Veritas et Sapientia – Washington Restrained Mordor on The Potomac, But Mordor Prevailed

Sapientia et Veritas – “What historians have come to call the Whiskey Rebellion was an armed uprising against the United States government in the latter half of 1794, which took place primarily in and around Pittsburgh in southwestern Pennsylvania. George Washington and John Marshall both thought that the Whiskey Rebellion was the single most significant event in the history of the fledgling United States in the 1790s, believing that “the very existence of government, and the fundamental principles of social order were involved in the issue.” The executive raised more than 12,000 militia troops and sent them hundreds of miles across the Appalachian Mountains, an army as large as any the United States put in the field during the Revolution. The President,  for the first time in United States history, acted in the field as Commander-in-Chief, organizing and disciplining the troops at the commencement of their march west.4 The powerful Secretary of the Treasury, Alexander Hamilton, then took effective command and stayed with the expeditionary force throughout its operations. The Rebellion seemed to melt away before the huge army, offering not a single musket shot at the troops. The government enacted violent, brutal reprisals nevertheless, brought back and tried a bedraggled group of captive rebels, then proceeded to downplay the episode in a manner echoed by most historians since 1795.5 Mainstream historians have either forgotten it, or have recalled it in a nostalgic and sanitized fashion.” – Historian Wythe Holt