The Saber and Scroll Journal Volume 1, Issue 1, April 2015 | Page 21

because it was a tax on production, not sales. The Federalists said it was a tax on the
wealthy, who bought distilled liquor. A game of semantics ensued between party
leaders when the Republicans countered this argument, and pointed out that the
wealthy did not pay the tax because their whiskey was stored in large casks.
The whiskey tax also affected the small farmer in the West more than
those in the East because they did not have the access to coin money the way the
Easterners did. Small western farmers and immigrants bartered with whiskey and
produce to purchase what they needed from area merchants, as well as the army for
the cash needed to pay for their land. The whiskey tax left no money for any items
other than necessities, which further highlighted the Westerners’ lack of access to
markets, and that the eastern elitists owned their land.
Farmers brought whiskey over the Alleghenies by horse in large casks
called kegs. A horse could hold two kegs, each holding six to eight gallons; whereas
a horse could only carry four bushels of rye grain. The demand for this grain was
not high enough for the grower to see a profit. However, the people wanted
whiskey, so the farmer made rye whiskey from the unwanted grain. In 1794, the
army paid almost fifty cents per gallon whiskey, but only forty cents per bushel
rye. 6 For transportation purposes, this meant a horse could carry more earning
capacity if it carried whiskey. To keep the trip cost effective, distillers usually sent
twenty to thirty horses at one time to eastern markets. By 1793, the Ohio River to
the Mississippi saw nearly one-third of these caravans, but because Spain closed the
Mississippi to travel, overland essentially became the only way to market. 7
Another benefit the wealthy Easterners had at their disposal was the
availability of large stills. Western neighbors went in together on a distillery
because a good one, a one hundred gallon still, cost as much as a two hundred acre
farm. These farmers used the shared still similar to a shared mill. They paid for their
share of the still out of their whiskey supply since the one whose property it sat on
usually paid up front for the still. Hamilton said it was the distiller’s fault for not
making the customer pay the production tax. Stills in the East had customers at the
site of production, and could pay their tax immediately. The stills in the West could
be as large as those stills in the East, but the whiskey had to make it to market. The
Westerners had to wait for the sale, and since the whiskey tax was on the size of the
still, there was the ongoing problem of transportation, and customers in the East still
demanded the same low price for whiskey, there was no room for profit anymore.
No profit meant the West became the greatest consumer of its whiskey. No matter
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