Citation Needed - The Whiskey Rebellion

Episode Date: December 14, 2022

The Whiskey Rebellion (also known as the Whiskey Insurrection) was a violent tax protest in the United States beginning in 1791 and ending in 1794 during the presidency of George Washington. The so-called "whiskey tax" was the first tax imposed on a domestic product by the newly formed federal government. Beer was difficult to transport and spoiled more easily than rum and whiskey. Rum distillation in the United States had been disrupted during the American Revolutionary War, and whiskey distribution and consumption increased afterwards (aggregate production had not surpassed rum by 1791). The "whiskey tax" became law in 1791, and was intended to generate revenue for the war debt incurred during the Revolutionary War. The tax applied to all distilled spirits, but consumption of American whiskey was rapidly expanding in the late 18th century, so the excise became widely known as a "whiskey tax".[3] Farmers of the western frontier were accustomed to distilling their surplus rye, barley, wheat, corn, or fermented grain mixtures to make whiskey. These farmers resisted the tax. In these regions, whiskey often served as a medium of exchange. Many of the resisters were war veterans who believed that they were fighting for the principles of the American Revolution, in particular against taxation without local representation, while the federal government maintained that the taxes were the legal expression of Congressional taxation powers. Our theme song was written and performed by Anna Bosnick. If you’d like to support the show on a per episode basis, you can find our Patreon page here.  Be sure to check our website for more details.

You ate a porpoise. Not the whole thing. Yeah, but eating any amount of porpoises in sane. You know what, you sound like the guy from the aquarium. Right now, that's you. And then we'll go camping. We'll go camping. I will go camping with you, man.

Fuck. Yes. Yes. Yes. Let's do it. Hey, guys, what's going on? Hey, Keith, what's up with Cecil and Eli? Yeah, are they drunk? Yeah, yeah, they're drunk.

We got talking about this week's episode and the importance of whiskey. And Eli was like, I've never really seen the peel. And Cecil was like, well, you just haven't had the right one. And then it up sharing an entire bottle. You know what? We don't say I love you, but Cecil, you know, I love you, right? But why don't, why don't we say it? Cause I, I love you.

I love you. I love you, man. I love you, man. Yeah. You guys both said it now. I see. Well, well, that will be interesting. Okay. But wait, there's something I don't understand here. Oh, yeah, what's that? I mean,

why didn't you have anything to drink? You're a whiskey guy, right? Oh, me. Yeah. No, I very much am a whiskey guy. I had like a, like a bottle, bottle and a half, something like that. And you're... Oh, no, no, I'm fine. I have pretty good tolerance at this point. Got it. Okay, no further questions. Okay, I mean, I'd say like on a weekday,

I'd say no further questions. Okay. Hello and welcome to Citation Needed. The podcast will be chosen to subject read a signal article about it on Wikipedia and pretend we're experts. Because this is the internet, and that's how it works now. Ami Lai Bosnick and I'll be drying this glass, abs and mindedly as you walk in the door, but I'll need some high proof companions.

First up, the Jack Daniels and Fireball to my Melort, Keith Ed Noah. What? No, absolutely reject the premise. Jack or Fireball, I don't really care which one I was Reject yeah, yeah, unless I can light my bung with that fireball. I've gotten No need for it man You just need to name three

Lickers and you came up with three free Names of whiskey The one I knew works in there too. I'm least offended by the Lord also joining us tonight two men who like their bourbon like they like their dates in a barrel. Well, you looking at my barrel who

the fuck is a grace get the fuck out of here. All right Eli, I'll tell you the same thing. Now I told you down in the docs if you could think of something better than a barrel. I'm all ears. Like this barrel of ears. Whatever.

Before we begin tonight, I'd like to take a moment to thank our patrons. Patrons, there weren't for you. This fun, Panther filled weekly, judo, spree would fade like the summers of youth. And if you'd like to learn how to join their ranks, be sure to stick around till the end of the show. And without out of the way, tell us, Cecil, what person place concept phenomenon or event will we be talking about today? Today we're going to be talking about the thing. It's the whiskey rebellion. And no, are you learned about this thing? Are you really changing the format of the show? this thing. Are you changing the format of the show again? Sometimes it's the thing. This now is part of the format of the show. Like it's just, this is now part of the format. So tell us about the whiskey rebellion eventually. We sure to open it up with a bunch of

arguably irrelevant context before you get to the point. Thank you. I will. I will. Okay. Back to the format. So, yeah. As Americans, we generally recognize the birth of our nation as happening in 1776 when the Declaration of Independence was signed, which is kind of like dating the birth of your child to the first time you convinced your spouse to fuck you. Right? That's not right.

