After coming home empty-handed from my recent trip to Greenfield, IN, to hear author Brady J. Crytzer talk about his new book on the National Road, I decided to sample his writing on the cheap by checking out one of his other books from the local library. The Whiskey Rebellion interested me and was available. I had no delusions about knowing the history in detail, but I thought I had a good overview: The government imposed a tax on whiskey; some farmers didn’t want to pay it; George Washington personally led troops to confront the farmers; and the farmers paid up. End of story.

That’s not wrong, but it’s terribly oversimplified. The biggest thing missing from my four-point summary is the extreme risk the uprising posed to a new nation with its first president in his first term. This book also showed me a different, less flattering, view of Alexander Hamilton than I’d previously seen. Hamilton designed the tax and saw its enforcement and the punishment of those who opposed it as something personal.

The first indication of just how little I knew about the book’s subject was when I read that what we now call the Whiskey Rebellion was known in its own time as the Western Insurrection. I don’t believe I’d ever heard that phrase before. I instinctively thought that removing the word “whiskey” from its name made the event seem more sinister and more important. My instincts were validated in the book’s last chapter, where Crytzer writes that when the event was completely over, “Alexander Hamilton and his Federalist allies took to calling it ‘the Whiskey Insurrection’ as a means of trivializing the affair.”

Crytzer does know the details. Like any good historian, he provides dates and names for events before, during, and after the insurrection. More importantly, he places those dates and names in the bigger picture of the times. At its core, the Whiskey Rebellion was a manifestation of the period’s conflict between Federalists (e.g., Hamilton, John Adams) and Anti-Federalists (e.g., Jefferson, George Mason). The most radical of the insurrectionists took steps to establish their own government separate from that of the United States. Had Washington delivered a Gettysburg Address-style speech as he led his troops west, it might have begun “Half a score and eight years ago…”.

Washington personally commanding an army to quell the uprising is part of virtually every description of the Whiskey Rebellion ever made, including my woefully shallow one in the first paragraph. That is deserved. It is the only time that a President of the United States personally led military forces in the field. But Washington returned to Philadelphia after reaching Bedford and turning command over to Henry Lee, the Governor of Virginia. The rebellion was centered in Pennsylvania’s Allegheny, Fayette, Washington, and Westmoreland counties plus Ohio County in Virginia. The 13,000 troops headed west came from Maryland, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and Virginia, and the governor of each state led their own troops.

Accompanied by Hamilton, Lee led the army into the heart of the rebellion, but there was no big confrontation or battle. As the insurrection grew, the rebels had organized militia-like forces, and they were active in attacking and terrorizing individuals and families, but they quickly dissolved as the federal forces approached. The army was put to work apprehending targeted individuals, but the targeting was not very precise and the apprehension heavy-handed more often than not. Hamilton wrote a letter to Washington suggesting the elimination of due process. On November 13, 1794, the Pittsburgh area experienced so many of what Crytzer calls “smash-and-grab-style raids” that it became known as “The Dreadful Night”. “The names provided by Hamilton and Lee,” writes Crytzer, “made no distinction between witnesses, dissidents, and cooperators…” Those grabbed were confined in deplorable conditions.

As is all too often the case, almost all of the insurrection’s ringleaders escaped. In those days, exiting the United States was as simple as floating a sufficient distance down the Ohio River. Hamilton never caught the “big fish” he hoped to make an example of, and many of the little fish and those who should not have been fish at all suffered terribly. It was early enough in our nation’s history that it might have been the first time that we behaved so badly on such a scale, but it would not be the last. It might be that the passage of time and the fact that the insurrection was unsuccessful explain what Crytzer calls “a void in scholarship surrounding the event.” Still, I have to wonder if there has been real purpose in our school books extolling Washington gallantly returning to the field while not once mentioning “The Dreadful Night.”

The Whiskey Rebellion includes several images. Some are from historical sources, but Crytzer uses his own photos when possible. These are locations described in the text, and many still have buildings standing today after playing a role in the rebellion. Somewhat related to the pictures is a nice touch that Crytzer calls “Traveler’s Notes”. These appear at the end of some chapters and include notes, such as directions, about a location mentioned in that chapter. The Jean Bonnet Tavern was among the few of these I was familiar with. It served multiple functions for both sides in the Whiskey Rebellion. Established around 1760 and still operating today, it witnessed many significant events before the rebellion and even more after. The most recent significant event that I am aware of is serving me dinner in June.

