Hamilton – Popular Politics in Early America

October 1, 2013

Honestly, come on Hamilton

Warning: Undefined variable $num in /home/shroutdo/public_html/courses/wp-content/plugins/single-categories/single_categories.php on line 126

Warning: Undefined variable $posts_num in /home/shroutdo/public_html/courses/wp-content/plugins/single-categories/single_categories.php on line 127

As class evolved today, the questions began to center around the validity of Thomas Slaughter’s work and a more slightly hidden question of what role should the Government had played back in its beginning stages; a question that everyone in the country at that time was asking, especially Alexander Hamilton and George Washington alike. Slaughter’s, Whiskey Rebellion, makes it very apparent that this question was very much on the minds of our Founding Fathers as the country first hit adversity and details how many of them decided to deal with it.

As discussed at length today in class after Ian’s initial comment, we all agreed that Slaughter did use this work to explore his personal observations, but rather meticulously fills the pages with historical facts supported with numerous primary or secondary sources. Agreeing with Ian, this often makes the read pretty boring and unclear at times, however, inevitably leaves you possibly questioning the ideas of the Founding Fathers and their decisions at the time.

The extremely comprehensive book thoroughly covers the “famous Non-Rebellion” that took place in outskirts of Western Pennsylvania in 1794, its resulting in President George Washington actually taking the field of battle for the first and last time under the new Federal forces, and everything that lead up to its initial tensions; properly giving attention to the reasons for rebellion, Alexander Hamilton’s master plan to retire the national debt, and the drama surrounding the “east v. west” dilemma. More importantly, Slaughter takes the energy to explain to his audience all of the groundwork of this national argument; the same groundwork that drove our discussion in class today regarding the more detailed reasons and explanations as to why some citizens believed the tax to be fairly acceptable and necessary and why others thought it was abusive and targeting.

Clearly, this book isn’t meant for the average history goer, the details provided by Slaughter are meant for historical scholarship. As we unpacked in class, Slaughter illustrates why this whiskey tax issue actually began to be interpreted many different ways; from a “Class Warfare” Marxist argument which divided the country along geographic and political lines to East v. West to finally liberty v. order and many more along the way. Deeply delving into his explanations and clarifying, for example that the wealthy, elite land owners on the urban, east coast appeared not to have a problem with the Tax or Hamilton’s idea of taxing this commodity in order to solve national debt. Then goes on to explain, on the other hand, that the poor, frontier farmers in the West found the Tax overbearing and targeting because it demanded them to solve an issue they felt had nothing to do with them, essentially became a luxury tax on spirits on the frontier and once again exemplified the issues of the national government not protecting the frontier’s best interests and safety.

In the end, after countless recollections of poor frontier experiences and urban elite sentiment, Slaughter in my opinion, as I stated in class, provides me with enough solid evidence to prove that superstar Hamilton could have avoided this encounter if he had been just a bit more diplomatic and sensible about the current situation of the country and surrounding post-revolutionary spirit. If he could have put aside his personal grudge with the Western settlers, Hamilton and inevitably Washington would have avoided this potential crisis. Really, after all that led up to the rebellion, only a few frontiersmen went to jail, essentially all to establish the right of the new Federal Government to levy taxes on its own people (an example of the many parallels Slaughter makes to British authority years earlier). At the end, Slaughter wraps up by telling us this was a battle between the Federalists and the Anti-Federalists, liberty and order, elite and poor and the Federalists won out.

September 26, 2013

Slaughter Slaughtering the Whiskey Rebellion?

This week’s reading of Slaughter’s The Whiskey Rebellion– to paraphrase the thoughts of several of my colleagues – was undoubtedly a work marked by thorough research and writing. While I agree with Ian, AJ, and CT in saying that Part II of The Whiskey Rebellion was indeed dense, I think Slaughter did this intentionally to demonstrate the complex narrative that culminated in the Whiskey Rebellion. This way he forces us to realize that the rebellion was not a mere short-lived affair often written off as an honorable mention in a list of the historical turning points of the United States. Rather, he argues that the Whiskey Rebellion was the product of continued and escalated tensions between various groups of people throughout the young nation, and – at least through the first two sections – that it was nothing short of a miracle that the country did not split amidst the conflict. This collectively contributes to his broader argument that the Whiskey Rebellion, particularly because of the conflicts harbored within the affair, should be thought about as a defining moment in the course of American history.