The earliest you can really dated is 178383 since we hadn't won the Revolutionary War until then. But for most relevant purposes, the real birth year of our country was 1789. That's when George Washington was inaugurated as our first president and the government established by the Constitution first guy going. So until then, the United States was more of a loose conglomeration of variably governed semi sovereign states, but since that loose knit coalition couldn't do shit like pay off war debts, it was replaced with the far more federalized system that we still more or less live with today. And the whiskey rebellion was the first real test of how that was going to work out.

Spoiler alert, like everything else in the history of America, it goes badly. Yeah. Okay, except for the loose conglomeration of variably governed semi-sovereign states turned out to be a great system to manage through the pandemic. Yeah, right. So the year is 1791. The US has been truly independent for less than a decade, and it was being crushed under the debt that it had incurred in securing set independence. To fight against the war, the nascent government ran up 54 million dollars in debt, and the various states had also amassed an additional 25 million dollars worth. When you adjust for inflation, we're talking about the equivalent of like a quarter of a billion dollars.

It was the need to service this debt more than anything that necessitated a stronger federal government and eager to capitalize on that arch federalist Alexander Hamilton, who was the secretary of the treasury at the time, proposed that the federal government buy up all the state debt to strengthen their hand. Needless to say, that was a real easy sell to the states. But those states would have just gone to trade schools instead of university. It wouldn't be in this mess with that. All right, I'm not an economist, but they were going to fix the national debt crisis by buying more debt. Is Twitter next on their list? Yeah, I was in the position.

No, because this actually worked ultimately. You just know it gets a blue check mark. Yeah. No, to this point, the federal government was almost entirely funded through import duties. It duties. Who? And Hamilton are you left? They were already as high as they could reasonably get without serving as a huge impediment

to business. So he proposed an internal tax. And since he knew that that was gonna be an unpopular, as all hell, he specifically suggested a tax on alcohol. Right, so this was a luxury tax and as much as nobody needs alcohol to survive, heath. And it was also a syntax. Which guaranteed, I'm just, whatever.

But in addition to that though, it was also a sin tax, which guaranteed that America's prude class would get behind it. And we've always had a pretty huge class of prudes. So Hamilton proposed what would later be called the Whiskey X size act, also known as the Whiskey act. Congress passed that act in March of 1791 and Washington appointed revenue inspectors in November of the same year. Who taxation is that? Seven citizen. This bullshit. 91 and Washington appointed revenue inspectors in November of the same year. Who?

Taxiationist, that's seven citizen, this bullshit. Yeah. So who is John goll? Yeah. I told you this would happen. As Hamilton and Heath predicted the tax wasn't popular, it was particularly problematic out west. I know this is 1791.

So when I say out west, I don't mean California. I mean the mountains. No, not those ones, the eastern mountains. Right. And at this time, the United States reaches as far west as the Mississippi River. But in terms of like the actual reach of the government, it doesn't even make it past the Appalachian mountains. So when I say problems out west, I'm talking about Pittsburgh. Now normally this story is told as like, you know, as a bunch of drunken, illiterate, incorrigible, revolutionary war veterans who stopped listening to words into the no taxation without representation slogan. And there, there

is definitely an element of that, especially late in the game. But the initial resistance to this tax was actually pretty well grounded. There were a lot of ways that the tax really favored Eastern population centers, like, for example, the tax was nine cents a gallon for distilled spirits, but you could pay a flat rate per still that could theoretically reduce that tax to six cents a gallon, but you could only really take advantage of that if you were distilling a fuck ton of booze. And most of the distillers out west were just farmers looking for something to do with their excess unsolved grain crops. Jesus Christ. And then a farm subsidy, a loser is Jesus. Farm subsidy.

He sees all, I think we could get him to trade the electoral college for letting him put caffeine back into four loco. My guy, we don't need to. We don't need to farm so good. No, there were other reasons why the tax hit small western distillers harder to, for example, in poor parts of the country, a gallon of whiskey sold for less money, right? Since the tax wasn't based on sale price, it was necessarily regressive. The regions in question were also species poor, right?

