This is a hybrid event.  Visitors may attend in-person in the Visitor Center Auditorium or virtually on Zoom. Registration required.  Log-in information provided at registration.

Join historian Brady Crytzer as he discusses his book The Whiskey Rebellion:  A Distilled History of an American Crisis.

In March 1791 Treasury Secretary Alexander Hamilton shocked the western frontier when he proposed a tax on whiskey to balance America’s national debt. The law, known  as the “Whiskey Act,” disproportionately penalized farmers in the backcountry, while offering favorable tax incentives designed to protect larger distillers. Settlers in Western Pennsylvania bristled at its passage and demanded that the law be revoked or rewritten to correct its perceived the injustices.  As the months passed people  grew restless with the inadequacy of the government’s response and they soon turned to more violent means of political expression.   In response President George Washington raised one of the largest forces he ever commanded to suppress the rebellion. No major battle ever occurred, but weeks of arrests, illegal detentions, and civil rights violations rocked the west. The event polarized the nation.