Who We Were and Are

Among the responses to the events of January 6 in Washington, the single most over-used word must surely have been “unprecedented.” Over and over, I heard and read people using that specific term—unprecedentedly—to dismiss the deeply unsettling notion of disgruntled citizens rising up in armed rebellion against a government they consider unworthy of bearing the mantle of leadership. But how unprecedented is such a thing really? The secession of the southern states from the Union to form the Confederate States of America was formally explained by the secessionists as a way for states unwilling to submit to what they deemed the tyranny of the majority to avoid rising up in revolt by withdrawing in retreat and living under their own flag and in their own land. But how realistic a hope was that really? Yes, it is true that the newly-formed CSA sent representatives to Washington to negotiate a peace treaty, but that idea was unlikely before Fort Sumter and unimaginable after it. And so the events that led up to the outbreak of fighting in 1861 were far more likely to lead to war than to peace—a fact surely known perfectly well by the secessionists. Nor is it a secret today: the reason that man who carried the Confederate battle flag into the Capitol chose to bring that specific banner with him into that specific place was to remind Americans that the last time the Federal government attempted to put down an armed rebellion of sullen, angry citizens, it cost the nation the lives of upwards of 650,000 soldiers, almost all young men, and left more than 600,000 wounded and/or permanently disabled. We, that young man was attempting to say, need to be reckoned with and listened to…or else the nation will explode in an insurrection that will cost countless innocents their lives. Message received!

Another line that appeared over and over was the passionate insistence that “this (meaning the notion of an armed assault on the epicenter of American democracy) is not who we are.” That too I also heard a thousand time, invariably by people trying to argue that this kind of incident is a mere aberration, a deviation from the civility that is embedded in our national culture, a kind of cultural anomaly that we need to address forcefully and then get past as quickly as possible.

But is that really true? (That question again!) One of the most interesting features of the way history is taught in our high schools and then recalled by the populace after their formal education ends is how certain events have been forgotten by all, their very names now familiar to almost none. I’ve written about this phenomenon in the past, but today I’d like to bring it to the fore again to remind readers that in our nation’s past are not one but several armed rebellions by angry, resentful citizens ready to use violence to express their displeasure with the government. I can almost promise that you’ll never have heard of them. I myself certainly don’t recall ever hearing their names back in high school. And yet I would like to propose that they form the correct set of background events against which to consider last week’s assault against the U.S. Capitol building.

First up, the Whiskey Rebellion. The year was 1791. The issue was taxation—specifically the tax on the sale of whiskey (and all distilled spirits) by the federal government that was the first tax imposed on a domestic product. The idea was to generate funds to cover the debts that the nation undertook as part of the effort to win the Revolutionary War, but the farmers on the nation’s western frontier (what we would call western Pennsylvania) were used to making their own whiskey and they resented mightily the federal government insisting on a cut of the profits. Feeling that this kind of taxation without (local) representation was precisely the kind of outrage that led the colonies to revolt against British rule in the first place, farmers and others used violent methods to prevent government agents from collecting the tax. This led eventually to a force of 500 men occupying the homestead of a local tax collector, one General John Neville, in the wake of which incident President Washington himself led a force of 13,000 militiamen from Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Maryland, and Virginia to put down the insurgency. Fortunately (for them), the rebels dispersed before Washington and his army arrived; only twenty men were arrested, of whom none was actually convicted. The tax was collected. The government endured. Eventually, during the presidency of Thomas Jefferson, the tax was repealed. But the point had by then been amply and forcefully made: the federal government cannot have its hand forced by armed thugs eager to use violence to force their will on the legitimately elected government.

My second example is Shays’ Rebellion of 1786-1787. This too was an armed uprising, this time in the western part of Massachusetts. The people were angry that the federal government was imposing taxes that had not been endorsed by the states, but their real fear was that the loose union of independent state-entities implied even by the name of the new nation (i.e., the United States) was going to be replaced by a single nation with a federal government leading it forward…and that that government was not going to submit every decision it wished to make to the states for their approval. Mobs under the general leadership of one Daniel Shays began to impose their will on the citizenry by shutting down courthouses and making it impossible for the justice system to function. This happened in Northampton first, then all across Massachusetts—in Springfield, Great Barrington, Concord, and Taunton. James Warren, then the President of the Massachusetts Provincial Congress, wrote to President Adams that the commonwealth had entered into a state of “anarchy and confusion bordering on civil war.” The tension escalated into real fighting; some few rebels were killed and hundreds were captured. Mass arrests followed: more than 4000 insurgents signed confessions, hundreds were indicted on charges related to the rebellion, eighteen were convicted and sentenced to death. Most of those sentences were commuted or overturned on appeal. In the end, two men were hanged and that was that. But the point was again made, and clearly: armed revolt against the federal government can only meaningfully be met with force, followed by the arrest and trial of the rebels.  

My third example is the Fries Revolt. The year now is 1799. This setting was the Pennsylvania Dutch community in southeastern Pennsylvania.  The background is the Quasi-War that the United States sort of fought with France at the end of the eighteenth century. (The Quasi-War is yet another part of American history ignored by all and remembered by none.) It was an undeclared war, mostly fought between warships in the Caribbean and in the Atlantic off the East Coast, but it cost a lot of money to pursue the enemy and Congress accordingly vote to impose a tax on the citizenry to pay for it. The people did not respond well, especially when the tax was levied based on the size of people’s homes as measured by the number of windows it had. (The assumption that rich people live in bigger houses with more windows than poor people is possibly true vaguely, but it’s hardly a rational way to assess wealth.) Gangs of rebels wandered the countryside, memorably marching on Bethlehem where they successfully freed prisoners incarcerated because of their refusal to pay the tax. That was the last straw for the federal government: President Adams sent in federal troops to assist local militias in arresting the insurgents, which they successfully did. Thirty went on trial; Fries himself, the ringleader, was charged with treason, convicted, and sentenced to death. (He was later pardoned by President Adams.)

So those are three important instances of armed insurgents rising up to defy the federal government. These were all instances of rebellion, not mere rioting. And the difference is crucial: we’ve all heard of the Stonewall Inn riot of 1969, but no one can argue that the rioters were attempting to overthrow the government.

So maybe last Wednesday’s attack on the Capitol wasn’t that unprecedented! Still, each of those instances of armed uprising was put own by a firm, unwavering response on the part of the federal government, one intended to make clear the fact that this is a nation governed by law in which armed rebellion cannot and will not be tolerated. Whether the events of January 6 rise to the level of armed rebellion is yet a different question. But to wave the incident away as something unprecedented—that is, something our nation has never had to deal with before—is just so much wishful thinking. We have faced armed insurgency before in our nation. But it has always been something we have successfully squelched, preferring to elect our officials and then to be led by them rather than allowing armed thugs to self-select as the arbiters of national policy and then impose their will on the citizenry not by the force of moral suasion or the fact of electoral victory by through the bully’s tools of threat, violence, intimidation, and terror. That is who we are.