So much so that they often used whiskey as a currency, which meant that for a lot of people that were poor enough, this effectively became an income tax. What's more, because it was a federal tax, anybody who didn't pay or had a complaint about how they were being charged for it had to take that to a federal court rather than a state court. And the nearest federal court to Pittsburgh was in Philadelphia. That was a hell of a journey for a cash-strapped farmer in the 1790s. All right. So I'm going to Philadelphia the L.F. to lodge my complaint. I tried pouring

my whiskey down the coin slot for the toll road. That's legal tender. All that public private. The arm won't lift up. It's fucking ridiculous. Ridiculous. Now, they say money can't buy happiness, but if the money is whiskey, it can absolutely buy a nice spot of oblivion, which is damn nice. Right. You're just using the wrong thing as money, then. Yeah. Now, to be clear, all those justifications are reasonable and they certainly factored into people's resistance to the tax.

But there's also just a huge contingent of people for whom it was just a case of, yeah, man, the government wants my money, but fuck them. There was also a feeling, and I feel like this persists even today for the Western U.S. But there was this feeling that the federal government was mostly doing shit for the people in the East. So why the fuck should the people in the West pay for it? But regardless of their reasoning, by and large, people in the Western US just didn't pay this tax. I'm so fucking, fuck these ivory tower academics and their common core madness.

I don't know what's happening to me. Right. And when you explain to these people that the government is doing more for the East because there are more people in the East, they vote for a Nazi and get interviewed on CNN. So it's tricky. You gotta be careful. Right. So at first, the opposition to the tax went mostly through official channels. Several petitions were sent seeking the repeal of the law, but when they failed, opposition leaders formed the convention to decide what to do next. This was convened in September of 1791, so this is before the government even started

collecting the tax in Pittsburgh, which was at the time a small frontier settlement of like just over 10,000 people. This convention was dominated by moderate voices who wanted to avoid an outbreak of violence above all things, and it did manage to negotiate a one cent reduction in the tax. That would not, however, be enough to stave off violence. Not sure I can get whiskey prices down, but I can't investigate Hunter Biden. Well, that get your vote. Can I get an account?

All right. So listen, just in case anyone wants to know, adjusted for inflation, a six cent tax on whiskey is the equivalent to a dollar 94 tax per fucking gallon in today's terms. And the government, the government was using this to fix a $76 million debt problem, which means America needed to drink 39 million 175,000 to 157 gallons of whiskey. And the population of the U.S. to that time was only about 3.9 million people. So if you're wondering why everyone is so belligerent about this, it's because they needed to drink 10 gallons of whiskey each to avoid insolvency. So weird example. I don't understand what you're trying to say. I feel like we're up to the challenge. Now, so 10 gallons of violence. So now the, the viola started light. I guess whatever the next step up from prank war is on September

11th of 1791, a recently appointed tax collector named Robert Johnson was tiredardin Feathered. Not to be out done, a different group now, some dude who was sent to serve warrants for nonpayment of the tax. And he was also Tardin Feathered, but whipped first. Jesus. Yeah. And, and, and well, this kind of shit was mostly confined to Western Pennsylvania. There was a strong resistance to the tax all through Appalachia. So yeah, so actually, the only reason there wasn't violent retaliation against tax collectors in Kentucky is that they literally could not find anyone willing to try to collect taxes there.

Yeah, if they would have tired and fed them, they would have fried them with 11 herbs and spices in Kentucky. Yeah, I don't want to smell really good, but it would have tasted like shit. It's a secret. It's a secret. We're not telling you. So again, so another real hotspot for resistance was western North Carolina. It got so bad that Alexander Hamilton was calling for armed military intervention

there by 1792. And I should point out here that like, there's actually a lot of controversy about what exactly Hamilton's goals were with this whole thing. Right? Like as Tom pointed out, the math doesn't really add up on this. And some people accuse Hamilton of trying to stoke a violent insurrection here just so that he would have an excuse to assert federal power and set that precedent. And given what we know about Alexander Hamilton, it's entirely possible that he would do something like that, several of his moves seem conveniently time to stoke the most possible outrage. All right. He put out a diss track on a mixed tape making fun of us. I don't know what that means.

