Whisky Rebellion

1. An insurrection that broke out in the early 1790s in western Pennsylvania. Hundreds of residents took arms against federal officials charged with collecting a tax on liquor distilled at home. Federal troops then put the rebellion down. Occurring only a few years after the adoption of the Constitution, the Whisky Rebellion was an important test of the power of the new federal government to enforce its laws.

Example Sentences

The great Whisky Rebellion, as it is called, was suppressed with an armed force 15,000 strong in 1794.

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The Bell House’s Sunday event is a “Take This Job and Shove It” party, with entertainment from the Wasabassco Burlesque Show and songs for the workingman from Alex Battles and the Whisky Rebellion.

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Whisky Rebellion Cardhu is on the rocks with the Scotch Whisky Association.

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But complaints go back at least to George Washington's pardon of two leaders of the Whisky Rebellion, and have surfaced during campaigns to pardon Eugene Debs, Tokyo Rose, Jefferson Davis and Samuel Mudd, the physician jailed for setting the broken leg of Lincoln's assassin, John Wilkes Booth.

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Americans have been historically disorderly in their response to leadership: a Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia had its counterpoint in a Whisky Rebellion in the backwoods.

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