Whiskey Rebellion Series

Constitution Series

The Whiskey Rebellion by William Hodgeland, 2006, Excerpts

The national crisis came to be known as the Whiskey Rebellion began in the fall of 1791, when gangs on the western frontier started attacking collectors of the first federal tax on an American product, hard liquor. The perpetuators were the toughest and hardest of westerners: farmers, laborers, hunters, and Indian fighters; most were disillusioned war veterans. Expert woodsmen and marksmen, adept not only in musket drill but also in rifle sharp shooting, they were organized in disciplined militias and comfortable with danger. Triggered by the tax on domestic whiskey, the rebellion brought to a climax an ongoing struggle not just over taxation but also over the meaning and purpose of the American Revolution itself. With independence won, a U.S. Congress imposing the hated excise tax would seem the ultimate in ideological betrayal.

Those attacks would develop, over the course of more than two years, into something far more frightening to eastern authorities, a movement dedicated to resisting federal authority west of the Alleghenies. In the fall of 1794, the rebellion would climax when President Washington raised thirteen thousand federal troops, more than had beaten the British at Yorktown – and led them over the Appalachians, where armed Americans were leading a secessionist insurgency against the United States of America. The president’s decision to suppress the rebellion became a test for the fragile new nation’s viability, the biggest news of the day.

By the time federal forces marched west, the Whiskey Rebellion was bathing all of its actors – founders and terrorists, extremists and moderates – in the stark light, not of an argument between genteel parties in Congress, but in a guerrilla war on the country’s ragged margin, our first war for the American soil.

Revolutionary War Debt – Not Worth a Continental

Robert Morris – Plunderer of the People's Purse

Creditor vs Debtor

The People's Movement

Differences of an Economic Vision

Taming a Mutinous Army – Make the Officers Creditors

Society of Cincinnati

Shays Rebellion 1787

Pennsylvania – Creditors vs Debtors

Constitution Ratified 1789 – The Right to Tax

Whiskey Tax 1791

Whiskey and the Frontier

Mechanics of the Whiskey Tax

Consolidation of the Spirits Industry

Mingo Creek Association

Liberty Poles and Whiskey Rebellion Flag

George Washington – Land Speculator

The Militia Act – Federal Troops Mobilize

Troops Advance to Squash Whiskey Rebellion

The Dreadful Night [17 Nov 1794]

Whiskey Rebellion Defeated – Rebels Paraded

Palestinian Grievances

Carter Palestine Israel Series

Palestine Peace Not Apartheid by Jimmy Carter, 2006, Excerpts

There was a unanimous complaint among Palestinian political leaders and others that the worst and most persistent case of abuse was in Hebron, about twenty miles south of Jerusalem, where the biblical patriarchs Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob are buried. About 450 extremely militant Jews have moved into the heart of the ancient part of the city, protected by several thousand Israeli troops. Heavily armed, these settlers attempt to drive the Palestinians away from the holy sites, often beating those they consider to be “trespassers,” expanding their area by confiscating adjacent homes, and deliberately creating physical confrontations. When this occurs, the troops impose long curfews on the 150,000 Palestinian citizens of Hebron, prohibiting them from leaving their own homes to go to school or shops or to participate in the normal life of an urban community. The Palestinians claimed that the undisguised purpose of the harassment was to drive non-Jews from the area. The United Nations reported that more than 150 Israeli checkpoints had been established in and around the city.

These Palestinians were convinced that some Israeli political leaders were trying through harassment to force a much broader exodus of Muslims and Christians from the occupied territories. They claimed that any manufactured goods or farm products were not permitted to be sold in Israel if they competed with Israeli produce, so any surplus had to be given away, dumped, or exported to Jordan. The fruit, flowers, and perishable vegetables of the more activist families were often held at the Allenby Bridge until they spoiled, and in some areas the farmers were not permitted to replace fruit trees that died in their orchards. Their most anguished complaints were about many thousands of ancient olive trees that were being cut down by the Israelis. Access to water was persistent issue. Each Israeli settler uses five times as much water as a Palestinian neighbor, who must pay four times as much per gallon.

Teachers and parents maintained that their schools and universities were frequently closed, educators arrested, bookstores padlocked, library books censored, and students left on the streets or at home for extended periods of time without jobs. They claimed that any serious alteration between these idle and angry young people and the military authorities could result in the sending of bulldozers into the community to destroy homes.

One of their most bitter grievances was that foreign aid from Arab countries and even funds sent by the American government for humanitarian purposes were intercepted by the authorities and used for the benefit of the Israelis, including the construction of settlements in Palestinian communities. 

Wizards, Sorcerers, and Witches

The Malleus Maleficarum Series

The Malleus Maleficarum by Kramer and Sprenger, 1489, Excerpts

It is a most certain and most Catholic opinion that there are sorcerers and witches who by the help of the devil, on account of a compact which they have entered into with him, are able, since God allows this, to produce real and actual evils and harm, which does not render it unlikely that they can also bring about visionary and phantastical illusions by some extraordinary and peculiar means. Whether it be the casting of spells by a look or by a formula of words or by some other charm, it is all of the devil

There are wizards and sorcerers who by the power of the devil can produce real and extraordinary effects, and these effects are not imaginary, and God permits this to be. Sorcerers, and those too who are skilled in the art of divination, incur the penalty of death. It is unlawful for any man to practise divination; and if he does so his reward shall be death by the sword of the executioner.

