Seeds of Conflict

It seems proper in a time of strife to recall early signs that in the young American republic all was not right nor yet perfected.

In the 1791–1794 Whisky Rebellion, more or less independent Pennsylvania family farmers rose up against a tax on distilled spirits they produced. The levy was enacted by Congress and President Washington to pay the rich interest on the bonds floated to finance the war of independence.

There were also 14 widespread major slave revolts between 1794 and 1859 — students usually only learn of Nat Turner’s. Besides that, there were enough escapes to justify legislation on their return and to spur the “Underground Railroad” to freedom.

Beginning with Mary Wollstonecraft’s Vindication of the Rights of Woman (1792), there was a movement to gain property rights, access to education and later voting rights for women. With typical generosity of spirit, its leaders campaigned for the abolition of slavery and temperance before championing women’s rights.

Finally, although four signers of the Constitution were Irish (mostly Anglo-Irish), when a million and a half people fled the Emerald Isle’s Great Hunger of 1845-1852, these newly arrived white Europeans began to experience discrimination and mistreatment. This would repeat itself with every successive later immigration wave from Europe, with Germans, Poles, Italians, Russian Jews and others, who quickly formed self-defense organizations and rallied around the political leadership of the only immigrants who were native English speakers, the Irish.