Do-Nows for Week of 1/23/13

MONDAY:
None

TUESDAY:
None

WEDNESDAY:
Why did Pennsylvania farmers rebel against the national government in 1791? What was the result?

Pennsylvania farmers rebelled in 1791 because George Washington and Alexander Hamilton decided to raise government revenues by taxing whiskey. Farmers in Pennsylvania planted rye grain as their principle crop, and several factors contributed to their discontent. First, the roads in western Pennsylvania were of very poor quality making travel to market difficult. Second, farmers were faced with the choice of carrying two bushels of rye grain or two barrels of rye whiskey to market at a time. A barrel of rye whiskey is the same as twelve bushels of rye grain, so this was a very reasonable option. Third, farmers in Pennsylvania did not trade with money. They bartered goods and services at needed (for instance, one farmer might trade a jug of whiskey to another for a sack of sugar). The farmers, unable and unwilling to pay the tax, rebelled and marched to Pittsburg which they would have razed if they had not been bribed with free whiskey by the townspeople. George Washington sent a massive federal army to Pittsburg and swiftly put down the rebellion. This set a precedent that the President will use force to end any internal rebellions.

THURSDAY:
Name some of the precedents that George Washington set as our first president. How have other presidents followed these precedents in their own careers?

1) George Washington served only two terms before retiring. (No president besides Franklin Delano Roosevelt ever served more than two terms.)
2) Washington approved taxes by Congress to pay off war debts. (All presidents since Washington have signed off on tax bills to raise federal revenue)
3) Washington used a federal army to put down the Whiskey Rebellion in western Pennsylvania. (After Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas in 1954, Dwight Eisenhower sent in federal troops to force the desegregation of schools.)
4) Washington send a federal army into the Northwest Territory to secure the borders of the United States. (James Monroe will dictate that the United States must expand across the entire continent from the Atlantic Ocean to the Pacific Ocean. Theodore Roosevelt will expand this to make it America's job to protect the entirety of the Western Hemisphere.)

FRIDAY:
None