With that being said, I think Slaughter’s attempt to provide such a vivid, detailed account of the events preceding the Whiskey Rebellion ultimately leaves his work vulnerable to several criticisms. His writing, especially so in Part II, seems to become a pattern. As Slaughter begins to place every group, ideology, or concern into a contest with a conflicting group, ideology, or concern, the work quickly became monotonous for me and lost some persuasive value. His constant pitting of East vs. West, rich vs. poor, big business vs. small business, educated vs. uneducated, liberty vs. order, Federalist vs. Antifederalist, etc. dilutes the effectiveness of his argument. While revealing that the origin of the Whiskey Rebellion cannot be neatly pointed to a single cause, Slaughter’s constant pairings lead to a superficial understanding of each of the potential causes he emphasizes.

Moreover, the strategy pursued by Slaughter has made his narrative very dry, thereby losing some his argument’s persuasiveness. There are times when Slaughter hints at aligning with the frontiersmen at the time, as on page 112 when he writes “The excise constituted a unique threat because it embodied in one law so many evils.” However, instead of continuing this narrative and emphasizing the abuses the national government were making upon the West, Slaughter quickly turns away from this argument to present an objective account of what transpired leading up to the Whiskey Rebellion. I believe Slaughter’s book would have become more persuasive had he chose a side in his monograph. Rather, he leaves us with what might amount to an almanac of events and conflicts leading up to the rebellion with commentary, but no adamant opinions or analyses. His constant back and forth with pairings, people, and occasional scholarly interpretation only leads – as many of my colleagues are likely willing to agree – to confusion among his readers.

My last point of contention with Slaughter is that he seems to have a faint idea of the image he wants to portray of Alexander Hamilton. While Hamilton was one of the key figures of the Whiskey Rebellion, Slaughter fails to characterize Hamilton with respect to the context of his book. At times, Hamilton appears to be a man looking out for the best interest of the United States – a mediator of sorts – trying, as seen on page 145 “to avoid conflict between collectors and distillers who honestly misunderstood the law.” However, only pages earlier, Slaughter appears to write about Hamilton as something of an antagonist, a man who “In every respect…defined his views on taxation in opposition to the ideology shared by friends of liberty” (140). This is only exacerbated by the point made by Ian that men like Washington and Hamilton believed 80 percent of frontiersmen were disloyal to the American government. This leads me to question whether Slaughter intends to depict Hamilton as a hero, a villain, or perhaps if Slaughter even thought about how he to represent Hamilton at all. While I do not have the answers to these questions, I do think that in Part II of The Whiskey Rebellion Slaughter took on a project much too vast for the 81 pages he allotted for it.

September 25, 2013

The West is Where You Don't Want to Go

The title is not a direct shot at my esteemed colleague’s, AJ Pignone, previous post, but I do disagree with the overall mentality of the post. Ian and AJ both hit the nail on the head by pointing out Slaughter’s incredible detail describing the Whiskey Rebellion. And at times, I’ll admit, I read over three or four pages, went to turn the page yet again, but I had to re-read those previous pages because I realized I had no idea what Slaughter was trying to say. The detail is a plus though. It’s better to have too much detail and force the reader to sift through the intricacies than to leave something out. Furthermore, Slaughter does do a decent job of summing up each of his chapters in the final paragraphs.

To address my explicit disagreement with AJ’s post and to continue the debate from class yesterday, the west is not where I would want to be during this time. Frontiersmen were poor and in a constant state of fear from Indian attacks. Furthermore, settlers were outside of the governmental protective reach. As Slaughter described, the government did send an army. However, due to the extreme distance, the forces were tired, ill-equipped, and unable to perform their duties. Albeit many of the forces were not the caliber of soldier able to truly be of assistance. That failure is attributed to the government, one-hundred percent. The attempt, however inadequate, to aid the frontiersman was there. Interestingly, Slaughter points out that after the slaughter (pun intended) of the American forces where 938 soldiers were killed, Indians were much less fearful of the American armed forces and became more aggressive with their attacks. So, the army’s aid turned out to be harmful instead. To quote a wise man, hindsight is always 20/20.

