[nicollo]

I like your history, Aurelius, but I question your judgement: the whiskey tax was nothing like the tariff, and neither one was "exploitation" of anyone. The tariff was hardly a punishment of the South. You might argue it was detrimental to southern interests, but exploitive? No way. That you believe this betrays your hatred of Hamilton.

(Btw, for you income-tax haters, it was southerners, who promoted the income tax; was that exploitive of the North?)

As for Washington: come on. Give sympathy to the Whiskey rebels, sure, but condemn Washington for it? It's non-sensical to derive from Washington's person and beliefs any other path than that which he took. The man who built the Union would not allow its destruction so easily.

Washington was and remains the first and greatest American.

[nicollo]

Sorry, I let the topic slide. I think we were on this:

Does that include letting the profiteering speculators make out as they did? Madison wanted payments to be made only to those who had taken the script initially.

Perhaps, but whatever Madison wanted, it would have been impossible to do this: the debt was bought & sold so much there were no longer any "original" lenders. Bob Morris, anyway, probably constituted lender/debtor many times over.

Madison wasn't pure on this issue, anyway. He was defending Virginia's position, which was actually weak at that point for having already covered most of its debt (as was the case for Hamilton's New York).

Besides, Hamilton was a Scott...

[Aurelius]

On the topic of the pistols. The device came to light (although there are obscure comments probably referring to it earlier) just before the 1976 bicential. One of the pistols remained intact, in the possession of Chase Manhatten Bank I believe, and was sent to an Italian gunmaker as model for replicas to be reproduced for sale as bicentenial commemoratives. When the gunmaker disassembled it he discovered the mechanism. This was written up in the Smithsonian magazine at the time, but I don't have the reference.

Hamilton's son died in a duel using the same set of pisols.

[Aurelius]

THE WHISKEY REBELLION: A MODEL FOR OUR TIME