Why does he keep rhyming everything? To be clear, I really don't know how credible the accusations against Alex Andrew Hamilton are here. Like, they have a lot of the hallmarks of historical conspiracy theories in so much as they invest a ton of power in foresight and one guy and forced us to believe that somehow that one guy was all the way inside the heads of all of his opponents, even the backward frontiers men half a country away from him. So I don't know. But regardless of whether he set out to get a violent insurrection or not, that's what he got. In August of 1792, there was a second convention in

Pittsburgh to discuss resistance to the tax. And this time, the voices of moderation that dominated the first round of talks stayed home. This convention was dominated instead by a group called the Mingo Creek Association. And they were all the way in on calling for violent resistance so much so that after the convention, they raised liberty polls and took control of the local militia. All right, well, Noah's spilling the hot goss on 1792 political intrigue.

So will I go put in my dentures and powder my wig? We'll take a quick break for apropos of nothing. I call this second convention of Pittsburgh to order. Mr. Secretary, would you like to open? I would. I would. My fellow countrymen, I know the weight we are in our fine nation. Bear is not a small one, but this tax should it so serve the people.

Shall be the foundation on which our nation's freedom was founded. I beg you do your duty. Yes, well said, well said. Now the representative from the Mingo Creek Association. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So first of all, fuck that guy. Oh, yeah, oh, fuck all y'all to scooters. Dad done let him order none. Shucks off the internet. And if you try to tax our wet can, he's going to crack your skull open like he

did his cousin ate that right, Scoop. Yeah. Yeah. Am. But whatever he's he's good. Anyway, the end or whatever. Oh, my phone now. Gentlemen, gentlemen, there is only one reasonable course of action here. We must take these people very seriously and rearrange our electoral systems so that they're vote counts eight times more than ours. I'm gonna get it.

Anyall here, a doctor, Scooter Done Torres Ballsack by sitting on that ninja star. Equal American. Ordered it out of Black Belt magazine. And we're back. When we left off, Noah was telling you a fascinating historical anecdote, but it was about poor people. So Tom and I were not listening. Jesus Christ. So, did you know what was the whiskey rebellion?

All right. So when Hamilton years reports of the second convention, he sends a fellow by the name of George Climer to Western Pennsylvania to investigate and apparently Climer is a class a boob. Okay. So he makes the trip in a half-ass disguise and he tries to intimidate local officials when he shows up. And then when he reports back to Hamilton, he exaggerates the hell out of the situation. It makes it

sounds way more dire than it was, which is exactly, of course, what Hamilton wanted. In response, Hamilton drafted a presidential proclamation denouncing resistance to the law and after being twice toned down by different editors, Washington signed it on September 5th of 1792. George climbers fake mustache just pulling off one side of his face. So you wouldn't know where I could find a rebellion. Anywhere around. Oh, hang on.

Now it's my eyebrow. Okay. Look, the guy said the glue was going to hold. It's hot and I'm sweat. I'll just make something up. So I just, I'm sorry. This Hamilton guy got to watch his temper. He could end up a boring musical. Oh, I thought it was good.

I don't like him. Musical. So okay, so you got to keep in mind that this was more about saving face than securing revenue at this point, right? So the reputation America had in Europe was of being unreasonable and ungovernable. And here you've got an armed rebellion against a relatively minor act of government. And keep in mind that the Capitol at the time was in Philadelphia. So the view from afar is of this fledgling federal government that can't even enforce a law within its own fucking state.

Yeah, well, you know, after January 6th, that's the view from both close up and afar. Yeah, that's the view from both close up and afar. Yeah. Yeah. Sure. Yeah. So about the same time, the Mingo Creek Association is rampant of its harassment efforts. In August of 1792, they go after a tax inspector named General John Neville, he's rented a room in Pittsburgh for his tax collection office. But after the Mingo Creek Association threatened the landlord, he agreed to a victim

Neville. They also went after anybody who would comply with the tax, issuing warnings in the form of anonymous notes and newspapers and retaliations in the form of burned barns and broken stills. Hey, guys, the op-ed section started with fuck you, Dave anonymous. I don't know what to do with that. So shit went on like this for two fucking years Taxis specters would try to collect money angry crowds would burn them in effigy in 1793 a crowd broke into one tax collectors House had forced them to surrender his commission at gunpoint in 1794 30 men surrounded the house of a local tax collector in Morgantown, Virginia

