The image of a nation united in the aftermath of the American Revolution, content with hard-fought for and hard-won independence, is largely a grade school fairy tale. The early years of the American republic were often tumultuous, and competing conceptions of liberty meant that popular unrest was not uncommon. As it had in the period leading up to the American Revolution, rhetoric played a crucial role in this politically chaotic time. Federalist and anti-Federalist took the place of Patriot and Tory as early Americans struggled to present a unified vision of what democracy was meant to look like.
In 1781, the ratification of the Articles of Confederation brought together thirteen states into a “firm league of friendship.”[1] This loose gathering of nearly autonomous states formed a quasi-nation with only a weak, decentralized authority. Prominent political figures who had once advocated government built upon a foundation of the “principle or passion in the minds of the people,” had realized some of the difficulties inherent in this position.[2] They began to promote a limited democracy that reinforced the existing social strata. On the other hand, the lower-classes and rural groups began to demand the increased role in society and politics that had been promised to them in the high-minded rhetoric of the American Revolution. As proponents of a centralized nation gained power and encroached on the ideals of popular democracy, the poor and those dispossessed by Federalist policies consolidated into meaningful pockets of resistance.
Movements of open resistance during the early years of the republic served to convince many elites of the necessity of a strong national government. Even after the ratification of the United States Constitution which formed the centralized power desired, rural unrest continued. In 1791, a newly-passed excise on whiskey instigated mass protest in the western counties of Pennsylvania. As was the case during Shays’ Rebellion, when western Massachusetts farmers rose against their local government in 1786 and 1787, many of the protesters of the whiskey excise were either veterans of or witnesses to the American Revolution. The rhetoric of revolutionary democracy had made a meaningful impact on them and deeply influenced the way they viewed the proper relationship between government and citizen. On the other hand, the former leaders of the Revolution had quickly reversed course and adopted a language of class and control that troubled democratic idealists. By examining the Whiskey rebels’ language and behavior, it is possible to showcase the diverging political ideals of the period by examining how Revolutionary rhetoric was simultaneously inherited by protesters and discarded by Federalist leaders.