| Book Reviews | The Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography, 131.3

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| Book Reviews | The Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography, 131.3 | The History Cooperative

Book Reviews

The Whiskey Rebellion: George Washington, Alexander Hamilton, and the Frontier Rebels Who Challenged America's Newfound Sovereignty. By William Hogeland. (New York: Scribner, 2006. 302 pp. Maps, notes, sources, index. $26.95.)

It is hard to believe that over the last century, with the development of professional, historical writing, only two books have considered the role of the Whiskey Rebellion as a cornerstone in the founding of the United States of America. In 1939, the Great Depression served as the backdrop for Leland Baldwin's Progressive championing of the poor western Pennsylvanians' plight in Whiskey Rebels, as they struggled against inflation, depreciating currency, rent collection and foreclosure, and a new federal tax that seemed to be aimed directly at them. In 1986, the maturing "republican synthesis" led Thomas Slaughter to denigrate the rebels for their fighting and drinking, and their louse-ridden bodies, as he used the "Court vs. Country" ideological divergence during the constitutional era to interpret the rebellion as an east-west schism in The Whiskey Rebellion: Frontier Epilogue to the American Revolution. Now comes William Hogeland, a professional writer, not a historian, who provides an exciting, page-turning narrative that at once combines Baldwin's economic thrust with Slaughter's ideological analysis to rehabilitate the "Westsylvanians" into rational, sentient, political, and economic beings.

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