[intense music] NARRATOR: On the night of September 6, 1791, a group of men carrying torches ambush a federal tax collector on his rounds.

They strip him naked, shave his head, and tar and feather him-- an act of political protest and intimidation.

WILLIAM HOGELAND: Tarring and feathering was a pretty horrible thing to do to someone.

And then leave you in the woods.

This was a federal agent.

NARRATOR: Rebels protested a domestic tax on whiskey production, a tax devised by Alexander Hamilton to repay wealthy Americans who financed the revolution.

But to farmers on the frontier, distilling grain into whiskey meant survival.

CAROL BERKIN: If you had to ship that grain over land in a wagon with a mule, by the time it got there, it was spoiled.

BRADY CRYTZER: Whiskey was the solution.

You can make your crop easier to transport and far more valuable.

NARRATOR: Hamilton dismissed petitions against the tax and hired federal agents to enforce the law and penalize delinquent farmers.

BRADY CRYTZER: If you didn't register your still, it was a $250 fine.

That's the equivalent to four years of income.

If you're on the side of the people who feel they need to resist this tax, maybe we need to continue the revolution.

NARRATOR: Citizens of the four Western counties refused to pay the tax.

And vigilantes punished those who followed the law.

CAROL BERKIN: They destroyed property.

They tarred and feathered people.

There's a current of violence.

You can't dismiss it.

BRADY CRYTZER: If you did follow the law, then your neighbors may attack you, kill your livestock, burn your barn.

WILLIAM HOGELAND: It involved some very violent action.

But it was planned throughout the various communities of Western Pennsylvania.

BRADY CRYTZER: Most of the rebels were veterans of the American Revolution.

This was not the country they signed up for.

The thing that really scared everybody in the East was military discipline going up against federal officials in a shootout.

[gunshot] Hamilton saw a kind of unraveling.

WILLIAM HOGELAND: There's an insurrection going on.

There's nothing else to call it.

Both sides want it to come to a head.

[gunshots] [background clamoring] [intense music]