Fingers - Not just for the government.

A bit of a continuation. George Thorogood and Jim Beam are along for the ride. So pour you a couple of fingers of your own and enjoy!

So last time around Hamilton was hurling us toward Obama as if we'd been shot from a canon. It didn't happen overnight. It was a slow process.

Much of early America was settled by fine people from the lands we know as Ireland and Scotland. These people blessed us all with the delicacy that we call whiskey. And while whiskey comes in many varieties the people that were making it in the early days of America were a little more homogeneous. They were, as a general rule, an "I'll mind my business, you mind yours and we'll both give the government the finger" variety.

Well, Mr Hamilton could ill afford to have free men making free booze while he was in the midst of the greatest bait-and-switch in the history of Western Civilization. These guys were going to be an excellent way for him to set a precedent that Congress could tax free enterprise and therefore make it less free. So in 1790, barely a year after our new Federal Government took power, he began to lobby for an excise tax on domestically distilled spirits - essentially telling these rowdy guys, many of whom had fought King George because of taxes, that they had to pay the Feds if they were going to peddle their John Barleycorn.

The people most affected by this tax would be farmers that lived west of the Appalachians and  used their excess corn to make whiskey to make their harvest profitable instead of just letting it rot and cutting their losses. These were small business people - the folks that are always hurt the most by tax hikes. And if the little guys suffer the big guys and the government reap the benefits. Did I mention that the nation's largest producer of whiskey during these times was a man named George Washington?

And so these farmers and distillers decided that if they could stand in a field against the world's most powerful empire, they could stand in a field to face the Johnny-come-latelys that were sending these tax bills. So these men started with Liberty Poles and militia groups and then began to escalate their grievances much as they had against the King just a few years earlier.

And then it came to a head. Just as George III before them, Hamilton and Washington nationalized the militia and then sent armed soldiers to force taxes on free men. And the very government "conceived in liberty" pulled the first of many armed robberies. The farmers backed down and the government got the cash. While violence was largely avoided, the point was made, "Question the authority of the Federal Government and, regardless of the Bill of Rights, we will shoot you.".

Hamilton began to centralize all fiscal policy and the economy and Washington was able to run off some of the competition. More power in the seat of government, less at the American dinner table.

As the whiskey issue progressed, the time would come that the industry became so regulated that there is actually a statute in the Federal Code of Regulations that governs the process and standards that have to be met to call a liquid substance "Bourbon" or "Whiskey" in the United States. It isn't just these two spirits but these are the pertinent ones. It's "Title 27 Part 5-21 & 22" for those curious enough to look.

And so came a important event in American History. Whiskey went underground and moved South. And the struggle was just beginning.