And he felt so threatened that he disguised himself as a slave and swam across a river to get away from the mob. Republicans, if you allowed actual history to be taught, you could say, you know, see once in a while, blackface is justified. I still think the banjo was weird. I don't know. Part of the location device, Eli. Now, so meanwhile, Alex Andrew Hamilton is looking at this tender box and he's like, well,

this needs a fucking match. So he convinces a federal attorney to issues subpoenas to more than 60 distillers in western Pennsylvania that hadn't paid the tax. Now again, I don't know if Hamilton was really trying to stoke insurrection here, but the fact that he pushed for this days before the government was about to change the rules so that state courts could take care of the tax disputes strongly suggests that he knew what he was doing. Anyway, one way or the other, they send a federal marshal named David Lanx to serve these

rites to basically the leaders of the armed resistance at this point. Dude's just walking in like the guys who flew to Afghanistan to try and catch Bidlánon. Ha, you all, um, y'all are under arrest. Please. No. Where's the fucking rhyming guy? You can't speak with the guy out here. Be busy.

Now, a company in Lennox, uh, when he goes to serve this, uh, the subpoenas is general level. And they serve most of them without incident, but late one evening, as they're heading up to one particular farm, somebody fires a couple warning shots at them. Both men are like, well, fuck it. It doesn't matter that much. And they turn around. Neville heads to his home. Lennox retreats all the way to Pittsburgh. But the Mingo Creek militia decides to retaliate. So dozens of them gather outside a Neville's house and demand that he send out the federal marshal who, be clear isn't to there. When he fails

to comply, they open fire. Oh, man, if he uses a force field, this is going to be a Joseph Smith situation. I know a Joseph Smith situation. I say, though, I do miss the old timey way of solving problems. Like I wish every time I got a bill, I get just like hop in the car and beat the hell out of the guy who sent it to me and then something, something debt forgiven. Yeah, right now. Yeah, yeah, it's going to be a little bit of a deal. So so Neville defends this house with the help of his slaves and when they're unable to dislodge him, the militia retreats.

Now Neville is a former general. He's still got a lot of Paul in the US military. So he rustles up 10 army soldiers stationed nearby under the command of his brother-in-law, major Abraham Kirkpatrick. The militia, for their part, also goes and gets reinforcement. And where Neville scrounged up 10 men, the Mingo Creek Association scrounged shut up like 600 of them. Nice. Yeah. Needless to say, the ensuing battle of Bauer Hill didn't go great for Neville's side. Neville walks outside.

Okay. Okay. I see we both have an army of some of these. How about this? I'll stop it for stuff. Ty? Also, just at some point in history, you could borrow some soldiers if there were some laying around nearby. Yeah, it's like take a soldier, leave a soldier in a bucket.

Now, of course, Neville looks out in all of this because the first command that Kirk Padrick gives when he arrives is for Neville to get the fuck out of there. So he's not even there when the shooting starts. And the shooting goes on for like an hour before the rebel leader gets fatally shot. That enraged the militia. So they just set the house on fire and that forced a pretty quick surrender.

Now, the casualty numbers are actually a little hazy here, but at least one and possibly as many as three militia rebels die and one US soldier may have died. So it's between one and four. Kirkpatrick was taken prisoner, but the rest of the soldiers were allowed to leave and apparently Kirkpatrick escaped soon after anyway. Feels like this whole act in Hamilton needs to be set to Yakitee sacks, man. What do I look?

Okay, but these are the arms you have the right to bear, everybody. Okay. The kind where the army and a militia have a shootout and maybe four people get shot. Right. Yeah. At the high end. Yeah. Well, it is 1791. The shooting lasted an hour. Let me go ahead and check my musket loading timing and inflation guide. Got it. Okay. Three shots total fire. Well played. Yeah. Right. right. Yeah. Well, maybe less than that then invented the B unit yet. So who even knows, right? So needless to say, this exchange galvanized both sides. The federal government has no choice but to respond to an armed militia firing on U.S.

soldiers. And the rebels now have this martyr, right, in the form of the leader who was killed at Bauer Hill. And well, it's not super clear at this point. The story at the time was that he had been killed while trying to call a ceasefire. So it was being sold to the insurrectionists as a straight up murder. Now, the rebels were also feeling increasingly emboldened after their win. And they made a few pretty dumb moves, which included robbing a male carrier that was on its way out of Pittsburgh

so they could read all the letters and figure out which of the townspeople were talking shit about them. They were also recently divorced from any country political goals. Yeah, right. Right. Yeah, exactly. But they were also increasingly divorced from any concrete political goals, right? So the overwhelming majority of people involved at this point weren't distillers or farmers of any kind.

