Stupid Wars : A Citizen's Guide to Botched Putsches, Failed Coups, Inane Invasions, and Ridiculous R

America had been founded in its struggle against the British Crown just a few short decades earlier. Most of the rebels were newly minted white Americans who depended upon only one handout from the government to sustain themselves on the edge of the new nation: freedom.

To these hardy souls freedom meant the freedom from taxation; in a nation whose focus was making money, tax-free status was the highest blessing that could be bestowed upon a citizen. But Alexander Hamilton had other ideas. The treasury secretary, super busy building the financial bedrock of the new country, felt that the tax base needed to be diver­sified beyond a dependency on taxing British imports. Thus was born his whiskey tax, an excise tax. It was the country’s first tax on internally made products.

It drove the frontiersmen to rebellion. It would take three years of unrest before a cautious George Washington suc­cumbed to Hamilton’s pleadings to unleash an army planned, outfitted, and headed by Hamilton himself into western Pennsylvania to crush the resistance to his diversified excise tax-funding scheme.

THE PLAYERS

Alexander Hamilton — the quintessential new yorker, an ambitious, foreign-born, mercantile-minded, highly efficient multitasker and pioneer Thomas Jefferson–hater.

Skinny — Since he was born on St. Croix he could not become president. But he could become king.

Props — Washington’s chief-of-staff during the Revolution, one of the founders of the Bank of New York, first secretary of the treasury, and key drafter of The Federalist Papers.

Pros — His far-reaching fiscal genius laid the financial footing of the modern U.S. economy.

Cons — His far-reaching fiscal genius couldn’t comprehend why poor frontiersmen wanted to dodge paying a tax on home-brewed whiskey.

George Washington — Western Pennsylvania land speculator, slave owner, first president of the Republic, lousy businessman, father of the country.

Skinny — Started the great American tradition of American presi­dent’s retiring to make loads of money.

Props — His previous experience running a war against white people made him aware of the political difficulties in seeking a high enemy body count.

Pros — Graciously pardoned the two rebels eventually convicted of rebellion.

Cons — Unleashed “General” Hamilton on the world.

THE GENERAL SITUATION

Western Pennsylvanians in 1790 faced a daunting existence. The forks of the Ohio River, formed by the Allegheny and Monongahela Rivers, today the site of the city of Pittsburgh, lay at the ragged edge of the American frontier. The main problem for settlers was that marauding bands of Native Americans often emerged from the woods to kill them. The land was sparsely settled and defended by local militias, who occasionally blundered out into the wilderness to attack the shadowy Native Americans, without much success. Govern­ment attempts to push back the Native Americans by alter­nating military ethnic cleansing operations with unfaithful negotiations had not worked very well up to this point. Life was stressful. Whiskey helped.

From Pennsylvania down to Georgia these hardy back­woodsmen, the genesis of the “Daniel Boone” icon, faced attacks on all fronts. Not only did they have to worry about Native Americans and hostile actions from British, Spanish, and French forces, they also suffered from the near constant inattention and underinvestment by their own government as they toiled to clear and farm land for absentee landlords — such as their own president.

Naked of all other aspects of orderly government, hugging the muddy banks of great rivers as they hacked out the new American empire from the sea of forest, the settlers were iso­lated. Pittsburgh was a village with 376 citizens, according to the 1790 census. To make ends meet, many small farmers distilled whiskey from excess corn to drink or trade. Bartering was a way of life for these hardy settlers. Home-brewed whiskey was a great product in a frontier economy; it was wanted by nearly everyone and was easy to store and transport.

Washington’s government and his frenetic treasury secre­tary, Alexander Hamilton, had agreed that one of the best ways to bind together the young country was through federal taxation. To get things rolling, Hamilton came up with a blockbuster deal. In July 1790 the federal government agreed it would “assume” the debt that each state had piled up in order to win the Revolutionary War. It was called the “as­sumption” deal. To close the deal Hamilton had to bargain away to the powerful Virginians the permanent seat of the government, sacrificing his personal goal of making New York City the new country’s permanent capital. On the other hand he succeeded in making many of his banker friends very rich. When you help to start a brand-new country, sometimes money just happens.

The federal assumption of the states’ war debts resulted in huge profits to New York businessmen. They had bought the state debts from private citizens and former soldiers who had been given IOUs in lieu of actual cash during the under­funded Revolutionary War. When the assumption deal passed, the bonds suddenly became redeemable at face value, and the speculators reaped spectacular profits. Virginia got the capital. New York got the cash.

Hamilton, as the author of the assumption deal, was natu­rally suspected by many people of having engineered this scheme to enrich his natural constituency, the Tory-sympathizing New York City mercantilists. In late 1790, not long after the federal government had relocated to Philadel­phia (the temporary capital chosen to placate the powerful Pennsylvanians who were betting that the swampy new capital would never be built), Hamilton submitted his funding plan to pay for the new government and the newly assumed debt.

In his usual thorough manner, Hamilton was eager to di­versify the tax base beyond the import duties of British goods, and he came up with the idea of an excise tax on whiskey. This “internal” tax hit the hardy frontier- types right in their thirsty, mud-bespeckled kissers.

Washington was on board with his treasury secretary. They agreed it was a wonderful device to strengthen the fed­eral government by taxing spirits before the state govern­ments could grab some of that swag. In March 1791 Hamilton’s funding bill passed. His band of merry capitalists had won. Or so it appeared.

When frontier settlers heard about the new tax, they howled. “No taxation without representation” had rallied the new country through seven long years of war. The fron­tier citizens could imagine no reason to abandon that idea now that the war had been won, especially for a power-mad New York moneyman like Hamilton, Founding Father or no. The tax was widely flouted up and down the frontier to the point of invisibility. Resistance to the tax in western Pennsyl­vania surged like a spring flood.

In response to the law that threatened their way of life, a group of approximately 500 men in western Pennsylvania, with deep ties to the local militias, renamed itself the Mingo Creek Association, after a church where they held meetings. The association became the backbone of the organized resis­tance to the tax.

Not long after this first meeting, a tax collector happened to get himself tarred and feathered by some citizens who dis­agreed with his efforts to perform his job. The brave collec­tor recognized two of his assailants and attempted to have them arrested for their assault. The federal marshal who showed up to serve the arrest warrants was too scared to proceed; he was directed by General John Neville, the inspec­tor of revenue for the region, to hire an illiterate cattle driver to perform the job. The cattle driver also managed to get himself tarred and feathered by a mob, all of whom were dressed in one of their typical disguises (blackface, women’s dresses, and Indian costume were all standard mob issue). It was a hearty frontier welcome for the tax collectors to the ranks of the massively disenfranchised and actively perse­cuted.

But not all the rebels delivered their message in hot tar while dressed in drag. Some moderate rebels sent a