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Economic and political causes for the revolutionary war
Economic and political causes for the revolutionary war
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How would you feel if you had to pay extra for whiskey that you made at home? The whiskey excise act, sometimes known, as the “Whiskey Act” became law in Mach 1791, putting a tax on distilled beverages. There were many other ideas to raise funds for the federal government but he had the support of many social reformers, who hoped a “sin tax” would raise awareness in the public eye on the harmful effects of alcohol. When congress enacted this law, Washington could then define the revenue districts, appointed the revenue supervisors and inspectors, and set their pay. The government needed the funds to pay off the debt of the American Revolution. The Whiskey Rebellion was a response to the government-imposed tax that was paid in “cold, hard” cash …show more content…
The Whiskey rebellion was the first time in American history that people were drafted for military service. Alexander Hamilton had stated in a letter to Thomas Miffin, the governor of Pennsylvania, in September, 1794 that:
“[…] While it shews a great proportion of the Inhabitants of those Countries disposed to pursue the path of Duty, shews also, that there is a larger and violent Party which can only be controlled by the application of Force – This being the result, it is become the more indispensable and urgent to press forward the forces destined to act against the Insurgents with all possible activity and Energy. The advanced season leaves no time to spare, and it is extremely important to afford speedy protection to the well disposed, and to prevent the preparation and accumulation of grater means of Resistance, and the extension of Combinations to abet the Insurrection – The President counts upon every exertion on your part, which so serious and eventful an emergency demands.
·Hamilton’s financial program not only sparked an angry political debate in Congress but also helped ignite a civil insurrection called the Whiskey Rebellion
Professor Thomas Slaughter has provided a most thorough overview of the Whiskey Rebellion, which he asserts had by the time this book was conceived nearly two centuries after the episode transpired, had become a largely forgotten chapter of our nation's history since the time of the Civil War. He cites as direct evidence of this fact the almost complete absence of any mention of the event in many contemporary textbooks of the conservative era of the 1980's, which this reviewer can attest to as well, having been a high school student in the late 1970's, who never heard of the Whiskey Rebellion until years later. Building off of his own dissertation on the topic, the author convincingly shows that the Whiskey Rebellion was in fact an event of tremendous importance for the future of the fledgling United States of America, which was spawned by the head-long collision of a variety of far-reaching forces and factors in the still quite primitive environs of western Pennsylvania that summer and fall. Slaughter contends that one must place the frontier at the center of the great political debates of the era and fully explore the ideological, social, political, and personal contexts surrounding the episode in order to fully understand the importance of its place in American history. In doing so the author has produced a very readable work that may be enjoyed by casual readers, who will likely find the individual vignettes which open each chapter particularly fascinating, and a highly useful basis of further research by future scholars into the importance of the frontier region as it relates to events on a national scale in those early days of the republic.
War is the means to many ends. The ends of ruthless dictators, of land disputes, and lives – each play its part in the reasoning for war. War is controllable. It can be avoided; however, once it begins, the bat...
September 1791, Robert Johnson was one of the many attacked for being a tax collectors, which are collecting the tax on distilled liquor. This tax is the first federal tax on American products. Gi...
It had seemed that ambiguity was arise in the forming nation, and was still establishing a central ideal for political issues to which it had no precedent. Would the strategy be to declare to the public a message of brutal warfare against a savage nation? Or the protection of the United States and its freedoms by a self-defensive action of declaring war against its former ally? Both would be approached vigorously by Ames to attempt to inform the public and gather a central and nationalized view in order to succeed against these heinous a...
Enacting prohibition in a culture so immersed in alcohol as America was not easy. American had long been a nation of strong social drinkers with a strong feeling towards personal freedom. As Okrent remarks, “George Washington had a still on his farm. James Madison downed a pint of whiskey a day”. This was an era when drinking liquor on ships was far safer than the stale scummy water aboard, and it was common fo...
A war starting was really overwhelming for everybody but there was not time to complain, but to take actions the government quickly realized that with men fighting in the front line a demand had to be satisfied. Political and social leaders ...
had created the Indian Removal act which sent them along the trail of tears to the
The whiskey Rebellion Witten by Thomas P. Slaughter talks bout a rebellion that setup a precedent in American history. It gives us the opportunity to really comprehend this rebellion that thanks to fast action from the Federal government didn’t escalate to a more serious problem like civil war. The book the Whiskey Rebellion frontier of the epilogue to the American Revolution captures the importance and drama of the rebellion. The book is divided into three sections context, chronology and sequence. In the first section Slaughter explain the reason why the taxes was needed in the first place. According to Anthony Brandt in his article of American history name “Rye Whiskey, RYE Whiskey” Alexander Hamilton, secretary of the
Another extremely important issue Washington faced was that of the Whiskey Rebellion. The whisky rebellion started when a tax was placed upon distilled liquor. The farmers of Pennsylvania completely infuriated at the taxed because Whisky was their most profitable product and their form of money. In 1794, they set up an armed uprising against the taxes. Alarmed by the attack, and following Hamilton’s advice, Washington sent over 12,000 troops into Pennsylvania for peace keeping. This was the first time a national militia was ever used in the new country. Washington’s decision proved to the people that Congress finally had th...
...ederal officers to enforce the prohibition law. Many of those officers found themselves in the midst of the exchange of dirty money between the bootleggers and themselves. Tax dollars were also spent on prosecuting bootleggers who got captured. Millions of dollars annually were spent convicting and keeping the prisoners in jails. Other economic problems were that citizens found themselves “drinking away” their pay cheques. These economic problems resulted in the government not taking in as much money as they could have, and spending money in areas that could have been avoided, if prohibition hadn’t existed in the first place.
In the month of April of 1862, the government issued the first draft of the Civil War. Throughout the war, they put out drafts because so many men were needed to fight. Citizens were expected to obey these orders, and as the war progressed, it was harder and harder for men to avoid fighting for their country. Towards the end, the government began forcing almost every able man to enlist in the army. Men of ages 17-50 were drafted in the South (20-45 in the North); bodies were needed. And the government made sure that they got what they needed.
Imagine walking down a United States’ city street during the 1930s and 1940s. As you passed shops, businesses, and restaurants, you would probably see two things: advertisements for the war and signs saying white or black people only. The Jim Crow laws and World War II are both significant part of United States history. Even though this was a pretty controversial time in history, the events that took place helped mold the United States into what it is today.
Current military leadership should comprehend the nature of war in which they are engaged within a given political frame in order to develop plans that are coherent with the desired political end state. According to Clausewitz, war is an act of politics that forces an enemy to comply with certain conditions or to destroy him through the use of violence. A nation determines its vital interests, which drives national strategy to obtain or protect those interests. A country achieves those goals though the execution of one of the four elements of power, which are diplomatic, informational, military and economical means. The use of military force...
The excise tax placed on whiskey to pay for the national debt was justified by the benefits principle. The tax was put in place to pay back debts that America had acquired during the revolutionary war, essentially by paying the tax the people were paying for their independence. In theory, the excise tax on whiskey should have helped pay off the national debt, however; the entire process was corrupt. The bonds that were being sold, were bought up by “speculators with inside knowledge of the plan” and exploiting the uneducated. This meant that a lot of important members of the government were going to make enormous amounts of money when the government paid them back. In order for this to happen, the excise tax was imposed on whiskey.