And the suggestions that their next meeting were mostly involved to like just pillaging Pittsburgh and making off with all the rich people's loot. They even took on declaring independence. Yeah, right. So they even talked about declaring independence and forming their own country or or joining with England or Spain. You know who won't tax us England. Yeah, that has to be like an awkward conversation. Okay, England. Now listen, I know I said some things, maybe killed some people, but I've got in fact, I think we've both grown. Hello, England.

Are you telling me you don't want Western pencil thing? Hello. So at this point, Washington has no choice but to respond. And that's washing to the dude, of course, not the euphemism for the federal government. He sends a few delegates with the mission of finding a peaceful resolution to the whole conflict, but he also starts mobilizing the military. He calls up state malicious from New Jersey, Maryland, Virginia, and Pennsylvania. And all he called up 12,950 men, which by the standard of the time was a substantial force.

Now, I, I should know that this mobilization had a bit of a rebellion knock on effect because you know, fucking buddy wanted to go to war with a bunch of hillbillies over the price of whiskey. So they had to make up for the short fallen volunteers with a draft and as with every draft in US history, this one led to protests and unrest. Hell, the fucking governor of Maryland had to send out 800 men to quash an anti-draft riot and ended up arresting over 150 people, but eventually they filled out the ranks and ended up with an overwhelming force to bring to bear against again, Pittsburgh. And and and and less we forget I should emphasize once again that the entire city at this time had fewer residents than the army that was marching on it.

Just one guy had that meeting with Washington. Hey, what if we just tax rich people and stop doing the whiskey? Get the fuck out, Bernie. Come on. I'm only 70 years old. Yeah. I love there's a boy. These taxes are unpopular. I'm at a draft will cure it. Democracy. Jesus. Now, of course, once you've got a fuck ton of amped up armed up, guys, many of whom don't even want to be there, you start getting a certain amount of violence inevitably. So there are several examples of civilians getting bayoneted or shot while resisting this force on their march across the state. But with those few exceptions, this is a largely bloodless affair. Even before the advanced force makes its way to Pittsburgh, the rebels

are already surrendering. The very act of gathering the army was enough to put down any rebellion. In fact, the mobilization is really only noteworthy now because it's the only time that a sitting president commanded troops in the field. Now in a sense, both sides claim victory on this one, right? So the rebels laid down their arms and they stopped taunting and feathering tax collectors, but they didn't start paying the tax. Only a handful of people were tried for their crimes. Only a few of them were convicted.

And though two of them were sentenced to hang, both of those guys were later pardoned as was everyone else convicted and both with us. So nobody got in any real trouble for it. And in fact, the whiskey rebellion and the general resistance to the tax that caused it were huge factors in the election of Thomas Jefferson and one of his first acts was to repeal this tax. And the memory of the rebellion was such a cautionary tale that the federal government would continue to subsist only on import fees until the war of 1812. Just a bunch of bears in New Hampshire spread in the rumor that the government wanted to charge taxes for garbage collection.

Hampshire is spreading the rumor that the government wanted to charge taxes for garbage collection. All right. So that's the end of the story and it should be the end of the essay, but it can't be because there's just this one other thing that I need to share with you that is almost, but not quite entirely unrelated. So when I pulled up this article on Wikipedia, I noticed a tag at the top that said not to be confused with the whiskey war and always on the lookout for a good citation needed topic as I am. I decided to click through and see what the fuck that was. And it was the most adorably Canadian thing that you can imagine. Okay. So wait, Ryan Reynolds does

a puzzle in footy pajamas. So that's the main deons. Judging of Poutine Contest, Shooter, even, then that. So, okay, so this all centers around this inhospitable, spid of arctic rock that sits midway between Canada and Greenland. It's tiny, it's half a square mile and it's uninhabited, even if you're including like plants and lichen in your senses, okay? But that didn't stop Canada and Denmark from arguing and ultimately technically going to

war over it in something that the Wikipedia article describes as a quote pseudo confrontation. See in 1973, when the two countries signed their border treaty, they didn't bother to specify who owned this little turd of rock because who fucking cares. Okay, point of clarification, Noah. It is not a pseudo confrontation. I believe the term now is special military operation. So anyway, so in 1984, Canadian soldiers provoked Denmark by planting a Canadian flag in the island. And honestly, look at it pictures of the place. I don't know how the fuck you would do that without a jackhammer. But they

