I haven’t read Brookhiser’s book, yet I agree (maybe for different reasons) that the Whiskey Rebellion was extremely important.
Did Brookhiser mention that real issue was about the nature of federal taxation and government involvement in monetary policy and markets? I ask because Hamilton was never genuinely concerned with the drinking habits of Americans. His attack against alcohol was just an excuse for him to persuade others to implement his centralistic interpretation of the Constitution, an interpretation that worried fellow Federalists and even “the Father of the Constiution,” James Madison.
William Hogeland, author of The Whiskey Rebellion (2006), writes that Hamilton’s tax was planned to “shift economic opportunity away from small-scale, generalist operators. . . ” to “large, government-connected, specialized operators.” And putting down this farmer’s rebellion necessitated Hamilton’s plea for a standing army (something most Americans then opposed, for they thought it fostered a war-like mentality which they believed sacrificed the erosion of individual liberties for the sake of military victory). It definitely was a flexing of governmental muscle.
Of particular note, after the Battle of Alamance (1771), North Carolina’s Herman Husband–the primary leader of the North Carolina Regulation against the corruption of the province’s royal government–fled to western Pennsylvania and later played a key role in the Whiskey Rebellion. Wherever he went, Husband regulated the government. My how that word has changed meaning in the past two hundred years!
