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The United States And The Revolutionary War

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Imagine one day after a long day off work in the fields, you go to your local pub or watering hole and you ask for your favorite brand of whiskey on the rocks. Then bam, there’s a tax on it. Not much, but not only do you have not just pay the 2 cents for your whiskey but you’re paying an extra penny for your favorite drink to the government. You thought your Government was getting rid of taxes forever but no, you have to pay for the cost of your freedom, because freedom is never free. In 1791, almost 20 years after the Revolutionary War, the United States was facing a monetary deficit. Alexander Hamilton, the Secretary of the Treasury, proposed the idea in order to keep a sustainable government, he wished to propose a small tax law, “set at a varying six to 18-cent per gallon tax rate, with smaller distillers often paying more than twice per gallon what larger producers paid. " Many eastern farmers, could easily transport the grain of their farms to market, but, “The western part of Pennsylvania at this time was separated from the east by the Allegheny Mountains .” These mountains made it very difficult for western farmers to get their products to market, to make it easier for them so they distilled it, and turned their grains into whiskey, making it a taxable product by the 1791 tax on whiskey.
The tax was unfair due to the idea it was “based on the capacity of the still rather than the quantity produced. ” Also, it “was required to be paid in cash - something unusual for

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