The Wickedness of a Woman

The Malleus Maleficarum Series

The Malleus Maleficarum by Kramer and Sprenger, 1489, Excerpts

All wickedness is but little to the wickedness of a woman. There is no wrath above the wrath of a woman. A wicked woman is by her nature quicker to waver in her faith, and consequently quicker to abjure the faith, which is the root of witchcraft. All witchcraft comes from carnal lust, which is in women insatiable. The evils which are perpetrated by modern witches exceed all other sin which God has ever permitted to be done.

If we inquire, we find that nearly all the kingdoms of the world have been overthrown by women. Troy, which was a prosperous kingdom, was, for the rape of one woman, Helen, destroyed, and many thousands of Greeks slain. The kingdom of the Jews suffered much misfortune and destruction through the accursed Jezebel, and her daughter Athaliah, queen of Judah, who caused her son's sons to be killed, that on their death she might reign herself; yet each of them was slain. The kingdom of the Romans endured much evil through Cleopatra, Queen of Egypt, that worst of women. And so with others. Therefore it is no wonder if the world now suffers through the malice of women.

Witchcraft differs from all other harmful and mysterious arts in this point, that of all superstition it is essentially the vilest, the most evil and the worst, wherefore it derives its name from doing evil, and from blaspheming the true faith. Let us especially note too that in the practice of this abominable evil, four points in particular are required. First, most profanely to renounce the Catholic Faith, or at any rate to deny certain dogmas of the faith; secondly, to devote themselves body and soul to all evil; thirdly, to offer up unbaptized children to Satan; fourthly, to indulge in every kind of carnal lust with Incubi and Succubi and all manner of filthy delights.

Witches Deprive Men of Virility

The Malleus Maleficarum Series

The Malleus Maleficarum by Kramer and Sprenger, 1489, Excerpts

The devil has power against those who are subject to their lusts. First, they directly prevent the erection of the member which is accommodated to fructification. Secondly, they prevent the flow of the vital essences to the members in which resides the motive force, closing up the seminal ducts so that it does not reach the generative vessels, or so that it cannot be ejaculated, or is fruitlessly spilled.

In the town of Ratisbon a certain young man who had an intrigue with a girl, wishing to leave her, lost his member; that is to say, some glamour was cast over it so that he could see or touch nothing but his smooth body. In his worry over this he went to a tavern to drink wine; and after he had sat there for a while he got into conversation with another woman who was there, and told her the cause of his sadness, explaining everything, and demonstrating in his body that it was so. The woman was astute, and asked whether he suspected anyone; and when he named such a one, unfolding the whole matter, she said: “If persuasion is not enough, you must use some violence, to induce her to restore to you your health.” So in the evening the young man watched the way by which the witch was in the habit of going, and finding her, prayed her to restore to him the health of his body. And when she maintained that she was innocent and knew nothing about it, he fell upon her, and winding a towel tightly about her neck, choked her, saying: “Unless you give me back my health, you shall die at my hands.” Then she, being unable to cry out, and growing black, said: “Let me go, and I will heal you.” The young man then relaxed the pressure of the towel, and the witch touched him with her hand between the thighs, saying: “Now you have what you desire.” And the young man, as he afterwards said, plainly felt, before he had verified it by looking or touching, that his member had been restored to him by the mere touch of the witch.

They can take away the male organ, not indeed by actually despoiling the human body. It must in no way be believed that such members are really torn right away from the body, but that they are hidden by the devil through some prestidigitory art so that they can be neither seen nor felt.

And what, then, is to be thought of those witches who in this way sometimes collect male organs in great numbers, as many as twenty or thirty members together, and put them in a bird's nest, or shut them up in a box, where they move themselves like living members, and eat oats and corn, as has been seen by many and is a matter of common report? It is to be said that it is all done by devil's work and illusion, for the senses of those who see them are deluded in the way we have said.

Metropolis

Witches Infect the Venereal Act, Conception, and Male Genital Functions

The Malleus Maleficarum Series

The Malleus Maleficarum by Kramer and Sprenger, 1489, Excerpts

There are, as it is said in the Papal Bull, seven methods by which they infect with witchcraft the venereal act and the conception of the womb: First, by inclining the minds of men to inordinate passion; second, by obstructing their generative force; third, by removing the members accommodated to that act; fourth, by changing men into beasts by their magic art; fifth, by destroying the generative force in women; sixth, by procuring abortion; seventh, by offering children to devils, besides other animals and fruits of the earth with which they work much harm.

These women satisfy their filthy lusts not only in themselves, but even in the mighty ones of the age, of whatever state and condition; causing by all sorts of witchcraft the death of their souls through the excessive infatuation of carnal love, in such a way that for no shame or persuasion can they desist from such acts. And through such men, since witches will not permit any harm to come to them either from themselves or from others once they have them in their power, there arises the great danger of the time, namely, the extermination of the Faith. And in this way do witches every day increase. God allows more power of witchcraft over the genital functions, on account of the first corruption of sin which came to us from the act of generation, so also He allows greater power over the actual genital organ, even to its removal.

Elvira Mistress of the Dark