I don’t know that this old dog can actually be taught any new tricks, but I’m encouraged knowing that I can learn new facts. In The Whiskey Rebellion, Crytzer does a fine job of shining a light on a subject I knew very little about. I don’t doubt he can do the same for one about which I think I know considerably more. I plan to read his National Road book and may acquire it at a future presentation of his. If so, I’ll make an effort to check inventory before driving too far.

The Whiskey Rebellion: A Distilled History of an American Crisis, Brady J. Crytzer, Westholme Publishing (June 14, 2023), 6 x 9 inches, 224 pages, ISBN 978-1594164002
Available through Amazon.

Although I have since figured it out, when I pulled Fifty Inventions That Shaped the Modern Economy from my to-read list, I wasn’t sure how it got there. I was, however, quite certain that beginning it immediately after reviewing Cities of Gold was a real piece of luck. That’s not because of any overlap in subject matter. There is virtually none. It is because that review had ended with me seriously considering whether or not the invention of the automobile had been a good thing. I guess I was in the mood to think about inventions.

Harford leads us to think about inventions differently than we otherwise might. Of course, just considering their impact on the economy, the focus of this book, is new for some inventions and some readers. But Harford has us thinking about how they came to be, why some took so long to be created or accepted, and yes, good versus bad.

Some inventions create clear winners and losers, and that is the name of the book’s first section. A good example, and the one Harford talks about first, is the gramophone. As he does with all fifty of his chosen inventions, he tells its story through real-world examples that illustrate why it was chosen. In pre-gramophone days, top-tier performers made more money than those who weren’t quite as good, but second- and third-rate performers could do alright since the only way to hear a hit (or any sort of) song was via a live performance. Once it became possible for a star to record a single performance and sell copies, the market for not-quite-star performers dropped dramatically.

Several of the listed inventions require a large array of other inventions to even exist. The premier example of this is the iPhone and the other smartphones that followed. Harford notes that economist Mariana Mazzucato has identified a dozen technologies needed to make this device practical and useful. Several are specialized miniature electronic components, but things like analog-digital conversion, a cellular network, and the World Wide Web are also obviously necessary. I was reminded of those pictures of a guy weighed down by all the devices replaced by a modern smartphone, and made to realize that if all of those functions didn’t already exist, smartphones wouldn’t be very smart at all.

There are other inventions that do not require a bunch of prior breakthroughs but do require a lot of coordination. I have passed harbors filled with ships loaded with identically sized shipping containers and have watched trains carrying the big cubes pass me. It never occurred to me just how much coordination it took to create ships and railcars to hold the containers and cranes and other devices to move them. The story of how that happened is fascinating.

Naturally, a lot of what Harford has to say about an invention concerns its impact. The book’s purpose, after all, is to identify those that shaped the modern economy. Some of that impact is intentional, some is not, and some of the unintentional impact is not good. It was the negative environmental impact of the automobile described in Cities of Gold that got me to consider it differently, and there are plenty of negative unintended consequences described in Fifty Inventions…. But there are also plenty of positive unintended consequences connected with those inventions.

Air-conditioning is a great example. Its invention was driven by the effect of varying humidity on color printing. It solved the problem – but also led to a lot of comfortable and happy people in their cars, homes, and offices. Along with the safety elevator, reinforced glass and concrete, and a few other things, air-conditioning is one of the inventions that allow glass-covered skyscrapers to exist.

That the inventions Harford identifies have overall been good things is reinforced in the Epilogue, when he recounts economist Timothy Taylor asking his students whether they would rather be making $70,000 a year now or in 1900. The answer might seem obvious at first, but it requires just a little thought to realize that while that money would definitely buy more stuff in 1900, much of the stuff that makes life enjoyable today was not available in 1900 at any price.

Fifty Inventions That Shaped the Modern Economy, Tim Harford, Riverhead Books (August 28, 2018), 5.5 x 8.21 inches, 336 pages, ISBN 978-0735216143
Available through Amazon.

I have read and reviewed more than a few books about modern retracings of historic routes, including some I was personally responsible for. Almost all of them involved automobiles, with the result that those doing the retracing typically traveled significantly faster than the route’s original users. For the original travelers on the route that Will Grant followed in 2019, speed was far and away the main consideration. Relay riders moved mail over the nearly 2,000-mile-long route in ten days. Grant’s main consideration was safety. About 75 horses were ridden to near exhaustion in each Pony Express run. Grant’s safety and the success of his ride depended on two horses covering the entire distance. Will, Chicken Fry, and Badger got to know each other quite well during the 142 days they spent together during The Last Ride of the Pony Express.

