The Whiskey Rebellion: The Intersection of Taxation, Insurrection, and Reality
1-Time Lecture | To register, please call us at: 305-919-5900.
In 1791, Congress, urged by Secretary of the Treasury Alexander Hamilton, passed a tax on distilled spirits to help pay off Revolutionary War debts. Dr. Rebecca Staton Reinstein explores how farmers who turned grain into whiskey for transport or used it as a local medium of exchange refused to pay, seeing it as taxation without representation. Tax collectors were attacked, prompting George Washington to lead troops into western Pennsylvania, where the rebels dispersed. The Whiskey Rebellion left lasting tension between distillers and revenuers and helped shape the emergence of two political parties.
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This lecture will take place at the Jewish Center in Pembroke Pines at Century Village.
Rebecca Staton-Reinstein
Rebecca Staton-Reinstein, Ph.D., president of Advantage Leadership, Inc. has served as an executive in the public, private, and nonprofit sectors and as a consultant in strategic leadership. She is the author of several books on strategic leadership and planning. Her best-selling Conventional Wisdom: How Today’s Leaders Plan, Perform and Progress Like the Founding Fathers allowed her to draw on her lifelong passion for history to draw parallels between the founders and contemporary leaders. Growing up in Virginia, the daughter of history-loving parents, the family visited every battlefield and historic home and read every historic highway marker. She followed in her mother’s footsteps and graduated from William and Mary. While there, she worked for the Restoration as a costumed guide and was hooked on the 18th century. Her programs examine the Enlightenment, the transition from colonies to independence, the creation of the Constitution, and lead up to the Civil War and its aftermath. In profiles of the women and men who were critical in the development of the U.S., she helps her audience understand them as human beings with their admirable qualities and their flaws. “Because these people were humans and not idealized superheroes, we can learn from them and apply the lessons of history to our situation today.”