put up a Canadian flag and they left a bottle of whiskey there. And then the Danish minister of Greenland affairs personally travels to the little island, takes down the Canadian flag, puts up a Danish flag and leaves a little bottle of schnops and a letter that says welcome to this Danish island. The two countries continue to take turns swapping out the flags each time, by the way, folding each other's flag properly and respectfully, et cetera, et cetera, and leaving bottles of liquor for fucking it. Jacket plus. I know, I know for the uninitiated, it seems like Canada was adorably leaving a bottle

of whiskey there as a gift, but I want to clear this up. It was Canadian whiskey and they were just throwing it out. Man, if he'd ever had a calling, it's sitting on an island by himself drinking whiskey. They have a guy doing clean up. So now eventually the two countries agreed to settle the issue, like two contancras siblings in an 80s sitcom by drawing a line right down the middle. But even that agreement wasn't finalized until this year. And that was largely done as a way of Canada and Denmark saying, Hey, Russia, look how easy it is to settle border disputes. You just make a line that everybody agrees on.

No word, whether this has had any effect on Putin yet, but we will keep you posted. And if you had to summarize what you've learned in one sentence, what would it be? I did an ebriant based rebellions are probably not the most effective kind. And are you ready for the quiz? Let me take a quick drink and yes. All right. No, which of the following. Be Aaron Berzer, Roses. This is one of the songs in that, erosis of the liver. Or see, my shot, shot shot shot. That's okay. Oh, it's this. It's a tough one. I think it is see my shot shot shot shot. That is correct. Well done. All right. No, what's the best movie about the whiskey rebellion? A, the war of the four roses. B, liquor license to kill. C, bullet proof. That's a, that's a, that's a doubly.

There proof is okay. Okay, forget it. All right. D. Rye hard. All right. It was a, it was a slow burn, man. It took a minute to build up. By the time it got there, it was worth it. I'm gonna go with D. Rye hard. Absolutely. It is a Christmas mood. All right. No, when drinking all night, sometimes the system needs to, shall we say reset? What is this sometimes called? A, a dry heaving martini. B, a mo oh no, Eto. C, a long eye, I don't feel so good, Linda.

I see D.A. lemon dropped me off at home or E a whiskey rebellion. All right. So you're trying to trick me with E a whiskey rebellion. I think it is, I think it is a dry, heaving marching. It is a whiskey rebellion. That is the answer that you got wrong. No, it isn't. It isn't actually.

No, it turns out it wasn't the thing you said. No wins. Good for me. I would like a Cecil essay next week. All right. Well, for Tom Noah Cecil and he and he I'm Eli. Thank you for hanging out with us today. We'll be back makes me sure and Cecil will be an expert on something else but right now and then you can listen to the

rivaled fun of Tom and Cecil over on cocking the dissonance you can listen to the plotting difference of Tom and I over on dear old dads and you can hear Noah Heath and myself review Christian movies over on our podcast and if you'd like to keep this show going, you can make a per episode donation at patreon.com slash citation pod or nivisify star review. Anywhere you can. And if you'd like to get in touch with us, don't do that. Check out past episodes, connect with us on social media or check the show notes. Be sure to check out citationpod.com. [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪

CISO, CISO wake up. Dude, what are you doing here? Oh, my head, oh, oh, my head. Uh, camping? Remember? Those Rockies are gonna hike themselves, silly. Did I say we'd do that? Ha-ha, didn't we say we'd do that? It was practically your idea. Now, come on.

We gotta get walking, because I don't know'd do that? It was practically your idea. Now come on, we gotta get walking because I don't know where the Rockies are. Oh God. Dude, you did say you'd go camping with them. You did say that. Keith, what are you doing here? Did you get drunk too? No, no.

I was just lonely. Sad. You made the end of this episode said. It's not sad if you say I can stay. Hang out with you guys. Did you want to say that? Did you want to say that I can stay? Cecil? Can I end the episode because I'm still talking right now? I'm still talking. Still talking. This is me. I'm just vamping it. Vampit it up.

Still. Flabbing jammer. Say I can stay. Please, Cecil. Cecil? Why would I say flabbing jammer right there? That's weird.