“Before the war these simple folks made their apples and peaches into brandy, and their corn into whiskey, and these products, with a few cattle, some dried fruits, honey, beeswax, nuts, wool, hides, fur, herbs, ginseng and other roots, and woolen socks knitted by the women in their long winter evenings, formed the stock in trade which they bartered for their plain necessaries and few luxuries, their homespun and cotton cloths, sugar, coffee, snuff, and fiddles.... The raising of a crop of corn in summer, and the getting out of tan-bark and lumber in winter, were almost their only resources.... The burden of taxation rested lightly on them. For near two generations no excise duties had been levied.... The war came on. They were mostly loyal to the Union. They paid the first moderate tax without a murmur.
“They were willing to pay any tax that they were able to pay. But suddenly the tax jumped to $1.50, and then to $2, a gallon. The people were goaded to open rebellion. Their corn at that time brought only from 25 to 40 cents a bushel; apples and peaches, rarely more than 10 cents at the stills. These were the only crops that could be grown in their deep and narrow valleys. Transportation was so difficult, and markets so remote, that there was no way to utilize the surplus except to distill it. Their stills were too small to bear the cost of government supervision. The superior officers of the Revenue Department (collectors, marshals, and district-attorneys or commissioners) were paid only by commissions on collections and by fees. Their subordinate agents, whose income depended upon the number of stills they cut up and upon the arrests made, were, as a class, brutal and desperate characters. Guerrilla warfare was the natural sequence.”
CHAPTER VIII
“BLOCKADERS” AND “THE REVENUE”
Little or no attention seems to have been paid to the moonshining that was going on in the mountains until about 1876, owing, no doubt, to the larger game in registered distilleries. In his report for 1876-7, the new Commissioner of Internal Revenue called attention to the illicit manufacture of whiskey in the mountain counties of the South, and urged vigorous measures for its immediate suppression.
“The extent of these frauds,” said he, “would startle belief. I can safely say that during the past year not less than 3,000 illicit stills have been operated in the districts named. Those stills are of a producing capacity of 10 to 50 gallons a day. They are usually located at inaccessible points in the mountains, away from the ordinary lines of travel, and are generally owned by unlettered men of desperate character, armed and ready to resist the officers of the law. Where occasion requires, they come together in companies of from ten to fifty persons, gun in hand, to drive the officers out of the country. They resist as long as resistance is possible, and when their stills are seized, and they themselves are arrested, they plead ignorance and poverty, and at once crave the pardon of the Government.
“These frauds had become so open and notorious ... that I became satisfied extraordinary measures would be required to break them up. Collectors were ... each authorized to employ from five to ten additional deputies.... Experienced revenue agents of perseverance and courage were assigned to duty to co-operate with the collectors. United States marshals were called upon to co-operate with the collectors and to arrest all persons known to have violated the laws, and district-attorneys were enjoined to prosecute all offenders.
“In certain portions of the country many citizens not guilty of violating the law themselves were in strong sympathy with those who did violate, and the officers in many instances found themselves unsupported in the execution of the laws by a healthy state of public opinion. The distillers—ever ready to forcibly resist the officers—were, I have no doubt, at times treated with harshness. This occasioned much indignation on the part of those who sympathized with the lawbreakers....”