Slaughter – Popular Politics in Early America

October 1, 2013

Honestly, come on Hamilton

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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 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 25, 2013

The Lens of the American Revolution

I am fascinated by the so-called whiskey rebellion and the tax that it sprung from. For me, the most interesting part of learning about it is considering it within the context of the American Revolution. Slaughter seems entirely correct in his subtitle: “Frontier Epilogue to the American Revolution.” The rhetoric regarding the exercise of excise taxes by the federal government, versus the rhetoric used by the founding fathers and later framers of the constitution, is a stark dichotomy. The elite of the period in which the whiskey rebellion took place seemed very willing to discount the ideological arguments of the frontiersmen concerning representation and fair treatment in favor of the practical consideration of money. Cynicism creeps into my perception here, as I wonder whether the ideological arguments made my the signatories to the declaration of independence were actually looking out for their own economic self-interest.

Furthermore, the revolution is apparently relevant in the founders concerns over the possibility that the confederacy and later the United States would crumble from east-west tension. In retrospect, it seems almost inconceivable that the United States would not have grown into the empire it became, but by reading this book I’ve realized that the elite of early America saw the existence of the new nation as highly tenuous, ready to shatter in a moment. “The Whiskey Rebellion” elucidates this fear even further, with the central government’s ability (not to mention right) to collect certain taxes in question.

Unlike Ian, I was not very surprised by the differences of loyalty leading up to the American Revolution versus the whiskey rebellion. To me, the rebellion seems like much more of a grassroots movement, boiling over from popular sentiment and spilling over into violent action, than was the American Revolution, which seems to me to have been a somewhat popular, but predominantly elite action taken to secure the rights and property of the owning class within colonial America from the elites of the British Empire. Additionally, from what I have learned recently, it seems like frontier settlers felt more aggrieved by the actions (or in-actions of the federal and state governments) than did colonists leading up to the American Revolution. Partially, I believe this to be the result of frontiersman believing that the new government would be more representative and receptive to their needs than the British government. Partially, however, I think that the frontiersmen felt cornered–stuck between the demand for taxes from the east, the threat of Indians to the west, and the difficulty of developing economically because of their lack of access to the Mississippi River, the last issue of which being particularly upsetting to many, because they felt that it was congress’ intention to limit their economic growth by not negotiating with Spain on that issue.

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.

September 19, 2013

The Great Chasm: Disconnect on the Frontier

Through his frontier analysis The Whiskey Rebellion, Thomas Slaughter argues that the largest internal American conflict between 1780 and 1860 was more than just a scuffle about an alcohol excise; it was a culmination of years of turmoil between two distinctly different Pennsylvanian groups. The politically powerful “easterners” who occupied the halls of power in Philadelphia and the “westerners” who lived precariously on the fringes of American society had been at odds for decades, from the Paxton Boys to the Westsylvania movement. Even the Revolutionary War did little to ameliorate the political divide between the two groups, as they had entirely different views on what the new Republic should look like. After a decade of conflict and tension over land, Indian wars, and taxes, the westerners decided to take up arms and dare the federal government to challenge them. Rather than being an idealist uprising against despotic taxes and abuse, the Whiskey Rebellion was instead a manifestation of years of frontier frustration that reached its tipping point after the passing and attempted enforcement of a whiskey excise tax in 1791.

By the time of the American Revolution, the men of the frontier from North Carolina to New York had established themselves as a separate entity from the elite interests in state assemblies and landed commerce. Bacon’s Rebellion solidified this distinction and exemplified the power that the united frontier could display when aggravated. Many of the grievances expressed by the Westsylvanians in 1775 remained unchanged from those expressed by Bacon: little state support in defending against Indians, overrepresentation of the rich and corruption public offices, and unfair property laws. While viewed by many easterners, including George Washington, as unkempt, troublesome, and “as ignorant a set of people as the Indians,” the westerners viewed themselves as the defenders of American borders and the expansionists of civilization (79). The Paxton Boys exemplified this disparity, with some treating them as frontier saviors and others declaring them bloodthirsty outlaws. In reality, it’s all about perspective.

