America's first tax revolt was against its own brand-new government

In 1791, the new US federal government taxed whiskey to help pay off Revolutionary War debt, hitting small frontier farmers who distilled grain into whiskey simply to make it worth transporting. Armed resistance in western Pennsylvania escalated until President Washington personally led nearly 13,000 militiamen west to crush it in 1794, the only time a sitting US president has commanded troops in the field. The tax itself was quietly repealed less than a decade later.

— Contemporary US federal records, Whiskey Rebellion — 1791-1794