THE “WHISKEY REBELLION” By John L. Moore
F
armers objected when Robert Johnson began performing his duties as a federal tax collector for Allegheny and Washington counties in Western Pennsylvania in 1791. After all, Johnson’s job called for collecting the newly imposed U.S. tax on whiskey, a product made by many of the farmers in those counties. Johnson quickly ran into trouble. “A party of men armed and disguised way-laid him at a place on Pidgeon Creek in Washington County, seized, tarred and feathered him, cut off his hair, and deprived him of his horse, obliging him to travel on foot a considerable distance in that mortifying and painful situation,” Alexander Hamilton later reported to President George Washington.
12 POCONO LIVING MAGAZINE© APRIL/MAY 2021
