You Never Forget Your First: A Biography of George Washington

by Alexis Coe

Washington seems to have taken this personally. He was no king; he had not handed down the tax to fund his jewel habit or build a seventh castle. Rather, democratically elected officials had voted it into law. He saw these local attacks as a direct challenge to legitimate federal authority and was determined to quash the protest and have its participants tried for treason. But according to the Constitution, the commander in chief could send in troops only at the request of state officials, and Pennsylvania governor Thomas Mifflin wasn’t ready to take that step. Washington saw a rebellion, but Mifflin saw isolated (and largely whiskey-fueled) acts of desperation from a community that felt unheard. Only land-owning white men could vote, and land ownership in western Pennsylvania had fallen dramatically since the earliest period of white settlement. In some townships, none of the locals owned any land at all; their landlords—the ones who were allowed to vote—lived in the big cities. Much of the population covered rent and other necessities by bartering crops or whiskey. They rarely paid in cash, which was scarce in the region. For the majority of the population, then, even a low yearly tax would leave them with nothing.