I’ve been to the stable-turned-museum where Grant and all of those Pony Express riders began their journies west, and I have crossed the Missouri River at Saint Joseph, but it somehow never registered with me just how close that stable was to the riverbank. The stable and the river are less than half a mile apart. When I finally realized that, my first thought was to question why the Pony Express did not just place its eastern terminus on the other side of the river. It was a dumb question that I almost instantly answered. The Missouri River marked the border of the United States in 1860. St. Joseph was on the frontier. Pony Express riders began their westward dash with a ferry ride. Will Grant began his unhurried retrace with a police escort over a bridge.

Grant was very familiar with horses from a lifetime of riding, and I suspect he was more familiar than most with the history of the Pony Express and the geography of the American West. But he became a lot more familiar with these subjects as he prepared for his ride, and he shares that knowledge throughout the book. He also shares what I see as a sense of awe at the logistics of managing the hundreds of horses and men involved in the Pony Express. Many of us see only a galloping horse and rider when thinking of the Pony Express. Some may also think of brave station masters. Grant thinks and writes about all the men, and probably a few women, responsible for a constant supply of water, hay, and other necessities to those isolated stations, for the speedy breaking of horses to be ridden, and for all the other behind-the-scenes details of keeping an operation this big and spread out functioning.

The lack of that widespread support organization might be just as big a difference between Grant’s ride and those of 1860 as the speed of travel. Grant had the benefit of modern resources, including a sometimes-connected cell phone, and numerous generous routeside residents provided meals, showers, and places to camp. But he was basically self-contained and, despite several invitations, never slept in someone’s home. Surroundings ranged from too much civilization to essentially none at all. The severe isolation of parts of the trail is illustrated by Grant arranging for six caches of water and hay to be placed along the route through the Great Salt Lake Desert to make up for the lack of staffed and provisioned Pony Express stations.

The routeside residents also provide conversation. Sometimes history is explored, and sometimes the topic is something very current. Some subjects, like corporate ranches, wind farms, and wild mustangs, have the potential to become political, but Grant somehow manages to avoid that. Not only in his real-life conversations but in his informative writings. He’s really good at sharing facts, and maybe even describing a couple of viewpoints, without letting his own opinion distort them. In fact, most opinions held by others are reported with any rough edge they might have had removed.

I enjoyed encountering place names I recognized. Just as parts of the Pony Express route followed paths marked earlier by wagon wheels, feet, and hooves, some of it would later be followed by the tires of automobiles. Saint Joseph, MO, where it started, is where the Jefferson Highway and the Pikes Peak Ocean to Ocean Highway crossed. I recognized one of Grant’s camping spots, Hollenberg Station, from having stopped there while driving the PPOO. Farther west, the Lincoln Highway has led me to Dugway, Fish Springs, and other Pony Express-connected places that Grant mentions.

At Willow Spring Station in Callao, UT, another place the Lincoln Highway has taken me, Grant pauses for a day to rest himself and the horses. The last of his arranged caches lies between Callao and the stateline and beyond that, Nevada and California. There was still a long way to go, but the big desert was essentially behind him, and the day of rest may have prompted a look back. “No one, I thought, knows the ride of a Pony Express rider, but I’d come pretty close. My time in the desert, free from the distractions of population or vegetation or paved roads, had revealed what no book had conveyed, what I could not fully articulate, but what I knew was a past informant to our current psyche.”

On September 22, 2019, 142 days after crossing that bridge in Saint Joseph, Will Grant rode Chicken Fry up to the Pony Express statue in Sacramento with Badger in tow. The three had surely traveled more than the 1,966 miles said to comprise the actual Pony Express route. I’m still not sure whether I think the Pony Express was insane or brilliant. Crossing a 1,400-mile-wide gap in our country on horseback once in ten days is an impressive accomplishment. Establishing a system to do that in both directions twice a week is incredibly so. It is commonly estimated that something like 500 horses were used. Grant’s not buying it. He thinks a number between 1,500 and 2,000 is more believable.

I doubt I have ever spent much more than an hour on horseback at any one time, and I certainly don’t intend to try it now. I gained a slight sense of what multiple days in the saddle might be like without risking snakebites, saddle sores, or wild mustang attacks, and that’s close enough for me.

The Last Ride of the Pony Express: My 2,000-mile Horseback Journey into the Old West, Will Grant, Little, Brown and Company (June 6, 2023), 6.3 x 9.55 inches, 336 pages, ISBN ‎ 978-0316422314
Available through Amazon.