Today's history lesson.........................Part 2

      George Washington, who made whiskey at Mount Vernon knew different.

      He opposed the tax at first, but a listening tour through Virginia and Pennsylvania in 1791 persuaded him.  Congress passed the bill.  And then, to use academic historian language, the farmers and distillers in Western Pennsylvania, the frontier at the time, went batshit crazy.  This was the first bubbling of the Tea Party Movement, the anti-government strain that continues to exert great control over American politics.  The new sin-tax punished farmers who needed to make whiskey to maintain value, which meant that the farther away from the seats of power a man lived, the more likely he was to get hit by this tax.  And the large distillers used their influence to keep the bill from crushing their businesses;  they paid six cents per gallon and accrued substantial tax breaks.  Small distillers paid nine cents per gallon

     The revolt that simmered and ultimately forced Washington to send in troops is now known as the Whiskey Rebellion.  Until it was quelled, real fear existed that it could turn into a second revolution.  Washington himself rode at the front of his army. . . .

     President Washington won the rebellion and strengthened the power of the federal government, but in the process the major debate in American public life was cemented, baked in, really.  Nearly every political and cultural flashpoint we've experienced since is descended from this divide.  Hamilton favored concrete and tall buildings and Wall Street, where he's buried, while Jefferson favored Main Street and the dirt of rural America in which he's buried.  Violence and discord over Hamilton versus Jefferson remain the greatest threats to the health of our experiment in democracy.

Wright Thompson, Pappyland:  A Story Of Family, Fine Bourbon, and the Things That Last