“By 1790, the chasm appeared…wider than ever before” (30). The chasm, of course, refers to the detachment in identity from the urban and frontier peoples of America. The majority of frontier concerns, even requests for greater autonomy and statehood, were generally ignored or denied by the state and federal legislature. While the east was concerned about the big picture (continental Indian peacekeeping, paying off war debts, and international diplomacy), the west was more concerned with daily survival. As their voice in legitimate politics dissipated further, the frontiersmen saw mass organization, or even illegitimate self-government, as their final option. As Wade pointed out on September 12, “Riots were one of a few ways communities could unite behind a common cause and…assure camaraderie amongst themselves”. The westerners found their only political allies to be themselves, and this united identity likely strengthened their resolve to openly challenge the state of Pennsylvania, as well as the federal government and George Washington himself. The uprising was the kind of popular political action that makes Occupy Wall Street look like kindergarten recess.

September 18, 2013

Tension in an Unfree Society

In “Reading the Runaways,” David Waldstreicher shows us how early America was structured in a hierarchy based on what degree of freedom a person had. Obviously, a wealthy white male would be an example of someone who was completely free while an African slave would be at the other end of that spectrum. However, people like indentured servants or slaves of mixed race (who would therefore be lighter skinned and more able to “pass” as white should they escape) would fall somewhere in between the two. Waldstreicher discusses how some slaves, especially more skilled ones, were allowed to go out and seek their own work, giving them a certain degree of freedom, and also making the possibility of escape more likely.
Waldstreicher talks about how unfree people who escaped would try and pass themselves off as free by imitating a more free type of person by taking on the specific qualities of a more free person, such as different clothing, hairstyle, and emphasis on any valuable skills they may have possessed. Slave owners knew this, and therefore any ads for runaway slaves would point out what clothes they were thought to have, their skills, and a multitude of other things aside from their bare-bones physical appearance. Waldstreicher paints a picture, therefore, of an uneasy world in which Americans were constantly on the lookout of anyone suspicious who may be passing themselves off as a more “free” person than they really are. By observing those around them and looking for signs that a person may in fact be “unfree,” the free people exerted a certain kind of power over the unfree in their watchfulness. In his post for this week, Ian Solcz discusses that idea and does a great job of putting it in a modern perspective by comparing that watchfulness to the way people today observe and judge those with tattoos or other forms of body art.
While Waldstreicher focuses on people’s vigilence in their looking out for those less free than them, Thomas P. Slaughter in the first chapter of Whiskey Rebellion reverses that somewhat and focuses on how less free members of society were always on the lookout for any kind of abuse from people above them (or more “free” than them). In that chapter, Slaughter focuses on how upset people, generally those in poorer, more rural regions, would get about the idea of internal taxes, both in England and America. For example, he starts by discussing how the rural parts of England, along with Scotland, Ireland, and Wales, were always the ones most upset my Parliament’s attempts to tax internally. (12) On pages 17-20, he discusses how angry American colonists (who were themselves at the time a fringe part of the British Empire far removed from the true power center in London) became over internal taxes in the lead up to the Revolution in the 1760s. In his post this week, Ben Hartshorn discusses the language of that anger, specifically how colonists conflated internal taxes with a form of slavery being imposed on them.
Waldstreicher and Slaughter both show us that the political atmosphere in early America (and Britain) was one of hyper-awareness of both others’ and their own status in a society where each rung on the hierarchy meant a lesser degree of freedom. It makes sense that American colonists thought of themselves as slaves when they sensed a group of people above them in the British hierarchy (those in Parliament) treating them unfairly would call themselves slaves. After all, they would look at anyone below themselves on the ladder as somewhat of a slave, so what else would they call it when they were suffering from unfair taxation imposed by those above them on that same ladder? Both Waldstreicher’s article and the first chapter of Whiskey Rebellion give great insight into the role of freedom in the structure of early American society.