https://tenthamendmentcenter.com/2025/02/23/whiskey-rebellion-truth-noncompliance-resistance-and-federal-retreat/

Whiskey Rebellion Truth: Noncompliance, Resistance, and Federal Retreat

By: Michael Boldin

Almost everything taught about the Whiskey Rebellion stems from a coverup. The prevailing myth presents an unbeatable federal government easily crushing resistance, discouraging any modern challenge to centralized power.

But the real history tells a very different story – one of widespread tax resistance and successful nullification that forced the federal government to abandon its hated excise tax.

THE OFFICIAL MYTH VS. REALITY

The conventional narrative goes like this: Western Pennsylvania farmers, angry over what they saw as an unfair and oppressive internal tax on whiskey, refused to pay. Their resistance escalated beyond noncompliance to include intimidation of tax collectors and violent confrontations. In response, President George Washington, urged by Alexander Hamilton, personally led a massive military force into Pennsylvania to crush the insurrection.

This, we’re told, was a decisive show of federal power – quick, effective, and total.

But believing this myth has dangerous implications. It suggests that any resistance to federal authority is futile, that centralized power cannot be challenged. In reality, the Whiskey Rebellion was far from a quick federal victory.

Instead, it was an eight-year saga of mass noncompliance that exposed the federal government’s inability to enforce its own laws, and it eventually repealed the tax. ......