July 2025
As Americans celebrate the 4th of July it’s worth recalling that obnoxious and burdensome tariffs were among the major grievances the colonists held against Great Britain 250 years ago.
Most alert readers (ARs) will recall from their elementary or middle school history classes that one of the rallying cries of the American Revolution (also AR) was “Taxation without representation is tyranny.” And some ARs will recall from these same history classes that tariffs comprised the bulk of the taxes to which the colonists were so vehemently opposed.
It was predictable and even inevitable that the colonists would take to smuggling in order to evade the hated tariffs. The east coast of what would soon become The United States with its multiple inlets and rivers was ideal for this activity.
The tiny colony of Rhode Island, which had multiple harbors and a long coastline relative its area, was a particular hotbed. Rhode Island’s strong opposition to British efforts to stop smuggling led it to renounce allegiance to Great Britain on May 4, 1776, two months prior to The Declaration of Independence and ahead of any other colony.
After the Revolution Rhode Island was the only state that did not send delegates to the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia in 1787. The concern was that a strong federal government would replace British tariffs with equally onerous American tariffs and would try to suppress smuggling just like the hated British.
It was the last state to ratify the Constitution, on May 29, 1790, one year after the federal government had come into existence, and it did so primarily to avoid having its shipments to other states subjected to tariffs as imports from a foreign nation.
Once the Constitution took effect, the highest priority for the newly formed government was taxing its citizens. The Treasury Department under Alexander Hamilton had eight times as many employees as The State Department (40 compared with five).
In addition to imposing tariffs on imports, the federal government in its quest for revenue authorized excise taxes on commodities such as tobacco and alcohol. These new Hamiltonian taxes included the infamous Whiskey Tax of 1791, which prompted The Whiskey Rebellion on the western frontier, concentrated in western Pennsylvania.
Hamilton’s tax on whiskey isn’t mentioned in the musical.
This rebellion was noteworthy for several reasons. First, popular outrage against the Whiskey Tax was so widespread and violent that in 1794 President George Washington personally rode at the head of an army to suppress the insurgency.
Second, the controversy contributed to the formation of political parties in the United States, with the Federalist party of Washington and Hamilton supporting the tax and the Republican party, led by Thomas Jefferson, opposing it.
Finally, The Whiskey Tax and Whiskey Rebellion are not mentioned in Lin-Manuel Miranda’s “Hamilton: an American Musical,” although an earlier version of the play included a section about them. This omission is curious given that the Whiskey Tax was the cornerstone of Hamilton’s plan for national finance and was one of his major initiatives as Secretary of the Treasury.
When Thomas Jefferson assumed the presidency in 1801 one of his first priorities was repealing the Whiskey Tax, which happened the following year in 1802.
One hundred and eighteen years later alcoholic beverages faced a much bigger threat than high taxes with the ratification of the 18th Amendment, which enshrined Prohibition in the U.S. Constitution. Rhode Island was one of only two states that never ratified the Amendment, the other being Connecticut.
This 4th of July would be a good time for ARs to celebrate the freedom we enjoy as Americans with the Schlafly Beer of their choice. We might want to drink a special toast to Rhode Island, the smallest state in the union, which took courageous stands against oppressive tariffs in 1776 and against an oppressive amendment to the U. S. Constitution 144 years later.
Tom Schlafly
Chairman
Schlafly | The Saint Louis Brewery
