Stevenson, George

Indentured Servants

1775 advertisement in Philadelphia’s Pennsylvania Gazette

Indentured servants were men and women who agreed to work for a master without pay for a specified number of years, usually in return for having their passages to America paid. This 1775 advertisement in Philadelphia’s Pennsylvania Gazette announced that the ship Hawke had just arrived from London and was lying off the Market Street wharf with a shipment of “a few likely healthy servants” of many different trades “whose times are to be disposed of.”

Whiskey Rebellion

During the presidency of George Washington one of the early major issues confronting him was raising taxes to pay the debt of the states incurred during the Revolutionary War. Treasury Secretary, Alexander Hamilton in 1790 recommended an excise tax on domestically produced distilled spirits (the Whiskey Act of 1791).1