Biography
Western Pennsylvania farmer-distiller and Whiskey Rebellion (1791-94) participant who beat federal tax collector Robert Johnson and burned his home in protest of Alexander Hamilton's excise tax on whiskey. One of only two men convicted of treason (the rebellion produced the first treason convictions in the new United States). Sentenced to hang; pardoned by President George Washington on November 2, 1795.
Philip Vigol (also spelled Wigle or Weigel) was a western Pennsylvania farmer who took part in the Whiskey Rebellion of 1794, the uprising against Alexander Hamilton’s federal excise tax on whiskey; he had assaulted a tax collector and burned his house. In 1795 he and John Mitchell became the first two people ever convicted of treason against the United States, under a sweeping definition of treason as “levying war” by resisting a federal law. Both were sentenced to hang, but President George Washington pardoned them.
