A fine bronze tablet mounted on a large boulder recently has been unveiled at the site of Fort Patterson, which will mark for this and future generations the spot made famous by the progenitors of this great Patterson family in Pennsylvania.
Washington Joins Troops in Whisky
Insurrection October 3, 1794
The year 1794 is distinguished in American history by a remarkable revolt among a portion of the inhabitants of Pennsylvania, known as the Whisky Insurrection.
In 1791 Congress enacted a law laying excise duties upon spirits distilled within the United States. This tax excited general opposition, but nowhere else was such violence exhibited in resisting the execution of the law as in the western counties of Pennsylvania, where the crops of grain were so over-abundant that, in the absence of adequate market for its sale, an immense quantity of the cereals was distilled into whisky, the far-famed “Monongahela,” called from the name of the principal river in that region.
The inhabitants insisted that an article, produced almost exclusively by an isolated people as their sole and necessary support, ought not to be taxed for the support of the Federal Government, and to this opinion they adhered with a tenacity worthy of a better cause.
Public meetings were held in all the chief towns, at which the action of Congress was loudly denounced as oppression to be battled against to the very last extremity; declaring, too, that any person who had accepted[accepted] or might accept an office under the Government in order to carry the law into effect should be regarded as an enemy of his country, to be treated with contempt and officially and personally shunned.
The Federal Government was scoffed at, its coercive authority ridiculed, and with the motto, “Liberty and No Excise!” the ball of the rebellion rolled on.
One day preceding the assembling of an important meeting of malcontents in Pittsburgh, the tax collector for the counties of Allegheny and Washington made his appearance. Aware of his business, a party of men, armed and disguised, waylaid him at a place on Pigeon Creek, in Washington County, seized, tarred and feathered him, cut off his hair and deprived him of his horse, obliging him to decamp on foot in that painful condition.