Genius Crimped by Government

It was Sunday night August 9th when I sat down to reminisce about 1995 when Jerry Garcia died. He was only 53 but struggled with a cocaine and heroin addiction for years. Over medicating was an emblem of the Grateful Dead and their counter culture followers who played and danced their way across America.

Around this time of year, August 1794, others were over medicating too but the drug in question was whiskey. The President of the United States was told by his aides that he had to get focused. They warned him that his popularity was slipping. In this case, the President was George Washington. His opponents, the “Republicans” (Jefferson’s supporters that later changed their name to Democrats), were using a tax engineered by, Alexander Hamilton ( Secretary of the Treasury), as political fodder.

The problem was Frontier folk were growing more grain than they needed and decided to sell it. Since there were no roads at the time, they loaded barges with corn and sent it down the Mississippi toward New Orleans. The settlers of the region who were mostly of Scottish and Irish descent were not just good at farming they had a knack for finance. Applying these skills they realized a ton of corn took up a lot of space, mostly went bad by arrival and yielded little profit. But a ton of grain made several barrels of “medication” (there was no anesthesia at the time) which did yield a profit. And since a barge could hold 5 times more condensed corn (whiskey) than dry corn (corn), the leverage was enormous.

Unfortunately, genius can be crimped by government so the Ohio Valley crowd was asked to pay the bulk of taxes for the new country. They soon responded by “tarring and feathering” tax collectors. They even burned tax offices and made bonfires with tax forms. (Makes us look like modern day slackers). Anyway sensing that he was slipping in the polls, Washington (a Federalist) followed his aides’ advice and sent the army to quell this so called “Whiskey Rebellion.” But the new U.S., had no army to speak of, and Washington had to ask for help from the militia of four neighboring states.

When the “army” hit Pittsburgh, most of the militia was over “medicated”, and the whole thing turned out to be like a Grateful Dead concert, without music.

Jerry you are missed!