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Politics : GOPwinger Lies/Distortions/Omissions/Perversions of Truth -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: TigerPaw who wrote (65590)	5/15/2006 1:25:44 AM
From: Father Terrence	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 173976

It wasn't universal. And the Founding Fathers did not set the tax. The Founding fathers created the Articles of Confederation. Hamilton pushed (with his "Federalist Papers" in New York, for a centralized government, a federal government. Many were against this, including Jefferson who later served begrudgingly in that federal structure. The Constitution was created in 1789. At the urging of Secretary of the Treasury Alexander Hamilton, the federal government assumed the states' debt from the American Revolutionary War. One of the steps taken to pay down the debt, that was requested by Hamilton, and approved by Congress, was a tax imposed in 1791 on distilled spirits. Large producers were assessed a tax of six cents a gallon. However, smaller producers, most of whom were Scottish or Irish descent located in the more remote western areas, were taxed at a higher rate of nine cents a gallon. These Western settlers were short of cash to begin with, and lacked any practical means to get their grain to market other than fermenting and distilling it into relatively portable distilled spirits, due to their distance from markets and the lack of good roads. From Pennsylvania to Georgia, the western counties engaged in a campaign of harassment of the federal tax collectors. "Whiskey Boys" also made violent protests in Maryland, Virginia, North and South Carolina, and Georgia. It was Washington and some members of Congress who passed the Whiskey Tax which led to the Whiskey Rebellion. They were ready to burn down the capitol. Only Gallatin, a Swiss, stopped them from marching on the capital. The rest is history. (Gallatin was wrong to stop them.) :)