My favorite tid-bit of information Slaughter enlightens his reader with on pg. 169, “Treasury department reports showed that no revenue was collected in the entire state of Kentucky and that collections on domestic spirits from Pennsylvania, North Carolina, South Carolina, and Georgia were far below the costs of enforcement.” This fact shows the lack of success of the tax because of the response from frontiersmen. The cost of protecting (or attempting to protect) the frontier constituted over 80% of the nation’s budget. Similar argument poised by the British following the Seven-Years War (once again caused by westward expansion): you started this war, so you help pay for it. The settlers in the west not only refused to pay the tax, but they protested violently against the tax collector, the middleman. Maybe the Whiskey Rebellion coined the term, “don’t shoot the middleman,” because that’s exactly what was happening during this time. The frontier was a violent place, there is no denying that claim. However, this violence overflowed to attacks against our own people, Americans attacking Americans, a truly despicable act. What separates the settlers of this time from those rebels in tumultuous countries in present day who attack their government officials because they feel their government’s treatment is unjustified? Without getting into a political debate, I’m simply trying to draw a comparison of internal strifes and how we as present day Americans view those other riotous countries with unfavorable opinions. I can speculate that those in the East viewed the Westerners with similar contempt during this excise fiasco.

Hamilton was willing to consider reasonable amendments to the law. However, this claim was a catch-22. As evident from the plain disregard for frontier petitions and pleas, eastern politicians, like Hamilton, did not respect frontiersmen opinions. Few easterners disagreed with the excise tax, so those who had a respected opinion, rarely dissented to the tax (frankly because the tax did not severely effect them). Hamilton did, however, recommend a “tax break” for domestic distilleries by increasing the tax on foreign distilleries. Furthermore, Hamilton sought to include this tax break to larger distilleries. Both of these ideas showed Hamilton’s business acumen. Larger distilleries were more efficient, and protecting domestic distilleries kept all American spirits more competitive in American markets, even those distilleries in Western Pennsylvania. I will not make the over sweeping claim that, as Slaughter quotes, Hamilton sought to remove all rural distillers. Hamilton simply knew that larger distillers effected the nation’s economy more than smaller, rural distilleries. To compare to modern times, why did Obama bail out the “big banks” and let them absorb the small town banks? Arguably, because the big banks were more vital to the nation’s economy.

To sum it all up, the frontier was violent and expensive to maintain. I support the idea of manifest destiny (‘Merica!) and westward expansion. However, there will always be a cost to this expansion, and someone has to pay it.

September 24, 2013

The West Is Where You Want To Go

First, I want to comment on Thomas P. Slaughter’s work, The Whiskey Rebellion, and pick up on what Ian stated in his post this evening. I agree with Ian and do tend to find, at least part two, to be very dense and hard to follow at times. Slaughter has done an incredible job and has packed tons and tons of historical research and insight into these pages, however, with that being said Ian makes a valid point that the onslaught of information makes it hard for the reader to follow what is going on. The information is very interesting yet difficult to consistently tie back to the overall picture of his message, so with regards to that claim, I do agree with Ian. What I want to add to that is the awesome picture that Slaughter paints by overloading us with information. I had yet to read something so extensive regarding the Frontier and the lead up to the Whiskey Rebellion. Even though it is so dense, Slaughter does give us amazing snap shots of Frontier life pre-Whiskey Rebellion. I always thought that the revolution and freedom was fought and won in the East but Slaughter’s work leads me to second guess myself and rethink my stance. His information on the expansion of the West and those who were fighting for its freedom illustrates just the true Americanism and heroism of those sticking it out on the West.

What really caught my eye was the quote Slaughter puts on the first page of part two to begin the section, by Robert Penn Warren it reads,

For West is where we all plan to go some day. It is where you go when the land gives out and the old-field pines encroach. It is where you go when you get the letter saying: Flee, all is discovered. It is where you go when you look down at the blade in your hand and see the blood on it. It is where you go when you are told that you are a bubble on the tide of empire. It is where you go when you hear that that’s gold in them-thar hills. It is where you go to grow up with the country. It is where you go to spend your old age. Or it is just where you go.

