The Commissioner recommended, in his report, the passage of a law “expressly providing that where a person is caught in the act of operating an illicit still, he may be arrested without warrant.” In conclusion, he said: “At this time not only is the United States defrauded of its revenues, and its officers openly resisted, but when arrests are made it often occurs that prisoners are rescued by mob violence, and officers and witnesses are often at night dragged from their homes and cruelly beaten, or waylaid and assassinated.”
One day I asked a mountain man, “How about the revenue officers? What sort of men are they?”
“Torn down scoundrels, every one.”
“Oh, come, now!”
“Yes, they are; plumb onery—lock, stock, barrel and gun-stick.”
“Consider what they have to go through,” I remarked. “Like other detectives, they cannot secure evidence without practicing deception. Their occupation is hard and dangerous. Here in the mountains, every man’s hand is against them.”
“Why is it agin them? We ain’t all blockaders; yet you can search these mountains through with a fine-tooth comb and you wunt find ary critter as has a good word to say for the revenue. The reason is ’t we know them men from ’way back; we know whut they uster do afore they jined the sarvice, and why they did it. Most of them were blockaders their own selves, till they saw how they could make more money turncoatin’. They use their authority to abuse people who ain’t never done nothin’ nohow. Dangerous business? Shucks! There’s Jim Cody, for a sample [I suppress the real name]; he was principally raised in this county, and I’ve knowed him from a boy. He’s been eight years in the Government sarvice, and hain’t never been shot at once. But he’s killed a blockader—oh, yes! He arrested Tom Hayward, a chunk of a boy, that was scared most fitified and never resisted more’n a mouse. Cody, who was half drunk his-self, handcuffed Tom, quarreled with him, and shot the boy dead while the handcuffs was on him! Tom’s relations sued Cody in the County Court, but he carried the case to the Federal Court, and they were too poor to follow it up. I tell you, though, thar’s a settlement less ’n a thousand mile from the river whar Jim Cody ain’t never showed his nose sence. He knows there’d be another revenue ‘murdered.’”
“It must be ticklish business for an officer to prowl about the headwaters of these mountain streams, looking for ‘sign.’”
“Hell’s banjer! they don’t go prodjectin’ around looking for stills. They set at home on their hunkers till some feller comes and informs.”