Whiskey Insurrection

Source

The Whiskey Insurrection mentioned in The Sherrard Family Of Steubenville:

It was the next year, 1794, that what is known as the Whiskey-Insurrection occurred in Western Pennsylvania.

This was in consequence of the obnoxious excise law passed under the administration of George Washington, which law has frequently since been charged to the administration of John Adams, which did not begin until the 4th of March, 1797. The resistance to this law caused President Washington to send out an army to quell the disturbance. Owing to the high state of feeling among the people of the southwestern counties, great numbers of Liberty Poles were raised during the fall of 1793 and the spring of 1794 at all towns, taverns, furnaces and crossroads. A label or inscription, in large capital letters some fifteen inches in length, would be put on a board, and this board would be nailed to the pole about twelve or fifteen feet above the ground, while on the top of the pole, at the height of from one hundred to two hundred feet, would be fastened a red-striped flag, which waved in the air till the wind and weather tore it to pieces or the liberty pole was taken down.

I remember that some time in the spring of 1794 there was the raising of a liberty pole at the Furnace on Dunbar's Run, which had just been built, and was owned by Isaac Mason and Moses Dillon, who
was from near Baltimore, and is now (August 18th, 1832) living near Zanesville, Ohio.