Not true at all. John Brown lost decisively and no one disagrees that Harper’s ferry was not an insurrection. Same with the whiskey rebellion or any number of Native American uprisings. They don’t need to be well planned, provisioned or successful to be insurrections.
Totally wrong.
First of all, John Brown definitely did not intend an "insurrection" at all, because he thought the federal government would be on his side, against those supporting slavery.
Second is that John Brown definitely brought weapons and the whole intend of attack on Harper's Ferry armory was to get thousands of rifles.
So he clearly planned on have sufficient weapons for an insurrection.
The Whiskey Rebellion also was NOT an insurrection at all, by any measure.
{...
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, ultimately under the command of
American Revolutionary War veteran Major James McFarlane. 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 Revolutionary War, and whiskey distribution and consumption increased after the Revolutionary War (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.
Throughout Western Pennsylvania counties, protesters used violence and intimidation to prevent federal officials from collecting the tax. Resistance came to a climax in July 1794, when a
US marshal arrived in western Pennsylvania to serve writs to distillers who had not paid the excise. The alarm was raised, and more than 500 armed men attacked the fortified home of tax inspector
General John Neville. Washington responded by sending peace commissioners to western Pennsylvania to negotiate with the rebels, while at the same time calling on governors to send a militia force to enforce the tax. Washington himself rode at the head of an army to suppress the insurgency, with 13,000 militiamen provided by the governors of Virginia, Maryland, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania. The rebels all went home before the arrival of the army, and there was no confrontation. About 20 men were arrested, but all were later acquitted or pardoned. Most distillers in nearby Kentucky were found to be all but impossible to tax—in the next six years, over 175 distillers from Kentucky were convicted of violating the tax law.
[4] Numerous examples of resistance are recorded in court documents and newspaper accounts.
[5]
...}
The proof that the Whisky Rebellion was NOT an insurrection was not just that it was narrow and justified, but that all involved were pardoned.
And Native uprisings are just that, not insurrections. The Natives were not part of the US during that time period, so could not possibly have any part in an "insurrection".
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