In 1798, Congress passed a $2 million direct tax to fund the Quasi-War with France, and assessors in Pennsylvania measured homes by counting their windows. This episode tells the story of John Fries, an itinerant auctioneer who rallied Pennsylvania Dutch communities against the tax and ended up sentenced to hang for treason.

We explore why German-American veterans resented assessors drawn largely from Quaker and Moravian communities, the protests in Milford Township and Quakertown, and the bloodless liberation of prisoners from a federal marshal in Bethlehem. Then we follow John Adams’ military response, the treason trial, his controversial pardon, and how the episode pushed voters away from the Federalists ahead of the election of 1800.

• How the window tax worked as a proxy for wealth in rural Pennsylvania
• Why an auctioneer’s network made John Fries a natural organizer
• How protesters in old Continental uniforms drove tax assessors out of town
• Why Adams pardoned Fries on a narrow definition of treason, and the insult in his reasoning
• How Fries’s Rebellion fits alongside Shays’ and the Whiskey Rebellion