During a distillery tour in Pittsburgh, a tour guide mentioned that President Washington dispatched 13-14K troops to put down the Whiskey Rebellion at a time when the area only held maybe 400 or so families. Are those numbers correct? If so, was there a larger message being sent by the sheer crush of troops?
The number was in the vicinity of 13K, though I don't have a precise figure.
Had the government shown a weak response, or worse still been defeated in its response, it would have undermined the fledgling federal government's authority. And at this early a stage, it simply couldn't afford to lose face. Had this rebellion survived, what was to stop another faction rejecting federal laws elsewhere?