Old Daddy Flicker Likes Corn Likker 295 



western Massachusetts, and the arsenal in Springfield had 

 been burned before the militia could restore order. Shays and 

 many of those who sympathized with him had left their over- 

 burdened farms for new land in the Genesee Valley and in 

 Ohio. They had turned New England over to the merchants 

 and the manufacturers. 



Would something of the same sort happen in the Back 

 Woods if an excise were levied on whiskey? 



"Let it." Hamilton dismissed the Back Woods with a snap 

 of his fingers. "We have the militia to enforce the law, and to 

 collect the tax on stills if necessary." It is not to be forgotten 

 that Hamilton came from the rum-exporting sugar islands. 



The law went into effect in 1791. The tax on whiskey 

 amounted to seven cents the gallon. But that additional seven 

 cents gave New England rum a commercial advantage. The 

 excise discriminated against American grain in favor of im- 

 ported molasses. 



Shouts of protest came from the Back Woods. What was 

 the government in Philadelphia trying to do? Ruin the Missis- 

 sippi River trade? And the fur trade in the Northwest, where 

 whiskey paid for pelts? Where there were no roads, a man 

 had to distill his grain to get it off his farm. Albert Gallatin 

 protested for the Pennsylvania farmers: "We have no means 

 of bringing the produce of our lands to sale, either in grain 

 or in meal. We are therefore distillers through necessity." And 

 he pointed out that farmers in the East were able to sell their 

 corn and rye for higher prices than the western farmers could 

 get for their whiskey. Farmers in Westmoreland County, 

 Pennsylvania, got up a petition. "Why," they demanded, 

 "should we be made subject to a duty for drinking our grain, 

 more than for eating it?" 



The law struck at the very roots of that independence which 

 had made the Scotch-Irish leave Ulster for the colonies. They 

 had fought for that independence during seven years of war. 

 They would go on fighting for it. And they did. 



For four years the resentment against the tax on stills, and 



