The Saber and Scroll Journal Volume 1, Issue 1, April 2015 | Page 20

along the East coast. Revenue from the excise was lower in some states than the
cost of collection, as was the case in Georgia, because only the coastal areas saw
enforcement. In Kentucky, the law was a “dead letter.” 3 Places like Northwest
Virginia, and the western sections of North and South Carolina were the same as
Kentucky.
Petitions asking for the repeal of the whiskey tax came from
Pennsylvania, Virginia, North Carolina, and Maryland’s legislatures. The
government’s answer to their protests was the removal of the right of local courts
to indict citizens with tax evasion. This added to the problems for the farmers in
western Pennsylvania because they now had to attend trial in Philadelphia, over
three hundred miles from home, and often during their busiest farming season,
which kept them from making money to pay for necessities and their land, and
which led to foreclosure. Thus, the people in the West viewed it as deliberate
confiscation of land by Easterners. 4 Speculators from the eastern cities purchased
the foreclosed land in the West.
The History and Purpose of Whiskey Taxes
The excise on whiskey in 1791 was not the first time a government taxed
this item. Whiskey taxes existed from 1684-1791, sometimes to provide money for
fighting the French, other times to pay bills of credit. There was no regular
collection of taxes due to the irregular passage of laws, and the unpopularity of the
tax. Whiskey was a constant target for taxes because of its wide array of uses from
people of all lifestyles. Those who lived the frontier’s hard lifestyle found whiskey
an easy and accessible luxury. It also held great importance in medicine because of
its use for fevers, snakebites, and pain. The army even gave it to its soldiers with
their rations. For a while, rum from the Caribbean was cheaper than distilling
wheat and rye, but this only lasted until the non-importation laws went into effect.
The surge in demand for locally distilled alcohol created a shortage of bread. In
order to regulate the stills, Congress instituted a law in 1778 that forbade distilling
for part of the year, but the government eventually saw no further use for it, and
repealed it. 5
There was always the view that taxes like the whiskey tax were the reason
why the Americans went to war against England. A more specific argument used
by the Republicans was that taxes on whiskey made it too expensive to make
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