept whiskey itself as payment. Distillers rejected the proposal, seeing it as a trick rather than a genuine concession.
But Kentucky, North Carolina, and Virginia weren’t alone. As the National Park Service noted, “There was not one state south of New York whose western counties did not protest the new excise with some sort of violence.”
Faced with widespread resistance and ineffective enforcement, Congress repealed the original 1791 excise and passed a new law in 1792, making several significant concessions aimed at easing compliance and reducing burdens:
- Reduced tax rates by up to 30%, with the largest cuts for domestically distilled spirits..
- Offered small distillers flexible payment options – including annual flat fees, per-gallon production duties, or monthly licenses.
- Simplified licensing, providing permits without added expense or bureaucratic delays.
- Eased inspection rules, permitting distillers to request up to two hours without inspections each day.
- Reduced export notice from 24 to 6 hours to ease trade delays.
- Introduced a 2% leakage allowance to ease the burden of production losses.
When that failed to quell resistance, Congress tried again, with a new law, passed on June 5, 1794, further backing down in an effort to increase compliance::
- Permitted prosecutions in state courts if defendants lived over 50 miles from a federal district court – a clear concession to enforcement challenges, even if it meant relying on sympathetic local juries.
- Permitted short-term licensing for distillers with small stills, making compliance less financially burdensome.
- Extended options for mitigating or remitting fines and penalties, offering more leniency to encourage cooperation.
- Barred revenue officers from engaging in related commerce, a concession to complaints about corruption and conflicts of interest.
Even with these retreats, non-compliance and other forms of resistance continued. By 1802, Congress repealed the tax entirely – a clear admission of failure despite public claims of federal power crushing the opposition.
LESSONS FROM THE WHISKEY REBELLION
The true history of the Whiskey Rebellion isn’t one of federal dominance – it’s a story of successful resistance through noncompliance and nullification.
As Murray Rothbard noted, “no one paid the tax on whiskey throughout the American “back-country”: that is, the frontier areas of Maryland, Virginia, North and South Carolina, Georgia, and the entire state of Kentucky.”
Far from proving the invincibility of centralized power, the rebellion shows that widespread, popular resistance can force even the strongest governments back down.
It’s a powerful reminder that liberty often hinges not on elections or courts, but on individuals and communities willing to refuse compliance with unconstitutional or unjust laws. As Rothbard wrote, the rebellion was a “victory for liberty and property” and a defeat for internal taxation and federal power.
In the end, the real winners weren’t the politicians in Philadelphia – they were the farmers, distillers, and frontier settlers who stood up, said “no,” and meant it.
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