I'm reading Salt: A World History by Mark Kurlansky right now. And, while I am fascinated by how significant salt is in our history, I sometimes question how significant it was vs other factors. For instance, on the Whisky Rebellion he states:
"THE AMERICANS DID not forget the salt shortages of the Revolution. Several states, including Massachusetts, still paid bounties to salt producers. The new nation remained, in principle, determined to encourage salt production. In practice, this was not always the case. When the new government realized that there was an unregulated commerce in whiskey in western Pennsylvania, traded across the Allegheny for salt, it responded by taxing the whiskey in order to stop the trade. In 1791, the whiskey-producing farmers rebelled, and beloved President Washington shocked the public by calling out a militia to put down what has become known as the Whiskey Rebellion."
To my understanding, the Whisky Rebellion was far more about unregulated trade undermining the laws (and coffers) of federal commerce. Specifically, after Hamilton's assumption of state debt for the revolutionary war. Was it unregulated whisky/salt trade, or is the author salting his book with events of historical import?
Kurlansky is vastly overstating the importance of salt in the Whiskey Rebellion. Back-country farmers were using whiskey as a barter medium and a sale item. They may have traded whiskey for salt, but salt was not the only item--nor the most important one--for which farmers traded whiskey. And the revolt was absolultey not prompted by denying back-country farmers access to NaCl.
To read more about the real reasons for the Whiskey Rebellion, I recommend Tom Slaughter's The Whiskey Rebellion: Frontier Epilogue to the American Revolution (Oxford University Press, 1986).
I hope Kurlansky is worth his salt as a historian in other areas. His argument here is rather tasteless.