[WHISKEY REBELLION] History of the Insurrection, in the Four Western Counties of Pennsylvania: In the Year M.DCC.XCIV (etc.)

FINDLEY, William

Published by Samuel Harrison Smith, Philadelphia, 1796

About this Item

Octavo, 328pp. A fair to good copy in contemporary full sheep with worn contemporary spine label. Contents toned, but clean, with miinimal foxing. Front board detached, but present. A few leaves have razor-thin slices, either to margins or within the text, with no loss whatsoever. A reading copy, or perhaps a candidate for restoration. Quite scarce history of the Whiskey Rebellion, a long and drawn-out conflict over the taxation of whiskey--the first tax to be imposed on a domestically-produced good in the new United States. The tax had been levied to help pay for the nation's massive war debt, and was unsurprisingly met with fury by small farmers in Western Pennsylvania, who were accustomed to turning excess grain after the harvest into whiskey and selling it. During the worst of it, the fortified home of a tax collector was ransacked, and the collector beaten by a mon. The conflict was ultimately resolved when President Washington himself arrived on horseback with the US Army--three years after the tax had been implemented--and the mob dispersed and gave up. It was in some ways the first major test of the American experiment after the ratification of the US Constitution. Howes F133; Sabin 24360; Evans 30419.

Seller Inventory # 14006

Bibliographic Details

• Title: [WHISKEY REBELLION] History of the Insurrection, in the Four Western Counties of Pennsylvania: In the Year M.DCC.XCIV (etc.)
• Publisher: Samuel Harrison Smith, Philadelphia
• Publication Date: 1796
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition: First Edition.
• Condition: Fair to good
• Seller catalogs:
  • American History