‘The Whiskey Rebellion’ Review: A Young Nation, Suddenly Tested

President Washington had taken the threat so seriously that he authorized an army of 13,000 militia and, wearing his old blue and buff uniform from the Revolutionary War, personally led one of its wings toward the epicenter of unrest along the Ohio River in western Pennsylvania.

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As Brady J. Crytzer notes in “The Whiskey Rebellion: A Distilled History of an American Crisis,” his vivid account of what contemporaries called “the Western Insurrection,” this was a region with which Washington was familiar from his younger days fighting alongside the British during the French and Indian War. Indeed, one reason for Washington’s decision to take the field as commander in chief (the only sitting president ever to do so) was the threatening muster of 6,000 rebels at Braddock’s Field, near Pittsburgh, the site of a bloody defeat in 1755 from which, as an aide to Gen. Edward Braddock, he had been lucky to escape alive.

The Whiskey Rebellion involved not only western Pennsylvania but also the frontiers of Virginia and Maryland. It was sparked by the Washington administration’s decision to start clearing the onerous debts incurred during the Revolutionary War by levying an excise tax, enacted in 1791, on spirits distilled within the U.S.

Attempts to enforce the new tax swiftly encountered fierce opposition from trans-Appalachian communities for whom whiskey had become a crucial commodity. Faced with the logistical problem of transporting their grain to market, back-country farmers maximized profits by distilling it into a more portable product. Already a familiar beverage to the area’s settlers of Scots-Irish descent, it was readily made from local wheat, rye and corn. The resulting clear, “white” whiskey was more like “moonshine” than the amber-colored, barrel-mellowed liquor enjoyed by drinkers today.

While the Constitution empowered the federal government to levy excise taxes, these had previously fallen on imports. Targeting domestic produce, the “whiskey tax” was fiercely resented, particularly when imposed by a distant eastern government that seemed heedless of the hard realities of frontier life. In western Pennsylvania, excise collectors were abducted and subjected to tarring and feathering. More moderate opponents convened assemblies that denounced the tax as oppressive and shunned all who paid it. This range of responses echoed those provoked by Britain’s efforts to extract revenue from its American colonies in the decade before 1775. There was a crucial difference, however: The “Whiskey Rebels” were objecting to taxation imposed by their own elected representatives, not ministers in London.

For Washington and his cabinet, Mr. Crytzer emphasizes, escalating resistance to the whiskey tax exacerbated a wider sense of crisis. War against a powerful confederacy of Native American nations in the Ohio Country had resulted in humiliating defeats, while an outbreak of yellow fever in 1793 decimated the population of the national capital, Philadelphia. Meanwhile, there were fears that the widespread bloodshed unleashed by the radical revolutionaries in France might spread to America.

Wary of civil war with the westerners, Washington issued repeated proclamations warning tax evaders to heed the law or face dire consequences. By early 1794, Alexander Hamilton, Washington’s Treasury secretary, was convinced that the time had come to prosecute “delinquents” and “offenders” with vigor. In July, a lethal shootout that ended with rebels torching the home of revenue officer John Neville heightened tensions. A month later, Attorney General William Bradford warned that the unrest was part of a plan “for weakening and perhaps overthrowing the General Government.” Even then, Washington was reluctant to use force. It was only after a last-ditch peace delegation failed that the militia he had mobilized marched west to overawe the rebels.

Confronted by this formidable army, all resistance crumbled. On the night of Nov. 13, 1794, in a swoop that Mr. Crytzer describes as “the largest law enforcement action in American history,” some 150 suspects were dragged from their beds and into custody. Evidence against them was flimsy. Of those later tried, only two were convicted of treason, both pardoned by Washington.

Many Federalists were gratified by an outcome that affirmed the government’s right to tax the population. Yet Washington and others remained uneasy. While rebellion had been suppressed, the threat of discord and disunion lingered, amplified by the emergence of a distinct “Republican” opposition party headed by Thomas Jefferson.

A teacher of history at Pittsburgh’s Robert Morris University, in the heart of Whiskey Rebellion country, Mr. Crytzer grounds his engaging narrative upon intimate knowledge of the landscape where events unfolded, identifying locations linked with the insurgents and the troops sent against them. Structures dating back to the insurrection—like the Jean Bonnet Tavern, at Bedford, Pa.—are rare and sadly becoming more so: e.g., the Old West Liberty Courthouse in West Virginia, dating from 1778, was demolished in 2020.

In retirement, George Washington became a whiskey producer himself, opening a commercial distillery at Mount Vernon that became one of the largest and most profitable in the country. Washington of course paid federal tax on his whiskey. But in 1802 that levy was repealed in a program overseen by Albert Gallatin, President Jefferson’s Treasury secretary, whose name had eight years earlier appeared on a “wanted” list of leading “Whiskey Rebels.”

Mr. Brumwell’s books include “George Washington: Gentleman Warrior.”