Via Codrea, this Murray Rothbard article with some thought-provoking revisionism on the Whiskey Rebellion…
The main distortion of the Official View of the Whiskey Rebellion was its alleged confinement to four counties of western Pennsylvania. From recent research, we now know that no one paid the tax on whiskey throughout the American “back-country”: that is, the frontier areas of Maryland, Virginia, North and South Carolina, Georgia, and the entire state of Kentucky.
President Washington and Secretary Hamilton chose to make a fuss about Western Pennsylvania precisely because in that region there was a cadre of wealthy officials who were willing to collect taxes. Such a cadre did not even exist in the other areas of the American frontier; there was no fuss or violence against tax collectors in Kentucky and the rest of the back-country because there was no one willing to be a tax collector.
I read this years ago, and it was a genuinely new thought to me at the time. Rothbard’s thesis is that the Whiskey Rebellion is sold in the history books as a failure but overall it really wasn’t. Hell, I’d knuckle under too if 13,000 federal troops were camped in my front yard. At least, while they were there. The history books don’t really get into the tax’s continued success after the troops went home, or in all those many places where they never went. I found it an intriguing thought. As to how true it is overall, I really have no idea.
Generally speaking, I do think that ignoring them is the best strategy. Non-compliance, especially in mass, makes enforcement impossible. All alone, much more difficult, of course, but it can be done. Just think of the millions of people who don’t file tax reports. 🙂
What, Joel, do you think they told us lies in the government school? How could that be possible? 😉
I wonder how long those troops hung around. Feeding them probably caused a real strain on the local economy so it can’t have been for long. I also wonder how many tax collectors were tarred and feathered, both before and after the troops showed up.
I meant, after the troops left, of course.
I think that non compliance continued in those areas through prohibition and the depression. There are still a few that make untaxed corn products.