PierzStyx
Banned
- Joined
- Sep 11, 2011
- Messages
- 5,225
You misunderstand if you think the Founding Fathers revolted just because they didn't want to pay their taxes. Remember the whole "No Taxation without Representation!" thing? The problem there isn't taxation, it was the whole "no representation" thing. Americans had no voice for themselves in the British government and could not govern themselves. Finally the abuses got so great and so often, and the oppression so severe, without them having a say in their own governance (even their colonial governors were crown appointed in most cases, not locally chosen leaders) that revolution became justified. But if they had had legal recourse, and representation in Parliament it might have been a different story.
The Whiskey Rebellion was not on the same grounds. They had legal representation and recourse that could effect laws governing them. (In fact after the rebellion the whiskey tax issue is what helped form Jefferson's Democratic-Republican Party, which promised to end it)The formers of the Whiskey Rebellion did not use up every justifiable legal means or any really. They did not appeal to local, state, or federal representatives or try any political action to get the tax withdrawn. They resorted to mob violence. Revolution is a last resort when all peaceful means have been exhausted. The Whiskey Rebellion did not do this. Therefore it was an unjust revolt.
And to drop a little history on you, the tax collectors were not the first to use force on anyone. They came around to collect an unpopular tax and the people who formed the Whiskey rebellion responded not just by refusing to pay but by assaulting them and driving them away. Then a US marshal arrived to serve legal writs telling them to pay their taxes or face legal action and the rebels gathered into a group of 500 men and assaulted the marshal and the home of the local tax inspector. it wasn't until this point that the federal government got involved. Washington's first step was to send peace commissioners to help settle the issue, and only when the rebels refused to do anything but rebel violently were militia troops called in. The Whiskey Rebellion formed a mob that threatened the lives and peace of the people of the state. The state asked the federal government for help. It responded and ended the rebellion peacefully ultimately. But it was the mob that initiated force.
As to Lincoln, you're laboring under a lack of understanding. Lincoln believed that revolution was only a right when you were rebelling for a just cause against an unjust government, an idea very inline with the Founding Fathers. His argument concerning the South was that it was not doing this at all. The South was rebelling for a wicked and immoral cause, to support and extend slavery, against a government that had bent over backwards to accommodate it. And that is pretty true. Because the cause of the South was to further slavery and not promulgate liberty, its revolution was unjust. All sound logic and morality I think. The irony of course is that he was a hypocrite because as he was teaching this he was simultaneously raping the Constitution.