From Warren’s work, All the King’s Men, this quote just caught my interest and intrigue because it views the West as almost the promise land; where everyone wants to go. This quote, along with the section of the book itself and the heated debate we had in class today is why I want to spend my last remarks asking why the newly created national government, headed by Hamilton’s policy, wanted to levy a tax primarily focused on frontiersmen? I understand the issue with the national debt and the need to promote American prosperity; however, I do not understand why it needed to be at the expense of the frontiersmen. The Whiskey excise needed to help pay back the debt was immediately controversial amongst many on the Western front. An excise clearly seen as a target on westerners, whiskey was often a popular medium of exchange and essentially the excise became an income tax that elites in the East didn’t have to pay. I don’t understand why after we just left Great Britain that we would do the same thing to our on people that forced us to revolt. The main complaint to the tax was that it was taxation without representation, exactly what they’d just fought the Revolutionary War to stop. Many of these westerners were veterans and in their view they were fighting for freedom, resisting the newly emerging central state. Along with larger distillers recognizing the advantage the excise and Hamilton gave them, westerners continually felt the government was ignoring their security and economic welfare. Adding the whiskey excise to other existing grievances only increased tensions on the frontier. To conclude, I wonder why our government would willingly take more and more from those who have less and less yet fight for our freedom on our fronts.

September 24, 2013

The Whiskey Rebellion, and the Birth of Partisanship

By the end of 1791, the farmers of the frontier and the Washington administration were at each other’s throats. Earlier that year, Congress had passed an excise tax on domestically produced spirits, known colloquially as the Whiskey Tax. The tax was especially hard on western frontiersmen, who often ran stills with the grain they cultivated. This tax lay on top of an already contentious relationship between western counties and the federal government, mostly concerning the government’s failure to sufficiently protect frontier towns from Indian assaults. From the government’s perspective, however, the western counties sucked up undue resources without contributing back to the country. The attempted enforcement of the excise was met by firm violent and nonviolent opposition, with grandiose rhetoric on both sides: the western farmers proclaiming their defiance in the name of Revolutionary values, and the supporters of the government insisting their supremacy in the name of law and order. By emphasizing this political context and rhetoric concerning the Whiskey Tax’s enforcement, Thomas Slaughter reveals how the Whiskey Rebellion provided a significant impetus for the division of American politics into a multi-party system.

The Pennsylvanians’ response to the excise echoed that of colonial Boston. One group of objectors, with an interest in law and civility, organized an official assembly to petition against the tax at Redstone and Pittsburgh. Another group saw little need for niceties and decided to treat tax collectors like British tea agents. In many parts of the country, such as Kentucky and the Carolinas, tax collectors did not even attempt to enforce the excise, much to the chagrin of Washington and Hamilton. While swift reprisals against the tax scared off collectors for much of 1791 and 1792, the federal government was not ready to simply keel over. Hamilton saw the insurgency as not only an embarrassment, but a threat to the American ideals of federalism under a strong, capable federal government. The “spirit of disobedience” as portrayed by the Pennsylvanians would diminish national order and cause “the authority of the government to be prostrate” (121). However, in the opinion the frontiersmen, fighting the enforcement of a perceivably unjust tax was as American as apple pie. Neither side saw any reason, ideological or pragmatic, to step down. Max’s earlier analysis of the North Carolina Stamp Act riots can certainly be applied to the escalation of the excise conflict in 1791: “Each side raises the stakes further until the other one folds or a victor eventually emerges”. In this case, after three years of defiance, Washington was forced to utilize the threat of open military conflict, the highest stakes at his disposal. The rebels quickly, and wisely, folded.

Slaughter’s most effective chapter in Part II, Liberty, Order, and the Excise, emphasizes how the Whiskey Rebellion was a critical, if not defining, moment in the identity of the American political process. The argument of Hobbes versus Locke, Whig versus Tory, or order versus liberty, was hardly new; they just fought a war over it. The western frontiersmen viewed the question as definitively settled by the Revolution, while the Hamiltonians viewed governmental order as the prerequisite to freedom. The heroes of the Constitution, such as Madison, Hamilton, Jay, and Jefferson, had little common ground remaining. The opposing poles on the political spectrum of the early 1800s were developing at this time, and the conversion of these men from allies to rivals was only precipitated by the excise conflict. As Slaughter put it, “the excise produced a simultaneous challenge to (republican) ideology and (national) interest and thus created a truly volatile situation” (142). In other words, the Whiskey Rebellion was the very first grand, divisive partisan debate. The zero-party state’s veil of harmony could not endure any longer.