The Whiskey Rebellion, or Whiskey Insurrection, was a tax protest in the United States beginning in 1791, during the presidency of George Washington. The so-called "whiskey tax" was the first tax imposed on a domestic product by the newly formed federal government. It became law in 1791, and was intended to generate revenue to help reduce the national debt.[3] Although the tax applied to all distilled spirits, whiskey was by far the most popular distilled beverage in 18th-century America. Because of this, the excise became widely known as a "whiskey tax." The new excise was a part of treasury secretary Alexander Hamilton's program to fund war debt incurred during the Revolutionary War.The tax was resisted by farmers in the western frontier regions who were long accustomed to distilling their surplus grain and corn into whiskey. In these regions, whiskey was sufficiently popular that it often served as a medium of exchange. Many of the resisters were war veterans who believed that they were fighting for the principles of the American Revolution, in particular against taxation without local representation, while the Federal government maintained the taxes were the legal expression. (Information from Wikipedia, copied on 7JAN2915)